Jockey has its limits as full-fledged drama; it’s more of a meditation on mortality, as well as a love letter from a filmmaker son to his own father. At the same time, though, it’s a testament to the power of being recognized, truly seen and remembered.

This classic tale of a little guy taking on giants benefits from being essentially true, and from accomplished filmmaking, but most of all from the beautiful vitality of Mr. McConaughey's performance.

As horror upon horror unfolds in Prophet’s Prey, Amy Berg’s shocking documentary about the mad polygamist Warren Jeffs and his followers, one may marvel, in horror, at the elaborate forms that deviancy can take.

Looks like Weimar decadence and feels like down-home friendship.

Ms. Dorfman, bless her open heart, has been captivated by the surfaces of the people she shoots, of how they seem. “I am totally not interested in capturing their souls.”

Years after its initial release, Ornette: Made in America, part of Milestone's continuing "Project Shirley," still feels fresh - its moves always surprising, yet always somehow perfect.

One of the best of the genre. If it doesn't serve oysters, per se, this submarine wonder offers marvels in abundance.

Mr. Fukanaga's purpose is to evoke the immigrants' experience, which he does with such eloquence and power as to inspire awe.

Growth is the film's subtext, and finally its subject. Never has a line of dialogue been more freighted with symbolism, or more grounded in literal reality, than when Barbu says, ever so quietly, "Mother, please unlock me."

The plot is so cleverly constructed that its undertones sneak up on you. Their subtlety makes them that much more effective.

This is a feel-real film, a sharp-witted, tough-minded biopic about Tonya Harding, the 1991 U.S. figure skating champion and two-time Olympian who skated rinks around most of her rivals but never became America’s sweetheart.

Proves to be a remarkably lean and incisive film about the fateful power of sexuality.

Value has been added as well -- the most thrilling car chase ever committed to film, a sequence that also shows, by cutting to the psychosexual chase, why fans embraced the tawdry genre in the first place.

What works best is what's readily accessible, the startling power of performers who understand the drama all too well.

Leonard Bernstein was a towering musical figure and a complicated man. Netflix’s “Maestro” has a great deal to say about the latter characterization and surprisingly little about the former.

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.

In the end Relic really is about decay, both physical and spiritual, and filial devotion. But devotion to what is the question. The answer makes this movie distinctive, and well worth seeing.

Alternately inspiring and dismaying—why is the large, affable Mr. Andrés filling this global vacuum of governmental response?—the movie is also informative, engaging and reads like an application for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ms. Stewart, who has maintained an impressively adventurous career since her “Twilight” days concluded more than a decade ago, helps keep the film upright, beautifully blending a moody exterior with the care of a lover and the anxiety skittering beneath it all as Lou tries to keep her world from coming completely apart.

The storytelling is first-rate, snowballing along from one outrage to the next.

It's a film of modest means and great ambition, a darkly comic drama concerned with nothing less than the place of faith, and an embattled Church, in modern life.

The scope of the subject is such that when Mr. Jarecki's voiceover cuts into the narrative, imposing a personal angle on the national story, it reduces the sense of significance its creator aimed for. But that's a fairly backhanded endorsement of a very potent movie.

The film is a sort of jigsaw puzzle that demands either paying minute attention or viewing it twice. Seemingly unimportant and easily forgotten details from the opening minutes turn out to cohere and create a conclusive emotional impact of the kind that everyone in the movie is missing.

Clark Terry the teacher sometimes talks like a trumpet, even though he's dealing with a pianist—"daddle-leedle-daddle-loodle" is how he wants Justin to play one phrase. Clark Terry the man personifies generosity, and it's lovely to behold.

This is filmmaking of a high order, even though the production's scale is modest and the climax is not without its facile contrivances.

The strength of her film transcends the soldier’s power to seduce. We’re beguiled, as an audience, by seeing this male animal as he is seen, and for better and worse experienced, by a diverse and dynamic group of females. And by seeing, in the end, how The Beguiled gives new and memorable meaning to the notion of a finishing school.

Ms. De Clermont-Tonnerre’s direction is a revelation — not just a good first try, but a first-rate achievement by any measure. She clearly watched such relevant classics as “The Black Stallion” and “The Misfits,” yet found a laconic style that is all her own.

Mr. Coogan, lavishly talented as a comic, and a comic actor, is fairly monotonous in the mostly serious role he wrote for himself. That leaves Ms. Dench to carry the picture, which she does, up to a point, with her usual delicacy and grace.