Film, TV & Streaming

Writer-director Rian Johnson has certainly made the busiest Star Wars film of them all, but he keeps it from becoming a slog by infusing it with humor, verve and visual charm

First, these are my favorite movies of the year, not a claim to rank the definitive best, so don’t write to tell me that your favorite should have made it

I won’t waste your time attempting to sum up the totality of this year’s output, because I can’t, and any critic who claims to have seen enough of the more than 500 scripted series that aired in 2017 to do so is lying

Wright’s film is fleet but not especially thoughtful, wholly convincing in its production design, and in one crucial sense something rare: Here’s a war movie about rhetoric rather than battle scenes

The Other Side of Hope is a spiritual sequel to Le Havre, arriving six years later; both are sympathetic pictures of refugees without being overtly weepy or sentimental

When same-sex marriage became legal in Finland this past March, the government celebrated by releasing an official emoji — a leather-clad man with a drooping mustache and a police-style cap emblazoned with the word “Tom.” No explanation was necessary, for “Tom” was clearly a nod to Tom of Finland —…

As Ginny and her life unravel, Allen’s sympathy for her seems to dry up, and she becomes something like the villain of the piece

Vero Tshanda Beya, the Congolese singer turned actress making her screen debut in Alain Gomis’s tough-minded life-in-Kinshasa character study Felicite, can pierce your heart with her croon, rouse your soul with her shout, move you with her mien of cussed indomitability, cut you with her look of wary, weary appraisal…

Franco portrays Wiseau as a haughty but charismatic weirdo, someone who isn’t well-liked but who definitely gets noticed

… Just as the story should start to speed up and get more predictably exciting, it becomes weirder, drawn to odd tangents

And one of the great delights of this film is the way it charts the shifting waves of allegiances that can occur in a family that loves and argues with equal ferocity

Matt Bliss’s entrepreneurial adventure started with an A-frame cabin, his grandfather and a new way of looking at the Christmas tree. Now his business, Modern Christmas Trees, is headed to compete on Shark Tank.

… The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel tracks its title hero’s journey from bright-eyed newlywed to disillusioned standup comedian making her way through the coffee houses and nightclubs of New York City circa 1958, propriety be damned

An article, a book and now a film, Talese’s fascination with Foos’ voyeurism still hasn’t resulted in anything like rigorous journalism

The drama is mostly interior, and Washington’s quiet performance tends to reveal the jittery surface rather than the tortured soul

Francis Lee’s stark, striking God’s Own Country is one of several significant films this year to depict hard-edged men softening, opening up, finding the courage to admit that everything they need to get through this life isn’t already inside them. The protagonist, raw-eyed farm boy Johnny (Josh O’Connor), has inherited…

Alpert checks in again and again with the same three families over 45 years of visits to the island, with sometimes heartbreaking results

Here’s a kiddo’s quest to define a self, in this case the descent of young Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez) into a land of the dead inspired by Dia de los Muertos celebrations

Despite, or probably because of, the density of its plot, Mr. Robot is almost more enjoyable if you don’t really know what’s going on

Nalluri’s emphasis is on amateur theatrical performances, magic-lantern projections and comically competitive authors.

My Friend Dahmer, from a graphic memoir of the same name by the pseudonymous Derf Backderf, is a kind of coming-of-age tale that dissects a troubled kid’s descent into murder. Backderf was a high school pal of the boy who would grow up to become the serial killer and cannibal…

It starts off as the portrait of a troubled child, but expands to become a film about community