Moira Macdonald

Pandas leaves its viewer newly educated, filled with hope, and dazzled.

Watching “The Tales of Hoffmann... feels like walking through a Technicolor field of poppies; you’re happily immersed in it and often a bit lost within, eventually emerging a bit dazed and dazzled by the experience.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread casts a remarkable spell; it wraps around you, like a delicately scented cashmere shawl woven from music and color and astonishing faces.

Nickel Boys is a life, made up of pieces; some of them lovely, some devastating. It’s a mesmerizing, uniquely told story — of memory, of injustice, of friendship, of survival.

Just as it lulls you, it also devastates.

Wickedly clever and unexpectedly touching.

“Do all lovers,” wonders Héloïse in a passionate moment, “feel as though they’re inventing something?” Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a bittersweet celebration of passion and art, feels like that; you’ve never seen another movie quite like this. In its quiet gaze, love becomes art — and vice versa.

It’s a film full of quiet magic; of the power of words not spoken, and the enduring strength of love.

Watching it leaves you lighter, happier, younger — dancing your way out of the theater to the Heads’ irresistible beats.

Johansson and Driver are remarkably, heartbreakingly good in every scene; showing their characters’ journeys to an unflinching camera, letting the gap between them get wider yet unable, for their son’s sake, to completely walk away. It’s a drama playing out on two larger-than-life faces; a family torn apart, and yet enduring.

It’s not a biopic, but I Am Not Your Negro leaves you wanting to know and read more of Baldwin, to experience the language that pours from this film like a fiery balm.

Watching Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s multilayered “Birdman” is like unfolding a piece of intricate origami; it keeps opening in unexpected directions.

You leave the film’s soft-grained world reluctantly, as if taking off a warm coat when it’s still a little chilly inside.

Twenty-five years in the making, this warmhearted, generous film is a quiet masterpiece — the very specific story of one family, but one in which many of us can find our own.

Mary Poppins Returns, made with palpable love for its predecessor, is glorious and gorgeous, and I adored it.

While it’s great fun to watch the Incredibles/Parrs zipping around saving the world (with help from their preternaturally cool pal Lucius/Frozone, voiced with gusto by Samuel L. Jackson), Incredibles 2 gets its heart by being a sweet family story.

Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma is a wondrously pure example of one of the great gifts that cinema can give us: to drop us into a time, a place and a life; immersing us in the sounds and the sights and the emotions, large and small, experienced by someone we’re not.

Though every performance is splendid, it’s Washington and Davis who create a mesmerizing symphony of emotion, finding both love and tragedy in every look, every line.

This quiet tale of an ordinary 1950s London man (Bill Nighy) facing the end of his life is a joy: elegantly written, movingly performed, evocatively filmed.

Almodóvar fills the movie with eloquent touches — scenes softly fading to black, music twisting like vines, an old house whose stories whisper in every corner, a baby’s watchful eyes, a past that informs a future. Generations pass, this wise movie tells us; family endures.

Like a gift from the movie gods, here comes Damien Chazelle’s dreamy La La Land, right when a lot of us are in desperate need of some light. It’s a valentine to cinema, splashed with primary colors and velvety L.A. sunsets.

Filmed with great respect and palpable love for its subject, Big Sonia is one of those documentaries that seems to bring its own light — just like the woman at its center.

12 Years a Slave isn’t easy to watch, and it shouldn’t be; it’s one man’s tragedy, but it’s also the tragedy of countless thousands of souls beaten down, literally and metaphorically.

This mesmerizing film is a tribute to an astonishing woman and a timely reminder of a dark period in a country’s history. And, through its vivid use of photographs (particularly the real-life ones shown at the end), it’s a reminder that through film, our stories live on.

This Frankenstein has no shortage of horrors, but it also finds notes of forgiveness and kindness; it’s a monster movie with a soul.

If Beale Street Could Talk is a film about injustice, about patience and anger, beauty and despair — but, ultimately, it’s about love.

Zhao shows us the difficulty of this life — the endless laundromats, the cramped bed in the van, the cold, the possessions left behind — but also its beauty and freedom. I wished I could have seen Nomadland on a theater screen, to see the horizons and pale-peach sunrises stretching endlessly in Joshua James Richards’ beautiful cinematography. And I wished I could have seen McDormand’s face as big as a house, looking wonderingly outward, finding possibility.

Yes, the film does strum the heartstrings a bit too emphatically toward the end, by cranking up Williams' music and giving us perhaps one tear too many, but that's a minor quibble. When Elliott and his friends soar on their bicycles, like flying Peter Pans who must soon grow up, it's as touching and note-perfect a moment as any in the movies. [2002 re-release]

This is how superhero movies are supposed to be: thrilling and funny and moving and full of popcorn-fueled joy.

The film is inspiring and funny and lovely.

As with “Rivers and Tides,” Leaning into the Wind is a work of art in itself; beautifully and meditatively shot (by Riedelsheimer), accompanied by a faintly mysterious score that seems to be telling us secrets.

Inside Out movingly but casually plays with our emotions, like a baby walking her fingers across a parent’s face; it leaves you changed, entertained, nostalgic, dazzled.

Director Jon M. Chu (“Crazy Rich Asians”) lets us feel the hot, heavy air of a Washington Heights summer, and dazzles us with movement.

"The Farewell" is so unexpectedly and deliciously funny that watching it feels like a tonic — an immersion in love and art.

It’s a remarkable personal-is-political drama, set in barely postcolonial Senegal and France.

The last moments of Hamnet are transcendent, and perhaps the most moving thing I’ve seen on screen this year.

Painstakingly reassembled by producer Alan Elliott (Pollack, who never gave up hope on the project, died in 2008), Amazing Grace shows us an artist at the peak of her powers.

Widows is smart, soulful and surprising in every frame, weaving statements on race, gender, crime and grief into a tick-tock (and tip-top) heist plot.

It’s a film — and a city — to get lost in, and it’ll haunt you afterward, like a face you thought you recognized under a streetlamp, before it disappeared.

Whether the new scenes make "Apocalypse" a better movie is debatable; for me, they were fascinating but not essential.

It’s also a celebration of language — Wilson’s glorious storytelling is given its due by this masterful ensemble cast, who weave colorful tapestries with his words — and of music’s transformative power.

In other hands, this story could have been lurid and silly. Here, told through Hawkins’ ever-dancing eyes, it’s poetry; some performances don’t need words.

It’s most evocative as a memorable portrait of a woman, both in youth and late life, who always knew what she wanted — and who, in doing so, helped make the world a better place.

It’s a unique ride of a movie, beautiful and disturbing and haunting — in other words, it’s a Jane Campion film.

The film is both a gripping and timely celebration of the free press, and, in the remarkable hands of Streep, an exploration of what it meant then (and, perhaps, now) to be a woman thrust into power in an all-male world.

We’re reminded, in this warmhearted film’s moving final act, that food can bring not only joy but, in the darkest of days, hope.

Every Manchester scene gives you a sense of the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, where it’s bitter cold but nobody makes too much of it, where the past stays with you whether you want it to or not. This is a movie that pays careful attention to details.

Dunkirk succeeds spectacularly both emotionally and visually.

You’ll watch knowing you’re in the hands of a master filmmaker; only wondering when it’s over how certain effects were achieved.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is both lovingly faithful to its source, and very much its own creation; how lucky we are to have both book and movie, preserved for girls past, present and future.

This Little Women purist was moved to tears by this movie, and didn’t want it to end. Beautifully intimate, gentle and wise, it made me — and all of us — part of the March family. And what better Christmas gift could we wish for than that?

Whether you care about motorsports or not, Ford v Ferrari is a kick: both a rollicking true story well told, and a moving depiction of male friendship.

Moore lets us see, through her quietly shining performance, that Gloria believes in love, in the way an old song can make you feel a little younger, and in the power of dressing up and hitting a dance floor by yourself, moving as if in a trance, letting the music take you to a better place.

In this season of Big, Serious Movies, what a treat to find this wonderfully silly, perfectly paced hall of mirrors hanging out at the multiplexes. It’s as if Agatha Christie came back for a visit, after getting caught up on pop culture in the beyond.

The Red Turtle doesn’t answer the questions it raises, but it doesn’t need to; it’s about moonlight on the water, a hand held out to another, and the way a wave, rippling onto a shore, leaves no trace of its brief life.

The plot doesn’t matter in the slightest; young and old fans of the first movie will be lining up for the wit, for the inventiveness of the characters, for the breathtaking visuals — and just the sheer fun of it all.

Louis-Dreyfus, making Beth neurotic and loving and devastated and furious all at once, is a joy to watch.

McDormand, carrying the movie on blue-denimed shoulders, is a wonder. Every now and then, she lets us see the tiniest crack in Mildred’s anger, through which something flickering shines through.

May December is often weirdly funny.

For all the witty voices and great escapes (maybe one too many of the latter), Finding Dory is ultimately a character story, and DeGeneres’ lovable, brave Dory swims right into our hearts.

Malick, director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki and the cast create a mood that lifts the viewer through the occasional head-scratching moments and into a place of serenity, where answers somehow seem in reach.

Ultimately, The Room Next Door is as much about love as it is about death — not the romantic kind of love, but the sort in which two friends hold each other up (quite literally, as Martha takes Ingrid’s arm during their walks) and give each other what they need, selflessly. Its final, magical moment finds uncanny beauty in sadness.

Hope Gap is a deeply sad film, and maybe not what a lot of us are in the mood for these days, but it’s ultimately uplifting, in its quiet way.

It’s uncannily choreographed, with gestures and movements timed precisely to the soundtrack’s beat.

What shines through is the beauty of Guy Godfree’s cinematography — the light has a lovely, soft stillness to it, like a painting — and a remarkable performance by Hawkins, whose impossibly wide smile seems to bring the sun.

The movie works for the reason that all the best rom-coms do: you fall in love, a little bit, with Kumail and Emily, and want them to stay together. Love, this movie reminds us, is often inconvenient; but it does ultimately conquer all.

A smart, wistful and very funny movie.

This Emily is indeed unworldly, uncomfortable around strangers, struggling to comply with what society expects of her. And yet the artist bubbles up inside her, emerging at moments both inconvenient (there’s a harrowing sequence at a party in which Emily dons a mask and takes on a ghostly persona) and poetic.

What really lingers after The Sheep Detectives is its tone: earnest, uncomplicated sweetness, rooted in the love that we — whether human or sheep — have for those with whom we share our lives, and a gentle acceptance of loss as part of that love.

You watch it rapt, leaning in, wanting to know more; you leave it wondering if that shadow at the window was, maybe, yourself.

It was a pleasure to become happily lost in this unique film’s world of color and line, and to see two filmmakers’ mad dream come true.

There’s a lovely sense, throughout the film, of how real life sometimes interrupts things, the way a child’s prattling disrupts the pretty wedding ceremony, or how even in the midst of grief breakfast must be made.

Sure, much of it follows ground already trodden in the first film, but it finds that same sweet balance of tears and laughter.

Richard Linklater’s Hit Man is one of those movies that just picks you up immediately and sweeps you away; it’s made with an irresistibly breezy confidence.

And the 89-year-old Moreno, creating an effortless bridge between this movie and the previous one, gives us a gift late in the film that had me reduced to tears; it’s a deeply touching choice that I won’t spoil.

Just try to resist the charms of Mira Nair’s Queen of Katwe, a triumph-of-the-human-spirit movie that’s ultimately, well, triumphant.

Cold War seduces its viewer, in its brief running time. You might find, in the quiet of its poignant ending, that it has left its mark on your heart.

It’s a sharp, pointed satire that’s also very funny.

In this bleak West Texas landscape where everyone seems to be struggling, you find yourself rooting, inexplicably, for all of them against a clear villain: the faceless, predatory bank.

Filmed in harsh grays and cruel light, interspersed with warm home movies of the family in a happier time, it’s a terribly sad and often mesmerizing story.

This tale of ambition and its cost — and its collateral damage — is Blanchett’s movie, and she delivers a tour de force in every scene.

There are moments of astonishing lyricism.

While occasionally the film wanders a bit too far into sentimentality (a scene involving a baby feels like it crosses a plausibility line), watching 1917 is an emotional and moving experience. You think of these two young men as one minuscule piece of an enormous tragedy, filled with individual stories.

“Salvatore” is a pleasure for anyone who loves shoes and/or good movies.

It’s a film full of creative swirls.

There’s more going on here than pretty pictures: This fascinating portrait of a lady has ice and steel at its core.

Winner of the best film award at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival, Greg Kwedar’s “Sing Sing” is a gentle reminder of the power of art to transform lives.

You leave The Assistant thinking about why some of us are invisible and some of us don’t notice — and about how evil lives in the places from which we look away.

A haunting and lovely documentary.

It’s a sweet-natured, gentle film that might remind more than a few watchers of a special date in their own life, long ago.

So much of Sicario, Denis Villeneuve’s disturbing drama set in the world of law enforcement and Mexican drug cartels (the title is the Mexican term for a hit man), takes place on Emily Blunt’s face.

Thank You for Your Service is a harrowing, honest and beautifully acted film about lives blown to bits and then put back together; not entirely, not immediately, but piece by tiny piece.

Prisoners is a dark, deeply serious examination of how loss can unhinge us; it grabs onto you, and you may have trouble shaking it away.

This film is both a loving homage to Austen and a celebration of fashion and decorative arts.

There is a touching universality to these life stories, which at this point have a lulling near-sameness: grown children, long careers, lasting passions and friendships (Paul’s and Symon’s is particularly touching), a looming shadow of illness, the nearness of twilight.

Ira Sachs’ lovely, heartfelt drama "Love Is Strange" had at its center a New York City real-estate problem — as does his new film, the equally splendid Little Men.

So much of the pleasure of Denis Villeneuve’s poignant science-fiction drama Arrival lies in watching Amy Adams figure things out.

BlacKkKlansman manages that tricky balance of being both entertaining (some of the performances are quite comedic, particularly Paul Walker Hauser as a mouth-breathing Klansman) and devastating.