I am glad to be able to say that all these clever and talented people have actually come up with the goods. The biggest goodie is Tom Hanks as the little boy after his wish has been granted. Much of the comedy in this movie is physical. Without forcing the matter Mr. Hanks has a startling ability to take on the mannerisms and facial expressions of an adolescent. [2 Jun 1988, p.1]

With his co-writer, Randy Sue Coburn, and composer Mark Isham, director Alan Rudolph has created a sense of time and place that authentically conveys what it might have been like when writers were celebrities and special effects came from words. [10 Jan 1995, p.A18]

Red Army is about many things — politics and sport, service and servitude, integrity trumped by money. Most memorably, though, it celebrates a good man living a great life by his own lights.

If you’re looking for something to lift you up and take you away from the tumult and anguish of the moment, seek out Our Little Sister, a lovely new film, in Japanese with English subtitles, that’s going into national distribution this week.

It’s family entertainment in the freshest sense of the term, a biographical drama, based on a true story, that vibrates with more colors — emotional as well as visual — than I can name.

Beautiful images can be a distraction in a serious documentary, but that's hardly the case here. They draw us in so we can better understand the hurtling changes that endanger the future of Cambodia and, by extension, much of the developing world.

While inseparable from Ukraine and its echoes, the film argues quietly but convincingly that its story is not specific to its time and place, necessarily, but is rather about how traumatized children everywhere might respond, react and/or rebel.

Nicole Kidman places the bereaved heroine of Rabbit Hole in a nether land between life and not-quite-life. Her beautiful performance transcends the specifics of the script, which David Lindsay-Abaire adapted from his play of the same name.

War Machine, with a screenplay and direction by David Michod (of 2010’s ferocious “Animal Kingdom”), is a comedy because, as per the old Angela Carter line, it’s tragedy happening to other people. But it’s also a highly accessible examination of why the Afghanistan war couldn’t be won the way we—in the person of Gen. McChrystal—were fighting it.

Soko is terrific, but it is Mr. Lindon who delivers the performance of the film, his internalized consternation amounting to an eloquent dispatch from the war between the sexes.

Throughout The Hong Konger, Mr. Lai exhibits amazing composure as he tells a story that is both inspiring and enraging, in interviews filmed both before and between his arrests.

The best car commercial ever, an absolute triumph of product placement, and great fun as a movie in the bargain.

A hoot, or at least a collection of delightful hootlets hung on a short, frayed line.

To their credit, and to the credit of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in the title roles of Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, the movie doesn't condescend to these relics of the recent past, but treats them with poignancy and humor. [21 Nov 1990]

There’s a link between this Marcello and the Marcello played by Jean-Louis Trintignant in Bernardo Bertolucci’s seminal “The Conformist,” a functionary ripe for corruption in Mussolini’s Italy. Both men are mesmerized by power, and both movies pose, in different ways, the same question — what happens when no one stands up to tyranny? In the Dogman’s case, another question presents itself. What happens if someone finally does? The answer is surprising, and, like the whole of Mr. Garrone’s film, eerily memorable.

Living With Leopards is superior nature content, largely because of the evident devotion of its humans.

It’s a paradox worth noting, and savoring, that the most dramatic movie of the week doesn’t have a script.

What's an eight-letter word for a non-fiction feature that is witty, wise and wonderful? "Wordplay."

The result is better than smart, it’s stirring.

That Mr. Rohmer is an octogenarian just beginning to play with digital technology makes the venture even more intriguing.

It is a modest, methodical movie-in-vignettes that demonstrates the far-reaching, constrictive force of Iran’s regime and the society it has created. It is also a canny representation of the kind of straight-faced authoritarian illogic that creates its own delusional reality, which is then forced upon a people.

It’s a finely wrought story of palace intrigue enriched by lush sets and decors, having been shot at Versailles.

The Square stands as a valuable document of a tormented time, an anatomy of a revolutionary movement doomed by a paucity of viable institutions, and by the movement's failure to advance a coherent agenda. (It's all the more heartbreaking when a speaker at one of the protests cries fervently, "We will fill the world with poetry.")

A beautiful film, shot by Tim Orr, that is elevated by Mr. Cage's stirring portrait of a violence-prone man who can't restrain himself from doing good.

An astonishing and horrific thriller that has been constructed, like few films I’ve ever seen, to make you turn away from its frequent eruptions of savagery but then look back, just as often, to savor its mysterious beauty.

Le Havre stands on its own fragile but considerable merits.

The greatest reward of Old Henry is Mr. Nelson’s performance.

You don't have to be a fan of Mr. Jarmusch's special brand of indie spookiness to enjoy his new film. All that's required is patience with its languorous pace, plus a willingness to swing between amusement and delight, with periodic pauses at ennui.