The movie, not to mention the company, deserves praise for showing the challenges as well as the triumphs; Dior and I doesn’t shy away from conflicts when they arise. This isn’t marketing material. It’s a real look at a fascinating line of work.

Black Souls has a deep and startling soulfulness that, despite its shocking conclusion, is profoundly moving.

If there’s a quibble with the film, it’s that it glosses over what it’s like to grow up in the glare of worldwide celebrity.

Along with his regular co-writer Eskil Vogt, Trier has crafted a profoundly beautiful and strange meditation on secrets, lies, dreams, memories and misunderstanding.

The movie masterfully crystallizes the unruly, episodic nature of memories, re-creating the way certain small things stay with us while other, much larger events recede into a haze of cigarette smoke.

This mesmerizingly beautiful drama ponders themes of duty, patience, isolation and compassion.

My King brims with intimate details, adding to a sense of authenticity that is rarely found in films.

There’s no doubt that Audiard has invested a story of grief, dispossession and desire with immediate, almost tactile, urgency. Like the best fiction, it takes the most incomprehensible stories of our time and makes them hauntingly, inescapably clear.

Embrace of the Serpent has some of the most vivid images captured on film in recent memory, and also some of the most haunting.

Thorpe doesn’t flinch from whatever awkward or controversial findings his subjects offer up, especially when they concern himself. The filmmaker’s curiosity as a reporter is tempered by an unapologetically subjective perspective.

The through-line of Chi-Raq is a sense of crisis that Lee refuses to reduce to binary causes, but interprets in terms of history, economics and psychology, as well as the personal, political and spiritual.

The Second Mother feels lovingly handcrafted. All the elements of the story fit impeccably together for a humorous and occasionally wrenching examination of relationships.

Unlike “Metropolitan,” which for all its brittle wit seemed clunky and stagebound, Barcelona is sharply paced and alive on the screen.

A Bigger Splash manages to infuse even the most straightforward questions with vicariously alluring ambiguity.

Few war films are entertaining in a traditional sense. This one is so relentless that recoiling from it is nearly impossible.

That A War both delivers the results one might wish for and denies a sense of closure is not a failing but its chief virtue.

The make-believe world of Boy and the World is confusing, scary and gorgeous. But then again, so is the real one.

Dark Horse is earnest, sweet and told with sentimentality, featuring shots of horses frolicking in fields set against beautiful string music by Anne Nikitin. Surprisingly, the effect isn’t melodramatic or overbearing, but disarming and endearing.

Small moments take on larger meaning in this exquisite memoir. That’s as true of the plot — in which nothing terribly significant happens, except life — as it is of the visuals.

For sheer inventiveness of story, language, visuals and theme, The Brand New Testament is, quite nearly, a divine comedy.

Sully is a classy, enormously satisfying ode to simple competence. To paraphrase the title character, it’s just a movie doing its job. And amen to that.

With a firm grasp on the duality implicit in its title, Little Men is a story that’s neither tragic nor triumphal in the way it resolves itself, but rather one that’s sadly, even satisfyingly true.

Arnold also brings to bear a euphoric appreciation for the spirit of freedom and the optimism — if not the innocence — of her subjects, who can seem at once world-weary and hopelessly naive. Call it a form of ecstatic naturalism, one that revels in the ugly paradoxes of life.

Hubris, narcissism, tabloid spectacle and massive self-deception collide with the mesmerizing inevitability of a slow-motion train wreck in Weiner, an engrossing, almost shamefully entertaining documentary.

As the movie progresses, it deepens emotionally and becomes less of a detective thriller and more of a character study, and it's to Franklin's credit that he never allows his hard-boiled style to soften. Thematically, the movie doesn't make a strong statement, but it is strikingly expressive in its details.

House Party isn't a great movie, but it's heartfelt and enormously winning. In its own modest, ramshackle way, it manages to seem innocent even when it's profane. And maybe a party that demonstrates that those two qualities aren't necessarily opposed is exactly the kind we need.

The "Godfather" films transcended their mobster genre; New Jack City doesn't, but it's a great genre film, edgy, vibrant and full of urgent color.

Davies is a master of the slow build, lyrically evoking the dreaminess and gravity of his subject and her verse.

For a movie that relies so heavily on a single, not especially groundbreaking visual effect — now you see the bogeyman, now you don’t — Lights Out is crazy scary.

If the conceit feels obvious and strained, it still gives Farhadi and his actors ample room to explore the ambiguities of commitment, ethics and revenge in a society where mistrust in public servants runs deep.

Toni Erdmann, it turns out, is Hüller’s movie all the way, with her character not just matching wits with the bumptious, often irritating father, but ultimately coming into her own with the genuine feeling he seems determined to deflect.

In a word, Hell or High Water is terrific.

Few films are both genuinely erotic and off-putting enough to inspire the occasional walkout. Raw succeeds at both.

Bidegain and cinematographer Arnaud Potier speak multitudes with wide-angle, slow-panning shots that immerse us in a post-9/11 quagmire that’s never less than utterly personal.

The production numbers in “Wicked” are garish and cluttered, but they have snap and a pleasing sense of unified mass movement; their effect on the eyeballs is somewhere between an assault and a massage.

For every misgiving The Eagle Huntress invites, it offers inspiration in equal measure, taking the audience on a beautiful, thrilling journey to a part of the world that is still largely inaccessible. And it introduces them to a young woman who gives bravery a bracing, unforgettable face.

The film incorporates the book’s story arc, with stylistic nods to Robert Lawson’s drawings of Spanish scenes and people. But it also adds new incidents, characters and depth, with a contemporary wit that doesn’t coarsen the story — or not much, anyway.

Hawke is good at playing bad, but Hawkins is better, rendering, in Maudie, a portrait of a woman that feels raw, real and revelatory.

The movie’s visual panache and fog-of-war ambiguity are as universal as the desire to detonate TNT under your enemy’s headquarters.

Frantz contains revelations unrelated to the manner in which it protects, and then peels away, its central mystery. Ultimately, it addresses the question: Why go on living when life itself betrays us?

Simultaneously warm and clear-eyed, “Best Worst Thing” is an unblinking look at how the sausage of theater gets made, as well as an emotional memoir.

Like all great movies, Get Out faithfully obeys the conventions of its genre — in this case horror films shot through with brutal wit and sharp-eyed allegory — while getting at profound psychic and political realities. The shocks and the laughs are thoroughly entertaining, but it’s the truth of Get Out that’s so real.

A charmer from its first action-packed frames to its over-the-top jailhouse-musical scene during the end credits.

A well-seasoned, handsomely cured slab of showbiz schmaltz that hits all the right pleasure centers. With equal parts glitz and grit, Cooper has successfully navigated the most perilous shoals of making a classic narrative his own, managing to create one of its best iterations to date.

It’s a treat to watch an actress at the top of her game, flexing her interpretive muscles in a showcase that is inventive and thought-provoking.

The acting ensemble has a believable, brotherly chemistry, especially Teller and Taylor Kitsch, playing a troublemaker who initially teases Brendan brutally before the two warm up to each other, forming an adorable bond.

As a sly chamber piece, it re­assures and unsettles in equal, exquisitely calibrated measure.

By focusing on the details of his characters’ lives, Weinstein finds common ground on both sides of the religious divide.

Gaga looks like fun, but the soul-revealing “Mr. Gaga” makes clear the sacrifice Naharin’s dedication has exacted from family and dancers alike.

If Phantom Thread isn’t exactly a narrative triumph, it still manages to deliver, especially as a haunting evocation of avidity, appetite and aesthetic pursuit at its most rarefied.

For much of its brisk running time, It Comes at Night teeters between delicious atmosphere and almost unbearable tension.

Rather than probe Giacometti and Lord’s curiously arms-length relationship, Final Portrait is at its best simply watching the artist work — the “artist,” in this case, meaning both Giacometti and Rush.

The result is an unabashedly violent B-movie throwback, the sort director John Carpenter used to make, with moments that resonate with real life.

Feelings of displacement — of loss of home, country and language — are balanced by the vivid imagination of a better existence. In other words, Radio Dreams is a quintessentially American stor

Betting on Zero makes such a strong and effective case that the company does, in fact, engage in shady business practices that it’s likely to leave viewers in a state of Documentary High Dudgeon (that brand of cinematic outrage that is not entirely unmixed with a pleasurable feeling of moral superiority).

Like its protagonist, First Man doesn’t go in for theatrics or gratuitous emotion, however justified. It gets the job done, with professionalism, immersive authenticity and unadorned feeling, of which Armstrong himself might just have approved, however apprehensively.

While the frequent sex scenes are graphic, they’re also driven by vulnerability and long-buried desire. In this film, wordless encounters often reveal more about characters than conversation.

It is fascinating to watch the writers in “Obit” strive to do right by their subjects, warts and all.

There’s something about this Lion King, which, like the original, has its narrative roots in “Hamlet,” that feels so much more Shakespearean and — there’s no other word for it — so much more tragic than the 1994 feature-length animation, in which the story’s darker themes were subliminal, not center stage.

What’s different this time around is how frequently these largely improvised conversations (between actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, playing fictionalized versions of themselves) veer into the abyss of impending mortality.

Things are never exactly what they seem here — but there’s a deeper, more authentic story Reitman and Cody are interested in telling, even when — maybe especially when — the film veers toward fantasy. If Tully is a movie that cheats, even lies to us a little bit, it’s to get at a more real and recognizable truth.

Stagnation, collapse, heartlessness — whether on an individual level or a national one — are the true subjects of Zvyagintsev’s film. Its message isn’t subtle, but it is delivered with deadly, haunting finality.

Dolores is a fascinating corrective to 50-plus years of American history. It’s educational, to be sure, but also exhilarating, inspiring and deeply emotional.

The drama is a realistic and methodical meditation on family obligation, personal sacrifice and — of course — the power of architecture. That makes Columbus as lovely to look at as it is to ponder.

Sami Blood is a beautiful, haunting film, anchored by a startlingly accomplished lead performance.

Like the hyper-competent aces at the story’s core, this is a movie that defines its lane early and sticks to it, with finesse, unfussy style and more than a few sneak attacks of emotion.

Love After Love meanders through richly observed and sometimes startlingly funny scenes, never attempting to force the drama. The richly drawn characters stumble toward healing in ways that are refreshingly honest.

Brad’s Status contains moments of delicate humor.

Sometimes a movie comes along that, devoid of a noisy publicity push or festival buzz, quietly ambushes the unsuspecting viewer with an absorbing, skillfully executed, meaningful and thoroughly entertaining experience. Ladies and gentlemen, Borg vs. McEnroe is just that kind of film.

This is slow, almost languid filmmaking, yet it’s a delight to watch the countless ways in which the library is still capable of lifting us.

Immensely watchable and thematically complex tale, which in some ways plays out like a deceptively conventional Agatha Christie-style whodunit.

Funny when it wants to be, poignant when it needs to be, and surprisingly effective in harnessing these deeper themes to a character who might otherwise be dismissed as a lightweight laughingstock.

In a mesmerizing, minimalist performance, Pitt forms the gravitational center of a film that takes its place in the firmament of science fiction films by fearlessly quoting classics of the genre (as well as those outside it). The net effect is that Ad Astra feels both familiar and confidently of itself, all the more boldly affecting by being unafraid to acknowledge the forebears it explicitly invokes.

The movie offers one of the great lost pleasures, one we so seldom encounter at the bijou anymore. You watch this monster unreeling in its splendid vitality, its absurd ambition, its wobbly tone, its beauty, its stupidity, its immaturity, its tragedy, its grandeur, and before you know it, close to four hours has blasted by. And when you leave, you seize whoever is up close to you -- friend or foe, stranger or lover -- and begin to talk. You have opinions. You must express yourself. You must be heard. [5 Aug 2001, p.G1]

No Greater Love gets at the camaraderie — and the contradictions — of military service in a way that few films ever have.

One of those rare movie history lessons that don't make you feel as if you're facing the chalkboard. It's an impassioned movie, with vehement, soulful performances from Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek, but it's also a work of great restraint and proportion. 

Accompanied by an expressively lush jazz-blues score by Lee’s regular composer Terence Blanchard, BlacKkKlansman announces from the jump that viewers are in for a lush, sensory treat as Lee plays with the film vernacular he’s manipulated so adroitly and expressively for three decades.

This is a handsome, hugely enjoyable movie that invites the spectators to reflect on precisely what they value, both on screen and off. “Is it good?” is a question repeatedly asked throughout Non-Fiction. When it comes to the myriad subjects at hand, the debate rages on. As for the movie itself, the answer is a resounding yes.

A deliciously diabolical comedy of ill manners and outré palace intrigue.

Leave No Trace is not a sociological treatise. It has nothing grandiose to say about homelessness or PTSD. It does, however, deliver an effective (and deeply affecting) allegory of the inevitable leave-taking that all of us — housed or unhoused, happy or half mad — must undergo with our loved ones.

Riotous adaptation of Alan Bennett's comedy about monarchal frailty.

The Irishman is a feast for the ages, a groaning board of exquisitely photographed scenes, iconic performances and tender nods toward old age that leave viewers in a mood more wistful than keyed-up.

At its heart, though, this is a film about human nature: about desire, recklessness and emotions. The fraught relationship between Israelis and Palestinians is this tale’s powerful overlay. But it’s the questions it raises about personal accountability that speak to wider truths.

The new movie — a sci-fi freakout that, like “Spring,” includes an “it,” but one that’s far less easy to define — is spooky, funny, touching and very, very well made.

It is not exactly a thriller, yet its plausibility will inspire very real anxiety.

Although Measure of a Man is less gut-wrenching than director Jim Loach’s only previous theatrical film, “Oranges and Sunshine” — about the cruel fate of unwanted children shipped from England to Australia during the United Kingdom’s mid-20th-century “child migrant” program — the British filmmaker shows himself to have an affinity for tales of the abuse of power.

A handsome production that delicately skewers literary-world pretensions and Great Man mythmaking. But primarily, The Wife offers viewers a chance to observe one of the finest — and most criminally underpraised — actresses of her generation working at the very top of her shrewd, subtle, superbly self-controlled game.

The Snapper is a small movie, but its spirit is gigantic. [17 Dec 1993, p.C1]

McQueen makes the case that its subject was an artist whose clay was clothing. It also, despite giving short shrift to psychoanalysis, reminds us that everything you might want to know about the artist can be found in the art.

Although the Beatles weren't actually involved in the making of this animated classic, their zany spirit and inventiveness are evident throughout, thanks to a wonderfully implausible story line, some beautiful and often extraordinary animation and, of course, 14 great Beatles songs, three written expressly for the film.

A thoroughly engrossing take on a familiar scenario.

Lee plays the actors off one another to create a compelling exploration of human nature. South Korea’s official Oscar submission, Burning culminates in a finale so astonishing that it will sear itself into viewers’ memories for years to come.

A Perfect World is one of the Academy Award-winning actor-director's most unexpected, most satisfying films. This isn't the first time that Eastwood has turned the tables on our expectations, but he's never been this bold in the past, or this sure of himself.

There's a good chance you're going to enjoy Aladdin more than the children.

The new story is decidedly, deliciously dark, veined with thin layers of Burton’s trademark macabre sensibility, which adds texture and tartness to the inherent charm of the story (at heart, one about the parent-child bond and the possibility of the impossible).

The Dark Crystal leaves no doubt that Jim Henson and his colleagues have reached a point where they can create and sustain a powerfully enchanting form of cinematic fantasy. [21 Dec 1982, p.C1]

Quest for Fire expresses an eloquent partiality for civilized virtues, especially companionship, sexual bonding and parenthood. [05 Mar 1982, p.B12]

The result, Bisbee ’17, is a fascinating exercise in nonfiction filmmaking as a performative, interdisciplinary, collective act, as well as a provocative inquiry into how selective memory, ideology, shame and unspeakable trauma shape what we come to accept as official history.