Marjorie Baumgarten

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

A masterful synthesis of generic conventions and creative imagination, a sublime amalgam of some of the best tendencies and talent our times have to offer.

Love means being helpmates throughout all of life's stages. Death is part of love's bargain, and Haneke lays this fact bare.

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.

I Stand Alone uses a cannon ball to shatter the psychological horror at the heart of human society.

With great subtlety and knowing humor, Eat Drink Man Woman emerges as one of those unforeseen treats.

Preminger strips the musical of all excess and frills. He creates an austere, depoeticized, anti-lyrical world in which nothing obstructs his camera's detached recording of the action. The great themes of Preminger's oeuvre are obsession and the conflict between freedom and repression, themes which are central to Carmen Jones.

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

Among the many things that Baadasssss! is, it is also a movie about moviemaking. In fact, the film should be a primer for anyone about to make an independent film.

At the very least, The Aristocrats provides a survey of some of the best comic minds in the business.

A moving tribute to this legendary artist's life and career.

This is one of the major delights of Hotel Artemis: a plot that posits a damaged, Medicare-aged woman as its central figure. And that the role is executed by a two-time Oscar-winning actress delivering her best work in many years makes this a rare treat.

Proves to be a wonderful reality check.

The three-and-a-half-hour-long movie revels in talk as this man ponders life, philosophy, the sexual revolution, the workers' revolution, love, death, and so on. He smokes, drinks, flirts, and talks –­ and the movie is exquisitely of its time.

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.

This Stanley Kramer-produced film is the original biker movie.

Cast aside any preconceived expectations you might have regarding this documentary and remember simply this: Winnebago Man is one of the best films you're going to see all year.

There is little in the way of narrative eventfulness in the film, but Leigh luxuriates in the moments, and provides glimpses of what it takes to be an artist amid the fray.

Scores its ultimate coup de grace though its interviews. Macdonald has lined up an amazing collection of interviewees.

As things turn out, Clooney’s butt is just one of the many delights to be found on a trip to Solaris.

This Romeo & Juliet is a rich visual feast, besotted with the fervor of its acrobatic camerawork and kinetic staging and its mind-bending aggregation of unrelated but resonant fragments of 20th-century iconography.

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.

As good as it ever was, and improved slightly by hindsight, experience, and extra cash.

A big generational saga that woos the audience with its humor, spirit, style, and ability. Genius here is an evolutionary thing.

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

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.

It’s an enchanting work, heartbreaking yet wryly amusing.

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.