Rene Rodriguez

A marketable counterpoint to last year’s "Boyhood."

Knocked Up is filled with comic exchanges and bits of business that, while not essential to the central plot, keep the movie's comedic energy chugging (like Debbie's throwdown with a doorman at a popular nightclub who won't let her in because she's too old).

By the end, Turtles Can Fly becomes a lyrical and heartbreaking reminder of the human toll of war.

This is the most vibrant, exciting and invigorating movie-movie of the year.

This delicate, transporting movie, which keeps dialogue to a minimum to tell its story primarily through images, is also a triumph of sheer cinematic craft that mirrors its characters' contemplative natures while extolling the virtues of lives simply led.

A big, bold movie that gets at undeniable truths about the way no one, no matter how powerful, is immune from manipulation.

Ever the satirist, Payne mines humor from his characters, be it Randall's cockeyed pyramid-scheme ideas or the banality of a ridiculous wedding toast.

There's a lot more at work in this raucously entertaining movie than cross-dressing clichés.

Holy Motors is wild and unfettered and playful - the work of an artist who carries his love of cinema in his bones, and knows how to share that affection with the audience.

The Dark Knight is dark, all right: It's a luxurious nightmare disguised in a superhero costume, and it's proof that popcorn entertainments don't have to talk down to their audiences in order to satisfy them. The bar for comic-book film adaptations has been permanently raised.

The movie is essentially a vehicle for Smith, but the actor more than rises to the challenge. Rarely has attaining the American Dream seemed so impossible or daunting or so intensely, profoundly satisfying.

This is a smart, wise and compassionate movie about young people in the act of finding out who they are and not always behaving properly but never crossing the line into cruelty or crassness. If you happen to have been around during 1980, the soundtrack is just a bonus.

Unlike "A Separation", in which Iranian culture and mores played critical roles, the theme in The Past is more universal and spelled out in the title.

If you're going to direct a piece of crass, nonsensical junk, at least have the decency to release it straight to video, where it belongs.

The movie plays out as a series of memories, so exact and evocative that watching it becomes an immersive experience.

It's Leigh's rawest, most self-indulgent film to date. At times the movie seems to go on and on, noisily spinning its wheels. There's no dramatic arc to speak of, and the scenes in his girlfriend's flat are much less involving than Johnny's street experiences... Whenever the movie lets Johnny loose to wreak his own brand of hellish emotional havoc, however, Naked seethes with primal fury. [25 Feb. 1994, p.G5]

Although it strikes a perfect balance between otherworldly, slimy menace and 1950s B-movie cheesiness, The Host's computer-generated mutant isn't what makes this frantic, wild picture so much fun.

Restrepo makes time to observe these men during brief off-duty stints -- at one point four use an iPod to form an impromptu, joyous dance party -- but the bulk of the film centers on their insanely dangerous and heroic work.

To call Meek's Cutoff slow doesn't begin to describe its pace. There are stretches that are, frankly, boring. But the vivid details and intimacy you develop with these travelers sticks with you.

What The Long Day Closes lacks is a narrative thread, however slim, to match the perfectly realized setting and wonderful visuals Davies has crafted. The whole thing feels like a chapter of a much larger work, one that, if finished, would doubtless prove more intriguing than what we get here. [7 Aug 1993, p.G5]

Coogler occasionally overplays his hand: The scene in which Oscar says goodbye to his daughter for what we know will be the last time is prolonged to the point of overkill.

A portrait of a family reeling with pain and resentment -- and rising to the challenge of dealing with it head-on.

This may not be Park’s best or gravest picture. But it might be his most entertaining.

A terrific yarn, one so engrossing and surprising that the nature of the story's structure -- each question Jamal gets asked on the show corresponds with a traumatic or momentous moment from his childhood -- never feels like a contrived framing device.

The story of Paranoid Park may center on an extreme and unusual case, but it's Van Sant's understanding of -- and compassion for -- the hell of growing up that makes the film such a profound and lasting pleasure.

Seeing the Earth from the point of view these men saw it -- ''like a jewel hung in the blackness'' -- tends to put things in perspective.

Movies that demand to be seen by everyone -- not only for their entertainment value, but for what they say -- are precious rarities. Spike Lee's Get On the Bus is one of those films. You walk out of it feeling the world's axis has tilted ever so slightly: No matter who you are, or what your perspective was going in, the movie will make you look at last year's Million Man March -- and all of black America -- through different eyes. [16 Oct 1996, p.1D]

Children of Men is thrilling, both for its groundbreaking style (there are action sequences here unlike any filmed before) and its complex, vividly realized ideas.