An enchanting documentary by Ceyda Torun, operates on three levels, and we’re not speaking metaphorically here.

What's on screen is a gorgeous grab bag of notions: ardent love, a salute to Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain," a bit of "Camille" and a lot — I mean a lot — of nuts-and-bolts stuff about nuts and bolts.

Ms. Israel's movie proves, once again, that the best nonfiction cinema possesses the same attributes as good fiction: Strong characters, conflict, story arc, visual style.

Beguiling, meditative and elegantly photographed documentary.

Mr. Scorsese has created a Judea that is dusty and harsh, where visions in the middle of a night seem like. Some of the visual compositions are dizzyingly beautiful; the Crucifixion scene couldn't be more masterful, or heartbreaking. [11Aug 1988, p.1]

Expansively, melodramatically entertaining.

It is by turns harrowing, affecting, unexpectedly funny, truly scary and fantastical. (The cinematographer was Juan Jose Saravia.) The fantasy grows overlush from time to time, but Ms. López has created an original work of art in genre disguise.

The film's point of view is inevitably that of an outsider, which Danny Pearl was, and menace is the essence of this shattering story, which has been told with skill and urgent conviction. A Mighty Heart makes the terms of the terrorist threat palpable.

The film grows on you too, a later-stage version of "The Big Chill" that starts schematically and ends as a stirring celebration.

Doubt leaves none in one respect: John Patrick Shanley was the right person to direct this fascinating screen version of his celebrated play.

A genuinely eccentric comedy that explodes with funny ideas and expresses most of them in wildly original animation.

The hurtling action, speaking louder than any dialogue, gives a stirring sense of the suffering and heroism that flowed from the terror at the Boylston Street finish line.

An act of expiation, Land of Mine is honorable, harrowing and stirring.

Shocking as it may be, One Child Nation needs to be seen. It’s a document that deepens our understanding of the totalitarian state that China was, not that long ago, of the enormity of the inhumanity that the central government visited on its most vulnerable citizens.

Blink your eyes and you've lost track of them, but one of the interesting things about the experience is that you don't want to lose track; though the film moves as slowly as its hikers, it demands, and deserves, to be watched closely. (The cinematographer was Inti Briones.)

The content can be raw, sometimes startling, but before and after everything else the film is hilarious, and constitutes a cockeyed pantheon of comic performances. On top of that it is beautiful. The more you laugh, the more deeply you’re moved by its portrait of a lost manchild trying to find himself in a present that’s missing a precious piece of his past.

For him (Schneebaum) it's a journey of stunning rediscovery. For us it's the discovery of a brave soul.

Hold Your Fire is a bona-fide thriller, its elements in delicate balance.

Ron Howard's Depression-era movie also works from the inside out, building a classic underdog drama from depth of character, rich texture, vivid detail and stirring performances.

The film, produced in conjunction with NASA, also fulfills its inspirational function with screen-filling, soul-filling views of the main space station in the story — the one that harbors all our lives and hopes.

This is a significant addition to the Verhoeven canon, meaning it’s elegantly crafted, formidably well performed and as fascinating as it is lurid.

Black Book is its own kind of thriller. The film is filled with the genre's conventions -- suspense, betrayal, melodrama, violence, music -- and it's hugely enjoyable from start to finish.

I laughed myself silly through most of A Mighty Wind, and was pleasantly surprised when it took a turn toward genuine feeling near the end.

The director, Kevin Macdonald, searches for clarity amid the contradictions of Marley's life and reaches no conclusions, but that's a tribute to his subject's complexity in a film of fascinating too-muchness.

The filmmakers find a way to expand their slashifications into provocative reflections on the white world’s fear of ostensibly menacing Black men, and, secondarily but importantly, art’s power to shape our understanding of the world around us.

What begins as a chamber piece, directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin from a screenplay by Dennis Kelly, becomes a full-fledged movie with a pair of marvelous performances at its claustrophobic center.

A surprising, entirely beguiling little film.

Period pieces can be marvelous or musty, depending on the period, as well as the piece. Soul Power is marvelous.

Like Crazy develops slowly, and threatens at first to be just another movie about beautiful young people in the Age of Fraught Relationships. It's much more than that, though. Without belaboring any issues, it speaks volumes about fear of commitment.

Through a single family, Mr. Rasoulof has created a vivid portrait of the dilemmas of today’s Iran, where the power of iman, or faith, suggests one kind of observation but the power of the iPhone suggests another.

The tone is dry farce that never strays into camp, with a mildly sardonic appreciation of oddballs recalling such Robert Altman films as “The Long Goodbye.” A creepily discordant musical score by Fatima Al Qadiri adds immensely to the feeling that everyone is hiding something and no good will come of it.

The picture sets up high expectations for itself with its wonderful casting, and the actors don't disappoint. [1 Aug 1989, p.1]

What’s admirable about Pioneer is its succession of interesting environments, both below and above the water’s surface, and the quietly appealing figure at the center of the international intrigue.

[Kore-eda's] latest film, though, has a special warmth and grace. It unfolds slowly, sneaks up on big questions about intertwined mysteries of family and personal destiny, and pretty much answers them, though the biggest question for Ryota is whether he’ll be changed by what he learns.

The BFG has fizz to spare. It’s an effervescent charmer.

The director’s best-known film, “BPM,” drew from his later experience as an AIDS activist, and whereas that was an insular, immediate and impassioned portrait of a movement, Red Island takes a lusher, more leisurely approach to its mix of history and memory.

For all its awkward structure, the film is heartfelt and deeply affecting.

This all-you-can-eat thrill buffet easily bests most of the recent big-budget movies and reminds us that Mr. Cruise remains a showman par excellence.

As interviewers — and filmmakers — go, Mr. Herzog is one of a kind, his searching curiosity complemented by his instantly recognizable German accent. His new film, he goes out of his way to note, is a love letter.

Uncommonly smart and interesting.

One of the wittiest comedies to come our way in a very long time.

Any movie with these two comics is a trip and a half. How about France for the next one? A perfect way to revisit Michael Caine.

A surprisingly agile and delightfully warm romantic comedy.

Mr. Zhang’s film is elegant fun. Along with all the ying-yangery, there’s the governing concept of movies as entertainment.

Wonderfully fresh and affecting fable from India.

The film is exuberant and heartfelt, and the hero’s journey takes him through spectacular territory; the picturesque land of the living pales by comparison to what Miguel discovers in the Land of the Dead.

Director, Darren Aronofsky, and the writer, Robert D. Siegel, have turned the story of this washed-up faux gladiator into a film of authentic beauty and commanding consequence.

A moving and even poetic mixed-media meditation on Albert Einstein, his life after Hitler and his sense of “responsibility, not to say guilt” about his theories and how they played into the destruction that, lest one forget, ended World War II.

It's a fleeting but memorable image in a film that defines Leonard Cohen largely through the admiration of fellow artists, who performed his songs at a tribute concert last year at the opera house in Sydney, Australia. Their admiration borders on the reverential, but reverence doesn't get in the way of their performances, which are varied, impassioned and thrilling.

But all of that — the visual style included — changes as the film develops an edge, then expands into a lyrical realm that is both very Japanese and entirely universal.

Undine isn’t a conventional romance, or a readily accessible one, but open yourself to this special film and you’re liable to be hooked.

The film is neither kind nor cruel, but wise, great-spirited and wonderfully enjoyable. It’s an addled dream of beauty unlike any other.

Z for Zachariah asks us to suspend a good deal of disbelief. Ann is absurdly beautiful, and Ms. Robbie emerges as a full-fledged star, even though her performance is precise and understated.

The violence is graphic, the dialogue can be awfully arch and the style is often mannered, but this long, dense adventure takes surprising side trips into thoughtfulness, ruefulness, whimsy and romance. It's high-grade entertainment sustained by a buoyant spirit.

The film may not propose a solution to any of our maladies, but it’s a bitterly convincing diagnosis.

Unexpectedly thoughtful, as well as touching.

A win-win situation in which a mainstream feature works equally well as stirring entertainment and a history lesson about a remarkable convergence of sports and statesmanship.

Mostly, though, The Last Black Man in San Francisco — which is what Jimmie sometimes feels like in the gentrifying city of his birth — glides from moment to meaningful moment with cumulative power and singular grace.

Taut, smart, intense and genuinely scary, Trey Edward Shults’s It Comes at Night fulfills the promise, and then some, of the filmmaker’s 2015 debut feature, “Krisha.”

“Reflection” is a highly playful exercise in its kaleidoscopic approach, though “kaleidoscopic” is about as useful as “surreal” in describing the film’s effect or philosophy.

Combining the best aspects of “Interstellar” and “The Martian,” but more satisfying in the end than either, this 2 1/2-hour epic Christian allegory recreates the same mix as the best Steven Spielberg fantasies—wonder, adventure, humor, warmth and pathos, all infused with a child’s sensibility.

The film, directed with exceptional flair and elegant concision by Scott Cooper, even comes from Warner Bros., the studio that specialized in psychopathic monsters played by such stars as James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson during Hollywood’s golden age.

Talladega Nights may be brash, unbridled, even unhinged, but its cornpone humor is rich in parody, and its craftsmanship is superb -- smart writing, shrewd direction, precisely calibrated performances (whether the calibration calls for delicacy or broad-gauge burlesque), inventive language, inspired silliness and all-but-flawless timing.

To top it all off, no matter where you sit in the theater, no matter how far you arch back in your seat, there's no escaping the sensation that all the action on the screen is taking place about three feet from your face. I loved it.

Besides engineering top-notch performances from his actors, Mr. Demme also put together a soundtrack that enhances the movie's marvelous, quirky rhythms. He keeps you hooked into this unpredictable, pleasurable picture right through the closing credits. [6 Nov 1986]

One of the film's best moments of deliciousness comes with the revelation that Yoshikazu, rather than his father, made the sushi that won the Michelin inspectors over; so much for working humbly in the old man's shadow.

This modest drama invokes the power of incipience — fear of what will happen next — and amplifies it with lean writing in the service of flawless acting. Antiwar films don’t have to be great to be worthy; this one is very, very good.

Much of what makes “The Boy Who Lived” special are the inexplicable ways people respond to the unexpected, and the randomly tragic, and whether they stick around when it would be much easier to vanish, as if by wizardry.

The big difference between Mr. Romero's film and Mr. Eisner's--which is so intelligent you fear the fanboys will scatter--is that Mr. Eisner never gives us the military's point of view. All we know is what David and Judy and Russell know, which for a long time isn't much. And The Crazies is all the scarier for it.

What makes "The Winter Soldier" so enjoyable, though, and what will make it so profitable, is its emotional bandwidth — all the vivid, nuanced life lived by its characters in between their frenzied escapades.

Make what you will of the story and its symbolism, but Mr. Antal has made a remarkable feature debut with this visionary film, chockablock with memorable images.

No doubt this would flounder spectacularly without gifted actors, but Mr. Jacobs is lucky enough to have three.

Here’s a brilliant idea for a rock documentary: Catch up with a band in the creaky fog of middle age, long after the hits. A certain toll has been exacted, a certain humility achieved, and yet the story is not yet over.

After Love may be a bit thin on story, but it nevertheless shines with feeling.

The worst thing I can say about Rosenwald, a wonderful documentary by Aviva Kempner, is that it tends to ramble. I say it, though, in the spirit of the joyous New Orleans funeral march “Oh! Didn’t He Ramble.” How could Ms. Kempner’s narrative follow anything like a straight line when her subject is so rich and varied?

I can tell you that Ms. Laurent’s direction is astute and economical, that both of the film’s young stars give fine performances, and that Breathe is a very good title for a film that ever so gradually takes your breath away.

Has its share of misfired jokes and pseudo-mythic sequences that semi-fizzle. All in all, though, it’s majestical nonsense that is anything but nonsensical.

His is a special kind of courage, and it impels him to act with special agility in a brave new world of his own making, where little tweets can challenge big lies and a blog post can echo like thunder.

The filmmaking is strong and confident throughout, while Mr. Brummer’s performance is a constant revelation.

His (Takeshi) sense of style is very much in evidence here, and so is his sense of humor.

Given the white-on-white color scheme, I didn't expect so many shades of feeling.

The second half, in particular, exemplifies science fiction at its best: thoughtful, exciting, provocative and pointed. It’s fantasy wrapped around ideological substance, making “Kingdom” the best of the franchise films to make it to theaters so far this year.

Without straining to make an obvious point, Mr. Tomnay uses black comedy and shocking splatters of gore to tweak the class of jaded plutocrats who are as asset-rich as they are morals-poor.

This film, which might have been called "The Fog of Words," isn't haunting, but dismaying. Mr. Rumsfeld is, as always, articulate, energetic and self-confident. Yet his words suggest a paradox — a restless mind with no discernible gift for self-reflection.

In a movie devoted mainly to making you laugh, it’s a plea for tolerance that takes your breath away.

Lovely & Amazing goes to the heart -- and face, and skin -- of a subject that's sure to ring true with women, and may even educate men.

In an industry afflicted by sequelitis, it has taken John Boorman almost three decades to make the sequel to his much-cherished “Hope and Glory,” but Queen and Country turns out to be well worth the wait.

A drama that transcends cleverness. This beautiful film, directed with subtlety and grace by Juan José Campanella, really is about moving from fear to love.

You’ll want to see Zero Days — just not when you’re counting on a good night’s sleep a few hours later. Alex Gibney’s documentary about cyberwarfare is many things, none of them lulling: a thriller, a detective procedural, a startling chronicle of science fiction transformed into fact, and an urgent plea for public discussion of a new way of waging war that could wreak havoc on a scale akin to that of nuclear weapons.

As a witness to some small rectification and the still simmering problems that surround it, Dahomey is at once haunting and humble.

Still, the family dynamics work out beautifully, and Jean’s return also leads to a deeply affecting revelation of his father’s feelings for him. As far as winemaking is concerned, Back to Burgundy is rich in vistas of the fabled côtes; stuffed with oenophile info (who knew how directly de-stemming affects a wine’s structure?) and studded with casual tastings of wines that most of us can only dream of. A 1990 Pommard? A 1995 Meursault Perrières?

The Rover, is anything but lively, though it's long on menace, often violent and consistently fascinating.

A mismatched-buddy movie that's endearing, funny and affecting in equal measure.

Dreamin’ Wild is an elegant appreciation of the many textures of aging, balancing the feel of rhapsodic memories and shuddery regrets.

This unique enterprise, which began as a documentary experiment almost a half century ago, has grown into an inspiring testimonial to the unpredictability of the human spirit.

If a thriller can make you hold your breath for fear of being eaten by aliens while you’re sitting in the multiplex, it’s working pretty well, and “A Quiet Place: Day One” appropriately kept me in a frozen state, afraid to so much as crinkle a page in my notebook.

Chile ’76 subtly illustrates how difficult it becomes to separate the personal and the political in an authoritarian state. As it goes on, it develops from a character portrait into an unusually realistic thriller, with danger asserting itself everywhere.

We’re watching a period piece that feels beautifully and painfully present: beautifully because love stories are timeless, painfully because the spectacle of racial injustice feels up to date.