Marjorie Baumgarten

Pacing problems and shallow psychological inquiries plague this film almost as much as the overworked metaphor that supplies the film's title.

It is rich with ideas and contemplations and packed with the sort of existential jokes that tickle the Coen boys so.

However commanding and absorbing Three Billboards may be, the film is diminished by its neatness and unconvincing resolutions to the many dilemmas it puts into play.

Most of all, this rendition of A Star Is Born oozes with romantic chemistry between Cooper and Gaga, as well as the stunning command of rock & roll visual tropes evidenced by Cooper and his director of photography Matthew Libatique (Black Swan).

A phantom of a movie whose beautiful flakes fall into the deep crevices of memory long after the seasons change.

The performances in this costume drama are wonderful.

A pleasant frolic, but fairly inconsequential in terms of the overall Allen output.

Despite its reliance on some overworked symbolism, the screenplay by David Tranter and Steven McGregor is smart. However, the intercut flash-forwards and flashbacks do little to aid our understanding or appreciation of the story, and seem like artistic frippery.

Although the dramatic scale of Leave No Trace is small as well, that trait should not be mistaken for insignificance. This film raises more questions than it answers, which can prove a turnoff to some viewers, but others will soak in its ambiguities long after the closing credits.

Melodrama mixes with light-hearted touches, moral dilemmas, and historical reckoning in Almodóvar’s latest.

Hell or High Water is a good but not great movie with sensational lead performances that elevate it to enjoyably memorable status.

We will be comparing Up with classics like "The Wizard of Oz" for years to come.

Back to the Future entertainingly deals with the child's eternal question: If my parents had never met, where would that leave me?

Nobody Knows is the rare film that successfully tells its tale of childhood from the children’s point of view.

Life Is Sweet observes this constellation of people without ever really commenting on their lots. Very little occurs and thus, if you don't find yourself drawn to these characters, you will find yourself wondering when it will all be over.

It’s a celebratory movie designed to rekindle awe and admiration for the accomplishments of the NASA astronauts and ground scientists, as well as a reminder of the endless realms of possibility that can be achievable when a country and its politicians work in unison toward a shared goal.

Armstrong presents a warm, funny, and believable rendering of the March family.

If, at times, Shine's luster reveals more elbow grease than internal radiance, the movie is still a moving tribute to the human capacity to overcome all odds.

A superlative cast vividly captures the turbulence of this classic drama about the constrictions caused by race in postwar Chicago.

The story is one of those great mad scientist tales in which the potion invented with the best intentions for its enhancement of human life becomes instead an evil force bent on its destruction. The visual effects here are pretty great - and at first comedic - as the Invisible Man smokes and brawls and rocks in a chair. Oh, but then the horror happens.

The film is a biting critique of American race relations in the Fifties and a complex study in contrasts and paradoxes.

An abundance of color is present in Pain and Glory but the shades are more muted than Almodóvar’s early color-saturated work. Thematically and visually, this film has more in common with such Almodóvar dramas as "All About My Mother" and "Talk to Her." Pain and Glory is ultimately the story of an artist on the verge of a creative breakthrough.

A tour de force of modern cinema.

The movie is a strange amalgam of compelling visuals and fascinating vocational details forged with deep moral ambivalence and often hollow didacticism.

All That Breathes instills admiration and wonder while also subtly implicating human beings in a responsibility for the upkeep and furtherance of life.

There's little drama or sense of progression in the movie until the bombshell hits, and then it just whimpers along for another half-hour until the end.

Blue is a movie that engages the mind, challenges the senses, implores a resolution, and tells, with aesthetic grace and formal elegance, a good story and a political allegory.

A stylistic tour de force, one that wordlessly emotes and wears its emotions on its literal silk sleeves.

A truly provocative essay.

Kubrick’s gladiator film is the pinnacle of sword-and-sandal epics, and who isn’t a sucker for stories about rebellious slaves? This is the kind of movie the Paramount’s screen was made for.

As usual, Oscar-winner Frances McDormand delivers a rich, physically detailed performance that leaves as much under the surface as above it.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl is the rare movie that presents the subject of the loss of virginity from the female perspective. Not only is the film unique in this regard, but also in its frankness, humor, and artistry.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is hopelessly depressing. Yet as a story of the callous impersonalization we inflict upon one another, the film is timeless.

The end result is a delightful, though a smidge too long, reminder of one of the reasons we so enjoy going to the movies: perchance to dream.

In the end, The Fog of War offers a couple of hours of brilliant clarity amid the noise and chaos.

It's possible to point to some weak spots in Brokeback – its seeming multiple endings, the lack of clarity about certain images, some digressions – but there is no movie this year that has moved my heart more than Brokeback Mountain.

How the Dardennes, time and again, turn gritty, mundane subjects into transcendent moments of honesty and truth is one of the great cinematic wonders.

Sometimes people grow up sane despite the best efforts of society to drive them mad. This is the case for filmmaker Jonathan Caouette.

Co-directors Rubin and Shapiro deliver the rare documentary that totally entertains, informs, and inspires.

As kids' comedies go, this one's fairly topical and, better yet, amusing.

What's compelling about Caché is not the answer to the whodunit but Haneke's exacting invocation of palpable tension.

It's filled with marvelous performances, fabulous wit, and some dizzying images.

Moneyball is a smart, funny, and thoughtful baseball movie.

You watch and wait for this underachieving film to ignite, then grow more and more exasperated as you witness its many misfires.

Though the story played out in the national media, this documentary makes effective use of commentary by Tillman's survivors, who resent the way the military lied to them and exploited the memory of their loved one to serve an ulterior purpose.

Room is ultimately not something you’d readily call enjoyable, but it is a cathartic and provocative reminder that life is full of possibilities and outcomes.

Manages the most delicate of hat tricks: It gives definition to uncertainty.

This oil-family story is way, way east of Eden. Were I asked to choose, Written on the Wind would blow in as my favorite Sirk film.

A living artifact that does what movies do best: exist in time.

The performances are first-rate, and Anderson as the obsessively attached maid Mrs. Danvers is a perverse gem.

The crisp imagery (by Radek Ładczuk) creates a true sense of menace amid the household banality. Tales about mothers who fear their offspring also strike at a very primal level of mythic storytelling. Vigilance is the only means of protection against creatures from the id.

From the second it begins, Boogie Nights seizes your senses and pulls you right in: no turning back, no time for debate, no regrets.

One of the all-time great action movies, The Great Escape also features an all-star international cast. The first half of the movie sets up all the various characters who have to drop their prickly differences and unite to outwit their German captors. Steve McQueen as the Cooler King is a genuine classic.

Definitely catch this movie in its 3-D iteration, as Herzog practically schools filmmakers in the technique's proper use.

Nick and Nora Charles are one of the screen's great couples.

Kidman inhabits the lead character of Suzanne Stone (yes, Suzanne Stone) with such sly and delicious zest that we can only wonder why this aspect of her acting has been buried under blonde dramatic ambitions.

So definitive in so many ways, Bonnie and Clyde has become a 20th-century touchstone.

Even in its disassociation, The Great Beauty ingratiates itself as a witty and compelling companion – much like Jep Gambardella.

Felix and Oscar are now part of the American mythos.

Based on a memoir by Annie Ernaux, Happening is remarkable for its first-person depiction of the panic and desperation of a young woman carrying an unwanted pregnancy. Moreover, the film is remarkable for its depiction of a determined and unflinching female protagonist who refuses to accept her predicament as her deserved fate.

Affleck's greatest talent, however, may lie in his casting instincts: In addition to the above-mentioned turns by Arkin and Goodman, stand-out performances are also delivered by Bryan Cranston as Mendez's boss and Victor Garber as the morally heroic Canadian ambassador to Iran.

Summer Hours is a lovely rumination on the meaning of things, but one that remains rooted in its human subjects rather than the inanimate objects that are more easily graspable.

Even if this is a film that does not always make perfect sense, Infinity Pool is a film that does not shrink from its transgressions.

An amazing work, a film that seems to gurgle up from the American heartland, resonant and fully formed, ripe with possibilities.

Just look at the cast and try to resist the testosterone pull of this movie.

Williams' shape-shifting, gag-spouting, celebrity-impersonating Genie is truly a hurricane in a bottle. His manic energy and hip humor are so exhilarating that the rest of the movie risks grinding to a halt whenever he's not onscreen.

This movie achieves a rare grace: it tells a story that could only exist in the form of a movie (or, perhaps, as a piece of poetry). The story is told not so much in customary narrative structures, but in glimpses, hints, and intimations. It has a way of taking the solid and making it chimerical.

Roeg's points about the contrasts between noble savages and civilized effetes don't stand up terribly well over time.

Take Shelter is a deeply unsettling movie. Writer/director Jeff Nichols (an Austin resident and director of the award-winning 2007 feature "Shotgun Stories") doles out information as strategically as a government official.

Not only does this genre exercise deliver the little jolts and inside laughs that keep modern horror fans pleased, Get Out is also one of the smartest, funniest, and most socially astute films to come around in a while.

Jenkins' superlative work proves her first film was no fluke; let's hope it doesn't take another nine years to hear from her again.

But for all our Tony Montanas and Pablo Escobars, both imagined and real, I guarantee you have never seen a drug-trafficking movie like Birds of Passage.

A distinctive story with universal appeal.

What truly binds this film is the love story that lies at the heart of it. It’s a love battered by fate and bad luck, quite the opposite of such forces as planned redesigns of China’s social and geographic landscapes.

Never devolves into the type of “man's man” adventure story that has become so fashionable again over the last couple of years, but instead trusts the power of its unembellished images and words to tell its tale.

Emerges as an artful, courageous, experimental work that is as compelling as it is impaired.

The Rider is a stunning piece of fiction played close to the bone.

It’s endlessly arguable and open for debate. At the very least, we can all agree that Banksy has found a new wall on which to plaster his art – that of the silver screen.

Thornton, who wrote, directed, and stars in Sling Blade, has created an unforgettable character and situation, a film that's sure to become an American classic.

Titled Girlhood for its American release in an obvious ploy to be viewed as a counterpart to last year’s widely hailed Boyhood, this film is better described by its original French title Bande de Filles, which translates as Girl Gang.

Fonda and Hopper’s now-classic film hit the old guard with the force of a rifle shot to the head. [Review of re-release]

Everything is a puzzle and it's as though Lynch lost track of his reasons for making this prequel and got hung up on filming the sordid details that TV won't allow: shots of peeled-back corpse fingernails; close-ups of oscillating uvulas; visions of strange-looking, backward-talking, gyrating weirdos; and uncensored whiffs of sex, cocaine, and families undone.

An emotional triumph.

It was the greatest rock & roll party you never heard of.

A gripping presentation of a little-known true story and its historical lessons.

As sad and poignant and potentially hopeful as it is amusing. The movie is our story as much as it is Schmidt's, no matter if it's viewed as a self-reflection or cautionary tale

A terrific piece of work.

This French movie uses remarkably expressive stop-motion animation to create an honesty and sense of whimsy that help offset the darkness of the intrinsic story.

A screen spectacle that beseeches its audience for adoration and mass acceptance.

Holy Motors is as individualistic a movie as you're likely to encounter – both in terms of the filmmaker's intent and the viewer's takeaway. Warmth and humor abide within its every frame but, like Carax's dreamer at the film's outset, you must find the key within yourself that unlocks the mysteries.

The film moves at a slow and deliberate pace, much like the wheels of justice. As viewers, we come to feel ensnarled in the grip of bureaucratic entanglement, much like Kornyev, fighting for justice against diminishing odds.

Even when The Tree of Life does not achieve the heights for which it aims, it soars boldly and fearlessly.

While the film provides many invaluable insights into Spielberg’s technical and thematic tropes that can be seen repeated throughout his career, the filmmaker also burnishes aspects of his life story and leaves out chunks of years to create what is inevitably a self-indulgent yet delightful origin story, appropriately called The Fabelmans.

The astounding performance of David Thewlis as Johnny is in no small measure responsible for the success of Naked. Talking his way through every scene, his portrait of this drifter is mesmerizingly appealing, hateful, humorous, self-destructive, honest and compelling. Still, I am unable to separate my loathing for this character from my feelings about the formal achievements of this movie. The effect may be one of naked observation but the view is ugly and corrosive.

Restrepo is an example of photojournalism at its finest.

Michael B. Jordan (The Wire, Friday Night Lights) delivers a brilliant, sensitive performance as Oscar and is one of the primary reasons Fruitvale has such resonance.

A well-chosen collection of friends and former lovers provides reminiscences that flesh out Chavela’s challenging personality. However, the documentary provides scant information about the challenges Chavela faced in her career.

There is no better way to while away a Sunday afternoon than with this sprawling saga about the growth of Texas and the families that matured along with the state. If Texas had a state movie, then Giant would be it.