Peter Travers

Foxtrot makes demands on audiences and then richly rewards them. It's a riveting, deeply resonant achievement.

Incisively witty, provocative and acted to perfection, this sublime entertainment is a career peak for producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.

The Woodman has recovered his common touch. On him, it looks good.

You don't just watch it as much as you absorb it until the film's ebb and flow become a part of you.

It may sound silly, but Lord and Park conjure up a world of visual miracles.

Two men alone create an epic landscape of feeling in one of the very best movies of the year.

Note to Oscar: Make sure a best actress nomination happens for the blazing Penelope Cruz in this emotional powerhouse from director Pedro Almodovar about a Madrid photographer coping with an unplanned pregnancy and a tangled political past.

Chris Pine proves he can act. Ben Foster, well, he always could. And Jeff Bridges shows them both how it's done. Those are just three riveting reasons to pony up for Hell or High Water.

Up is a breathtaking ride into the realm of pure imagination.

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.

Even when it goes off the rails, this epic take on the notorious French emperor boasts state-of-the-art battle scenes from master tactician Ridley Scott, 85, and a big acting swing from Joaquin Phoenix in a beast of a role that will keep you riveted.

Say this about Black Panther, which raises movie escapism very near the level of art: You've never seen anything like it in your life.

Brooklyn is easily the year's best and most beguiling love story. The surprise is that it also goes deeper, sadder and truer.

Spectacular in every sense of the word, even if you don' t know an Orc from a Uruk-Hai.

Renier and Francois give deeply affecting performances that help soften the film's harsh blows. But only in the compassionate eye of the Dardennes do these three children achieve a state of grace.

It’s the sort of cinema that feels steeped in the past, completely of the moment and timeless all at once.

I'm jazzed by every tasty, daring, devastating, howlingly funny, how'd-they-do-that minute in Birdman. Like all movies that soar above the toxic clouds of Hollywood formula and defy death at the box office, Alejandro G. Iñárritu's cinematic whirlwind will bring out the haters. They can all go piss off. Birdman is a volcano of creative ideas in full eruption. Buy a ticket and brace yourself.

Melissa McCarthy is a lock for a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Can You Ever Forgive Me?

The artful symmetry is an Almodovar hallmark, and his cinematic memento is filled with the intimate, indelible moments that made a life. You can feel his passion for cinema in every frame. Pain and Glory is not just his most personal film. It’s also one of his greatest.

So fasten your seat belts for Gomorrah, just snubbed in the wussy Oscar race for Best Foreign Film (so you know it's dynamite).

Niccol is too good a screenwriter (The Truman Show, Gattaca) not to know that Hollywood cliches are hell on a film's political bite. They muzzle it.

The film is alive with delicacy and feeling...It's a beauty.

Rushed off to Netflix when theaters are readily available, this fitfully competent “Jaws” ripoff will have to do until the real thing comes along. Condolences to leading lady Phoebe Dynevor who deserved better.

The challenge is exhilarating. You can discover a lot about yourself by getting lost in Mulholland Drive. It grips you like a dream that won't let go.

The practical effects, meaning the real stuff the computer never touched, make all the difference when you’re asking audiences to see the characters as human instead pawns in a digital game.

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

August Wilson’s play about black musicians fighting racism in 1927 may reveal its stage origins on screen, but watching Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman deliver the performances of their lives is a thrilling experience you do not want to miss.

What we have here is an exhilarating blast of a movie, full of heart but still punk rock. So don’t get all pissy because it’s in Swedish (with English subtitles) and you never heard of anyone in it and coming-of-age movies about girls make you puke.