As Crowhurst's situation grows desperate, the scope of the film expands -- from a good yarn to a haunting, complex tale of self-promotion, media madness, self-delusion and, finally, self-destruction.

Represents a big growth spurt in Mr. Cronenberg's career. Its measured pace, along with a style that is sometimes austere (though sometimes anything but) repays close attention with excellent acting and a wealth of absorbing information.

Difficult too, and certainly problematic, but it's sometimes quite wonderful. Do see it if you're curious about one-of-a-kind films, and if you care about the ever-evolving career of one of our most gifted filmmakers.

Saroo is played dazzlingly by Dev Patel, who gives his richest performance since Mira Nair’s “The Namesake.”

The film is a dramatic and visual feast, one that portrays its adversaries as passionate humans who move us and make us laugh while they’re having at each other in search of common theological ground.

As you watch Doc Paskowitz perform for Mr. Pray's camera, it's hard not to judge him harshly. His narcissism seems boundless, even when he cloaks it in self-deprecation.

The film is quiet, deliberate and low-key, and some may find it underwhelming, but writer-director Gabriel Martins has a novelist’s feel for his characters, taking us under everybody’s skin with deep sympathy for their differing outlooks.

A relatively small, tough-minded drama about pitiless people doing unprincipled things, proves to be one of the most interesting, elegantly crafted and — paradoxically, given the dark subject matter — elating films to come along in recent memory.

What’s lovely about The Adam Project is its treatment of grief, the love between mothers and sons and, to a slightly lesser extent, fathers and sons.

It’s easily the most effective work of horror I’ve seen this year.

Formally and dramatically, the movie has poise, which only strengthens its depiction of girls thrown off balance by growing up.

The direct, intimate way in which the movie is filmed and acted, however, makes it an affecting study of two people’s attempts to forge some kind of relationship despite huge psychic damage on both sides.

As director Alison Ellwood shows in her briskly entertaining documentary—The Go-Go’s—the band’s members can explain away, with enormous charm, the naked ambition that made them the most successful “girl group” ever.

Duma is not a masterpiece, but its deficits recede into insignificance once you open yourself to the movie's mystery and visual splendor.

You can't take your eyes off Ms. Kidman; she has never played a role with more focused energy.

Mr. Gaines occasionally loses confidence in his audience—the parallels that can be drawn between Gregory’s times and now are pretty obvious and don’t really need the punctuation. Most of the time, though, The One and Only Dick Gregory is a memorable portrait, of someone whose story deserves to be better remembered.

Morgan Spurlock has come up with a terrific idea-a movie about product placements that depends completely on product placements for its financing.

I took it as a pretty piece of ephemera, and I must confess that I laughed a lot.

The daunting logistics of Superman Returns have obviously affected the director's work -- thus the hit-or-miss continuity of the narrative -- but Bryan Singer hasn't been defeated by them. While his movie can be cumbersome, it's consistently alive, and that is saying a lot when many such productions are dead in the water, on land or in the air. Also, how can you resist the charm of a fantasy in which everyone gets his news from newspapers?

Car chases have come a long way since Steve McQueen's cop, in a spunky little Mustang coupe, pursued a couple of bad guys, in a hulking Dodge Charger, up and down the streets of San Francisco. This seminal chase put a premium on finesse.

Understanding that a knockout finish is the most important element, Mr. Spielberg delivers spectacularly in a scene drawn from a real-life meeting. He puts a mischievous twist on his well-earned reputation for sentimental endings by dramatizing an encounter with one of the gods of celluloid.

It's hard to stop quoting from a movie this good.

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.

Some of Mr. Loach's earlier feature films have been easier to admire than to enjoy. This one, which won the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival, fairly vibrates with dramatic energy.

Fresh and flip and enjoyable, it's a sci-fi-tinged romantic comedy that I urge you to seek out.

Noah can be silly or sublime, but it's never less than fascinating. I was on board from start to finish.

The made movie — i.e. Mr. Pavich's documentary — makes for a great seminar on creativity. Its star is Mr. Jodorowsky, outrageously handsome and dynamic at the age of 84.

A sports movie with a quick wit, uncommon grace and a romantic soul.