Peter Travers

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.

In The Farewell, Wang builds a funny, touching and vital film about what makes a family in any culture. It’s simply stunning.

Timothee Chalamet ping pongs to greatness in Josh Safdie’s whooshing wonder of a film about winning at all costs. And in case you’re wondering: This is the wildest damn thing Chalamet has ever put on screen.

Even a double dose of the great Robert De Niro taking on the grandpa roles of feuding mob bosses Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, can’t lift this gimmicky, grating, draggy attempt to join the pantheon of classic gangster cinema. It’s a losing battle.

Comedy and tragedy cohere in this extraordinary film of Alan Bennett's play.

Can Jane Campion’s Montana western about toxic masculinity and repressed sexuality win Netflix its first Best Picture Oscar? With a never-better Benedict Cumberbatch leading a dynamite cast, let’s just say that no list of the year’s best movies will be complete without this cinematic powder keg.

Delicate business is being transacted in Columbus, a whisper-soft debut from Kogonada that nonetheless results in something unique and unforgettable. It's pure cinema.

The Artist encapsulates everything we go to movies for: action, laughs, tears and a chance to get lost in another world. It just might leave you speechless. How can Oscar resist?

Director Brad Anderson tightens the screws of suspense, but it's Bale's gripping, beyond-the-call-of-duty performance that holds you in thrall.

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.

Eastwood's direction here is a thing of beauty, blending the ferocity of the classic films of Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai) with the delicacy and unblinking gaze of Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story).

Filtered through Kaufman's searching mind and soulful brilliance, the result is a masterpiece.

Relentless suspense allows The Girl Who Played With Fire to hold you in a viselike grip. But it's the performances of Nyqvist and especially Rapace that keep you coming back for more.

The movie pulls you in through the sheer immersive force of its filmmaking. In Long Day’s Journey, the search is everything with meaning as elusive and haunting as a dream.

A hugely entertaining blend of music, fun and eye-popping thrills, though it doesn't lack for 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.

This seriously funny movie, artfully photographed by the great Roger Deakins, is spiritual in nature, barbed in tone, and, oh, yeah, it stings like hell.

Capote is a movie that doesn't pull its punches. It's a knockout.

Who'd have thought the demise of a kill-happy Russian dictator could leave you laughing helplessly? That's The Death of Stalin for you, a slapstick tragedy – and for the funniest, fiercest comedy of the year so far – from the fertile mind of Armando Iannucci, the British political satirist behind the HBO's Veep and the sensational, Strangelovian In the Loop (2009).

In Mike Leigh’s lacerating new film, Marianne Jean-Baptiste delivers a hall-of-fame acting triumph as a London housewife and mother who’s mad at the world and ready to give us all a tongue-lashing. She’s an emotional powderkeg ready to blow. Better duck

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

Huppert's brilliance is indisputable, her performance alternately playful and deeply moving.

His (Anderson) abiding love for a vanished past, real and imagined, is at the core of The Grand Budapest Hotel. The thrill comes in watching as this rare talent gives his movie wings.

Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones bring flesh-and-blood immediacy to this classic in the making. about the beauty and terror of pioneering railroad days. A tough sell? Maybe. But not when a movie dares to reach for the stars like this one.

You get pulled into a force field, thanks to Cooper’s behind-the-camera chops and Gaga’s sound and fury. By the time the end credits roll, you realize that, in fact, two stars have been born.

It's a wow of a thriller with a soul that isn't computer generated. Poitras may be guilty of taking Snowden at face value, but she succeeds brilliantly in evoking a shadow villain intent on world domination. Big Brother is back, baby, and he's gone digital.

Recoing gives a performance that won't soon be forgotten. Neither will Time Out. It's a great movie.

All the acting is first-rate -- Dukakis gives major dimensions to a supporting role. And Christie, a Sixties screen goddess in "Darling" and "Doctor Zhivago," shows that her spirit and grace are eternal. She's a beauty. So is the movie.