Peter Travers

Written and directed by the bracingly brilliant Joanna Hogg, this delicate, dazzling memoir traces her own origin story, and there is something superheroic about her struggle to look back without hitting the brick wall of formula and weepy nostalgia.

What makes David Crosby: Remember My Name one of the best rock documentaries of all time is the no-bull immediacy of the filmmaking.

Take a look at leading man Wagner Moura. That’s a movie star, right there. An Oscar nomination for this political thriller that truly thrills is his next step. Just watch, it’ll happen.

If you're looking to have your nerves fried and your pulse pounded, this is your ticket to ride.

A savage comedy of sexual extremes; the barbed laughs draw blood.

The year’s most indelibly inventive animated adventure mixes graphic design with documentary realism and puts hallucinatory brilliance at the service of understanding the continuing psychic damage of war. You’ll never forget it.

Anderson offers no phony uplift for the Tenenbaums or for audiences. But he does know how to take a sad song and make it better. In these troubled times, that's a gift.

One of the best movies of the year--startling, innovative, hugely funny and powerfully, courageously moving.

Sadly, Howard blands out in the final third, using old-age makeup and tear-jerking to turn a tough true story into something easily digestible. Until then, you'll be riveted.

Elegant, funny and unexpectedly touching, this whodunit about a murder aboard the yacht of William Randolph Hearst represents a bracing comeback for Peter Bogdanovich.

In a hotly divisive, post Jan. 6 election year, cinema virtuoso Alex Garland embeds us with journalists, led by a killer Kirsten Dunst, covering a speculative second war between the states. The bloody result is the most original,and propulsively exciting movie of the year so far.

Gorgeous filmmaking that brims over with funhouse thrills and ravishing romance.

Fierce, funny and vividly moving.

This new animation classic, the first in a two-part sequel, is out to make history. Consider it done. In a word—wow! You’ve never seen anything like it in your life.

Starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga in two of the year’s best performances, this mesmerizing film about race, class and gender identity in the 1920s speaks urgently to right now and marks a brilliant directing debut from Rebecca Hall.

One of Moore’s best and most incisively funny films — right up there with "Roger & Me" (1989), "Bowling for Columbine" (2002) and "Sicko" (2007) — his latest goes way past taking potshots at the Donald, though it does that with piercing intelligence and wounding wit.

Oscar voters pretend not to see that Sandler’s a clown who can, almost by an act of will, stand toe-to-toe with the best we’ve got.

Cage, who gives a blazing, imposive performance, uses his haunted eyes to reveal the emotional scars that Frank can't heal.

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.

Howard lays off the manipulation to tell the true story of the near-fatal 1970 Apollo 13 mission in painstaking and lively detail. It's easily Howard's best film.

It’s impossible to experience the deep-seated compassion of this film and not be moved to tears.

The actors make it unique and unforgettable.

An uncommonly good movie - a thriller that transcends thrills to become a heartfelt and heart-stopping personal drama.

It's a powerful and provocative achievement from a first-time filmmaker of enormous promise.

A funny and touching film that is gorgeously acted by a British cast to rival Gosford Park's.

A world-class charmer that could even seduce the Academy when it hands out the first official animation Oscar next year.

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

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.