Peter Travers

What's fresh about Midnight in Paris is the way he (Allen) identifies with Gil's idealization of the past, of the Paris that represented art and life at their fullest.

Mirai casts a spell that works on children and adults alike, but in different ways. Its creator’s artistry and empathy are the connecting links. It may be the animator’s smallest film, but it stands tall. You’ll be enchanted.

So what if the plot is the usual tangle to set up stunts. Tom Cruise does the impossible and nobody does it better.

Bill Nighy delivers a master class in acting as a stifled bureaucrat Brit who decides to seize the day before it's too late. Working in miniature to achieve major truths, this deeply human drama has the power to sneak up and knock you sideways.

It'll knock you on you ass from laughing when you're not rubbing your eyes in disbelief.

The hypnotic and haunting Foxcatcher can prove its worth as one of the year's very best films. Steve Carell, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo give the performances of their lives.

Inside this manic jumble about a family of prehistoric ‘Flintstones’ knockoffs lies a brightly animated bauble that speaks to the power of staying connected even when forced apart. Pretty good for a cartoon, especially during a pandemic.

Nil By Mouth is a shockingly intimate portrait of entrapment that may leave you wincing. It’s Oldman’s Raging Bull.

This baby has the stuff to end the movie summer on a note of dazzle and distinction.

Luckily, Mangold fuels his true-life plot with enough flesh-and-blood action to leave you dizzy.

A rapturous masterwork.

You might bitch that Flight levels off after its shocking, soaring start. But you'd be missing the point of an exceptional entertainment that Zemeckis shades into something quietly devastating – not an addiction drama, but the deeper spectacle of a man facing the truth about himself.

Silver Linings Playbook is eager to sting instead of soothe. It's one of the year's best movies because Russell makes you laugh till it hurts.

So cheers to a movie as gloriously entertaining and bluntly honest as the lady herself. Everybody rise.

This movie isn't just a necessity (listen up, do-nothing politicians) - it might change your future.

You’ll be thinking about this scary, savvy fright fest long after you wake up screaming.

The film, bathed in gorgeous shadow and light by cinematographer Joe DeSalvo, gets more personal as it moves along. You can feel the romantic ache when Bruce and the missus duet on “Stones.”

Mad trippy or catastrophic? This DC superhero epic is actually a mix of both, dragged down by exhausting multiverse hopping but flashy fun on the wings of captivating star Ezra Miller and the grumpy comic perfection of Michael Keaton as a Batman on the ropes.

Emmerich can crack the whip on computer pixels like nobody’s business. But in sacrificing a reckoning on the human toll of war for cardboard characterization and showoff fx, he’s left an empty space where the soul of the film should be.

Even in the face of grievous misfortune, the characters created by Schults exude a tenderness that allows this achingly intimate drama to move past sorrow and hit you like a shot in the heart.

This suspenseful survival tale, smartass to its core, slaps a smile on your face that you'll wear all the way home.

It’s murder behind stained-glass windows as “Knives Out” detective Daniel Craig and a cast of all-star sinners find the fiendish fun in a crime story about the wages of wickedness. Don’t worry, it’s not a musical

Simple story, beautifully told.

The tension flattens in the film’s drowsy second half, but the blazing wonder of Amanda Seyfried as Shakers leader Ann Lee makes believers of all

You watch The Wrestler (with a superb title song from Bruce Springsteen) in a state of pure exhilaration. A great actor in a great movie will do that to you.

These three unimprovable actresses make The Hours a thing of beauty.

A flabby farce that might win a pass at the box office because it's just so cute and family friendly. But where's your edge, guys? Where are the laughs that walk a tightrope?

The fighting spirit of this female quartet blazes through every frame of this galvanizing film. “We did this without knowing shit,” says Vilela. That’s just a beginning. Way before the movie ends, you’ll feel their fire.

Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles makes itself essential viewing by chronicling the turbulent genesis of a global sensation. But its real miracle is demonstrating why it continues to entertain and illuminate, from Tokyo to a Brooklyn middle school where an African-American girl now plays the role of Tevye’s wife, Golde, and back to Broadway.

This unassuming animated gem about a shell (indelibly voiced by co-writer Jenny Slate) trying to find his family shames the bloat of big-studio cartoons by proving good things really do come in small packages. The result is unique and unforgettable.

The Secret in Their Eyes has a decent shot at wearing down resistance to subtitled films. Don't be put off. This spellbinder from Argentina will sneak up and floor you. It's that good.

As directed by the Safdie brothers, Josh and Benny, the movie rips through 100 minutes of screen time like Wile E. Coyote with his tail on fire. It's electrifying.

Eating can be one dangerous business. Don't take another bite till you see Robert Kenner's Food, Inc., an essential, indelible documentary that is scarier than anything in the last five Saw horror shows.

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.

Josh O’Connor and director Kelly Reichardt tell the story of an amateur art thief who’s not as smart or cool as he thinks he is, though the movie is both those things

A thunderous spectacle.

The three actors work wonders. And Zobel, as he did in 2012's mindbending "Compliance," nails every nuance of intonation and posture.

A devastating mystery thriller from Quebec filmmaker Denis Villeneuve that grabs you hard and won't let go.

Leaves you feeling tense and terrific. It's fun to be fooled.

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.

This follow-up is every bit the start-to-finish sensation as the original, and you'll be happy to know that Bird's subversive spirit is alive and thriving.

A romantic comedy so numbing it feels like Novocaine.

It promotes an awareness of ALS that goes beyond the best-intended any ice-bucket challenge — and ranks as a profound achievement.

Craig gives us James Bond in the fascinating act of inventing himself. This you do not want to miss.

The climax, in which all the characters link arms in a dance and sing, could serve as a textbook illustration of forced gaiety. Much Ado is much askew.

A feast of a film done on a low budget with a menu featuring top-grade acting, writing and direction.

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.

Gray’s filmmaking is tremendously exciting.

Alive with beauty, spirit and wit, Roan Inish is pure magic.

Money, madness, incest and murder! Just the recipe for a twisted mesmerizer of a movie, if it doesn't creep you out.

He lacks Scorsese's raw inventiveness, but there's no denying De Niro's skill in keeping this pungent street epic brimming over with action and laughs without sacrificing intimacy. He is a supreme director of actors.

Musically, the film is a miracle, right and riveting in every detail.

Bugsy is less an indictment of the dark side than a black-comic look at our continuing fascination with it. Even when this powerhouse entertainment trips on its ambitions, you can't shake it off.

Never snap judge a Nicole Holofcener film as a sitcom. Just watch how she steers Julia Louis-Dreyfus and a pitch-perfect cast to dig out the raw feelings colliding under the laughs to reveal a generosity toward human foibles, even when comic darts draw blood.

At two-and-a-half hours, Monrovia, Indiana often feels static and low-key to a fault. As always, Wiseman is working hard at being fair, refusing to condemn or even condescend to what his camera sees.

What makes True Grit a new classic for the Coens is the way the brothers absorb the unfairly unsung Portis into their DNA, like they did with Cormac McCarthy in "No Country for Old Men." True Grit is packed with action and laughs, plus a touching coda with an older Mattie, but it's the dialogue that really sings. Great filmmaking. Great acting. Great movie. Saddle up.

This bracing, original comedy may be mostly smoke and air, but it's not insubstantial. Mystery Train insinuates itself into the memory and lingers on.

Malick has created a war film without a single scene of war, of Jewish persecution, of the thought process that helped Franz hold steadfast. It’s one thing to fashion a film about one man’s blind faith; it’s another to keep audiences in the dark about the fundamentals that made him human.

Your only mistake would be to not see it at all, and miss out on one of the unalloyed pleasures of the fall movie season.

An electrifying Ian McKellen hits a new career peak and takes an early shot at Oscar in Steven Soderbergh’s unmissable tale of an artist and his forger, played by the brilliant Michaela Coel.

The action, from lightsaber duels to X-wing dogfights with TIE Fighters, is explosive and buoyed by John Williams' exultant score. And the movie is also funny as hell. Abrams knows how to build a laugh and fill the emotional spaces between words.

McNaughton has made a film of clutching terror that's meant to heighten our awareness instead of dulling it. At the end, Henry is still out there among us. And he's no B-movie monster in a hockey mask. He could be the guy next door. This film gives off a dark chill that follows you all the way home.

By the time they're onstage, your pulse is pounding right along with theirs. Spell this movie: g-r-e-a-t.

A film of female empowerment that resonates deeply.

Sobs are earned the hard way in this moving drama, which grips you with such scrappy humor and no-bull grit and grace that you'll be hooked.

Even when Greta Gerwig trips up on her ambition to make this pretty-in-pink fantasia more than the fun party of summer, you cheer her refusal to play it safe as she turns Margot Robbie’s doubt-plagued Barbie and Ryan Gosling’s clueless Ken into a match made in movie heaven.

This classically trained Irish singer and actress was a runner-up on a BBC singing competition and won roles in film (Beast) and TV (War and Peace, HBO’s Chernobyl). She’s a skyrocketing talent — and the full range of her gifts are on display here.

Homer even jokes that it takes a sucker to pay for a show you can get for free on TV. D'oh! That hurts.

Summer just saved its thrillingest thriller for last. Starring a wow Kyle Gallner and Willa Fitzgerald, this cinematic gut punch from JT Mollner brings one day in the romantic twisted love life of a serial killer to vivid life on screen. You won’t know what hit you.

If you haven't already sold your soul to rock & roll, Almost Famous should seal the deal.

Ascher's unique and unforgettable film is a tribute to movie love. I couldn't have liked it more.

Bertrand Bonello’s exhilarating cinematic challenge stars a never-better Lea Seydoux and George MacKay as lovers across space and time who fight to embrace the beast of their dangerous emotions while artificial intelligence threatens to eradicate it.

It's a movie as timely as it is thrilling to watch.

You leave this movie with questions about this odd-duck of a humanist, who eased children through the thorny feelings that come with fear, bullying, divorce, and trauma. You also leave grateful for how Hanks and Heller respect the privacy and complexity of a man who knew life was never as simple as it looks. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is a movie that speaks from the heart. Let it in.

No one who cares about movies and those rare actors who can elevate them into something unforgettable would dream of missing this scrappy, loving tribute to a virtuoso. Lucky may not believe in God. But what kind of fool doesn't believe in Harry Dean Stanton?

It's really inventive and bizarre and marvelously entertaining.

In ninety-three tight, terrifically exciting minutes, Clooney makes integrity look mighty sexy.

What makes David Crosby: Remember My Name one of the best rock documentaries of all time is the no-bull immediacy of the filmmaking.

This eyepopper from Russian director-writer-cinematographer-editor Victor Kossakovsky (¡Vivan Las Antípodas!) is like nothing you’ve ever seen. His free-form documentary on water opens by scaring us to death.

Recalling the best movies about actors, from "All About Eve" to "Birdman," Clouds of Sils Maria is a bonbon spiked with wit and malice. It's also a penetrating look into the female psyche, a specialty of critic-turned-filmmaker Olivier Assayas, who wrote Juliette Binoche her first starring role, as a young actress in 1985's "Rendez-vous."

OK, sensitive tykes may be scared shitless. But those who tough it out with this twisted, trippy adventure in impure imagination will only be the better for it.

It's "National Lampoon's Family Vacation" with soul.

Sometimes a movie arrives that charms its way into your heart — and The Old Man & the Gun is just such an unassuming, exuberant gift.

Propelled by Mark Mancina's percussive score, this Tarzan swings.

Under the astute direction of Danny DeVito, who does a sly turn as Oliver's attorney, this acid-dipped epic of revenge is killingly funny and dramatically daring.

The chaotic, jumbled The Other Side of the Wind isn’t for everyone — just folks who care about the history of film and the master builder who helped make it great.

Just when you're ready to puke, the old Bill Conti theme ("Gonna Fly Now") kicks in -- are you feeling it? -- Stallone steps in the ring and every day is Christmas. All together now: Rock-ee! Rock-ee!

Director Ron Howard has turned Peter Morgan's stage success into a grabber of a movie laced with tension, stinging wit and potent human drama.

Malkovich weaves something delicate and devastating.

Expertly directed by Richard Eyre (Iris) from Jeffrey Hatcher's play, the film is bawdy fun.

OK, the plot is inane, Val-gal-speak is a clichT, and Heckerling was more incisive covering similar hormonal ground 13 years ago in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." But there's still wicked good fun to be had.

In a beautifully nuanced directing debut, actor Paul Dano mines the smallest details in Richard Ford’s acclaimed 1990 novel — he and his partner Zoe Kazan wrote the emotionally-attuned script — to create a portrait of a woman who can’t quite catch up with the frustration and feminist stirrings she feels inside.

Close plays this ignored, pushed-aside woman like a gathering storm, drawing us into the mind and heart of a heroine who’s not going to take it any more. The actress has received six acting nominations without ever winning an Oscar. The Wife, a funny and fierce showcase for her prodigious talents, might just end the drought. You can’t take your eyes off her.

It sounds pretty cheesy and sometimes it’s a whole cheese wheel, but Hugh Jackman and especially Kate Hudson sing and act their hearts out.

Watching Haneke's film is, aptly enough, a challenge and a punishment. But watching Huppert, a great actress tearing into a landmark role, is riveting.

It's the Pixar animators who keep grown-ups as riveted as the kids with visual marvels that dazzle and delight.

Exorcist junkies should look elsewhere. Instead of spinning heads and projectile puke, Mungiu offers nuance and provocation. The result is quietly devastating.

Soderbergh’s mostly improvised jaunt on the Queen Mary 2 with three acting legends, shouldn’t work. But it does, gloriously, thanks to the irresistible teamwork of Streep, Wiest and Bergen. They’re pure gold.

The filmmakers don't trust us to understand what Eddie is feeling about the Olympics without blaring a musical message from Hall and Oates on the soundtrack, "you make my dreams come true."

Just see it. This movie will take a piece out of you.

Oscars all around. Led by a life-of-the-party Gary Oldman as the boozehound screenwriter of ‘Citizen Kane’ and a sublime Amanda Seyfried as a tycoon’s mistress, this funny and fierce landmark from David Fincher peels away at Hollywood’s Golden Age. The result is a gorgeous piece of cinema that ranks with the year’s very best.

Michael Moore might want to look into this before more animal docs steal his thunder.

The Muppets slaps a smile on your face you won't want to wipe off.

Writer-director Raymond De Felitta creates something wonderfully funny and touching.

Garland need make no apologies for Annihilation. It's a bracing brainteaser with the courage of its own ambiguity. You work out the answers in your own head, in your own time, in your own dreams, where the best sc-fi puzzles leave things. Get ready to be rocked.

The gifted Rees makes finding out a stirring and heartfelt journey. And Oduye is unforgettable. A star is born.

Pride naively thinks it can change the world with a single movie. Talk about fighting spirit. I couldn't have liked it more.

George has been criticized for simplifying a complex story into an African "Schindler's List." But despite flaws in execution, this is a film of rare courage and imperishable heart.

Nicole Kidman burns up the screen in Helena Reijn’s erotic spellbinder about why a married-with-children titan of industry would risk career suicide to find her true self by losing control with a hottie young intern (Harris Dickinson) who bends her to his cruel will. Not as transgressive as it wants to be, but damn close

The antique charms of the story can still seduce us when done well, and director Jean-Paul Rappeneau, who freely adapted the play with Jean-Claude Carrière, knows how to fashion a sumptuously beautiful, hugely entertaining spectacle that also stays alert to the cadences of the heart.

There's not a timid, sympathy-begging minute in it. Even better, you leave Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work with the exhilarating feeling that the lady is just hitting her stride.

All the pieces hang together. You can't say that about many movies.

Think "The Hurt Locker," which shares a cinematographer in Barry Ackroyd with no damage to the Bard's bruising poetry. Neat trick.

In the end, the audience is rewarded with a steadily riveting provocation that jabs at the culture of money that makes us all complicit.

Evocatively shot by "Selma" wizard Bradford Young, A Most Violent Year reflects a world where nothing is held sacred. You watch with nerves clenched, holding on tight.

David Fincher's shockingly good film version of Gone Girl is the date-night movie of the decade for couples who dream of destroying one another.

Scrappy, funny, hot-to-trot biopic.

Perks deserves points for going beyond the typical coming-of-age drivel aimed at teens.

Fierce, funny and vividly moving.

Kingsley creates an unforgettable monster. Acting rarely gets this hypnotically explosive.

Dear White People marks an auspicious debut for writer-director Justin Simien, an African-American who laces his satire with delicious mirth and malice.

Broken Flowers may be too low-key for laugh junkies, but Jarmusch fills his sharply observed comedy with wonderful mischief. The mix of humor and heartbreak brings out the best in Murray.

The film sneaks up on you, quiet-like, until its implications accumulate. And then it crushes you.

No one with a genuine belief in the possibilities and mysteries of cinema would think of missing Silence. It's essential filmmaking from the church of Scorsese, a modern master who lives and breathes in the images he puts on screen.

It's both gravely serious and a demonically funny, a blend meant to catch audiences off balance. Mission accomplished.

Paul Dano excels in this fact-based tale of how little-guy investors actually took down billionaire Wall Street fat cats. What’s not to like about this slapstick tragedy with a windfall of laughs.

From "The 39 Steps" and "The Lodger" to "Rear Window," "Psycho" and all stops in between, this film gets us drunk on Hitchcock's movies again. My only problem with Hitchcock/Truffaut is that it's too short at 80 minutes. More please, and soon.

Freeman's nuanced acting is a marvel.

A film of awesome power and blistering provocation.

The result is a film of surprise and wonder, lyrically attuned to the ticking intensity of romance.

You’ve never seen a Pinocchio like this one, a funny, touching and vital masterpiece from del Toro that uses stop-motion animation to create a world of beauty and terror to get lost in. The Oscar for best animated feature belongs right here.

This bonbon spiked with malice is a triumph for Jaoui, who takes witty and wounding measure of the small betrayals that leave bruises on us all.

The year’s first surefire blockbuster is a sequel that outdoes Denis Villeneuve’s first epic 2021 sand opera. OK, it’s long and sad-faced solemn, but Chalamet and Zendaya are destiny-kissed lovers to die for, Austin Butler makes a hissable new villain and the spectacle is off the charts.

The performances are uncommonly fine...Lone Star isn't built to ride trends. It's built to last.

This Parker spits in our collective eye. Don't blame us for spitting back.

A brilliant piece of nasty business that races on a B-movie track until it switches to the dizzying fuel of undiluted creativity. Damn, it's good. You can get buzzed just from the fumes coming off this wild thing.

Gore is kept to a minimum, a fact likely to disappoint audiences out for blood. It's a changed Schwarzenegger on view in Maggie, and the change becomes him.

The Fighter, its heart full to bursting, is an emotional powerhouse that comes close to spilling over.

Keep "Survivor" and "Fear Factor," and give me this spellbinding mind teaser, the ultimate game for movie buffs.

It's the remarkable Attah, whose young face reflects a hellish journey, that makes this fierce movie a blazing, indelible achievement.

Saddle up for a rowdy, rip-snorting, hilarity-and-hellfire western full of riding, fighting, hanging, shooting, gold prospecting and bloody massacres — plus silly songs, a limbless poet, cowboy love rituals and philosophical musings about the inevitability of dying. Yes, it’s all in one movie. Who does things like that? Try Joel and Ethan Coen.

A heartfelt human drama that sneaks up and floors you.

Green Room is way more than crass exploitation. It's a B movie with an art-house core.

A terrifying first film in which a tween water polo team becomes a "Lord of the Flies" metaphor for the hell of modern bullying. The scares are killer, but it’s the violence of the adolescent mind that hits hardest and haunts you longest.

Sollett, hoping for a "Before Sunrise/Before Sunset" vibe, sadly settles for a soggy aftertaste.

All praise to acting dynamo Robert Downey Jr., who brings so much creative juice to the party that Iron Man achieves instant liftoff.

Jarmusch, as ever, has the power to sneak up on you. He's a spellbinder. The same goes for his movie.

In a summer of clones, Harvard Man is something rare and riveting: a wild ride that relies on more than special effects.

In fact, Bell the writer, director, producer and actress knows how to set a savvy trap. While we're laughing, she pulls the rug out, making us see Carol's world as a microcosm for the world every working woman lives in. That she does it with subtlety, humor and touching gravity marks Bell as a filmmaker to watch.

The sad fact is that racial injustice is timelier than ever. Righteous fury is in the air. And that fervor to stand up and be counted is all over Selma.

OK, it’s no Fury Road, but visionary action poet George Miller scores a solid base hit by replacing the irreplaceable Charlize Theron with livewire Anya Taylor-Joy as the younger Furiosa in the exhilarating act of inventing herself. You’ll be dazzled, guaranteed.

Green’s slow-burn style might not spell box-office windfall in a cinema era of short attention spans, but her artistry is indisputable.

Dawn is dynamite entertainment, especially in the rousing first hour.

A mesmerizing deconstruction of the brute nature of love.

Just one talking head, that's all. But the head in this mesmerizing documentary belongs to Traudl Junge.

A Best Actress Oscar nomination for Jennifer Lopez? You better believe it. Her see-it-to-believe-it performance in Hustlers is that dazzling, that deep, that electrifying.

Lee uses 3D with the delicacy and lyricism of a poet. You don't just watch this movie, you live it.

Reeves plugs in a live wire to play Abby, the girl vampire who's been 12 for, well, a very long time. That would be Chloë Grace Moretz, an acting dynamo (see Kick-Ass) whose mesmerizing performance goes deep.

The movie of Fences doesn't need Hollywood bells and whistles. This writer, this director and these actors are all the magnificence required to grab your attention and hold it.

Naranjo, a graduate of the American Film Institute, has a gift for staging action that defines character. The film is a harrowing experience. It cuts deep.

Ralph Fiennes delivers a master class in acting in this juicy, jolting mystery thriller in which director Edward Berger uses the fictional election of a new pope in Rome to mirror America’s own dirty politics. What fun! And the drama of It will pin you to your seat

A peak-form Mads Mikkelsen stars in this hilarious and heartbreaking spellbinder as a Copenhagen high-school teacher who thinks day drinking might sharpen his faculties. The Oscar for Best International Feature belongs right here.

A fresh and unexpected documentary that plays like a nail-biting mystery and a ticket to ride the whirlwind where art and commerce do battle.

Sing Street is the most romantic movie you'll find anywhere these days, brimming over with music, fun and the thrill of first love.

Keane means to shakes us, and does.

Witherspoon has the class, the sass and the full-out talent to sustain a major career. Who else could turn the wimpy Sweet Home Alabama into a date-movie winner? She's one of that select group who is worth watching in anything. Even in this less-than-magic kingdom, Reese rules.

Abounds in pleasures.

Unique and unmissable.

Transformers 2 has a shot at the title Worst Movie of the Decade.

In Sofia Coppola’s bittersweet biopic, Elvis takes a backseat to Priscilla Presley—shining new star Cailee Spaeny—who met the King (a dangerously seductive Jacob Elordi) at 14, married him at 21 and finally escaped his Graceland pumpkin shell to become her own woman. Brava!

Portman's portrait of an artist under siege is unmissable and unforgettable. So is the movie. You won't know what hit you.

It's Bettany's portrait of the monster as a young man that rivets attention. So remember the name, or don't. Just watch Bettany strut his stuff. You'll know a star when you see one.

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.

If, like me, you enjoy challenges that are emotionally rewarding to puzzle out, then I'm Thinking of Ending Things ranks with the year's best movies.

Indignation is one of the few adaptations of Roth's work to make it to the screen with its claws intact — Schamus reveals his gifts as a filmmaker who respect the words and the space between them in equal measure.

It sounds like rom-com hell. And it would be if Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfus weren't such an appealing pair of misfits. It's a pleasure just to watch them spar.

Aaron Schimberg’s head-twisting, heart-piercing psychological thriller stars a never-better Sebastian Stan as a facially disfigured actor who has an operation to remove his scars and finds he can't hide the gloomy, self-loathing introvert that lingers in his DNA.

Hold on for a hell of a ride.

In Morgan Neville’s intimate and insightful musical doc, Paul McCartney finds his musical wings without the Beatles but with wife Linda riding shotgun and teaching him about hard to reach places in the heart.

It's taut, tense and terrific.

It's Corbijn, shooting with a poet's eye in a harshly stunning black-and-white, who cuts to the soul of Ian's life and music. You don't watch this movie, you live it.

The House of Mirth is not one of those teacup and doily movies; it's harsh and disturbing. Davies does superlatively right by Wharton. There's blood on the walls.

The sequel is still unapologetically rah-rah about American imperialism, but who cares? Thirty-six years after the original, Tom Cruise is having the time of his life, the in-flight thrills are off the charts and—hot damn!—you won’t find more blazing action anywhere.

A fantastic cast led by Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton tells the sad but true story of the flame-out of the world’s first smartphone and the manchildren who created it. This raucous workplace comedy (think The Office) puts an unexpected lump in your throat.

Langella delivers a master class in acting. He's playing Leonard Schiller, an aging author aching from the loss of his wife, a weak heart and literary neglect.

It makes you laugh till it hurts.

Though the film has an evocative look reminiscent of Matthew Brady’s period photographs, Zwick has stuffed the actors’ mouths with numbing bombast. Glory is a shame.

Springs surprises that entertain and provoke.

It's a mesmerizing spectacle.

This, however, is not Mamet – it's a beast of roaring stupidity that devours everything in its path, including the veteran filmmaker.

Watching Carville and Stephanopoulos manipulate the media by playing both footsie and hardball makes for a wickedly funny and irreverent lesson in ’90s power politics.

Claireece "Precious" Jones, played by Gabourey Sidibe, 24, in an astounding debut that brims with grit and amazing grace.

Hollywood retreads of foreign films are rarely a good idea (did you see Miss Bala?), but Gloria Bell is a playful, pleasure-giving exception.

Want to see great acting, from comic to tragic and every electrifying stop in between? See Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine.

You want horror that screws with your head? This is your ticket.

A surprise package of fun, fright and untamed imagination.

The pitch-perfect performances help Holofcener stir up feelings that cut to the heart of what defines an ethical life. There's no movie around right now with a subject more pertinent. It'll hit you hard.

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.

With Brando around, The Freshman has a snappy madness that’s hard to resist.

Wick-haters find only monotony in this carnival of carnage, but the rest of us will revel in the fourth chapter’s state-of-the-art action fireworks led by a hypnotically-Zen Keanu Reeves as the hitman who treats kung fu fighting like a dance tableau. Unmissable? Hell, yeah!

A new Paul Schrader movie is always an event and this spellbinding meditation on sin and salvation—seen through the eyes of a gambler (a superb Oscar Isaac) who counts cards to both escape and confront his torturous past—is one of his best.

Bigelow's artful handling of the magic & menace of the night is hauntingly apparent.

Fueled by gripping suspense, dark humor and outraged humanity, the film is a modern horror story that means to shake you, and does.

Anderson orchestrates a comic romance like no other. The effect is intoxicating. Sandler and the movie will knock you for a loop.

You can wait around and hope, but it’s difficult to believe that this rediscovered Sondheim classic with Grof, Mendez and Radcliffe will ever have a more feeling and vital performance than this one. And hey Harry Potter, you can really sing.

Explosive entertainment.

Kristen Stewart’s directing debut is not an easy sit, but with actress Imogen Poots, she creates an indelible, impressionistic film about a competitive swimmer that doesn’t follow tidy biopic rules or, let’s face it, any rules at all.

A hot-wired crime thriller that captures Thompson's flair for hard action, malicious wit and fevered eroticism.

I, Daniel Blake, a new Loach landmark which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year, sums up everything that has kept he muckraking motor running for decades.

The sheer scope of Nolan's vision – with emotion and spectacle thundering across the screen – is staggering. The Dark Knight Rises is the King Daddy of summer movie epics.

Hunnam is slow to grab us as Fawcett, but the implosive force of his performance soon takes hold.

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.

The movie hits you like a shot in the heart.

Millie Bobby Brown fights a heroic battle as a princess bride up against a digital dragon, but it’s not the damsel but the audience that will suffer distress from the nonstop, numbing repetition that turns this Netflix movie dull and dreary way too fast.

Isaac's brilliant take on this bearded, buzz-cut and barefoot Dr. Frankenstein is a tour de force of shock and awe. Ex Machina springs surprises that will haunt you for a good long time.

As always with Park Chanwook, you just hold on and let him rip.

Despite grim doings involving sexual hysteria and chopped-up body parts (don't ask), Ramsay and Morton fill this character study with poetic force and buoyant feeling.

Audiard recently won the Silver Lion as Best Director at the Venice Film Festival. Watch The Sisters Brothers and you’ll have no trouble understanding why.

Ethan Hawke gives one of his greatest performances as a Broadway musical legend who ends up breaking his own heart in Ricard Linklater’s enthralling, encapsulated biopic

Getting lost in the hypnotic Half-Blood Prince is what gives the movie its haunting power.

A tour through the byways of Zootopia is a bracing blend of color and richly detailed design.

I found myself wishing that Taymor would turn off the sound and fury and let The Tempest speak for itself. My wish wasn't granted.

Waggish fun like this is too good to miss.

If you're looking for action movie heaven, try Speed, a crackling blend of suspense and fun that gives you the rush of a runaway roller coaster.

The famous Assayas light touch keeps his film above the fray of didacticism. So dig in as an expert cast puts a scintillating spin on every verbal volley. Non-Fiction is a bonbon spiked with delicious wit and malice.

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

Whedon, without skimping on the tale’s tragic undercurrents, has crafted an irresistible blend of mirth and malice.

British actor Harris Dickinson gives a smashing breakthrough performance in Beach Rats.

The exquisitely wrought tale of four British women of different backgrounds who rent a villa in Portofino, Italy, is delivered with a witty feminist twist by director Mike Newell (Dance With a Stranger) and an outstanding cast.

What saves director Ted Demme's comic talkfest from sitcom slickness is a quirky script by Scott Rosenberg and an appealing cast.

Tracks is an exhilarating adventure that opens up an unknown world to most of us and does it so well that we feel we're living it too.

A mesmerizing film spinning from hilarity to heartbreak.

One of the best movies of the year--startling, innovative, hugely funny and powerfully, courageously moving.

Linda is a beast of a role and Rose Byrne plays her with everything’s she’s got and then some. No list of the year’s great performances would be complete without this tour de force.

Uneven in tone and pacing, Guillermo del Toro’s passion project about a monster and his creator still roars to life as a thing of beauty and terror.

Oakland-based rapper Boots Riley scores a knockout debut as a director with Sorry to Bother You, a no-mercy satire that gets up in your face, breaks all the rules – and then invents new rules so it can break them too.

A borrowed idea -- hello, "Blade Runner," hi there, "Matrix" -- but an idea nonetheless.

Starring the great Jessica Lange as a Broadway legend gobsmacked by a diagnosis of dementia, this is a snappy, stirring tribute to theater as a lifeline. Ignore the occasional drift into soap opera in favor of Lange’s transfixing master class in acting Just sit back and behold.

The burning intensity of MacKay’s face, reflecting the ferocity and futility of war, leaves an indelible mark. His fervor, coupled with the creative passion that Mendes infuses in every frame, makes 1917 impossible to shake.

Don't think you can take another Hollywood version of Sherlock Holmes? Snap out of it. Apologies to Robert Downey Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch, but what Ian McKellen does with Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective in Mr. Holmes is nothing short of magnificent.

Demi Moore seizes the role of her lifetime as a movie star turned fitness guru who gets axed for committing the cardinal sin of aging. You’ve never seen anything like the body horrors in Coralie Fargeat’s gory and glorious takedown of youth obsession.

A funny and touching film that is gorgeously acted by a British cast to rival Gosford Park's.

It's a terrific, twisty, funny-as-hell crime flick about so-called hicks who decide that making America great again starts right at home.

With Denis there’s always more than meets the prism of snap judgements. Let the movie mess with your head.

Here’s your holiday counter-programming ticket to fear and trembling. It’s a passion project for Robert Eggers who creates an atmosphere of creeping dread in which Bill Skarsgård and Lily-Rose Depp are to die for as a vampire Count and his loveliest-trickiest victim

In this romcom that evaporates while you’re watching it, a mismatched Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page fight a losing battle to outshine the scenery.

Cynthia Nixon is simply magnificent as Dickinson, finding the sharp wit and searching mind of a woman out of step with the codes and formalities of her time.

It's a major dud.

Does the plot spin out of control? You bet. But dumb fun this smart is a gift.

Howard lays off the manipulation to tell the true story of the near-fatal 1970 Apollo 13 mission in painstaking and lively detail. It's easily Howard's best film.

Slim pickings.

This teeming film sometimes bursts at the seams, but it’s abound with an exuberant energy that honors Dickens without embalming him in the literary past. It’s irresistible.

If you want to see what great acting is, watch Alfre Woodard deliver a master class in Clemency.

A black-comedy gem.

Before this trippy, mesmerizing movie swerves out of control, it delivers an exhilarating and challenging ride.

When it flies, it soars.

Affleck and Hall make this unlikely love story palpably moving. And Renner (The Hurt Locker) is dynamite - he radiates ferocity and feeling.

Danielle Deadwyler gives the breakout performance of the year as an activist mother who used the 1955 lynching of her son Emmett Till (Jalyn Hall) to galvanize the civil-rights movement. Director Chinonye Chukwu crafts this emotional powerhouse into essential viewing.

Will Smith has an easy charm, and this labored romantic farce works it hard. Too hard.

Another game-changer from Jordan Peele, who pushes the limits of fun, fright and movie love to take horror to the next level. What do UFOs have to do with the violence eating at America? Say yes to Nope—it’ll mess with your head and pin you to your seat.

If Finding Dory lacks the fresh surprise of its predecessor, it still brims with humor, heart and animation miracles.

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

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

When it comes to high-wire acting with no net, Nicolas Cage is a rock star and the serial-killing satanic devil he plays here ranks with his bizarro best even when director Oz Perkins lets his plot slide into silliness. No matter—virtuoso Cage lights the spark and then, ka-boom!

One terrific movie... Pacino and Depp are a match made in acting heaven, riffing off each other with astonishing subtlety and wit.

In Washington's haunted eyes, in the stunning cinematography of Roger Deakins (Fargo) that plunges into the mad flare of combat, in the plot that deftly turns a whodunit into a meditation on character and in Zwick's persistent questioning of authority, Courage Under Fire honors its subject and its audience.

It's funny. So is Nicole Kidman, very Cruella De Vil as Millicent Clyde, a taxidermist with an eye on adding Paddington to her stuffed collection. It's an excuse for some chase scenes and physical comedy (Paddington gets his head stuck in a toilet bowl) that manage to suggest both the Marx brothers and Wes Anderson. I mean that as a good thing.

Nothing can save this repetitive bore. Dude, where's your memory?

So what if it’s talky. Writer-director Sarah Polley’s vital film gathers together eight women—acted with heat and heart by a miraculous cast—to debate what to do about male sexual predators. Doing nothing is not an option in this unique and unforgettable landmark in the making.

The movie needed great performances, and it gets them from Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn.

Coppola gives Suicides a haunted quality that is undeniably affecting, a feeling intensified by a wonderfully funny and touching Dunst.

This no-bull spellbinder is allergic to sentiment. Unlike porn, Wetlands keeps its humanity intact. And if Oscar didn't have a stick up his ass, Juri would be a nominee for Best Actress. Yup, she's that good. Your move.

Ed Harris, who plays Pollock and makes his debut as a director - doing both jobs superbly, by the way - is angst incarnate.

In this risky, riveting film, our most prolific and provocative moviemaker uses his wit to touch a nerve. Crimes and Misdemeansors is so funny it hurts.

Through haunting home movies, Mina's diaries and interviews with Mike, a raw, riveting portrait emerges of what a child sees in his parents' relationship and what lies beneath.

It would have been nice if filmmaker Sam Levinson had provided a real script instead of a thin outline, but John David Washington and an incandescent Zendaya are thrilling to watch as lovers at war in a millennial ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.’

A riveting Anna Kendrick brings her own experience with a psychologically abusive relationship to this tale of a young woman who learns to stand her non-violent ground against a male predator through female friendship. The result is quietly devastating.

Writer-director Damián Szifron hasn't made one film — he's made six, stitched together under one title and sent out to a world that may not be ready. Screw the pussies. Wild Tales is gleefully out for blood.

It's pure cinema, a hypnotic and haunting dream that tempts us to jump in and get lost. Do it.

A stuffy, soggy slog of a movie that fails to generate sparks or a lick of dramatic sense.

All credit to a finely tuned Brosnan for packing so much intensity and wayward wit into his scenes with McGregor. Their verbal duels make for a dazzling game of cat-and-mouse.

In the hands of first-time feature director Shannon Murphy — who crushed it in both of the Season Three Killing Eve episodes she helmed — and screenwriter Rita Kalnejais, who adapted her own play, Babyteeth rips past the hackneyed tropes of illness drama to dig out what’s fresh in the familiar.

A visual marvel that cuts a direct path to the heart.

As the cases mount and institutional reps succeed best by playing dumb, The Hunting Ground becomes a energizing call to action, a potent provocation that’s been too long coming.

Wobbly but well-intentioned broadside against racism.

Comedy really is hard. So it's a kick when a filmmaker gets it right, as Noah Baumbach does in this stingingly funny take on aging.

It may be tonally all over the place as cinema, but in his first film, actor turned director Harris Dickinson cuts a direct path to the heart and certifies star Frank Dillane as a major talent.

For three years, the camera focuses on the Chicks as wives, mothers, entertainers and political flash points. Their fight to stay uncompromised is inspiring.

McConaughey makes sure we feel his tenacity and triumphs in the treatment of AIDS. His explosive, unerring portrayal defines what makes an actor great, blazing commitment to a character and the range to make every nuance felt.

In a world of humans, bad boy British pop rocker Robbie Williams casts himself as a computer=generated monkey. Too much? Maybe. But damn, this banger-infused biopic works like gangbusters under the visual magic of director Michael Gracey

A movie that offers hard speculation and harder truths. You won't be able to get it out of your head.

Anora Oscar winner Sean Baker produced, edited and cowrote Shih-Ching Tsou’s captivating tale of three generations of women building a life in Taipei. One personal note: As a leftie myself, I strenuously object to the idea that being left-handed is the mark of the devil.

The film belongs to Firth. Uncanny at showing the heart crumbling under George's elegant exterior, he gives the performance of his career.

Its truths are personal. It means to shake you. And does.

To the credit of this scrappy, admirably femcentric film, crisply directed by Meera Menon from a tightly wound script by Amy Fox (with Reiner and Thomas also doing double-duty as producers), Equity refuses to paint a rosy picture of women at the top.

No wonder Kurt Cobain was a fan. But it's the way Feuerzeig walks with him on the line between creativity and madness that digs this haunting and hypnotic film into your memory.