Peter Travers

Fueled by performances worth treasuring from Chastain and Sarsgaard, this impossible love story between a woman who can't forget and man who can't remember slowly works its way into your mind and heart. Filmmaker Michel Franco makes sure you’ll be moved to tears.

Three sublime actresses, indelibly played by Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and an Oscar-calling Natasha Lyonne, portray sisters coping with the impending death of their father in a bruisingly funny and sad chamber piece from Azazel Jacobs that takes a piece out of you.

Scott Pilgrim is a breathless rush of a movie that jumps off the screen, spins your head around and then stealthily works its way into your heart.

The bloodsuckers in this thriller may not have much bite, but here's a movie that can -- it's guaranteed -- drain the life out of an audience in minutes.

Screenwriting this smart, inventive, passionate and rip-roaringly funny is a rare species. It's magic.

Fighter shapes up as one of the great documentaries of this year, or any other.

This rip-roaring Irish comedy is the freshest surprise of the season.

It's a beast of a movie, an emotional roller coaster that threatens to go off the rails, and does. But Cianfrance, working from a scrappy script he wrote with Ben Coccio and Darius Marder, takes you on a hell of a ride.

Barbershop: The Next Cut is stagey, often simplistic and it talks too damn much. But, hell, the talk has flavor and snap and a real-world sense of a community in crisis. Not bad for an escapist romp.

Until the last half-hour, when Lucas actually does establish a emotional connection between the landmark he created in 1977 and the prequel investment portfolio he laid out in 1999, the movie is one spectacularly designed letdown after another.

Far from being exploitive, the effect is inspiring: This is the best of us.

Hopkins and Mirren are acting pros in stellar form. There's no way you want to miss the pleasure of their company in a movie that offers a sparkling and unexpectedly poignant look at how to sustain a career and a marriage.

It's a big story, and in this landmark film Miyazaki is up to every demand. Sit back and behold.

An adventure in pure imagination that plays to the smart kid in all of us.

Laugh you will, loud and often. In the Loop deserves to be a sleeper hit. The whole cast is stellar. And it proves that smart and funny can exist in the same movie, even in summer.

Pixar’s first feature with a predominantly Black cast and a Black lead actor (the superb Jamie Foxx) contemplates the origins of jazz and the meaning of life and death. Don't fret the metaphysics, kids, It's the year's peak achievement in animation.

Exclusively culled from police-cam footage, this outstandingly crafted, Oscar-buzzed documentary examines a white Florida woman who murders her Black neighbor on the basis of a stand-your-ground law that indicts an entire society

The first indisputably great movie of 2024 is a blazing Oscar contender about a real-life prison arts program that helps caged birds, led by a simply stupendous Colman Domingo, to rediscover their humanity with a heart full to bursting and a spirit that soars.

Pixar tackles the topic of female puberty in this animated funhouse ride about a 13-year girl from Toronto’s Chinatown who turns into a giant red panda in this wise and wonderful metaphor for the roller coaster of messy adolescence.

Writer-director Peter Sollett takes the familiar and turns it into hot, heartfelt movie magic.

Demange's film, spiked by an outstanding, all-stops-out O'Connell, makes politics unnervingly personal. Too much? What else do you expect of a cinematic knockout punch that sends you reeling?

Forget "The Conjuring," Blackfish may be the scariest movie around.

It's warped and wonderfully effervescent. Ditto the songs by Danny Elfman, who sings the role of Bonejangles, the frontman for a skeleton jazz band at a swinging underworld club. Best of all is the love story.

You’d have to search hard to find a movie this hypnotic and haunting.

A sequel of twisted thrills and sly surprises.

All credit to O’Sullivan, Thompson and a tone-perfect cast for creating a film that moves to the rhythms of life as its lived rather than fantasized. Saint Frances retains its rough edges to that last. And that’s some kind of miracle.

Sometimes it's racism; sometimes bum luck; sometimes it's producer Phil Spector putting Love's voice in another singer's mouth. You watch. You hear the gospel spoken in the voices of these women. And you marvel.

Tone-deaf but thunderously exciting.

Despite its grandiose title, 20th Century Women unfolds as series of small moments – some hilarious and heartfelt, other silly and sorrowful – that help define the characters and their time.

Writer-director David Michôd catches you in a vise and squeezes - hard.

Scorsese builds Hugo in the Méliès manner, creating a complete, ravishing Parisian world on a soundstage in England and reveling in the sheer transporting joy of it. Hugo will take your breath away.

A wickedly smart and funny free-for-all, and sassy enough to shoot well-aimed darts at corporate branding.

Horror-movie heaven.

Who would have guessed that a documentary about gamers obsessed with scoring a world record at Donkey Kong would not only be roaringly funny but serve as a metaphor for the decline of Western civilization?

A savage comedy of sexual extremes; the barbed laughs draw blood.

What catches us in Spider's web -- besides the indelible performances of Fiennes and Richardson -- is the director's sympathy with this freak man-child who struggles to order his confused memories into a kind of truth.

The twice Oscar-nominated actor appears onscreen only briefly. Hawke knows where the spotlight belongs. Believe me, the 81 minutes spent in Bernstein's funny, touching and vital presence is something you don't want to miss.

One-word reaction: bravo.

It's a total triumph, brimming with humor, heart, sexual heat, political provocation and a crying need to stir things up, just like Harvey did. If there's a better movie around this year, with more bristling purpose, I sure as hell haven't seen it.

Lukas Moodysson, a young Swedish director, crafts a stunner of a film out of familiar turf.

Debuting director Regina King ignites sparks by casting four dynamite actors as 1964 civil-rights icons—Kingsley Ben-Adir as Malcolm X, Eli Goree as Cassius Clay, Aldis Hodge as Jim Brown, and an Oscar worthy Leslie Odom Jr. as Sam Cooke—and letting them rip about being Black in America.

Oscar shortlisted for best animated film, this ravishing new gem from anime master Mamoru Hosoda is a knockout fantasia that cuts to the core of Gen Z lives that revolve around digi-tech and yet speaks an intimate universal language of love and loss.

You'll thrill to the action, savor the tasty dialogue and laugh like bloody hell.

Using Staunton's face as his canvas, Leigh crafts a powerfully moving film that is unmissable and unforgettable.

Spike Lee is coming at you with his greatest and most galvanizing movie in years. BlacKkKlansman is right up there with "Do the Right Thing" and "Malcolm X" in the Spike’s Joint pantheon of game-changers.

Zane, a good actor in the right circumstances (Orlando, Dead Calm), is trapped by screenwriter Jeffrey Boam (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) and Australian director Simon Wincer (Free Willy), who don’t give him anything to act.

A brave experiment in cinema that richly rewards the demands it makes. The result is an amazement, a film of beauty and shocking gravity.

Red Army deserves a big boo-yah from audiences for being illuminating and hugely entertaining. And if some of the talk is in Russian, live with it.

A rabble-rousing journalistic thriller filled with fierce commitment and fervent heart.

Mullan errs by making all the sisters dragon ladies. Still, the film gets to you; it's a powerhouse.

You won't know what hit you after watching Tyson. This power punch to the gut is one of the best movies of any kind this year.

In Eastern Promises, shot to envelop by the great Peter Suschitzky, Cronenberg brings us face to face with the horror of self.

Lessin and Deal have made Trouble the Water a spellbinder you do not want to miss.

The power of this Holocaust tale sneaks up and floors you.

Palm Springs suggests that repetition can kill sex drives, marriages, and even the will to live. Yet it still leaves you laughing gratefully at the resilience of love.

Some movies are so good and true and tough-to-the-core they should just sneak up on you. James White is one of them.

Mitchell has his own twisted gift for letting atmosphere help define character. It Follows creeps you out big-time in that cool way that freezes the blood.

It feels lived it, honest and painfully funny.

This Sweeney is a bloody wonder, intimate and epic, horrific and heart-rending as it flies on the wings of Sondheim's most thunderously exciting score.

It's a powerhouse of claustrophobic suspense and fierce emotion, mostly because Tom Hardy, best known as Bane in "The Dark Knight Rises," is a blazing wonder as Locke.

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

Like the best filmmakers at Sundance 2001, Nolan leaps into the wild blue and dares us to leap with him. Go for it.

The good news is that Coogler puts his own stamp on it. You can feel this fine indie talent stretching his wings in the mainstream.

Romantic yearning hasn't looked this sexy onscreen in years.

It’s shameless fluff wrapped in a blanket of bland. You won’t believe a word of this romcom knockoff, but JLo and Owen Wilson work real hard to convince you that love is the answer.

A uniquely hypnotic and haunting love story sparked by Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue at their career best.

O'Toole gives a staggering performance -- fearless, defiantly untamed and in its own way a work of art.

Pucci is an actor to watch: He rides this spellbinder without softening the truths that plague the thumbsucker in all of us.

For Swifties and newbies, here's the musical event of the movie year. And, yes, you can dance to it as the pop princess uses her all-time top-grossing concert film to show off her talent for artistic reinvention and storytelling in song. What's not to like?

In a mere 76 minutes, director Ira Sachs and his virtuoso actors, Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall, have captured a specific world in universal terms and made a film for the ages.

Clermont-Tonnerre comes from a place of defiance, and her fearless instincts surge through every frame. Each time you think you have this movie pegged, it’ll knock you for a loop.

Oooowee, this is one scorchingly sexy thriller. Powered by shining new star Glen Powell, who singes the screen with wowza costar Adria Arjona, this cheeky, somewhat true story from director Richard Linklater adds up to one of the best and most beguiling movies of the year.

Like the A.R. Rahman score that drives the movie, the triumphant 127 Hours pays fitting tribute to Aron by being thrillingly alive.

The movie brims over with action -- check out Alex's run through traffic on the Paris beltway -- but Canet scores a triumph by plumbing the violence of the mind.

The film is a striking cinematic tone poem.

Nothing and everything happen in the movie. Director James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now), working from a fluid script by playwright Donald Margulies, does justice to the book without compromising his film.

It's scarier than "The Amityville Horror," as scandalous as "Fahrenheit 9/11" and loaded with more conspiracies than "The Interpreter."

It's the no-bull performances that hold back the flood of banalities. Robbins and Freeman connect with the bruised souls of Andy and Red to create something undeniably powerful and moving.

Some of the footage, shot by crew members, radiates hold-your-breath suspense, especially when the Maiden pushes through the ice floes of the Southern Ocean, near Antarctica. You’ll have your heart in your mouth as the yacht enters the final stretch.

Reeves achieves visual wonders even in the stillness before all hell breaks loose. It's what makes War for the Planet of the Apes such a unique and unforgettable experience – that, and Serkis's career-high performance. Hail Caesar, indeed.

Director Fernando Meirelles and screenwriter Jeffrey Caine put a human face on John le Carre's novel of sex, lies and dirty politics in modern Africa. Prepare for a thrilling ride.

Rehab movies nearly always make me cringe, as if the audience needs to take medicine, as if hope needs to be force fed. Short Term 12, an exceptional film in every way, breaks the mold.

Other films this year will have to sweat bullets to match the explosive power and subversive wit of David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. It slams you like a body punch and then starts messing with your head.

The result is raw and riveting.

The Lobster, with a score that samples everyone from Beethoven to Nick Cave, comes at you with images that burn and laughs that stick in the throat. Take the challenge of this movie — it'll keep you up nights.

A movie heart-breaker of oddball wit and startling grace.

Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas restores originality and daring to the Halloween genre. This dazzling mix of fun and fright also explodes the notion that animation is kid stuff. The history-making stop-motion animation in this $20 million charmer transcends age. It's 74 minutes of timeless movie magic.

Paris Is Burning catches the sadly hollow spectacle with acuity, wit and intelligence.

"Waves" is a spellbinder.

Without jerking tears or reducing the acid content of his wit, Baumbach's humane movie gets under your skin.

The result is a movie miracle; it soars.

Even education can't kill the demon of fun in Black. Enroll in his class and you won't stop laughing.

A burst of pure filmmaking exhilaration that manages to pay homage to the classic 1960s TV series and still boldly go where no man, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy included, has gone before.

The acting is flawless, with Simmonds and young Jupe making every minute count. Blunt (Krasinski's wife off screen) is in a class by herself, taking a near-silent role and building a tour de force of expressive emotion.

Writer and director Carl Franklin ("One False Move") scores a triumph in using the brooding atmosphere and racial tension of the sun-kissed, seedy City of Angels to reveal character and reclaim a neglected past that ace cinematographer Tak Fujimoto brings to vivid life.

Don’t miss this nail-biting thriller in which director İlker Çatak and sensational star Leonie Benesch turn a tale of petty theft at a German middle school into a battle between freedom of expression and institutional control all too easy to recognize as our own.

This is a generational family saga everyone can relate to, and Nair gives it her special magic.

Baumbach, in his most compassionate film since The Squid and the Whale, catches Frances in the act of inventing herself. It's a glorious sight to see.