Chris Nashawaty

Easily one of the most personal and most powerful films of the year.

Experiencing the lovely and lyrical Roma, you get the impression that at age 56, Cuarón not only wanted to get these still-vivid memories down on film, but that he also needed to. You’ll be glad he did. Because movies with this much empathy and humanity don’t come along very often.

Affleck has never had a role that matches his minimal, anti-charisma style like this one. His tendency to be mumbly and awkward and withholding fits his character perfectly. And Hedges, as a temperamental teenager working through loss in his own authentically teenage way, is a real discovery. Michelle Williams, as Lee’s ex-wife, doesn’t get many scenes, but she cracks your heart open in the ones she has.

If there’s a flaw with the film (and it’s a minor one), it’s Peck’s impulse to cram it with clips from lily-white Doris Day movies and John Wayne Westerns that are a bit too on the nose.

It’s a daring, cynical gem.

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.

This is visceral, big-budget filmmaking that can be called Art. It’s also, hands down, the best motion picture of the year so far.

There’s enough slapstick and silliness to keep kids entertained.... But the film also has a bittersweet streak about the loss of innocence and the fleetingness of childhood.

There's a long tradition of filmmakers poking fun at the movie business. But no one bit the hand that fed him more viciously or with sharper fangs than Billy Wilder in Sunset Boulevard.

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

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

Action-packed and jaw-droppingly epic (it was the first time director John Ford ever shot in Monument Valley), Stagecoach is the perfect Western to show to people who don’t like Westerns.

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 one of those rare puzzle-box mysteries where, even if you can’t work it all out, you trust that it all makes sense. And when you do finally solve it — for me, around the fifth viewing — it fills you with the giddy sense of accomplishment you get from polishing off a stubborn New York Times Sunday crossword.

Visually dazzling and morally devastating.

Eric Rohmer’s sun-kissed love quadrangle remains as fresh and romantically profound as it was 18 years ago.

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

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

Jonze's satiric, brave-new-world premise is undeniably clever, but it's also a bit icy emotionally.

Bogart is hilariously crusty as a hard-drinking river rat who journeys downriver on a rickety steamer with a prim missionary (a flawless, lock-jawed Hepburn), trying to stay one step ahead of the Germans.

The film simply drags too much in the middle. Somewhere in the film’s 152-minute running time is an amazing 90-minute movie.

With her brassy, determined aunt, Ida sets off to find answers and discovers life beyond the convent walls in this leisurely but satisfying journey.

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.

Naturally, if you’re putting it before youngsters’ innocent eyes for the first time, you’ll want to stick close by in order to play grief counselor when Bambi’s mother ”meets” a hunter in the woods.

When you get past Miller’s orgy of loco action sequences—and they’re so good, you may not need to—the story is pretty thin.

Like all of Anderson’s films (the best of which remain Boogie Nights and Magnolia), Phantom Thread is meticulously crafted, visually sumptuous, impeccably acted, and very, very directorly. But until the final act, this straight-jacketed character study is also pretty tame stuff — emotionally remote, a bit too studied, and far easier to admire than surrender to and swoon over.

It delivers. The Perfection is a pure hit of twisted, absurd camp catnip.

Director Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War resembles a waking dream. And a ravishingly romantic one at that.