Chris Nashawaty

Room is more than the title of one of the year’s most powerful movies — it’s a state of mind that’s unbearably tense and as claustrophobic as a straitjacket

I suppose you could call The Big Short a comedy. It’s very, very funny. But it’s also a tragedy. Behind every easy drive-by laugh is a sincere holler of outrage.

Hepburn doesn’t know whom to trust and neither does the audience, which is what makes this Hitchcock-lite thriller so much fun. The chemistry between the two leads — something surprisingly missing between Depp and Jolie — is electric.

If you’re willing to surrender to his singular vision, you might just walk out of the theater seeing the world in a new way — which is probably more than you can expect from the new Kevin Hart comedy.

Mitchum looks like a doomed slab of granite and gives a dynamite performance. The tough-guy dialogue and working-class Boston locations are so realistic it almost feels like you’re watching a documentary.

It’s the kind of pure, straight-no-chaser pop fun that not only keeps taking your breath away over and over again, it restores your occasionally shaky faith in summer blockbusters.

It proves that Morgen isn’t interested in hagiography. He wants to show us the real Kurt Cobain, warts and all.

Tautly directed by Tom McCarthy (The Visitor), the film hums as a tense shoe-leather procedural and a heartbreaking morality play that handles personal stories respectfully without losing sight of the bigger, more damning picture.

It’s a feast for the ears, eyes, and soul.

This couldn’t be further from the corsets and curtsies of your typical Hollywood prestige period piece. It’s more like "All About Eve" directed by a Satyricon-era Fellini all hopped up with enough sex, deviance, hypocrisy, decadence, and spicy profanity to make your average Masterpiece Theatre patron reach into their PBS tote bag for some smelling salts.

Eighth Grade is an absolute delight that stings with truth. It’s heartbreaking, heartwarming, and a total charmer.

The kind of Swiss-watch precision and attention to detail that would eventually get Kubrick labeled Hollywood's most notorious perfectionist.

It’s a ridiculously raunchy and very, very sweet comedy about staying connected to the most important people in your life.

It's both weird and wonderful.

Snowpiercer sucks you into its strange, brave new world so completely, it leaves you with the all-too-rare sensation that you've just witnessed something you've never seen before...and need to see again.

A pulse-pounding procedural that pieces together the murder of a left-wing youth leader (Yves Montand). A baroque government cover-up is foiled by a tenacious inspector (Jean-?Louis Trintignant) whose rat-a-tat interrogations are like machine-gun fire. This is an amazing film.

It’s like a security blanket for our troubled times.

Like Michael Apted in his "Seven Up!" documentary series, Linklater makes you feel as if you're watching a photograph as it develops in the darkroom.

The NASA mission at the heart of the must-see documentary Apollo 11 reminds you what it feels to be truly awestruck.

It’s the rarest kind of moviegoing experience: an absolute masterpiece.

It’s stunningly ambitious and thrillingly alive the way the best movies are.

Thanks to Gabe Polsky's enthralling new documentary, we finally get to see these athletes for who they really were—it humanizes a group of men who were cast by history in the role of villains.

It taps into every parent's worst nightmare — the horror of being unable to protect an out-of-control child.

I’m not quite sure how Rees (2011’s Pariah) has done it, exactly, but the depth of heartbreak and humanity in this — just her second feature film — is remarkable.

With the exception of Waleed F. Zuaiter, who does a remarkable good-cop act as an Israeli agent, the cast is composed of first-time actors who bring realism to a tragic story. It manages to punch you in the gut and break your heart at the same time.

Like "Far From Heaven," Carol mines society’s narrow-mindedness and the dangers of living a double life. But what was true more than a half century ago remains true now: The heart wants what it wants, society and propriety be damned.

I don’t mean to give the impression that John Wick 3 is anything grander than a gorgeously choreographed, gratuitously violent action movie. But as gorgeously choreographed, gratuitously violent action movies go, it’s high art.

A dizzyingly tense and creepy workout.