Andrew O'Hehir

It's a tremendously absorbing blend of history, journalism and drama. As soon as it was over, I wanted to watch it again.

Something close to a contemporary masterwork, and maybe the best foreign-language film of the year, right at the tail end.

Elegant but never overstated, sinister but never coldhearted, this is a note-perfect masterwork on a modest, human scale.

Offers an exquisite tour of the twilight zone between high school and the so-called real world, as well as between bohemian subculture and the even stranger culture of America at large.

It's a classic and even charming yarn of vanity, hubris and redemption, played out against the bizarre, intense alternate universe of '70s English soccer.

There’s so much that is brilliant and unexpected and often downright thrilling about Mommy, the fifth feature (a fact amazing in itself) from 25-year-old Quebec enfant terrible Xavier Dolan.

Forget the inflated Trumpian moral dilemmas of "Superman" and "Captain America." The summer’s most powerful and most disturbing thriller has arrived, in the form of an intensely atmospheric Korean movie called The Wailing.

One of the greatest films of recent years.

If you have the patience to watch this film develop and unfold, like some bizarre night-blooming orchid, what you'll see is not just the last movie released in 2012, but possibly the most original of them all.

A work of tremendous confidence and dazzling showmanship that may just be a delirious movie-as-drug-high or may, if you choose to read it this way, contain a level of commentary about the nature of America and the illusioneering of Hollywood.

Rapturous and hilarious.

Old Joy is only 76 minutes long, but it has the contemplative power of Buddhist meditation. Reichardt gives us long, stoned takes of rural roads; shots of birds, insects and slugs in the spectacular Oregon rain forest; interludes with Mark's dog, Lucy. Some viewers may well be bored, or monumentally irritated, by this. I found it masterly, riveting.

It might well be the most important film you see this year, and the most important documentary of this young century.

More broadly this is a resonant, vivid and finally heartbreaking tale about the universal difficulty of marriage and the endless self-delusion of the human condition, driven by a trio of amazing dramatic performances.

This is an unforgettable love story set at the close of day, as tragic and beautiful in its way as "Tristan und Isolde," and a portrait of the impossible beauty and fragility of life that will yield new experiences to every viewer and every viewing.

What has perhaps been lost over the years, however, is the cultural freshness and vitality of Reed’s masterpiece...The Third Man is important not just because of its technique but because of its theme.

Like any classic work of children's entertainment, this best-loved of all Hollywood films almost has more to offer adult viewers; it's still easy to see why it amazed us as kids, but many of us have also grown to appreciate the wonders of its construction and its immense significance as a cultural touchstone.

The most powerful documentary I've seen all year, and one of the two or three best films ever made about an artist or musician.

One of the best movies of the year.

You don't have to know the first thing about modern dance to be transported to an alternate state of consciousness by Pina, which is utterly free of Wenders' cloying sentimentality (perhaps because it's an elegy for a dead friend) and might be the first of his films I've loved all the way through since his 1987 masterpiece, "Wings of Desire."

As a rich and exuberant character-driven crime saga in an idiom you absolutely have not encountered before, and a dense, unsentimental portrayal of the collision between democracy, capitalism and gangsterism on the frayed margins of the post-colonial world, Gangs of Wasseypur is a signal achievement in 21st-century cinema.

It's a highly original film made in a familiar context, and an exciting moviegoing experience you shouldn't miss.

I also understood that while this movie is deliberately constructed so that almost nobody will “get it” or like it – and I’m not sure how I feel about that perversity – it’s a masterpiece despite that, or because of that or just anyway.

Its too-muchness is also the source of its power; I was absolutely never bored, and felt surprised when the movie ended. It's an amazing, baffling, thrilling and (for many, it would appear) irritating experience, and for my money the most beautiful and distinctive big-screen vision of the year.

For my money, the 33-year-old Isaac – who was born in Guatemala, raised in Florida, and has been working his way toward stardom for years – gives the year’s breakout performance, and Inside Llewyn Davis is one of the Coens’ richest, strangest and most potent films.

Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore bring dignity and Oscar-worthy performances to The Hours, a lovingly crafted meditation on death, loss and literature.

Winter Sleep belongs alongside “Boyhood” and “Inherent Vice” on the short list of the most powerful films of 2014. Calling a film “good” or “important” is subjective, of course, but this isn’t: All three are reaching for the kind of cinematic transcendence that exceeds language, that weaves together various art forms into an ascending spiral of meaning that cannot finally be captured or defined.

Jones, as always, knows what he’s doing. In only his second feature as a director, the laconic 68-year-old star has made a wrenching, relentless and anti-heroic western that stands among the year’s most powerful American films. Not everyone will like The Homesman, but if you see it you won’t soon forget it.