Marjorie Baumgarten

Frenzy is one of the great latter-day Hitchcocks; great technique, great suspense, and very black humor drive this tale of an innocent man hunted by Scotland Yard for a series of sex murders.

Household Saints restores one's faith in miracles while teaching us how to invent them ourselves. That, and also teaching us not to worry about getting stigmata on the carpet when Jesus comes to visit.

One of Disney’s best and most popular live-action movies, this one is a favorite among those who grew up in the Seventies

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

Winter's Bone never hits a false note.

Repulsion's depiction of a young woman's dissolution into madness is one of the most harrowing mental descents ever depicted onscreen. (Reviewed 11/24/97)

This modern cult classic is a triumphantly dark comedy directed by one of the film world's truly original visionaries, Terry Gilliam. "Imagination" is this futuristic film’s middle name.

Tennessee Williams’ study of a crumbling Southern patriarchy is riveting stuff. Although the word homosexuality is never uttered, this Hollywood reworking brings a certain understanding of the son’s latent “immaturity” and his wife’s childlessness. Bolstered by extraordinary performances, this tale’s a summer sizzler.

A movie that amply delivers on the epic promise of its title, entertaining, enlightening, and emboldening viewers with its deceptively simple premise and execution.

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

Taylor, Burton, and Harrison are sublime in this sweeping epic of love and nations.

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.

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.

For my money, this Freudian tale about a beautiful kleptomaniac and liar is one of Hitchcock's best accomplishments, certainly one of his most perverse.

More lethal than a nuclear waste dump, Kubrick's komedy at least kills us with laughter... It's one of the greatest - and undoubtably the most hilarious - antiwar statements ever put to film.

Teen tales don’t get much better than this.

This is an amazing allegorical study of the life and death of a donkey named Balthazar, whose nasty, brutish life as a slave parallels that of a young farm girl.

One of the cinema’s very best car-chase sequences – set amid the hilly, windy San Francisco streets – caps this quintessential Steve McQueen policier.

Just about as great as a movie's ever gonna be... As for the storytellng, The Godfather is an intricately constructed gem that simultaneously kicks ass.

An additional treat is seeing Hollywood good guy Henry Fonda playing one of the nastiest curs in the West. Once Upon a Time in the West is one of the great films in cinema history. (8/30/2000 Review)

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

Bergman and Grant sizzle in this espionage tale written by Ben Hecht.

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.

In this enduringly transcendent love story, Truffaut traces the relationships between three lovers and friends over the years. Moreau dominates every fragment of the movie with her magisterial eroticism. The film works in ways that touch the heart more than the mind.

This sentimental perennial is a holiday chestnut.

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

One of the sharpest prison dramas ever, although it's graced with some very humorous portions as well.

Based on a Cornell Woolrich short story, this is one of Hitchcock's finest moments, full of subtle humor and nasty black turns, not to mention a wonderful score by Franz Waxman and gorgeous cinematography from longtime Hitchcock director of photography Robert Burks.

[A] prescient and sharply drawn comedy about the depths to which one unscrupulous station will sink.

A marvelous achievement that refuses to avert its gaze from the poetry and the insane savagery of the hopeless.

Due more to how it makes you think rather than to what it shows, Night of the Living Dead gets under your skin and burrows into your blood and psyche.

Arguably, the best John Ford film ever, certainly one the very best, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is an American classic. Ford addresses the complexity of heroism in a poetic manner.

Michael Mann is in top form here helming this bone-chilling thriller.

One of Hitchcock's very best comic thrillers, North by Northwest features scene after unforgettable scene.

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

Everything about its scale is epic.

The peerless actors match and elevate Lonergan’s artistry beat for beat. And the film’s greatest gift of all may be that it declines to tidy up after itself, prettifying life’s messiness with a finishing bow. In the end, it’s the package that counts, not the wrapping.

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

Amy Heckerling’s portrait of high school/shopping mall life in Southern California is still just about as good as it gets...The panoply of teen types and turmoils is dead-on accurate.

The spoof that launched a thousand parodies – this is the one that's 100% funny.

An epic biopic, over three hours in length, Gandhi captures the spirit of the man and his struggles.

Ingenious in its simplicity.

With Bad Education, the great Almodóvar delivers the finest movie of his career.

Hands down, this is the best Astaire-Rogers musical ever. Nothing more needs to be said.

Linklater’s newest film, a true masterwork, eschews this big-bang theory of dramatics in favor of the million-and-one little things that accumulate daily and help shape who we are, and who we will become.

Raimunda believes that dirty linen should be washed at home: Thank goodness Almodóvar hangs some of it up on the screen to dry.

This multi-Oscar-winner nails its characters, time period, and locale so perfectly that it becomes even more compelling as time goes by. Fueled by two riveting character studies and its exposure of New York City's seamy underbelly, the movie screams “contemporary” and “eternal” at once...It's one of those rare movies that comes together just about perfectly, so check out this theatrical release while you can.

As disturbing as it is well-made, this low-budget indie is a thoroughly original piece of work.

Streetcar is always a wonderful screen drama and now, also, a study in film archeology. [Director's Cut]

If Billy Wilder achieved nothing else in his entire career, he would still rank as one of the great masters of cinema for pulling off this comic tour de force.

The story winds its way over the material, forcing the characters and the viewers to constantly reassess everything they have seen and heard.

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

One of Chaplin’s sweetest and most humble movies.

Very satisfying. Classic storytelling, modern techniques. And the images: This movie has embedded so many strange and new mental pictures in my head that I'm not able to shake free. Yet, neither would I want to be free.

Peter Weir made this unsettling, atmospheric film early in his career, and it is still one of his most successful projects to date.

A concept executed with bravura style, intelligent curiosity, and playful wit.

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

Nabokov’s satire is sensationally cast, with Winters and Sellers delivering some of their best work ever.

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.

Beautifully made, courageously edited, and swift-moving, this challenging, provocative film is a work that is both humanist and revolutionary.

Edwards' crowning achievement. It is a wickedly funny, impeccably cast, ingeniously subversive satire of the Hollywood film industry.

The film is an intensely personal record, yet also a universal contemplation. Faces Places leaves the viewer with a sense of the glories of images and communication – sometimes random, sometimes specific, always continual and cumulative.

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

Virtually flawless performances and directorial execution render The Fighter one of the most thrilling movies of 2010.

This is the way this ground-breaking monument was meant to be seen: in mind-boggling 70mm.

This essential Billy Wilder film smoothly combines trenchant social observation with hilarious comedy.

It was written by military-horror storyteller David Rabe (Sticks and Bones, Streamers), and features outstanding performances by this ensemble ñ especially Fox and Penn.

Boasts a smart screenplay by Robert Benton and David and Leslie Newman, striking cinematography by Geoffrey Unsworth (especially in the Smallville sequence), bright comic turns by Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman, and of course, that winning performance by Christopher Reeve in the title role. Believe a man can fly? You bet!

Disturbing and grim in its portraits, Wise Blood is nevertheless marvelous storytelling and its performances are virtually divine.

Although made in 1969, this French masterpiece is receiving its first stateside release with a new print struck for the occasion.

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

The film's sense of family values will make your head hurt and the chase scenes will set your noggin spinning.

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

It's paved with delightfully irregular and unanticipated bits of business that stimulate the viewer to stay fully alert, while renewing our faith in the sheer joy of watching movies.

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.

A smart, creepy, violent, funny, and modern vampire movie that benefits from some wonderful performances, a stunning visual texture, and music by Tangerine Dream.

A chilling classic, the movie is a scabrous satire about human deviance, brutality, and social conditioning that has remained a visible part of the ongoing public debate about violence and the movies.

Hepburn brings Truman Capote's Holly Golightly to vivid life. [Review of re-release]

Director James Cameron and producer Gale Anne Hurd (both of whom co-wrote the script) demonstrate their storytelling virtuosity.

Certainly one of the very best films in each of Donen and Hepburn's careers, this devastatingly lovely remnant of Hollywood's anything-goes Sixties (with a script by Frederic Raphael) tells the story of a marriage by showing a couple over the course of successive trips to the south of France.

Before Midnight surpasses the two previous films in this trilogy in terms of its intelligence, narrative design, and vivacity. It’s a grand accomplishment, and I feel greedy about wanting to see this film series continue.

Barry Sonnenfeld's stunning cinematography and the sharply etched characterizations make this film one for the ages.

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.

It's been 40 years since James Dean essayed his quintessential role in as a troubled American teen and, along with co-stars Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, established an iconography of adolescence whose potency extends into the present.

Nic Roeg here offers one of the most disconcerting portraits of otherworldliness ever seen on the screen.

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.

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

As masterful as the character it portrays, TÁR is a textured, finely calibrated, stunningly composed, and thoroughly contemporary study. Its chords reverberate long after the music fades.

Divorce severs this marriage like the dull blade of a knife cutting through the tiers of a wedding cake.

This 1964 film, featuring an enduring Lerner and Loewe score, is a classic.

There Will Be Blood is not a movie that disappears quietly.

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

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.

These creatures of the underworld are the fervid fabrications of del Toro's imagination: More than once they will catch you by surprise and make you gasp.

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]

In Carol, all the elements dovetail perfectly to create a movie that is as irresistible as its title character.

Angela Lansbury's frighteningly in-check performance is alone worth the trip.

One of the most exciting movies of this, or any other, year. It's smart, funny, and wonderfully crafted and performed.

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

Vertigo stands as one of the thrill master's most psychologically dense and twisted works in which obsession, commitment, and dual identities all merge to create a voluptuous tale of thwarted love. [Restored version]

With Captain Phillips we get a viable thriller whose conclusion is already known, and a character who reacts to circumstances rather than a personal, heroic code. And now, it’s a story preserved in brine.

The movie occasionally continues on too long with certain scenes and may strain the sensibilities of anybody not caught up in its delirious visuals and melodrama, but The Saddest Music in the World nevertheless beckons with a seductive and unforgettable melody.

Director David Gordon Green has made a work of uncommon beauty and intelligence, one that is smart enough to trust its characters and the technical contributions of its crew.

What the film excels at, however, is the anticipatory desire. It builds slowly, concluding with a stunning sequence that is all breathless remembrance and self-satisfaction that is both wordless and impalpable. The film will seem the height of romantic desire to some, but will be a slow burn for others.

Contemplative, though riddled with humor, After Life reveals itself gradually.

Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb dramatically and unforgettably burst from nowhere onto the screen with their searing portrayals of Sex Pistol Sid Vicious and American groupie Nancy Spungen. Their performances in this embellished docudrama are so intense and definitive that they leave little room for any other memories of these doomed junkie lovers.

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.

A real winner -- smart, funny, subtle, and resonant -- and there's not a hanging chad in sight.

The work of a fine craftsman and artist.

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.

Sharp scripting, note-perfect performances, and nimble direction and technical execution combine to make Wag the Dog one of the wittiest and most mordant political satires to come along in quite some time.

It's the kind of movie you wish you had more time to absorb and could see more than once before reviewing.

An evocative, probing, enlightening, and impressionistic look at the lesser-known period of Hendrix’s life: the pivotal time from 1966-67 during which the musician discovered his style and voice.

Haneke (Caché) has created a morality tale that concludes with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand: one more example of a solitary act of violence that unleashes a cataclysm.

Though Crumb is packed with information and telling details, the movie's objective is hardly art history or a survey of Crumb's place in the world of comics. The movie aims for broader subject matter, to discover something about the role art plays in the life of the artist, and about how the release of art may, indeed, allow the artist to function as a stable human being.

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

So many things come together so beautifully in this movie based on the life of John Forbes Nash Jr. that you're likely to find yourself willing to benignly overlook its occasional biographical lapses and narrative sweetening.

Mary Harron's movie turns out to be anything but a sensationalistic bio-picture; it neither sanctifies nor demonizes the shooter or her famous victim. What the movie accomplishes is something trickier: It treats its two principals, Solanis and Warhol, with respect and humanity.

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

More than an appreciation, Pete Seeger: The Power of Song is an inspiration.

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.

Brooks’ early reputation as a film director rests with the success of this raunchy Western spoof. A great cast is eclipsed by the hilarious performances of Korman and Kahn, who plays a Marlene Dietrich-like chanteuse.

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

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

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

Ageism, sexism, classism, and unabashed snobbery rear their ugly heads in a provocatively told story by probably the greatest film melodrama stylist who ever lived.

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

Probably the ultimate writers' film, but it's also a brash, daring, and dynamic film -- as delicate as an orchid but as durable and malleable as the species.

As grisly and disturbing as Bones and All is, the film strikes me more as a romance, a coming-of-age movie, and/or a lovers-on-the-run chronicle. Dark and bloody, definitely; but also, at times, sweet and hopeful.

Hitchcock's comedic charms shine in this delightful story about a corpse that just won't stay buried.

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

The wonder of The Piano is that such an outwardly simple story could emerge into such a complex swirl of lingering memories.

Eastwood finds the humorous aspects of the character as well, no more so than when the appetite of the widower who lives on beef jerky and Pabst Blue Ribbon becomes the center of attention among the Hmong women cooks.

A truly provocative essay.

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.

Mother finds Brooks in top form as he dons the tri-fold hat of director, star, and writer (with co-writer Monica Johnson). His humor has more of an observational zing than a jokey, one-two patter. Within this structure, Brooks uncovers many of the fidgety truths about the relationships between parents and their grown children. The film comeback of Debbie Reynolds is also a most welcome offshoot of this movie.

In so many ways, The Quiet American speaks volumes.

Unruly girls around the world are liable to find these Bandits stealing their hearts.

At the age of 81, Altman may show signs of mellowing, but he again emerges as a master filmmaker.

These people and the tale of their migration and reintegration into life’s ebb and flow will remain with the viewer long after Johnny's and Sarah’s green cards expire.

The keen observations of The Class ultimately become a remedial education in themselves.

Despite perpetual rumors of its demise as a genre, the Western is alive and well in the Australian outback.

This Tom Clancy thriller gets the proper screen treatment here with this first-rate cast and direction by one of the genre’s best: Die Hard director John McTiernan.

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

Weitz (About a Boy) is a sharp observer, and Tomlin and the rest of the cast are so superlative that any anxiety is quickly quelled. You’re happy to follow this movie over the river and through the woods.

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.

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.

Mikey & Nicky is commonly, and unfairly, categorized as a John Cassavetes knock-off, which diminishes the originality of Elaine May's screenplay and this character study she crafted especially for co-stars Cassavetes and Peter Falk. She unleashes the darkest, most mercurial side of Cassavetes, and in Falk finds the actor's moral ambiguity that had been obscured as a result of his then-popular run as TV's Columbo.

We've come to expect each new Demme film to percolate to an urgently musical beat. (The Manchurian Candidate also features a few cameos by musicians as diverse as Robyn Hitchcock and Fab Five Freddy.)

Spielmann’s deft storytelling is coupled with immaculate compositions that constrain the characters as confidently as any prison bars. Revanche reveals Spielmann as a true master of his craft.

A terrific piece of work.

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.

Billy Wilder’s cynical edge is finely honed in this darkly amusing satire, which won three Academy Awards. It’s a film that is perennially ready for its close-up.

A war movie with a conscience, an action movie with a funny bone, a caper movie with a shifting agenda.

With its complexity of viewpoints, Get on the Bus has to be seen as one of Spike Lee's most mature visions to date.

The way the individual stories are intercut builds connections between the seemingly discrete tales such that they begin to converge in ways that were not readily apparent. Repeated viewings, I'm sure, would enhance the connections, so smartly are they conceived.

Langella is terrific in a small but critical role as CBS president William Paley, although the one essential problem with the film is that it never clearly delineates the jobs fulfilled by the cluster of other newsroom employees that are always huddled about.

This stirring historical re-creation depicts the experiences of America's first unit of black soldiers in the Civil War and the young Northerner who leads them.

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.

Who would have ever thought to pair up Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King? But weird as it sounds, this creepy thriller works.

Light Sleeper represents Schrader at his best, giving us a character we've become familiar with over the years and Schrader's intimate mastery of our fascination with decadence, loss and redemption.

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

Dingy atmosphere and great performances make this a standout.

The cast is great and the scene in which Carl Reiner and vaudeville vet Tessie O'Shea are lashed together is unforgettably funny.

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 on-target performances, along with the unceasing barrage of popular music and daring narrative gambles, combine to make Trainspotting one of the grand movie rushes of 1996.

When people think fondly of John Hughes, it's movies like Ferris Bueller that they're thinking of.

The film's story is both culturally specific and broadly universal and that duality is a large part of what makes Once Were Warriors work.

There’s a definite austerity to the storytelling, which is enhanced by the crisp black-and-white cinematography by Łukasz Żal and Ryszard Lenczewski.

Ideas and their visual illustrations come at the viewer in a cascading torrent. The editing by Alexandra Strauss deserves its own recognition for its painstaking exactness.

Spotlight is a great newspaper movie, ranking up there with "All the President’s Men" and "Citizen Kane", and it’s certainly the best of its kind since "The Paper" in 1994, which also happened to star Michael Keaton.

An understated movie that, in turns, is funny and heart-breaking and uplifting, Manny & Lo is a work that burrows under your skin and makes you impatient for the next project from first-time feature filmmaker Lisa Krueger.

In many ways even more hellish and stylish than its predecessor... A horror cult classic.

This movie presented a radical melange of genuine horror and self-aware comic touches, not to mention the fabulous Rick Baker special effects.

One of the most emotionally honest movies about drug addiction ever made.

A distinctive story with universal appeal.

Exciting to watch: The audio disruptions of Carla putting in or taking out her hearing aids and the inventiveness of the way the heist plot is revealed are just a couple of the film's treats.

This Danish film is an alternately funny and harrowing look at a family crisis, a meltdown that blends the needs of the truthsayers with the instincts of the let's-bury-our-heads-in-the-sand-and-pretend-none-of-this-is-happening types.

Although a nip and a tuck here and there might improve Hugo's overall pace, there is no denying that this love letter to the movies is something to cherish.

Ju Dou is a juicy and stylish potboiler that keeps the pilots turned on full blast.

The perfect antidote to the summer heat in Austin, more refreshing even than a dip in our chilly holy waters of Barton Springs.

Oscar-winning special effects and animation sequences by Ward Kimball make this musical fantasy a perennial favorite.

The film's content is adult – and for the first time in Araki's career, so is the director.

Wonderful but improbable tale about a group of mercenaries sent to Mexico to rescue their employer's wife from bad man Jack Palance.

LaBute's narrative structure and visual strategies are rigorously crafted, bespeaking an almost mathematical calculation that, in compellingly contradictory ways, both enhances the dramatic experience while undermining its very authenticity.

The Counterfeiters differs from most Holocaust movies in that the emphasis is on the personal moral choices that are made rather than the overall horror and despair.

This political satire that's as fresh and exhilarating as anything we've seen come out of Hollywood in quite some time.

The adaptation by Joel and Ethan Coen (both co-credited as writer and director) of McCarthy's as-if-written-for-the-screen No Country for Old Men becomes a marvelous meld of narrative faithfulness and pre-established sensibilities.

Certainly one of the best drug movies ever made.... Great performances make this dispassionate study a memorable experience.

Despite its probe of deep moral questions, Woman at War (a multiple award winner on the festival circuit as well as having been Iceland’s entry for Oscar consideration last year) maintains a light feel and concludes with a sense of uplift as we watch human beings forge ahead despite the floodwaters rising around them.

Doesn’t provide any answers, and that’s both its strength and weakness.

Campion’s story of a tubercular poet and his lady love recasts the hackneyed old stanza in refreshing new verse.

The Hanna-Barbera animation is better than the studio’s usual bare-bones mediocrity, and the voice cast is superb.

The German film Victoria gives off a lustrous intensity. Filmed all in one take in pre-dawn Berlin, the film is a technical marvel inset with small jewels.

The sexual chemistry between Hepburn and Grant, when set against Charade's tumultuous backdrop of shifting identities, makes this movie an enduring favorite.

Yes, it's a coming-out film, but it breaks that mold by being thoroughly unpredictable. It's a coming-of-age film, too, and by virtue of of telling the story of a young, black lesbian, Pariah also ventures into novel territory for a motion picture.

Watching and listening to these two is a charming experience; their conversation has the ring of veracity, and rarely does the viewer's interest stray.

One of the most original movies of the year.

The kind of movie that gets under your skin and takes root.

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

The film is a magnificent document of secular humanism.

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.

Restrepo is an example of photojournalism at its finest.

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.

Though we will differ on the methods of improving the American health care system, Sicko's enduring contribution is the undeniable evidence that the system is broken. If the film brings the debate out into the open of our movie lobbies and living rooms, it can’t be long before the conversation trickles into the corridors of Congress.

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

This folk tale about a magical child has even been cited by some scholars as an early and elegant work of science fiction. However, it’s also possible to bypass all this baggage and just approach The Tale of Princess Kaguya as the gorgeous and expressive film that it is.

Only a quite over-the-top character played by Raquel Welch strikes any false note. Otherwise, Tortilla Soup is a real chef's special.

Smart and self-deprecating story about love and mortality: It’s merely a winter's tale told with a summer's palette.

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.

Hustle is a great modern love story disguised as a neo-noir police procedural.

For the iconoclastic film director Ken Loach and his longtime screenwriting collaborator Paul Laverty, I, Daniel Blake represents their most accessible film ever.

Visually inventive cartoon is complemented by clever, whimsical narration and 11 songs from the Beatles.

Music has rarely appeared more essential to the human drama.

In her first solo writing and directing effort, the hard-working indie film actress Greta Gerwig proves that she is her own muse. She takes the well-worn coming-of-age-dramedy format and fashions something fresh, funny, and artful from its familiar tropes. Also delivering the goods is a knockout cast of accomplished veterans and relative newcomers.

Secretary is a testament to the importance of tonality in telling a story.

Not enough can be said about Willem Dafoe’s amazing performance as van Gogh. It is some of the best work of his career.

Jennifer Jason Leigh's performance is so incredible that witnessing it is reason enough to take a look at this movie.

There is a whole lot to be said for fun -- especially fun that can be shared by all -- and in this regard Spy Kids saves the day.

The basic outline was adapted from Kurosawa's classic Seven Samurai and made into an American Western by one of the great innovators of the genre, John Sturges. The film led the way for other all-star cast outings.

Elvis' third movie is surely his best. He plays a guy vaguely like himself, who hits it big after learning to play music while in prison. Not only does this film have some of the best tunes in an Elvis movie, the choreography is great too.

Finds a way to impart this sad history while raising our spirits at the same time.

Haynes brings the emotional underbelly to the surface, he also tricks up the visual surface with elaborate color schemes that provide unspoken clues regarding the characters’ frames of mind.

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

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.

Gets under your skin with its graceful edits and poetic elisions, lovely performances, and faded imagery.

The movie's ending at the train station and the modern-day epilogue feel protracted and indulgent...Apart from the ending though, this is Spielberg's most articulate movie ever.

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.

Don't let the near-impossible-to-remember title keep you away from this singular and slightly surreal Tommy Lee Jones scorcher.

As we begin to follow the trail of journalist Areez Rahimi (Ebrahimi, who received the Best Actress award at Cannes for this role), the film becomes a very effective thriller. Through her, we also experience the country’s entrenched misogyny.

The Queen is palace intrigue at its finest.

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

Depp, as the the fragile but irresistibily fabulous title character, is a delight.

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

A devastating portrait of impoverished Calucutta children.

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.

At heart, White is a black comedy with intriguing characters and a plot that plays its cards close to the deck.

Corrosively funny yet emotionally devastating.

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

Technically, what’s on display may not be the Oscar winner’s finest go at filmmaking, but never has his message seemed more urgent and unaffected.