Jeff Baker

A movie as bold and deep as a Turner landscape, as sharp as light on water.

Mad Max: Fury Road sets new standards in old-school stunt work and car chases and does it in service of an idea-driven story with a beating heart and an action star for our troubled times in Charlize Theron.

A snapshot of what happened at a particular time and place and doesn't try to glamorize its subjects or make any larger points about what it all means. By refusing to do so, by celebrating the process over the outcome and the work over the reward, it becomes a special experience, a movie that matters.

It's an exciting experience, dazzling and entertaining and thought-provoking. I saw it at Cinema 21 last week and immediately wanted to see it again. I couldn't, so I started researching and read everything I could about it. It's truly great.

The violence is shocking, effective and soaked into the dry brown landscape.

What matters in '71 is the action, and the look on O'Connell's face when he emerges from a shed into the Belfast night.

The tone -- deadpan, wistful, silly but never stupid -- is just right and puts What We Do in the Shadows next to "This Is Spinal Tap" as a mockumentary that shows its subjects as human -- in this case, inhuman -- in their hopes and fears.

It's duck soup for cinephiles.

A highly entertaining, informative movie about how the subprime mortgage crisis led to a worldwide financial meltdown in 2007-08. The fact that such a movie is so unusual is one big reason why the meltdown occurred and why it easily could happen again.

That this is a documentary, this family lived in New York for decades in almost complete separation from its neighbors, is astonishing.

At the heart of Iris is love, between Iris and the camera, Maysles and his subject, and Iris and Carl. They nailed it, this crazy life, and they're still getting a kick out of it.

A wonderful documentary.

The End of the Tour can feel like a down-home deification at times: Like Einstein riding a bike, only it's Wallace going to the Mall of America. It's not sentimental, though, at least not until the very end, and is moving in beautiful, unexpected ways.

Mistress America is a different kind of channeling, straight through the screwball comedies of the 1980s, "After Hours" and "Something Wild," back to "Bringing Up Baby," where Katharine Hepburn sang "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" to a leopard while Cary Grant looked for the last bone (the intercostal clavicle) for his Brontosaurus skeleton.

The 82-year-old director has a light, assured touch and wrote a script that gives his actors space to shine.

The Salt of the Earth presents not just a passing of time through one man's remarkable life but a change of perspective.

Dope has energy and smarts and a heart in all the right places.

The problem with Inherent Vice, and what keeps it a step below "The Master" and "There Will Be Blood" and Anderson's best movies, is that all the Pynchon threads and dead ends come apart in the middle and aren't really pulled back together.

A movie that underplays its many strengths. You don't realize how good it is until it's over.

Baumbach loses his grip a little in the third act and gives Stiller too much babbling and ranting. The denouement at a tribute dinner for Leslie is unsatisfying for all concerned but is redeemed by a coda that assures everyone that happiness is possible in this crazy world.

Strickland has the courage of his convictions and maintains a tight focus on the proceedings while allowing the occasional feather of humor to float down on the pillow.

All involved bring a warm eccentricity that lifts what in lesser hands could be a collection of cliches about the contrasts between the Old World and the New.

Two Days, One Night is timely and timeless, a social statement about current economic conditions and a parable about individual and community. Cotillard's performance is revelatory, one to be admired and studied for generations.

Heaven Knows What is a hard movie to recommend because of its unrelenting intensity and hideously depressing subject. It's a hard movie, period, but it's exceptionally well-made and beautiful in its execution.

Fetisov is a jovial, imperious guide through an era of Cold War politics, when sports were a battleground between East and West and no sport was more important to the Soviets than hockey.

I'll See You in My Dreams takes its time getting to unexpected places and makes you glad to follow along.

Just when you think all the great rock and roll stories have been told, along comes Lambert & Stamp.

What it doesn't do -- and this is what makes this "Diary" different -- is let what happens define her or ruin her.