Michael Phillips

Is the movie fun? Well, Furiosa’s story doesn’t really welcome that word. It’s gripping, even when it’s a bit of a trudge. Miller’s a visual genius. And a pile-driver. He’s also an adult, with a mature master filmmaker’s sensibility and serious intentions to go with his eternal-adolescent love of speed and noise.

While the protracted third act doesn't kill the two-hour, 23-minute picture, "Casino Royale" remains the best of the recent Bonds, with Skyfall just a notch below it.

Dense like a detailed graphic novel in the Chris Ware or R. Crumb vein, but a real movie in every way, Consuming Spirits is a strange and wormy accomplishment, the sort of personal epic only the most obsessive of cinematic madmen undertake, let alone complete.

Ideally, with Roe about to be erased from the books, The Janes would land on a more complex note of imminent, controversial change afoot. Small matters. It’s a very fine film

A Fantastic Woman is the likely front-runner for this year’s foreign language Academy Award. Its clarity of purpose translates to an effectively lean and straightforward story of adversity and survival, in any language.

Much of Melancholia plays, effectively, like a slice of late 20th century Dogme-style realism, in the vein of the film "Celebration" by von Trier's fellow Dane, Thomas Vinterberg.

Less polished but more fun than "Dreamgirls." Both are drag revues at heart, one funny, the other serious. I prefer the funny one.

Director Burr Steers milks them dry, like an overeager farmer at milking time, which is a paradox since this is the wettest picture of 2010, what with the sea spray and Efron's tear ducts and the general metaphysical mist.

Flashes of Goodnight Mommy are forceful and blackly funny.

Led by Wilson and Cotillard, the ensemble makes the most of the material that works, and makes the best of the rest of it.

Whether Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One turns out to be a massive hit or merely a hit, it’s certainly the franchise action picture of the year, the one that truly knows what it’s doing, front to back.

The movie is madly, wonderfully at odds with itself.

Mountains does what it sets out to do with grace, and a sure instinct for music, color, faces and moments of decision regarding where we’ve come.

The result is an act of partial, tenderly observed guerrilla filmmaking. It works; it takes you somewhere, quietly but evocatively, and it’s affecting without pulling at your heartstrings with both hands.

Some movies pack such a terrific central idea, even their flaws can’t stop the train. District 9 is one of them.

As Halla/Asa, Geirharðsdóttir never forces a thing. The actress is the honest engine of this sincere, slightly off-kilter fable.

All four key actors are lovely, none of them playing to the camera — Durkin likes nice, long, slow-zoom set-ups, roomy and generous — and all of them affecting. Coon has the built-in advantage of playing the character undergoing the most evident and playable changes. But she’s extraordinary in her contained emotion.

Ford v Ferrari works as a stylish, enjoyable mash note to its era, and the need for speed and all that.

Flight is exciting - terrific, really - because in addition to the sophisticated storytelling techniques by which it keeps us hooked, it doesn't drag audience sympathies around by the nose, telling us what to think or how to judge the reckless, charismatic protagonist played by Denzel Washington.

Cooper's performance is his best yet. As is Lawrence's (the more crucial role, in fact).

To millions, Stritch is the Emmy-winning actress who did "30 Rock," playing Alec Baldwin's mom. Those people who don't know the rest of her story should take the 82 minutes to see this.

A Thousand and One, this year’s top jury prize winner at the Sundance Film Festival, puts you through it, but with real feeling, real stakes and an authentic vision guided by a fiercely commanding performance by Teyana Taylor as Inez.

Takes you places an ordinary documentary filmmaker might’ve gone to yet missed completely.

Keaton is the one who brings both effortless gravity and subtle levity to a film that, without him, wouldn’t have much of either.

Midway isn’t bad, really. Certainly, it gets a lot more done than the cinematic cinder block that was the 1976 historical drama also titled “Midway.”

The picture’s gliding energy is something to behold, and when Tyler’s predicaments turn to panic, and then worse, the suspense becomes nearly oppressive. In the second half, it’s a different style and a different focus entirely. There’s a scene in that half, a reconciliation of sorts between father and daughter, that’s just about perfect. And that scene is not alone.

It's one of the most comforting science fiction films in years.

The beauty of the film is undeniable, as is the cruelty of the bull's lives. (This is not a picture for animal-sensitive viewers.)