Bill Goodykoontz

Boyhood is not just a great movie, it's a landmark achievement in film.

It's one of the best movies of the year, one of the best entries ever in the Way We Live Now oeuvre.

Occasionally you see a movie that just satisfies on all fronts — the performances, the direction, the whole package. Even less occasionally you see one that does all that and moves you, too. “The Worst Person in the World” is one of those.

Inside Out is terrific, a mind-bending concept turned into a brilliant film, a return to form for Pixar not just in terms of quality but in taking risks — risks that pay off.

With “A Real Pain,” Jesse Eisenberg — who wrote, directed and stars in the film — pulls off a kind of magic trick. He’s made a movie with backdrops of pain and despair, both personal and existential, that is also funny, charming and something approaching uplifting. Ta-da!

Gosling is terrific, playing hangdog and irritable yet still managing to be someone you root for (even if you want to smack him in the head every now and then). Stone is even better. It’s her best performance, and that’s saying something. Their relationship, their chemistry, everything about it, and everything about La La Land is, well, magic.

It’s delightful to see filmmakers and actors take such big swings. It’s even more delightful when they connect, and in Poor Things, they do.

It’s powerful, a technically dazzling achievement; so audacious is Nolan’s filmmaking that if it didn’t serve the story you’d think at times he was just showing off. He’s not.

Moonlight is a minor miracle, a movie that mines beauty out of the ugliest situations, and a glimmer of hope from heartbreak.

The Zone of Interest, then, serves as a horror story about the past, and a cautionary tale for the present.

Between the galloping pace of the action and the percussive soundtrack and sound editing, you remain tense the entire time. Garland just won’t let you relax.

50/50 is a tremendous movie. It's also a really funny one, which doesn't mean it won't make you cry.

The Irishman is a great movie, easily one of the best of the year, one of the best of the great Martin Scorsese’s career.

A great movie, a look inside a world so foreign that it might as well be another planet, yet so universal that its observations are painfully familiar to anyone, anywhere.

A genuine triumph, a great movie with astounding performances so natural, so genuine, that you forget it's a movie.

What a great movie.

The Artist is such an engaging, delightful film that, if you like movies, you will walk out of the theater with a smile. You just will; it's that inspired.

Greed, the lust for power and the willingness to do anything to obtain it are all on a lot of people’s minds just now. Washington offers a glimpse into that dangerous combination, one that resonates as strongly as ever.

This is a fully realized film, with a confident eye and lived-in performances. What a treat.

Manchester by the Sea is a masterpiece in a minor key, an exploration of grief that never lets its characters — or its audience — off the hook. It manages this even when it’s funny, which is surprisingly often.

Foster was born to this kind of role, rugged but soulful, and he’s outstanding. The surprise is Pine, giving by far his best performance.

It is devastating and magnetic and most of all brilliant. Don’t miss it.

A great movie, an astonishing achievement on nearly every level.

The acting is outstanding, the direction assured if straightforward. 12 Years a Slave is a history lesson of the best type. It’s brilliant. But, more crucially, it’s important. It’s brutal truth that demands to be seen.

Anderson’s vision of this world, this era, these people, is so winning that you feel a part of it, yet with the removal of an observer. It works. That’s why Licorice Pizza is a blast.

It is a remarkable achievement.

Her is an outstanding movie, in part because of its originality, but also because of its execution.

Wreck-It Ralph is smart, funny, sweet and sassy. And that's just Sarah Silverman's character... The movie is a treat for kids and the parents they drag to see it. Or maybe it'll be the other way around. Either way. It doesn't matter how you get to it. Just get there.

The visuals are stunning, perhaps the most fully realized of any film.

Minari is as moving as it is entertaining, and it is a lot of both.

There Will Be Blood is a masterpiece; Daniel Day-Lewis' performance as a ruthless oilman is without flaw.

It is particularly rewarding to see Clooney outside his comfort zone of self-composed cool in The Descendants, Alexander Payne's beautifully gentle, funny and moving film.

It’s 3 hours and 35 minutes long (including a 15-minute intermission), and while it’s full and complete, it never drags or feels padded. It is, simply put, a great movie.

With Drive My Car, the journey is as satisfying as the destination. It’s great.

It's powerful stuff.

Simply put, Argo is why we go to movies.

Emotionally engaging from the start, bolstered by brilliant performances and held together by Song’s understated direction that weaves timelines together flawlessly, it’s more than just good.

Nothing is off the table when your status is threatened, no matter what your station in life. Parasite explores this in stunning fashion.

Dunkirk is a great movie, both an old-time inspirational war epic and at the same time very much a Christopher Nolan movie.

The whole movie is amazing.

McCarthy and his brilliant cast make hard work and truth-telling inspiring.

Birdman is a treat. But it's also more than that. It's a full-fledged wonder.

Marty Supreme is breakneck, it’s nerve wracking and it is above all entertaining as all get out. It makes you eager to see what Chalamet’s going to do next.

Of course, you could just watch this for the performances and it would still be one of the best movies of the year. But why sell yourself short? Watch it for everything that it is, a kind of miraculously unearthed treasure trove of music and politics and culture and soul. So much soul.

Though everyone is older this time around, and the themes are darker, harder to enjoy, the conversation is just as engrossing. So is the film.

Hamilton defies a cynical reading. It is a great show, and an important one. Right now the latter might be more a more crucial description that the former. Don’t miss it.

It makes you think. And that's invaluable.

"Three Billboards" is a really good movie filled with terrific performances, but what McDormand is doing here surpasses them all.

It’s only Fargeat’s second feature after 2017’s “Revenge.” That was a good movie. “The Substance” is a substantial leap forward and a film people will rightfully be talking about for a while.

What makes 56 Up, like the “Up” films before it, so remarkable is how it puts these stories together, giving us an ensemble of characters as interesting as any in a scripted drama.

Soul asks its audience to examine what in life truly is important. You never know what your spark might be, until suddenly you do. And it might not be what you think. Turns out you may have had it all along.

First Cow sneaks up on you a little bit. You become engrossed in these men and their relationship, then their business, then their survival. And that’s definitely not nothing. Far from it, in fact

There was a cry from Wallace fans when Segel was cast (some are still up in arms), but he’s terrific. So is Eisenberg, in an even more difficult role.

Carol is a simple story that sneaks up on you. Todd Haynes takes such care in the telling of it — and the gorgeous depiction of it — that it's impossible not to be moved.

Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret is a delightful film, just lovely.

What’s most remarkable about the film, which was shot in Iraq, are the performances. The cast members are not actors. They’re non-professionals, at least, acting for the first time. Yet their performances feel so genuine, so lived-in.

It's terrific. It's about many things, but dread infuses them all. You won't be grossed out. You'll be creeped out. And that's a lot more satisfying.

When telling the story of real-life heroes, it’s easy to lapse into clichés. What makes the terrific Only the Brave such a powerful movie is its abject rejection of them.

How you feel about the film will depend on how you feel about politics, probably. But don’t let partisanship get in the way of appreciating another inventive film from McKay, and some truly brilliant performances. Surely on that, we can all agree.

If you’re making a movie about someone with exacting standards, Day-Lewis is your man. Yet what’s so exciting about Anderson and Day-Lewis’ collaborations is that while the actor is always superb, they’re very much the director’s movies. They feed off of one another, creating collaborative works that show off each other’s strengths.

There are a few examples that illustrate what makes “Turn Every Page — The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb” such an exciting documentary. Yes, seriously, exciting.

Jean-Marc Vallee’s film is anything but standard, thanks to an astonishing performance by Matthew McConaughey.

Lucky is one of Harry Dean Stanton’s last roles, a rare leading performance, and it is a treasure.

Take my word for it, or better yet go find out for yourself: Big Hero 6 is a treat.

As with "The Central Park Five," you come away from the film impressed by the storytelling but enraged by the facts. It's outrageous that this kind of thing happens, but Berg does an outstanding job of showing us how it does.

The film is a fascinating struggle between Balram’s promise and capability and the generations of ingrained, unfeeling privilege that stacks the deck against him.

Jenkins brings an urgency to If Beale Street Could Talk, along with the melancholy of problems still yet to be solved.

Scarier than anything you'll find in a horror movie this time of year.

Lots of movies mix comedy and horror. But Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin makes real-life horrors the source of hilarity — and it is hilarious — while never making light of the insanity that inspired it.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is something unexpected, fun. Sorkin trusts his instincts. Maybe real life has made it so that nothing seems over the top anymore. Whatever the case, it makes the film something else, too: timely.

Maren Ade's film, an Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film, is almost painful to watch at times, but it's also funny and touching and reflective of the world, all courtesy of Ade and terrific performances by Peter Simonischek as a goofy father who refuses to act his age and Sandra Hüller as his daughter, as buttoned-up as her dad isn't.

Sorry to Bother You, Boots Riley's see-it-to-believe-it feature debut as a director, goes from agreeably strange to weird to surreal, but its brilliance lies in how it never stops feeling real, genuine, lived-in.

At times hilarious but ultimately heartbreaking, Project Nim is a great chronicle of the 1970s and all the nutty ideas that implies; academia in particular comes in for a hard reckoning.

This isn't a warts-and-all portrayal. More like a warts-and-little-else one. But it is an inspired film, a beautiful exploration of art and creation and difficulty, with Spall's brilliant performance at its center.

A perverse delight, the rare film that makes you feel good about feeling bad (or at least watching others do so).

Howard, whose first job as a director was the 1977 Roger Corman-produced “Grand Theft Auto,” has captured what is surely the greatest racing footage ever shot.

The Secret in Their Eyes never lets you forget that you're watching a movie - and never lets you wish you were doing anything else.

It unfolds in ways both comic and affecting.

There is no particularly cathartic climax to Frances Ha. Instead there is a more realistic depiction of Frances’ growth. Like Gerwig’s performance, it’s natural, it’s realistic, perfectly believable.

The Handmaiden is everything, in that it is a mystery, a graphically erotic romance, a black comedy and a little bit of a horror story. And, of course, really good.

It is a terrifically entertaining film, alive from the start, following its Marvel mission (for good and bad) while rising above it.

It isn’t just a terrific movie. It’s an important one.

Riva, meanwhile, is astounding, not just in the way she portrays the physical manifestation of her decline, particularly later in the film, but also earlier, when she knows she is fading and does not wish to do so. The look in her eyes, the sadness in her face, is crushing.

Once it's done, you feel terrible for these people, for their lives, for their daughter, especially. Is that entertainment? To each his own, but it is compelling and, yes, rewarding.

It’s all a neat trick. Or exercise. Or brain-teaser. Whatever you want to call it, Upstream Color is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. But once you have seen it, once isn’t going to be enough

The trip through their history is a trip through the 1980s and ’90s, and Diamond and Horowitz offer the unique perspective of people in the middle of it then who are on the outside looking back, knowledgeable observers who know more now than they knew then. And isn’t that the idea?

The acting is uniformly terrific, just a marvel to watch.

Some of the behavior of Uriel and Eliezer will make you squirm. But Ashkenazi and Bar-Aba are so compelling in their performances of difficult men that you'll gladly suffer.

There are surprises and plenty of action. What's good about Snowpiercer is how they all blend together; each element informs the other.

The performances are remarkable. So is the way Farhadi tells the story.

The Shape of Water is a fantasy, a myth, a fairy tale, all that.

It Comes at Night is soaked in uncertainty. It makes us uncomfortable because we want answers and can’t have them. And if there’s anyone who knows how to make an audience uncomfortable, it’s writer and director Trey Edward Shults.

In the hands of three gifted actors — Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen and Carrie Coon — it is a beautiful film, one of the best of the year.

Throughout the film Famuyiwa, who also wrote the script, uses split screens and backs up the film and jumps around and freezes the action, but he's not showing off. He uses these techniques to tell his story, and doesn't overuse them to the point of annoyance.

Frank is a true original, a film that heads in one direction only to veer off in another, yet never loses sight of where it's going.

It's a fine line between being gratingly self-conscious and really smart; more times than not, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl comes out on the winning side of that equation.

In addition to the performances — truly, everyone is good — what stands out is Sachs' direction. It's measured, patient. The scenes play out as one imagines the characters' lives would.

David O. Russell's film makes use of some terrific performances - Christian Bale is brilliant, as is Melissa Leo, even by their lofty standards.