Joe Morgenstern

Strong stuff, and all the stronger for having taken itself so comically.

Rather than dwell on the darkness and squalor, von Donnersmarck has fashioned a genuinely thrilling tale, leavened with sly humor, that works ingenious variations on the theme of cat and mouse, speaks to current concerns about personal privacy and illuminates the timeless conflict between totalitarianism and art.

An astonishing combination of spectacle, suspense, martial-arts flash, sublime silliness, anti-gravity action and passionate intensity -- before and after everything else, it's a grand love story.

The story demanded — and deserves — the services of a singular actress. Ms. Cotillard’s international stardom doesn’t hurt, of course, but the invaluable gift she brings to the production is her ability to play a working woman in naturalistic style while giving a transcendent performance.

National Gallery isn’t just about a museum full of famous pictures. It’s about the nature of art, and art’s acolytes; about the mystery of what may lie beneath a particular painting’s visible surface; about the business of art at a time when money can be scarce and attention spans can be short.

James Marsh's documentary raises the bar for the genre to skyscraper height.

Give yourself away to this movie and you'll be glad you did.

Not since the halcyon days of Archie Bunker and "All in the Family" has so sharp a wit punctured so many balloons.

The most efficient review of Minari would be something along the lines of “It’s wonderful. See it. You’ll love it.” But you need to know more than that about Lee Isaac Chung’s partly autobiographical drama.

More than a musical offering, it’s a study in boundless passion, plus a wellspring of wisdom about art and life from a man who sees no dividing line between the one and the other.

A funny, emotionally intricate and deeply moving tale of severed connections and renewed family ties.

The film, written by the director and Thomas Reider, is often brutal in content and spare in style, a celebration of unquenchable tenacity and the sustaining power of love.

Mr. Petzold, directing from a screenplay he and Harun Farocki based on a novel by Hubert Monteilhet, has made a film of light and shadows that sometimes looks like a color version of “The Third Man,” and sometimes feels like a somber ode to Hitchcock. But Phoenix has no precise peers; it’s an original creation, and a haunting one.

An improbably beautiful work of barnyard art.

Insisting on the significance of its themes, the film dispenses one emotion at a time while it creates a pervasive atmosphere of dread. Yet there’s no air in the atmosphere, not much life in the brooding landscapes.

Silence makes the film interesting by enticing us to concentrate in ways we're not used to, while artistry carries the day. The Artist may have started as a daring stunt, but it elevates itself to an endearing - and probably enduring - delight.

The first thing to be said of Lucrecia Martel’s Spanish-language film is that it stands as a startling original. Though the story is elusive, the images speak for themselves, and they are stunning. (The cinematographer was Rui Poças ; what does he know about light and color that others don’t?)

As a piece of entertainment, Ms. Johnson’s documentary is exuberant, to say the least, and instructive in the bargain.

The view taken by Clint Eastwood, directing from Iris Yamashita's exemplary screenplay, is elegiac, but -- and this is remarkable, given the nature of the production and the sweep of his ambition -- not at all didactic. He lets the film speak for itself, and so it does -- of humanity as well as primitive rage and horror on both sides of the battle.

In a truly weird way Anomalisa provides an immersive experience that is no less compelling, though lots more authentic, than the one you get in a megahorror show like “The Revenant.” Once you’re in that puppet’s head it’s hard to get out.

The actress gets immeasurable help from the writing: Lisbeth's anger is matched by her intelligence and her physical prowess, which enables her to administer as well as absorb pain in megadoses. But none of it would register without Ms. Rapace's singular combination of eerie beauty and feral intensity. She's a movie star unlike any other.

This stop-action animated feature is downright sweet and tender, as well as all the other things we've come to expect from him -- funny, bizarre, graphically stunning and blithely necrophilic.

Paddington 2 is “The Godfather Part II” of Peruvian bear movies, a sequel that surpasses the superb original.

Mr. Wiseman’s film shows us, without telling us, that American cities continue to be laboratories for rebirth and innovation. The spirit of this one is embodied in its mayor, Marty Walsh.

What do the Coen brothers want of us? More specifically, what do they want us to think of the repellent people in this pitilessly bleak movie?

What Mr. Hoffman has done here borders on the miraculous.

Armando Iannucci’s absurdist comedy reveals this in an extremely loose manner of speaking, with malice aforethought, straight-faced glee and formidable sharpshooting that occasionally misfires. It isn’t history but free-range fiction, a venomous farce containing nuggets of fact, and if its subjects bear any resemblance to present-day dictators and authoritarian mugs or thugs around the world, then the movie has hit its archetypal target.

The movie is, by turns — and sometimes simultaneously — darkly comic, blazingly profane, flat-out hilarious and shockingly violent, not to mention flippant, tender, poetic and profound.

Quest is intimate, warm yet unsentimental and agreeably rambling, at least for a while. It’s an extended visit, squeezed into 104 minutes, with intensely likable people who are doing their best to hold things together, and, if possible, get a bit ahead.

Overlord feels like a small but vivid tragedy inside an epic container.

The filmmaker has put two familiar pieces of music to such glorious, full-throated use toward the end that I can’t resist mentioning them: Donovan’s “Deep Peace,” and “Unchained Melody” done in close harmony by the Fleetwoods. For Nathalie in the uncertainty of the here and now, peace and harmony are great ideas too.

Real life is not the movie's concern. Mr. Anderson's lovely confection — that's a pastry metaphor — keeps us smiling, and sometimes laughing out loud. Yet acid lurks in the cake's lowest layers.

The simplest thing to say about A Star Is Born is that it’s all right. Not all right as in OK with a shrug, but thrillingly, almost miraculously right in all respects.

Vincent is played masterfully by Aurelien Recoing, who gives him a sort of as-if anomie; this haunted hero is so detached that he may not realize he has no real life to be detached from.

A feature film that's often astringent on the surface, yet deeply and memorably stirring.

[Sordi] lifts buffoonery to the level of high art.

What might have been predictable or sentimental in other hands becomes startling in the film’s approach, as well as beguiling, unsparing, terribly moving and occasionally very funny.

Inside Job has the added value, as well as the cold comfort, of being furiously interesting and hugely infuriating. It's a scathing examination of the global economic meltdown that began more than two years ago and continues to affect our lives.

The first few minutes of Leave No Trace are as entrapping as the spider webs the camera notices in passing. They catch you up in a suspenseful wilderness tale that opens out to an urgent drama of conflict, beauty and growth.

No screen portrait of a king has ever been more stirring-heartbreaking at first, then stirring. That's partly due to the screenplay, which contains two of the best-written roles in recent memory, and to Mr. Hooper's superb direction.

All of the performances are superb. Ms. Smit is a special revelation. This is only her second feature, though you’d never know it from the alacrity and intensity of her scenes with Ms. Cruz.

By turns funny, elegiac and thrilling, it’s a tale of brotherhood and family that takes in the harsh beauty of the land, the elusive nature of right and wrong and the quirky delights of human connections in a time of bewildering change.

I'm still left, though, with an unshakable sense of Up being rushed and sketchy, a collection of lovely storyboards that coalesced incompletely or not at all.

The movie has a beating heart, and a big one; it’s not just sincere, but that rarest of birds in the jungle of mainstream entertainment, a heartfelt epic.

Brooklyn grabs us, holds us and moves us on its own. Emotionally it’s a killer.

Apart from a singer named You who plays Keiko, the members of the cast are non-professionals. You may find that hard to believe when you see this astonishing film, as I hope you will.

This evocation of the mission half a century ago is as good as it’s likely to get — meaning not just good but magnificent.

Casts a spell and then some -- a ringing testament to the power of motion pictures.

Astonishingly vivid. The illusion of reality is so nearly complete in this magnificent French-language film by the Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne that the screen becomes a perfectly transparent window on lives hanging in the balance.

We’re watching a period piece that feels beautifully and painfully present: beautifully because love stories are timeless, painfully because the spectacle of racial injustice feels up to date.

This pitch-dark comedy, which was directed, con brio, by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, sizzles as the camera circles, stalks and swoops. Emmanuel Lubezki’s friction-free cinematography constitutes a virtuoso turn in its own right in a production that’s strewn with superb performances, some of them loud and bold, others subtle and restrained.

The film is not only not unpleasant but a genuine, authentic and honest-to-goodness pleasure.

These miniatures magnify their subjects, and ennoble them. The picture is anguishing to see, but it isn't missing anymore.

It’s a puzzle play, with one of the best closing shots in memory. Film is its subject. So is life. With Mr. Almodóvar behind the camera and Mr. Banderas in front of it, film and life are synonymous.

By turns intriguing, boring, frustrating, amazing and stirring, this is a tour de force that, necessarily, lacks dramatic force, but one that creates a dream state of seemingly limitless dimensions.

The malignity can be oppressive -- this is a far cry from Fellini finding poignant uplift in the slums -- but the dramatic structure is complex, the details are instructive, and the sense of tragedy is momentous.

It is, simply and stirringly, a kind of beau ideal of education, a vision of how the process can work at its best.

It’s a fertile idea, beautifully executed.

Excites us with words not spoken, passions not played out. A mood story more than a love story, it's all about sustaining a state of exquisite melancholy in the face of desire.

Watching this surrealist silliness, I would have welcomed the sight of a geezer on a riding mower.

Profoundly moving documentary.

This episode is something special, because the dance is so smashingly gorgeous.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is the year’s best movie thus far, and a fitting tribute to Chadwick Boseman. His loss is still stunning, but oh, what a legacy to leave behind.

Mr. Moodysson's film is little only in physical and financial scale. When measured by the pleasure it confers, We Are the Best! is a big deal that will be winning hearts — and even grownup minds — for a long time to come.

Stirring, profound, poignantly funny and almost literally transporting.

The illusion is seamless and the pleasure is boundless.

Mr. Day-Lewis works famously, and phenomenally, from the inside out. The mystery at the core of his gorgeous performance, which is enhanced by Mr. Kushner's script, has to do with his masterly grasp of Lincoln's quicksilver spirit.

It's a meditation on mortality, with remarkable resemblances to "Gravity," not to mention echoes of "The Old Man and the Sea." It's admirably crafted, with a wealth of detail that illustrates the sailor's resourcefulness.

A meta-mystery lurks here — how it is that this horror flick can be so shocking and dismaying, so genuinely upsetting in spasms and spurts, yet at the same time so madly entertaining.

Although movies about celebrities are often fatuous and superfluous, that’s anything but the case with Stevan Riley’s Listen to Me Marlon. This feature documentary about Marlon Brando needed to be made, and Mr. Riley made it extremely well.

Needlessly long, visually drab and not just a foreign-language film, with English subtitles, but a film that's ostensibly foreign to our experience. That said, there are compelling reasons to see it.

A remarkable -- and harrowing -- debut feature that makes you think there's hope after all for the future of independent films.

The film's power also lies in the honesty of its observation. Though Gyuri survives unfathomable horrors, he can't forget them and, in the end, doesn't want to. They're the only history he has.

Haunting, troubling documentary.

I can't pretend to understand the intricacies of the Buddhist belief system that informs the surreal story, or the fantasy system in which Boonmee, embodying Thailand, recalls his nation's history and shimmering myths. Yet no effort of understanding is needed to be moved by Boonmee's descent into a limestone cave shaped like a womb.

Brokeback Mountain aspires to an epic sweep and achieves it, though with singular intimacy and grace.

Working on a scale that's minuscule by studio standards, the Dardenne brothers have made yet another movie that does what Hollywood used to do - keep us rapt, and leave us grateful.

There’s never been anything like this animated exaltation of the Spider-Man canon. The animation is glorious, and more faithful to its comic-book roots than any big-screen graphics in the past. The story is deliciously witty and preposterously complex, but perfectly comprehensible, whether or not you have studied quantum physics. The scale feels vast, yet the spirit is joyous. It’s as if everyone had set out to make the best Spider-Man movie ever, which is exactly what they’ve done.

There are worlds within the startling world of Murderball.

Ms. Hawkins reminds us how intense silent films could be. She gives the best performance of the year with the most heart-piercing silence you’ve ever seen.

A harrowing but enthralling documentary.

Demanding, quietly breathtaking film.

Never before, though, have statistics added up to such electrifying entertainment. After the mostly minor-league productions of recent months, this movie, which was directed by Bennett Miller, renews your belief in the power of movies.

This isn’t only a wise and graceful film but, in its tossed-off way, a great one, with a debut performance — by a young actress named Lou Roy-Lecollinet — that will prove to be unforgettable.

Lacking space for a proper review, let me say first that Tampopo is right up there with “Ratatouille” and “Big Night” when it comes to peerless movies about food.

Diane navigates some challenging narrative disjunctures en route to a spiritual dimension, but it also has quiet moments that speak volumes. They’re all about Diane achieving a state of grace by awarding it to herself.

The film is clearly not for everyone; sometimes it wasn’t for me. But it’s steadfastly nonjudgmental and wonderfully tender toward two searchers for new versions of old-fashioned love.

The writing is semicoherent at best, and the buddies of this meandering road trip are not only mismatched but dislikable.

The deeper problem with Rock Star is its insistence on turning a heavy-metal fairy tale into a morality tale that's as heavy as lead.

Where the film shines is in its vivid and affecting portrait of Tillman himself. Instead of the square-jawed hero memorialized by the army and lionized by the news media, we get to know a man of many gifts for many seasons.

This drama is as big as all outdoors in scope; poetic and profound in its exploration of the senses; blessed with two transcendent performances, by Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay; and as elegantly wrought as any film that has come our way in a very long while.

What's extraordinary is what happens at the intersection of Mr. Payne's impeccable direction and Mr. Nelson's brilliant script. The odyssey combines, quite effortlessly, prickly combat between father and son.

It is thoughtful, unfashionable, measured, mostly honest, sometimes clumsy or remote, often exciting, occasionally moving and eventually surprising. It's correct.

What you call Mr. Shults’s first film is spectacular.

As a director, working with actors, she may have drawn on her own experience acting in features and TV; whatever her method, she has come up with a matched pair of terrific performances.

I was riveted by the performance of Paulina García, the great Chilean actress who plays Tony’s beleaguered mother. To watch her is to see exactly how less can be more. Instead of acting, she allows her character to reveal her thoughts in words that are all the more powerful for being few, far between and softly spoken.

A thrillingly funny and casually profound film.

Go underground with magic glasses on your nose and you won't regret it.