This is a must-see film, not just for the primer it offers in how foodways, farming practices and larger environmental forces are crucially connected but for its dazzling imagery of nature in action, both by way of breathtaking close-ups and sensational aerial shots of the farm and its environs.

It transfixes, not with artifice or cheap sentiment, but with a strange alchemy of gloom and light.

Much of the film’s appeal is from the quiet determination of the patriarch Sung, unflappable under the stress, and the family and community who rally around him.

How great can an epic be, when it takes 30 years, including a whole sequence devoted to World War I, for Jean to realize he could be a little nicer to his wife? This is for diehard Francophiles and literate-movie fans only.

Although the cast is uniformly fine, Hoffman shines in a role that demands not showmanship, but a kind of complexity and contradiction that can be rendered only through the kind of dull character details that he excelled in, accumulating them from the inside out.

Suffice it to say that, in addition to celebrating the energy, enterprise and idealism of America’s postwar generation, Spaceship Earth provides a sobering primer in how some dreams die, and others are strangled mercilessly in their cribs.

There are few cinematic pleasures as satisfying to behold as an actor in a role that fits him like a Savile Row suit. Richard Gere offers just such gratification in Arbitrage, a silky, sophisticated Wall Street thriller that finds the actor utterly in his prime, wearing his age and accumulated emotional wisdom with warmth, charisma and nonstop appeal.

Somersault faces the difficulty of representing a girl's unspoken desires and anxieties, a challenge Shortland rises to with terrific skill and aplomb.

The Princess and the Frog invite viewers to see the world as a lively, mixed-up, even confounding place, to recognize essential parts of ourselves in what we see, and to say: This is what we look like.

The story, held at well-mannered arm’s length by Piani, never gets too messy; even Agathe’s deepest psychological issues — a phobia that makes travel difficult and, later, the explanation of its traumatic roots — are handled with efficient, unfailingly discrete politesse.

An infectious (in a good way) documentary.

This brilliantly naive, low-budget shoot-'em-up presents every action as if it were brand spanking new.

Deeply absorbing and moving with the caffeinated speed of Smith's own feisty campaign, Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore? is at once a celebration of small-d democracy and an elegy to it, a portrait that will surely inspire and infuriate viewers.

There are early warning signs that “World” isn’t going to end well. But Fastvold, a Brooklyn-based Norwegian actress and filmmaker making only her second effort behind the camera, never gins up the sentiment, the melodrama or even the sensuality.

This knowing, low-budget comedy will appeal to men, who'll recognize their behavior, but also to women, who'll see it as goosing the gander.

This slight but insinuating documentary by Abbas Kiarostami...will do nothing to advance or detract from the reputation of the acclaimed Iranian filmmaker.

There's no denying its surreal, hypnotic effect.

Despite the quirky trappings, Something Wild is often as tame as its star couple.

In tone, School Life feels like a recruiting film for prospective students. It isn’t exactly profound, except perhaps in the way it makes a case for the theory that happiness comes first, and then learning.

The absence of legal details makes the movie something of a cheat. It offers few insights about the case from the official side, let alone about the machinations of Ai’s legal team.

In his most bracing and maddening morality tale yet, Lanthimos doesn’t so much paint himself into a corner as he runs into it, headlong, dragging us with him all the way.

Although Sheridan has approached the setting with the sensitivity and respect of his deeply empathic protagonist, the film still bears a slight but inescapable whiff of cultural tourism.

Apparently, the answer is yes: Working from a well-judged script by first-time screenwriter Alex Convery and enlisting a superb cast of appealing ensemble players, Affleck has created something that Hollywood has seemed incapable of making in recent years: a smart, entertaining movie that, for all its foregone conclusions and familiar beats, unfolds with the offhand confidence of the most casually impressive layup.

With disarmingly entertaining movies like this, dare I say, who needs big bad superhero movies?

There is just enough story here to give the brutality shape and purpose, and to keep that numbness from turning to boredom. “Parabellum” — the name comes from a Latin phrase meaning “If you want peace, prepare for war” — picks up precisely where “John Wick: Chapter 2” left off: with John on the run.

A delightful and frequently funny cartoon feature based on the characters of the Sherlock Holmes series. [07 July 1986, p.B8]

Viewers are urged to grab an aisle seat, the better to dance when the music moves them -- as it surely will.

Sunset Song is a gritty and gorgeous film. Perhaps a little too gorgeous, in fact, and not gritty enough.