Peter Travers

Niccol is too good a screenwriter (The Truman Show, Gattaca) not to know that Hollywood cliches are hell on a film's political bite. They muzzle it.

The film is alive with delicacy and feeling...It's a beauty.

Rushed off to Netflix when theaters are readily available, this fitfully competent “Jaws” ripoff will have to do until the real thing comes along. Condolences to leading lady Phoebe Dynevor who deserved better.

The challenge is exhilarating. You can discover a lot about yourself by getting lost in Mulholland Drive. It grips you like a dream that won't let go.

The practical effects, meaning the real stuff the computer never touched, make all the difference when you’re asking audiences to see the characters as human instead pawns in a digital game.

Herzog conducts his own expedition into knowing the unknowable -- the true task of any filmmaker. Herzog makes it an art.

August Wilson’s play about black musicians fighting racism in 1927 may reveal its stage origins on screen, but watching Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman deliver the performances of their lives is a thrilling experience you do not want to miss.

What we have here is an exhilarating blast of a movie, full of heart but still punk rock. So don’t get all pissy because it’s in Swedish (with English subtitles) and you never heard of anyone in it and coming-of-age movies about girls make you puke.

It’s part tour diary, part trickster handbook and totally mesmerizing. Rockumentary-wise, you’ve never seen or heard anything like it.

Chloe Zhao, the Chinese-born director of this wondrous work of art (Oscar, please), joins with a never-better Frances McDormand and a cast of real-life nomads to capture what inspires the human urge to roam. It’s a new American classic.

You will laugh yourself silly.

Powley is sensational, expertly blending hilarity and heartbreak. Her scenes with Wiig, sublime in her hard-won gravity, are unique and unforgettable. Just like the movie.

The result, glitches and all, is a great American movie.

Redford, who can play intelligence, wit and nuance to a camera like nobody's business, holds us in his grip. It's a master class in acting.

Ignited by career-best performances from Farrell and Gleason, this new classic from son of Ireland Martin McDonagh brims over with dark comic magic and jolts of bloody scary hell. Fasten your seatbelts for a spellbinder that stands high with the best movies of the year.

I can't think of a more wickedly modern romantic comedy.

It's Collette, giving the performance of her career, who takes us inside Annie's breakdown in flesh and spirit and shatters what's left of our nerves. Her tour de force bristles with provocations that for sure will keep you up nights. But first you'll scream your bloody head off.

For dynamite suspense loaded with thrills and wicked fun, you can’t beat The Fugitive — the summer’s best action blaster.

Marston builds incredible tension. But it's the human drama etched on Moreno's young, weary face that gives Maria its potent punch.

This unique and devastating look at the Holocaust is drawn from the autobiographical novel of 2002 Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertesz.

It will knock you for a loop like no other movie this year.

As Joe blurs the line between reality and the supernatural, his haunting and hypnotic film exerts a hold you don't want to break. It's a beauty.

Ang Lee's unmissable and unforgettable Brokeback Mountain hits you like a shot in the heart. It's a landmark film and a triumph for Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Not only the coolest Spider-Man epic ever, it’s one of the best movies of the year.

Joel Coen’s triumphant film version of Shakespeare’s tragedy astounds on every level, starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, two acting titans, playing an aging couple taking their last shot at murderous ambition. There is no way you can take your eyes off them.

The result is a film that defies description. I'd call it some kind of miracle.

Latvia’s dark-horse entry in the Oscar sweeps for best animation doesn’t need dialogue (it has none) or A-list voice talent (also absent) to qualify as a thing of beauty as a cat and four fellow creatures carve out a future after a cataclysmic flood wipes out humanity.

It's original, outrageous and murderous fun.

Don't miss it. Though Life Itself is a warts-and-all portrait Ebert didn't live to review, my guess is his thumbs would be shooting upward. Mine sure are.

The result is an acting duet that will haunt your dreams and break your heart.

Casts a spell that grips you and won't let go. The film works as a provocation, on a personal and a political level.

This uneven musical take on Alice Walker’s seminal novel can trip on its own too muchness, but the star film debuts of Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks are worth shouting about in a tribute to Black sisterhood that’s blessed with a heart that sings and a spirit that soars.

Pedro Almodovar's transfixing tragicomedy -- the best foreign movie of the year -- is also the best showcase for actresses in ages.

Moneyball is one of the best and most viscerally exciting films of the year.

Yes, it's in French with English subtitles. Don't worry. Nothing gets lost in translation as this coming-of-age tale brims over with humor, heartbreak and ravishing romance.

Force Majeure is a jolt. You won't know what hit you.

What’s never in doubt, however, is the compassion the movie shows to its protagonist, partly based on the women in the filmmaker’s own family and embodied by a great actress at her intuitive, indelible best. In capturing what Jones calls “the rhythm of living” even in the face of death, he has turned this character study into a shattering portrait of resilience — and an essential work of art.

Lacks the cumulative impact of "Boyz," since Singleton allows repetition and sermonizing to dull his theme about the infantilization of black males. But Baby Boy leaves you shaken.

A groundbreaking film that leaves you in stitches while quietly breaking your heart.

First-time director and screenwriter Hue Rhodes shows no discernible talent for dialogue, humor and, especially, pacing.

A movie of prodigious power and feeling that is also high-spirited, hilarious and scorchingly erotic.

Detractors will see the usual parade of repressed feelings in a Masterpiece Theatre setting. Those who look closer will find one of the best films of the year.

Launches the fall season with a crashing thud.

This documentary succeeds triumphantly on so many levels that its full impact doesn't hit you until you have time to register its aftershocks.

Room deserves to be seen unspoiled. All you need to know is that the performances of Larson and Tremblay will blow you away.

Prepare to be wowed by one of the best movies of the year, starring a sensational Sandra Hüller (heads up, Oscar) in Justine Triet’s spellbinding murder mystery that is really a forensic anatomy of a marriage told through the gripping story of a wife on trial for killing her husband.

Just try to take your eyes off Dern. In his finest two hours onscreen, he gives a performance worth cheering. There's not an ounce of bullshit in it. Same goes for the movie.

It's a role of fierce demands, and Rampling meets them all. In a summer of crass, Rampling is a true class act.

This new animation classic, the first in a two-part sequel, is out to make history. Consider it done. In a word—wow! You’ve never seen anything like it in your life.

Jackson’s visionary triumph, heightened by the blazing performances of Lynskey and Winslet and by Alun Bollinger’s whirling camera, is in capturing the delirium as the girls whip themselves into an erotic frenzy with Mario Lanza records, semi-naked dances in the woods and revenge fantasies.

The knockout punch comes from Eastwood. His stripped-down performance -- as powerful as anything he's ever done -- has a rugged, haunting beauty. The same goes for the movie.

Kent will have you climbing the walls simply by plumbing the violence of the mind. Brace yourself.

Little Men, with its two boys racing at life with the brick wall of maturity still at a distance, is funny, touching and vital. It's truly an exhilarating gift.

The actors are to die for. Bening and Moore nail every nuance of a relationship going adrift. And Ruffalo is dynamite as a man keeping himself at a distance. Kids makes its own special magic. It's irresistible

Lynch takes us on a journey of shattering understatement -- a remarkable accomplishment.

An uncommonly good movie - a thriller that transcends thrills to become a heartfelt and heart-stopping personal drama.

Forget the biopic imitations, the found concert footage in this music doc soars with 100 essential minutes of The King back on his throne and thrillingly alive on stage and off. I’d call that a must-see.

Duvall is a blazing wonder in a film that ranks with the year's best.

To Die For, sparked by a volcanically sexy and richly comic performance by Kidman that deserves to make her an Oscar favorite, is prime social satire and outrageous fun.

A dynamite film that ranks with the year's best.

Jane Schoenbrun's off-handedly revolutionary mindbender about two teens bonding over a sci-fi TV series isn't always easy to get your head and heart around. But hold on for its incendiary daring, its willingness to go for broke. Schoenbrun is a trans game-changer. They make us believe.

What would make a 30-ish woman have sex with a 12-year-old boy? Expect director Todd Haynes to throw you thrillingly off balance with peak acting from Julianne Moore and Charles Melton as the lovers and Natalie Portman as the actress eager to go Hollywood with their squirmy moral tale.

Writer-director Michael Patrick King, the creative force behind the show's later seasons, can't disguise the fact that the movie is basically five TV episodes strung together (only three hit the mark). But his script is more honest about aging than anything in "Indy 4."

Thank Maggie Gyllenhaal, in a stunning debut as director and screenwriter, for creating one of the year’s very best movies starring the magnificent Olivia Colman as a mother haunted by her troubled past. This, you do not want to miss

Nanjiani and his wife/co-screenwriter Emily V. Gordon carved this romantic comedy out of her personal hospital experience and their own culture-clash relationship. Their hilarious and heartfelt script has a rare authenticity that pulls you in and keeps you glued to the screen.

Just so we're straight, Ben Affleck doesn't merely direct Argo, he directs the hell out of it, nailing the quickening pace, the wayward humor, the nerve-frying suspense.

Writer-director Olivier Assayas crafts a near perfect blend of humor and heartbreak, a lyrical masterwork that measures loss in terms practical and evanescent.

The actors are outstanding, illuminating four different views of loneliness. But it's Camara's tour-de-force performance that anchors the film, that shocks and unnerves us.

Written, directed, acted, shot, edited and scored with a bracing vibrancy that restores your faith in film as an art form, The Master is nirvana for movie lovers. Anderson mixes sounds and images into a dark, dazzling music that is all his own.

A shockingly intimate and deeply affecting film about the roots of sexual role playing.

When a forty-four-year-old man makes a movie about his family and friends sitting around singing old tunes, you certainly don't expect an unforgettable amalgam of humor and heartbreak. But that is precisely what Terence Davies delivers.

It feels manufactured to be suitable for mass consumption.

Besides the in jokes, the animation and the Alan Menken score supply enough glorious entertainment to hold even brats and cynics in thrall.

The acting could not be better in this new film landmark spiked with laughs that can suddenly—or maybe not for hours or even days later—leave you choking with tears.

Miyazaki works marvels. Sit back and behold.

Not only is this faith-in-crisis drama one of the legendary writer-director's most incendiary films ever, it's one of the year's very best – a cinematic whirlwind that leaves you both exhilarated and spent.

Now this is what I call a summer movie. Baby Driver has it all: thrills, laughs, sex, nonstop action, a killer soundtrack, a star-making performance from Ansel Elgort and a director – Edgar Wright – who can knock the wind out of you.

The superbly crafted suspense thriller…slams you like a sudden blast of bone-chilling, pulse-pounding terror.

There's no way you won't be captivated by Wallis, chosen ahead of 3,500 candidates to play the tiny folk hero who narrates the story. Her performance in this deceptively small film is a towering achievement.

Using their voices for demonstrations and protests, they helped pass 1990’s revolutionary Americans With Disabilities Act. This documentary proves that they are still changing the world.

As ever with Park Chan-wook, there are tasty bits of bright and bleak to noodle on in this stinging satire of AI and capitalism, but with a rigorous fix on the growing dehumanization infecting our world. One of the year’s best.

Take in the pleasure of real teamwork as the gifted writer-director-actor Jesse Eisenberg joins an Oscar worthy Kieran Culkin for a deeply felt dramedy about two New York cousins on a tour of Poland where their late grandma survived a Nazi death camp? You’ll laugh till it hurts.

In uniting to honor Arenas, Bardem and Schnabel create something extraordinary.

That Linklater pulls off the innovative feat with hypnotic assurance is nothing short of amazing.

In a summer of junk, cinema visionary David Lowery delivers a modern movie masterpiece about a wannabe knight (a sensational, Oscar worthy Dev Patel) who must fight monsters he can and cannot see. It’s a unique and unforgettable film that ranks with the year's best.

The movie is thunderously exciting, but what makes it resonate is the wrenching story we read on Damon's face. We've waited all summer for a wild ride to grab us with more than jolts. Now it's here. Hang on.

What an exhilarating gift to watch Harry and Company go out in a blaze of glory and amazing grace.

It’s delicious — sweet, tart, surprisingly moving and funny as hell.

Nichols throws curveballs, but his film is unique and unforgettable.

A dazzling, darkly funny, quietly devastating human drama from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

There may be bigger, costlier, weighter films this year. There's none lovelier.

Nothing can detract from the film as a portrait of hell so shattering it's impossible to shake.

A jolt-a-minute horroshow laced with racial tension and stinging satirical wit.

Is it sacrilege for Spielberg to re-imagine the Oscar-winning 1961 musical classic? Not when it’s this thrilling. Not when two new stars—Rachel Zegler and Ariana DeBose— get to share the screen with the legendary Rita Moreno. Then Spielberg sets the screen ablaze.

What makes Asif Kapadia's documentary a devastating don’t-miss dazzler — like the lady herself — is the way he lays out her story without editorializing.

With the help of acting giants, Jenkins turns The Savages into a twisted, bittersweet pleasure.

An Education is remarkable for the traps it doesn't fall into. Jenny, for all her naive impulses, isn't a victim.