Marjorie Baumgarten

A stunning work of beauty, mystery, contemplation, and grit -- and like sands through the desert hourglass, these are the days of our lives.

I can think of no other movie that has dared to analyze grief and its aftermath with such naked honesty and precision.

Ghost World resists convenient closures and summaries and some may take issue with its open-endedness. But anything else would have been phony, and Enid would never have stood for it.

Although the characters and their backstories are carefully thought out, Delpy and Hawke deliver their dialogue as if spontaneous and unmeditated.

Julie’s restlessness is anchored by a self-confidence that Reinsve conveys guilelessly and brilliantly.

One of the best movies I've seen this year and, consequently, the less said about it here the better. The beauty of this movie is in the way it twists and turns, thwarting expectations, confounding stereotypes and venturing into places you least anticipate.

The story builds to a feverish pitch and then never reaches a satisfactory conclusion. But while it’s onscreen, the film moves, incites, and jabs, all while reminding us how difficult it is to grow up female and sane in this world.

From its silent opening moments to its breathtaking double-cross conclusion, Le Samourai is the work of one of the film world's great directors working at his expressive peak.

Winter's Bone never hits a false note.

The Queen is palace intrigue at its finest.

Remarkably, the film is composed entirely of point-of-view shots. Although she’s in the room, Viviane is not even part of the image during the early minutes of the film.

Dingy atmosphere and great performances make this a standout.

A wildly inventive, unrelenting thrill that amazes us with its visual and intellectual treats and dazzles us with its ongoing ingenuity.

A Prophet is the kind of film that makes you remember why going to the movies can be a thrilling experience.

Crowe has created a genuine love song for all those who've ever felt their lives to have been saved by rock & roll.

Kubrick’s film vividly depicts the harsh realities of war and remains a great anti-war drama.

Fans of wartime romances like Casablanca and Doctor Zhivago are sure to swoon over the fate of Cold War’s divided lovers.

It's unusually provocative and challenging for a Hollywood movie and, surprisingly, allows the audience to piece things together without too much external direction.

Not only is it a film about a poet, Paterson transcends its story to become a work of poetry itself.

One of Chaplin’s sweetest and most humble movies.

Instead of using actors, Greengrass employed many of the actual air traffic controllers and military commanders who were on the ground that day. Also aiding his film's universality is Greengrass' use of little known actors in the central roles, preventing stardom from affecting our ideas about heroism and patriotism.

By the end of the movie, it’s no longer possible to know anything with certainty -– so convoluted, contradictory, pathological, and long ago have the events become. It’s a movie that will have you talking and thinking for hours.

Though you might have a hard time discussing some of the film’s verbal descriptions of torture with young ones, Persepolis will prove a worthwhile movie for thoughtful teens.

A delightful little wormhole that takes us on a journey to another dimension of consciousness.

Searching for Bobby Fischer is a story that sounds, on paper, like something that shouldn't succeed as a movie but when played out so remarkably by all the parties involved, it becomes an unexpected treat.

Talk about your baby boys – Cagney takes the cake here as a psychopathic gangster with a seriously perverse mother complex. A gangster classic.

Michèle is a daring, complicated character – one that Isabelle Huppert brilliantly creates in concert with the director, Paul Verhoeven.

This is a movie to love, that touches you in places you never suspected, that shows you that the road less traveled is the road to your dreams.