All of the performances are superb. Ms. Smit is a special revelation. This is only her second feature, though you’d never know it from the alacrity and intensity of her scenes with Ms. Cruz.

By turns funny, elegiac and thrilling, it’s a tale of brotherhood and family that takes in the harsh beauty of the land, the elusive nature of right and wrong and the quirky delights of human connections in a time of bewildering change.

I'm still left, though, with an unshakable sense of Up being rushed and sketchy, a collection of lovely storyboards that coalesced incompletely or not at all.

Both literary and cinematic, “Poor Things” gives the audience everything we can ask for in a film—beauty and wonder; hefty ideas and clever storytelling; twists, shocks and laughter.

The film is more illuminating in its depiction of a distinctly contemporary war, in which men are augmented at every step by advanced machines.

The movie has a beating heart, and a big one; it’s not just sincere, but that rarest of birds in the jungle of mainstream entertainment, a heartfelt epic.

Brooklyn grabs us, holds us and moves us on its own. Emotionally it’s a killer.

Apart from a singer named You who plays Keiko, the members of the cast are non-professionals. You may find that hard to believe when you see this astonishing film, as I hope you will.

This evocation of the mission half a century ago is as good as it’s likely to get — meaning not just good but magnificent.

Casts a spell and then some -- a ringing testament to the power of motion pictures.

Astonishingly vivid. The illusion of reality is so nearly complete in this magnificent French-language film by the Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne that the screen becomes a perfectly transparent window on lives hanging in the balance.

It’s hard to overstate the pleasures of this film or, more precisely, this encounter with its subject.

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.

This pitch-dark comedy, which was directed, con brio, by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, sizzles as the camera circles, stalks and swoops. Emmanuel Lubezki’s friction-free cinematography constitutes a virtuoso turn in its own right in a production that’s strewn with superb performances, some of them loud and bold, others subtle and restrained.

Ms. Armstrong's Little Women, which has enough sugar to make your teeth sing, if not your heart. [29 Dec 1994]

The film is not only not unpleasant but a genuine, authentic and honest-to-goodness pleasure.

The film is terrific fare for kids. But the underpinnings of its fantastical story lie in tortured Irish history, English imperialism, and the use of religion to rationalize oppression; there’s a hum of yearning for a pre-Christian Hibernia of pagans, Druids and nature worship. Adults will be eager to see where it’s all going to go.

These miniatures magnify their subjects, and ennoble them. The picture is anguishing to see, but it isn't missing anymore.

It’s a puzzle play, with one of the best closing shots in memory. Film is its subject. So is life. With Mr. Almodóvar behind the camera and Mr. Banderas in front of it, film and life are synonymous.

By turns intriguing, boring, frustrating, amazing and stirring, this is a tour de force that, necessarily, lacks dramatic force, but one that creates a dream state of seemingly limitless dimensions.

The malignity can be oppressive -- this is a far cry from Fellini finding poignant uplift in the slums -- but the dramatic structure is complex, the details are instructive, and the sense of tragedy is momentous.

Familiar Touch is a film about forgetting, but it’s also a reminder—as moving, sincere and gracefully unadorned as any I’ve seen in some time—of the actor’s art.

It is, simply and stirringly, a kind of beau ideal of education, a vision of how the process can work at its best.

The Velvet Underground is a beautifully poetic meditation on the emotional and cultural power of rock and the allure of making a life in art.

It’s a fertile idea, beautifully executed.

Cinema’s power to transport is vividly on display in Nigerian writer-director C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s eerie but beautiful visit to a rich and unfamiliar setting.

Excites us with words not spoken, passions not played out. A mood story more than a love story, it's all about sustaining a state of exquisite melancholy in the face of desire.

Watching this surrealist silliness, I would have welcomed the sight of a geezer on a riding mower.