Bill Goodykoontz

The Babadook is a terrific horror film.

Of its many brilliant aspects, the film does illuminate the numbing grind of real life when you’re trying to make art.

The whole film is an exercise in trust and the lack thereof. In the end, it’s a kind of horror film, really, a reminder that these sorts of things were endured by so many for so long, with hope an unlikely ally.

Schoenbrun’s direction is masterful, both in terms of what they get out of the actors (Smith and Lundy-Paine give committed performances) and in their visual language. The look of the film is both haunting and inviting — not unlike that of a nightmare, or a horror film. “I Saw the TV Glow” has elements of both, and more.

Vartolomei’s performance is amazing. The way her face registers everything she endures, from grim determination to frustration to mental and physical agony, seems genuine, authentic.

It’s an outstanding debut for someone who obviously knows her way around both sides of the camera.

It’s a terrific example of a movie that doesn’t work too hard to make you love it. It’s patient as it waits for you to come around to its considerable charms.

Simply put, Argo is why we go to movies.

The film is not an epic. It's not a masterpiece. But it is an involving study of men searching, searching for answers, for belonging, for a foothold in life at a time when footholds were hard to find.

Ernest & Celestine draws on plenty of classics, animated and otherwise, for inspiration, but the film manages to be delightful on its own offbeat terms.

Paul Schrader’s First Reformed is an amazing examination of faith, a film that stays with you long after you have left the theater.

There’s a hint of artificiality to it. Maybe it’s an allegory, but the meaning hidden therein seems simply to be: go faster. Nothing wrong with that. It’s not as if Wright was shooting for something deeper and missed.

A mixture of magical realism, Southern gothic, coming-of-age movie, star turn for first-timers, disaster story and out-and-out strangeness. It's unlike any film you've seen.

Director Wes Ball's film is a mad dash from one place to the next, with little time in between for rest, recuperation or plot development.

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!

It's a movie that should be seen, a throwback to a looser, freer cinema. Wake in Fright has a tremendous '70s vibe to it, a "they-don't-make-them-like-this-anymore" feel that is as welcome as a cold beer in the Outback. [25 Oct 2012]

With shifting loyalties, unlikely heroes, truths revealed and a little help from friends, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 winds the series up in a most-satisfying fashion.

Not just a fascinating character study but a kind of horror movie as well.

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

A scathing examination of race, a take down of phony liberal sympathies that sticks it to racists of every stripe.

West Side Story is timeless, because of the source material. Tragic romances never go out of style. Spielberg’s version successfully makes the classic contemporary.

Chen captures with both humor and heartbreaking realism the complicated mechanics of the family dynamic and how outside forces work to shape it.

The Rider is a beautiful movie, a Western of sorts that isn’t limited to that classification as it chronicles the life of a down-on-his-luck cowboy who simply keeps on living, as difficult as that sometimes can be.

The transition between junior high and high school is exhilarating, traumatic, funny and horrifying, and Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade captures the whole experience perfectly.

April and the Extraordinary World is a visual delight, an animated French steampunk adventure that is smart, exciting and wonderfully weird.

It's just as accurately described as a bunch of British guys sitting around acting. But what actors! The cast includes Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Mark Strong,Ciarán Hinds and Toby Jones.

Passing is Rebecca Hall’s first feature film as a writer and director. You’d never know it. With her meticulous eye for detail, her beautiful framing of shots (in stunning black-and-white) and the wondrously moving performances she gets from her actors —to say nothing of her handling of the material (she wrote the script) — you’d think Hall had been at this for a while.

If you're willing to let a movie wash over you and work at what it might mean, you'll love "Holy Motors," Leos Carax's surreal ode to … identity? Movies? Performance?