Steven Rea

If Malik doesn't remind you of Al Pacino's Michael Corleone on his journey from innocence to corruption in "The Godfather" saga, well . . . he should. A Prophet is similarly, startlingly momentous.

It's Greengrass' way of asking a question that looms large in these post-9/11 days: Are we all praying to the same God, or is one man's God better than another, and one man's God vastly more terrifying?

Big hair. Big mouths. Big scams. Everything about American Hustle, David O. Russell's wild and woolly take on the late-'70s FBI sting operation code-named Abscam, is big. And the biggest thing of all is the love story that beats at the heart of this rollicking disco-era ensemble piece.

A visually dazzling mood piece.

It's a trippy but tender examination of human emotions, relationships, all-consuming love.

Whiplash is writer/director Damien Chazelle's hyperventilated nightmare about artistic struggle, artistic ambition. It's as much a horror movie as it is a keenly realized indie about jazz, about art, about what it takes to claim greatness.

It's action opera, sword-and-sorcery song-and-dance, and it's a heart-pumping, jaw-dropping thrill. OK, so I kind of like the thing.

The Dardennes are aces at these small-scale human dramas, and Two Days, One Night is almost without flaw.

Pitch-perfect and profoundly moving.

Baron Cohen brings scary conviction to the performance.

The polar opposite of the J.K. Simmons character in "Whiplash."

There is intrigue. There is suspense. Guilt - a man's guilt, a nation's - hangs heavy in the air.

A quietly soulful study of two very different men.

Strangely, wonderfully, The Artist feels as bold and innovative a moviegoing experience as James Cameron's bells-and-whistles Avatar did a couple of years ago. Retro becomes nuevo. Quaint becomes cool.

We're in the company of a great character here, with a lot on his mind, a lot to say.

One of the great war movies - or antiwar movies - of all time.

Despite the potential for some supernatural grandiosity, the tone here remains understated and quiet, and Gainsbourg's performance feels lived-in, and deep, and right.

Singular and stunning.

This is no-nonsense, let's-get-to-it business, and will probably be less satisfying, and less clear, to viewers unfamiliar with the source material.

Easily the best stop-motion animated necrophiliac musical romantic comedy of all time. It is also just simply, wonderful: a morbid, merry tale of true love that dazzles the eyes and delights the soul.

A profoundly unnerving historical document.

Sustaining illusion with marvelous grace is, in a nutshell, exactly what Anderson is all about.

It's aimed at adults as much as children, with jokes that work on multiple levels, and contraptions.

And Bridges? What's there to say about a man who makes it look so easy, and who - in one breathless, pivotal scene - runs through a range of emotion like a wild pony running across the land. Genius, any way you look at it.

Toy Story 2, like its forebear, will stand the test of time.

Brooklyn is that rare period drama that doesn't lose itself in its dogged re-creation of another time.

It's a quietly powerful work, pulsing with gentle humor and a gripping sense of imminent calamity and dread.

Yun's performance is remarkable. The journey Mija takes is painful and hard and - for us, watching - sublime.