Peter Rainer

The best family films are those that entertain both children and adults. The Sheep Detectives can be enjoyed simply as a funny fable with a solvable mystery at its center. The well-placed clues are hidden in plain view.

A crowd-pleaser in the best sense, it overflows with empathy for its beleaguered people.

To the Dardennes’ immense credit, their film is not about villains and victims. Neither is the narrative sugarcoated.

“Wake Up” can be appreciated as an excellent example of that venerable murder mystery genre – the “impossible crime” – in which no solution to the murder seems rational. But Johnson also has a bit more on his mind than this. Without being too strenuous about it, the film also probes the nature of religious belief.

The paradox of Train Dreams is that we are looking at a vanishing way of life that, at the same time, has a startling immediacy. That immediacy is more than a matter of careful observation. In its widest sense, the movie is asking what makes life worth living.

I greatly enjoyed Nouvelle Vague, but will anybody besides cinemaniacs and Breathless devotees appreciate it? I think the answer is yes. That’s because it’s not simply a movie about how a landmark maverick movie got made. Its true subject is the exhilaration that comes from being part of an artistic escapade. It’s about how art – the making of it and the appreciation of it – can free you.

To make us begin to understand the anguish on display here, the movie needed more emotional layers and fewer obvious signposts.

The film’s moral issues don’t come across as tacked on. They arise organically and register as both intensely personal to the filmmaker and much larger in scope. The film even offers up, against all odds – and a truly chilling final moment – a measure of hope.

Blue Moon may essentially take place inside a single room, but it rarely feels stagy. It captures the connivance and conviviality of theater people – the way they come together, if only for a night, with a spiritedness that is both forced and entirely genuine.

It would be natural to place this film in the context of America’s ongoing immigration crisis. Certainly it is “topical.” But I think Liu and Majok have transcended its immediate relevance. It’s a human drama, not a sociological artifact. Because of its quality of feeling, and the remarkable performances of its two leads, it will likely outlast its historical moment.