Peter Rainer

The fact that neither Stone nor Gosling are tip-top song-and-dance artists is, in some ways, integral to their appeal. If they were Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, we might not feel as much of a kinship with them.

Delivers more goose bumps than anything Hollywood has served up in years – which I hope does not mean that Bayona, a first-time feature director and music video whiz, will be enlisted to direct "Saw V."

Plenty of terrible movies know how to work your tear ducts. Here's a weepie that, in Pfeiffer's performance, touches you on the highest levels.

Yes, we can draw links between then and now, but, in a way, Glazer’s film contradicts his own public sentiments. His depiction of this agonized world is so enveloping and unrelenting that, at least for me, it stands wholly alone, untethered to our current traumas.

Waltz With Bashir is a supremely courageous act, not only as a piece of filmmaking, but much more so as a moral testament.

The most joyously cinematic movie I've seen this year. Chomet's astonishing imagination conjures images you could swear you've seen in your dreams.

Jackson is rare among the makers of epic movies in that he knows how to do the small stuff, too. The Return of the King has “heart”--how else could it pump out all that blood?

A love affair between performer and filmmaker. The director shows off his ardor by eliciting from his actors aspects of their gifts that they themselves may not have known they had.

No other concert film has ever expressed so fervently the erotic root of rock. Seeing it is the opposite of taking a trip down memory lane; it's more like a plunge into the belly of the beast.

The performances by Phoenix and Hoffman are studies in contrast. Phoenix carries himself with a jagged, lurching, simianlike grace while Hoffman gives Dodd a calm deliberateness. Both actors have rarely been better in the movies. The real Master class here is about acting – and that includes just about everybody else in the film, especially Adams, whose twinkly girl-next-door quality is used here to fine subversive effect.

In the end, this melancholy, inspiriting movie achieves a breathtaking emotional harmoniousness.

A remarkable movie about a remarkable friendship. It honors the audience's intelligence, which makes it a double rarity.

A semi-improvised, microbudget marvel with a range of feeling that shames most big-budget star-driven movies.

To call it “immersive” is an understatement.

This delicate, hand-drawn marvel is lyrical and heartbreaking in ways that most live-action movies never approach.

I’m Still Here is a movie about remembrance – of a family and a nation. The necessity to acknowledge injustice is its timeless clarion call.

Frederick Wiseman’s documentary National Gallery is for art lovers, movie lovers – basically for anybody. Ostensibly a film about London’s famous museum, it’s really about the experience of art in all its manifestations.

Altogether fascinating.

For Your Consideration is, except for "Borat," the funniest film of the year. Or, it's the funniest film that you don't have to watch through parted fingers.

It has what the most heartfelt Disney animated features used to have: rapturous imagery matched with real wit.

It’s no secret that the best animated movies can enthrall us in ways every bit as immersive as any live-action film. Flow is a triumphant case in point.

A hushed, small-scale masterpiece that moves into the shadowlands of tragedy.

The movie is true to its own fierce vision and it's the better for it. I haven't seen a stronger or better American movie all year.

A supremely cranky and lyrical feat.

In the end, the finest achievement of Wright's movie is that it fully captures what Martin Amis, writing on Pride and Prejudice, said of Austen: "Money is a vital substance in her world; the moment you enter it you feel the frank horror of moneylessness, as intense as the tacit horror of spinsterhood." All that, and a great love story, too.

The story is so powerfully observed that it does indeed become larger than itself – an American tragedy.

One of the sharpest and funniest movies about the music business ever made.

Florence Foster Jenkins isn’t really about how passion trumps art. It’s about how life is more important than art.