Peter Travers

Michael Gerbosi's script might have reduced Crane to a clueless cliche were it not for the bruised humanity that Greg Kinnear brings to the role. Kinnear is dynamite.

A new crime classic.

It's a wild, whacked-out wonder. Coenheads rejoice.

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.

A landmark musical tribute.

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

If you're going to interpret on film the searching mind of an indisputable genius, it helps not to make too many dumbass moves. On that basis, score a triumph for Steve Jobs, written, directed and acted to perfection, and so fresh and startling in conception and execution that it leaves you awed.

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.

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.

In Jafar Panahi’s latest masterpiece, one of the very best movies of the year, five Iranian dissidents debate killing their former torturer.

A riveting screen adventure.

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.

Gilliam, along with the gifted cinematographer Roger Pratt and production designer Jeffrey Beecroft, fashions a disturbing and dazzling lost world.

In terms of excitement, imagination and rule-busting experimentation, it's a gusher.

This dizzyingly intricate film reveals new facets each time you see it. We leave Vertigo unsettled, like Scottie, who ends up on the edge of a precipice. Hitchcock is daring us to leap. He has prepared the ultimate fix for a cinema junkie: a movie to get lost in.

Ang Lee's unmissable and unforgettable Brokeback Mountain hits you like a shot in the heart. It's a landmark film and a triumph for Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Stimulating entertainment, as rigorously challenging and painfully funny as anything the Coens have done. But it's necessary to meet the Coens halfway. If you don't, Barton Fink is an empty exercise that will bore you breathless. If you do, it's a comic nightmare that will stir your imagination like no film in years.

Most movies stress the agony of art (think of Kirk Douglas' Van Gogh in "Lust for Life"). Schnabel's exceptional film honors his friend by showing the act of creation as a natural high.

Haynes' commitment to outcasts, then and now, makes Carol a romantic spellbinder that cuts deep. It's one of the year's very best films.

Ephron homes in on what's been missing in movies and in life: ardor, longing and smart talk about the screwed-up notions that pass for love.

Del Toro never coddles the audience. He means us to leave Pan's Labyrinth shaken to our souls. He succeeds.

You won't know what outrageous fun is until you see Borat. High-five!

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.

It’s an indisputable classic.

Linklater is a sly and formidable talent, bringing an anthropologist's eye to this spectacularly funny celebration of the rites of stupidity. His shitfaced "American Graffiti" is the ultimate party movie -- loud, crude, socially irresponsible and totally irresistible.

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.

It's a renegade masterpiece that will get you good.

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.