Peter Travers

The line between making guerrilla art and selling out has never blurred more provocatively.

Rogen and Heigl step up to the plate with a tougher task from Coach Apatow: Nail every laugh and the emotions underlying them. No worries. They knock it out of the park.

Though the movie ups the TV ante on nudity, language and violence, Lynch's control falters. But if inspiration is lacking, talent is not.

A new American crime classic from the legendary Martin Scorsese, whose talent shines here on its highest beams.

Israeli filmmaker Navid Lapid is taking the risk that audiences will embrace a tragically real situation about his country’s military culture presented as an absurdist comedy. Say yes

Oldman gives a performance that is flawless in every detail.

Family audiences rejoice! The Oscar for Best Animated Film belongs right here in this enchanting tale of a robot, voiced by the amazing Lupita Nyong'o, who finds herself playing mother to a baby goose. The result is spectacular in every sense of the word.

Pfeiffer is a knockout; she’s the sexiest presence in movies today and an exceptional comic and dramatic actress, to boot.

With it's dynamite performances, strafing wit and dramatic provocation, The Insider offers Mann at his best -- blood up, unsanitized and unbowed.

It is also Nicholson at his bravest and riskiest. By banking his fires and staying alert to the smallest details, he delivers a monumental performance that blasts your expectations and batters your heart.

The film never musters the intimate feel the gifted director brought to such early films as "Raise the Red Dragon" and "Ju Dou." You cheer his accomplishment in Hero without ever feeling close to it.

Food porn has never been yummier on film than it is in this indecently delicious French romance starring on-and-off screen lovers Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel as dueling foodies who craft mouth-watering dishes as a way of finding each other’s hearts.

This is more than a movie, it's a privilege.

The director and her cinematographer Rachel Morrison do wonders with the elements that batter the people of every race and social class in the Delta. But it's the storm raging inside these characters that rivets our attention and makes Mudbound a film that grabs you and won't let go.

Starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga in two of the year’s best performances, this mesmerizing film about race, class and gender identity in the 1920s speaks urgently to right now and marks a brilliant directing debut from Rebecca Hall.

What's lucky is that no matter what language it's in, My Life as Zucchini never sacrifices what’s true for what’s trite and easier to sell. This is animation as an art form, inspiring and indelible.

Mitchell gives this post-punk, neo-glam rock extravaganza everything in his loaded arsenal of talents. He gets the sound right, the look right, the fun right and - this is crucial - the pain right.

Holy Motors, fueled by pure feeling, is a dream of a movie you want to get lost in. It's a thing of beauty.

Unforgiven is the most provocative western of Eastwood's career, and with Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris along for the ride, it's also the most potently acted.

No fair giving away the mysteries of The Dark Knight. It's enough to marvel at the way Nolan -- a world-class filmmaker, be it "Memento," "Insomnia" or "The Prestige" -- brings pop escapism whisper-close to enduring art.

Smith wins our hearts without losing his dignity, as Chris suits up for success by day and fights off despair by night. The role needs gravity, smarts, charm, humor and a soul that's not synthetic. Smith brings it. He's the real deal.

It'll slap on a smile on your face that won't quit.

Bejo (The Artist) digs deep into the secrets and lies that have afflicted all her relationships, in a wonderfully affecting film that haunts you long after it ends.

While the first movie steadily tighened its vise, the second loosens its grip through strained acting and incoherent plotting.

In this queer BDSM romdomcom with a core of sweetness, Alexander Sarsgård and Harry Melling bring passion and compassion to a taboo subject rare in mainstream cinema. It’s about time.

OK, Steven Soderbergh’s sleek, sexy spy thriller is sometimes too cool for school. But oh the twisted, erotic mischief dished out by dynamos Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbinder as married spies, still hot for each other but wondering if the other is a mole for the wrong side.

Like the music, the film is outspoken, roaringly funny, defiantly sexual and relentlessly in your face. I couldn't have liked it more.

Nothing in Joe Wright's screen version of Ian McEwan's dense, internalized 2001 novel of secrets and lies should really work, but damn near everything does. It's some kind of miracle. Written, directed and acted to perfection, Atonement sweeps you up on waves of humor, heartbreak and ravishing romance.

Like its predecessors (Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and The New World), Tree delivers truths that don't go down easy. No one with a genuine interest in the potential of film would think of missing it.

Bring out the Oscars for the year’s best movie, a personal best from Steven Spielberg about his own coming of age as a teen torn between his love for movies and family (Michelle Williams is incandescent as his troubled mom). You won’t forget this hilarious and heartfelt classic in the making.

Is it that scary? Yes. Will it reduce you to quivering jelly? Oh, my, yes! Does it bust the bonds of the Godzilla formula to fuse fright with feeling? Better believe it, dudes.

The filmmakers offer no commentary. We watch. And what we see is explosive, deeply moving and impossible to shake.

In these troubled times, it's a good feeling to see a funny, touching and vital doc that is both timely and timeless.

As for Lee, he clearly relates to this material and the questions of political, musical and family identity he himself raised in films as diverse as "Malcolm X," "Mo' Better Blues" and "Crooklyn."

Reichardt has crafted a haunted dream of a movie to get lost in.

Fruitvale Station is a gut punch of a movie. By standing in solidarity with Oscar, it becomes an unstoppable cinematic force.

Fact-based family dramas don’t come more intense or indelible than Walter Salles’s emotional powerhouse starring Golden Globe best actress winner Fernanda Torres as a Brazilian wife and mother who fights a military dictatorship to save her flesh and blood

The acting is of the highest caliber. Winger, magnificent and too long between films, is a volcano of repressed anger.

Panahi creates a raw, riveting film.

Brimming with humor and heartbreak, Slumdog Millionaire meets at the border of art and commerce and lets one flow into the other as if that were the natural order of things.

Dark secrets are unlocked, words draw more blood than punches, and Desplechin turns one family into a universe that resembles life as a startling work of art.

The film's sound design, sampling Beethoven and Nino Rota, among others, links up with visual miracles performed by Rain Kathy Li and Wong Kar-Wai's noted cinematographer, Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love), to take us inside Alex's head. The result, a defiant slap at slick Hollywood formula, is mesmerizing.

Want to know what the “right stuff” really is? Take a look.

Hollywood does gloriously right by Judy Blume’s groundbreaking 1970 novel about a pre-teen girl (a stellar Abby Ryder Fortson) in a tug-of-war with puberty and religion. Costars McAdams and Bates exemplify Blume’s refreshing candor. Call it totally irresistible.

Cuarón has a gift only the greatest filmmakers share: He makes you believe.

Shaka King’s powerhouse about the 1969 murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton (an Oscar-worthy Daniel Kaluuya) by the Chicago police with the help of an FBI informer (Lakeith Stanfield) is a new movie classic that speaks to the toxic racism of its time and ours.

Allen has never crafted anything as fiercely funny as this comedy of coming apart; it’s a groundbreaking film, full of sublime performances alert to the violence done in the name of love.

All the actors, in roles large and small, bring their A games to the film. Two hours and 40 minutes can feel long for some. I wouldn’t change a frame.

The top-tier cast, including Tilda Swinton as a character called Social Services, may be star overload, but each actor performs small miracles.

A landmark musical tribute.

What the film does so movingly as a portrait is show the isolation that comes with creative success.

Booksmart changes the game and opens the genre up to greater possibilities. Directed by the actor Olivia Wilde in a smashing feature debut, this femcentric spin on Freaks and Geeks is high on girl power.

The acting is top-notch, and LaPaglia, who makes the cop's torment palpable, gives the performance of his career.

At the end, with Sean's condition scarily deteriorating, the raw and riveting BPM musters the emotional power to floor you.

Hits hardest when it bypasses sentiment to ponder the inextricable mix of love and pain that comes with the ties that bind.

Nothing about the pulsating ‘Sirāt’ is appropriate or expected or traditional or fully comprehensible. It just is. And it is utterly transfixing.

Sonnenfeld deftly orchestrates the intricate two-part harmony, and Smith and Jones -- a powerhouse comic pair -- make it all look easy.

This week’s shocking, out-of-nowhere Oscar nomination for British actress Andrea Riseborough as an alcoholic single mother from West Texas who squanders her $190,000 lottery win on booze turns an indie movie no one ever heard of into an absolute must-see. Prepare to be wowed!

A triumph of acting, writing and directing that defies glib description...the kind of artful defiance that Hollywood is usually too timid to deliver: a jolting comedy that makes you laugh till it hurts.

Fierce, funny and finally devastating, Tanovic's superb film offers a timely look at the roots of civil war and acts of terrorism on both sides that can be exploited by political and media hypocrites alike.

For a series that began nearly 25 years ago, this classic in the making couldn’t go out on a more fitting note of tender, tear-drenched resolution.

This haunting film never pushes itself on you. It trusts you to suss out the horror that lies beneath the veneer of innocence. You'll be knocked for a loop.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony-winning musical is a surefire Oscar contender that lights up the screen with the immigrant experience of the American Dream. Anthony Ramos fires up an estupendo cast to give the summer’s best party a heart that sings and a spirit that soars.

Savor their technique and the sizzling performances of Frances McDormand as an adulterous wife, Dan Hedaya as her vengeful husband and M. Emmet Walsh as a private detective from hell.

Chloe Zhao’s new film landmark blows the dust off history to bring a raw, present-tense immediacy to a tale of love and grievous loss. In what Shakespeare once termed “a mad blood stirring,” Jessie Buckley is guttural, defiant, and untamable in the performance of the year.

A crafty calling card brimming with beauty and terror. Eggers pulls us into the supernatural with subtle cunning and meticulous attention to detail.

Lacing tremendously exciting action with touching gravity, Looper hits you like a shot in the heart.

Graduation, isn't quite on the landmark level of his searing 2007 abortion drama "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," but this gripping film still sizzles with Mungiu's social-realist concern for people who believe they can't raise their position based on merit alone. In that sense, the filmmaker is working on a universal level.

What makes it one of the best (and most unclassifiable) movies of the year is the hypnotic way it keeps re-inventing itself from scene to scene.

What jump-starts the film is the casting of Johnny Depp as Don Juan and Marlon Brando as his shrink. They bring a playfully romantic touch to a drama that could have been dead weight in clumsier hands.

Joaquin Phoenix is simply stupendous in You Were Never Really Here. His performance is damn near flammable — dangerous if you get too close.

This is a poetic and profound experiment you do not want to miss.

Volver is Almodovar's passionate tribute to the community of women -- living and dead -- who nurtured him. Through the transformative power of his art -- carried on the wings of Alberto Iglesias' exhilarating score -- we feel their presence. You do not want to miss this one.

The filmmaker brings everything he has as an artist to this raw, resonant thriller. The screen damn near explodes as his genre caper suddenly encompasses a whole social strata (race, class, politics, gender). You’re in for a hell of a ride.

Strains credulity at every turn.

Forget who wins or loses, Boys State is about that promise of change in the air. And it’s exhilarating.

Purposely out of step with the feel-good-movie era, he offers caustic wit instead of gags, blunt questions instead of glib answers and challenges instead of reassurances. Bless him.

Payne's low-key approach only deepens the film's intimate power. Want a movie you can really connect with? The Descendants is damn near perfect.

Concentrate on the abundant factors that make First Man unmissable and unforgettable. There have been astronaut movies before, good (Apollo 13) and better (The Right Stuff). But few have been as much a triumph of the imagination fueled, not by FX but by indelible feeling, as this one.

A slambam sci-fi thriller with a brain, a heart and an artful sense of purpose. You're in for a wild whoosh of a ride.

Nothing happens in Eephus and it’s still one of the best damn baseball movies ever made.

No list of the year's best performances should be made without her (Sally Hawkins).

A world-class charmer that could even seduce the Academy when it hands out the first official animation Oscar next year.

Byrne is sensational, finding the broken places under Justine's rebellious hot-mom surface. Nothing groundbreaking here, but there's something to be said for a fun time that won't let the laughs go down too easy.

Caine has never been better, which is saying something. He puts a human face on a tragic era of history in a film that ranks with the year's finest.

Gordon, who died shortly after the first Arthur, never had to see the luckless 1988 sequel that made his beloved characters seem like strangers. The new Arthur, insipid when it should be infectious, leaves the same deadly impression.

This spellbinder about a politician in free fall would be hilarious if it weren't so agonizingly true. OK, it's still pretty funny because Anthony Weiner — the subject of this documentary — can't stop shooting himself in the foot.

Clint Eastwood pours everything he knows about directing into Mystic River. His film sneaks up, messes with your head and then floors you. You can't shake it. It's that haunting, that hypnotic.

The pleasure of this unique film comes in watching superb actors dine on Mamet's pungent language like the feast it is.

The Star Wars universe is the best toy box a fanboy could ever wish for, and Johnson makes sure that Jedi is bursting at the seams with knockout fun surprises, marvelous adventure and shocking revelations that will leave your head spinning.

The Cove plays like a thriller. It has the breathless pace of a "Bourne" movie, but none of the comfort of fiction. This is documentary filmmaking at its most exciting and purposeful.

Want your skin to crawl? This one's for you.

This hilarious and humane film nails its subject -- not just the unshaved armpits and the lack of underwear -- and marks Moodysson as a talent to watch.

Thompson never disappoints, nailing every nuance of a judge who lets the world in at the cost of losing her own judgment. This is acting of the highest order.

Somehow, Lucille's plight is meant to comment astutely on the civil-rights movement. Now that IS crazy.

Even when you know what's coming, Crazy Heart haunts you like a classic country song. It's a mesmerizer. So is Bad Blake. This dude also abides.

Farrell is a dynamo. And Kiefer Sutherland, whose sniper role is essentially a voice on the phone, matches Farrell subtle shift for subtle shift.

Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow, filmmakers themselves and De Palma fans to the bone, haven't gathered a bunch of talking heads to debate De Palma's significance. They just put the man himself on camera, mic him up and let him rip. The result is heaven for movie lovers.