Joe Morgenstern

I loved this movie, and I wish it could be seen by all those kids who turn out every weekend for shoddy studio comedies that show them who they'd like to be. Raising Victor Vargas shows young lovers as they are.

Succeeds at its daunting task: summing up an epic struggle with bedazzling action; with a style that progresses, apart from a few lapses, from the elegiac through the episodic to the symphonic; and with more humor, zest and feeling — the real, heartfelt stuff — than you’d dare to expect from what is, after all, an immense industrial undertaking.

A dazzling piece of filmmaking, and much of the dazzle - as well as the anguished darkness - comes from Adam Stone's cinematography, which expresses the swirling state of Curtis's mind with richly varied flavors of light.

Jane Campion has performed her own feat of romantic imagination.

It's a stirring portrait of a singular artist, a gorgeously photographed album of his buildings, and, perhaps most importantly, a film that manages to demystify the way he works without diminishing it.

The other remarkable aspect of Mr. Schipper’s film centers on the title character, who is played by an extraordinary Spanish actress named Laia Costa. She’s full of energy, and effortless grace.

A thrilling -- and harrowing, and beautiful -- celebration of the unpredictability of life.

Andrew Garfield's phenomenal performance makes room for the many and various pieces of Jack's personality, whether or not they're securely fastened together.

A film of fitting energy and complexity, it’s a stirring account of an astonishing life.

No one makes movies like Mr. Jia does. He’s a dramatist with the eye of a documentarian and the instincts of a historian, even a geographer. But he’s also a romantic poet, and his heroine, a strong woman with a pure heart, is driven by love as far as it can take her.

An elegant horror film, starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, that takes pleasure in its own theatricality, gives pleasure with caustic wit, trusts the power of Stephen Sondheim's score and exults in flights of fancy that only a movie can provide.

It's exciting, stirring, often funny, sometimes lyrical and unusually thoughtful. And, with that one egregious exception, genuinely pleasurable.

A lovely surprise. Ripe with feeling and lush with physical beauty, it's a love story that swings confidently between age and youth, and, like the young Tiger Woods of old, avoids every trap along the way.

The good news about Claude Lelouch's And Now Ladies and Gentlemen -- there's no bad news -- is that the man who made the sublimely superficial "A Man and a Woman" almost four decades ago has grown in wisdom and artistry, but hasn't lost his love of glossy surfaces.

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.

There are mysteries here, not the least of them being how such a modest little movie can evoke such profound feelings.

What makes Rocketman a gift of entertainment that keeps on giving is the brilliance of the musical numbers coupled with the complexity of the star’s portrayal.

A remarkable though sometimes frustrating film.

Crazy Heart is blessed with so many marvelous moments, lovely lines and vivid characters.

Hugely inventive -- and smashingly beautiful.

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.

A handsome, absorbing debut feature by the fiction and television writer Henry Bromell.

(Morton's) character here is emotionally mute -- though Morvern speaks, she can't or won't reveal what's in her heart -- and her performance is brilliant from start to finish.

What makes The Flat mesmerizing is its wealth of historical detail. What makes it universal is what it says about families everywhere - that children, being children, don't want to know what their parents are up to, and that grown-ups, being human, don't want to credit troubling facts that conflict with what they need to believe.

The silents, as this film suggests, achieved aesthetic marvels before sound came along to set things back for a while.

Ms. Berg's film, which she wrote with Billy McMillin, tells the story with unprecedented clarity. She has a dramatist's eye for what was irretrievably lost-the innocent lives of the children, plus 18 years of three other innocent lives.

A film that asks its audience to invest serious thought, and in return, bestows serious pleasure.

This is a woman's work in the best sense -- empathetic, inferentially erotic and delicately intuitive, as well as fiercely intelligent.