Peter Travers

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.