As odd as it may sound, it's a remarkably beautiful movie.

A consistently entertaining, frequently violent and generally slapdash action comedy.

It’s a paradox, then, as well as a pity, that the film loses its way at precisely the point when the new story starts to merge with the old one, and the Little Girl meets a character called Mr. Prince.

Jonas Carpignano’s second feature — and Italy’s entry for this year’s foreign-language Oscar — is shockingly alive, startlingly accomplished and remarkably acute. It’s a neo-realist study of a kid with special gifts for leadership, daring and friendship. And for stealing everything in sight.

Benjamin Button is all of a visionary piece, and it's a soul-filling vision.

There is no reason to adapt an existing work without doing something new, and Ms. DaCosta does plenty, though much of the updating shows how truly groundbreaking Ibsen was. And how little ground is left to break.

Unstrung Heroes is a revelation. [15 Sep 1995]

Without the fizz of wit and humor the underlying emotional scenario ends up feeling flat.

Unfortunately, the climax comes with more than a half hour to go, and the film, losing its focus on Jane Jacobs, turns its attention to the urban-renewal plague that devastated cities across America.

By making Emilia Pérez a quasi-musical, Mr. Audiard cranks up the campiness; by making it a parable about one’s own past being inescapable, he makes it profound.

Herself has a largeness of spirit that finds room for its passionate, funny and fiercely desperate heroine and everyone who rallies around her.

The best thing, though, is the movie’s modest scale. It’s a good-natured epic, dedicated to the nontech principle of dispensing plain old pleasure.

The upshot is an emotionally satisfying fusion of the mixed up and the magical.

Here's a debut feature from Norway, a coming of age comedy so fresh and droll that the actors seem not to have been directed at all, but simply observed as they went about their odd lives.

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.

Walks a fine line between bold indie film, with the attendant in-your-face roughness, and sodden Lifetime Original Movie.

Everything and everyone is observed sharply, succinctly and indelibly.

This documentary feature is fascinating and infuriating in unequal parts, the latter far outweighing the former, since Mr. Jarecki’s instrument is a shoehorn.

Sweet, funny, a little melancholy and a little obvious.

Delightful and insightful romantic comedy.

Rousing, provocative film.

Ultimately an original film that forces us, time and again, to reconsider what we think we've just seen, and what we're sure we feel - not only about mere appearance, or fateful gender, but about who, under our skin, we truly are.

Shall We Kiss? gives us storytelling as art. Emmanuel Mouret's romantic drama, in French with English subtitles, is expert, intricate, ineffably droll, ultimately provocative and entirely enchanting.

Social media is not an inherently cinematic subject, but Ms. Binoche is, and in the hands of director Nebbou and cinematographer Gilles Porte the story of Claire becomes, both visually and psychologically, a bridge between worlds, ethereal, tragic and more than a little scary.

The film, like its subject and everyone who talks about him, is frustratingly short on analysis or insight. It’s as if BASE jumping had been invented and psychology had not.

Calmly, almost serenely, Mr. Van Sant and his superb cinematographer, Harris Savides, reveal a vision of contemporary American youth quite unlike any other.

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

Mr. Howard wants us to know that greater challenges lie ahead — not a welcome reminder while we’re in the grips of the coronavirus. Yet his documentary also dramatizes the resilience and resourcefulness we can bring to bear in meeting them. Calamity, the film says, isn’t destiny.