Peter Travers

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.

It's unmissable, flaws and all, because riveting suspense spiced with diabolical laughs and garnished with a sprig of kinky romance add up to the tastiest dish around.

Begins like an episode of "I Love Lucy" and ends with the impact of "Easy Rider."

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.

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.

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

Get your titles straight -- this is the good one, and a roaring good time.

You’ll never forget the nakedly unafraid performance that Emma Stone delivers in this rowdy and rapturously beautiful blast of feminist whup-ass from director Yorgos Lanthimos. You won’t know what hit you, which is just one reason why I’m rabid to see it again.

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

Richardson is extraordinary; it’s a brave, award-caliber performance...The fiercely erotic and deeply moving Damage casts a hypnotic spell and without moralizing.

The Daniels and their wow of a star Michelle Yeoh turn this visionary absurdist comedy into a volcano of creative ideas in full eruption. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen

Irresistibly deranged.

Director Ben Affleck slam dunks a movie about a basketball sneaker—the Air Jordan, no less— and it’s the first all-star Oscar contender of 2023, an outrageously entertaining classic in the making with Affleck, Matt Damon, Viola Davis and a cast of MVPs at the top of their game.

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.

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

The crazy-ass imagination at work in Being John Malkovich hits you like a blast of pure oxygen...this movie of constant astonishments will make you laugh hard and long.

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.

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.

Cord Jefferson’s slashingly funny satire of Black literary stereotyping is one of the best and boldest American comedies in years with a dynamite performance by Jeffrey Wright that should put him up front in the Oscar sweeps. You won't look at race on screen in the same way again.

A maliciously funny and keenly observant movie -- director-writer Patrick Stettner makes a potent feature debut -- that serves its humor dark and without artificial sweeteners.

So what if the showoff climax deserts depth for dazzle. As the first Asian hero in Marvel history, former stuntman Simu Liu is action poetry in motion and his epic starring debut kicks off the fall film season on a rousing high note.

In the most purely pleasurable movie so far this year, Ryan Gosling has a blast as a science guy who rockets into space to save all our asses with jolts, jokes and smarts that won’t quit.

Instead of the easy attitudinizing that is the default position for teen comedies, Gimme the Loot fills each frame with raw talent and exuberance.

Nightcrawler curves and hisses its way into your head with demonic skill. When the laughs come, they stick in your throat. This is a deliciously twisted piece of work. And Gyllenhaal, coiled and ready to spring, is scarily brilliant. He truly is a monster for our time.

The film belongs to Jolie. She won an Oscar for 1999's "Girl, Interrupted," but this is by far her best performance.

It's the work of a major talent. Apatow scores by crafting the film equivalent of a stand-up routine that encompasses the joy, pain, anger, loneliness and aching doubt that go into making an audience laugh.

It's the classic American tale of the family man triumphant, and Howard makes sure that it hits you right in the heart.

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.