The Trial of the Chicago 7 is something unexpected, fun. Sorkin trusts his instincts. Maybe real life has made it so that nothing seems over the top anymore. Whatever the case, it makes the film something else, too: timely.

Maren Ade's film, an Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film, is almost painful to watch at times, but it's also funny and touching and reflective of the world, all courtesy of Ade and terrific performances by Peter Simonischek as a goofy father who refuses to act his age and Sandra Hüller as his daughter, as buttoned-up as her dad isn't.

Gregg really reaches far, scattering in bits of magical realism and an art-house ending that is simultaneously wondrous and a trifle heavy-handed. The finale may be a bit much for some, but movie buffs will likely give Gregg the benefit of the doubt.

It’s lush, it’s electrifying, it’s wild. But more than that, the movie has real heart.

It is not hyperbole to say Oyelowo is a revelation. The British actor brings phenomenal humanity, grace and torment to a historical figure who once seemed to loom too large a legend to make flesh on screen.

Sorry to Bother You, Boots Riley's see-it-to-believe-it feature debut as a director, goes from agreeably strange to weird to surreal, but its brilliance lies in how it never stops feeling real, genuine, lived-in.

At times hilarious but ultimately heartbreaking, Project Nim is a great chronicle of the 1970s and all the nutty ideas that implies; academia in particular comes in for a hard reckoning.

This isn't a warts-and-all portrayal. More like a warts-and-little-else one. But it is an inspired film, a beautiful exploration of art and creation and difficulty, with Spall's brilliant performance at its center.

A perverse delight, the rare film that makes you feel good about feeling bad (or at least watching others do so).

Howard, whose first job as a director was the 1977 Roger Corman-produced “Grand Theft Auto,” has captured what is surely the greatest racing footage ever shot.

The Secret in Their Eyes never lets you forget that you're watching a movie - and never lets you wish you were doing anything else.

It unfolds in ways both comic and affecting.

There is no particularly cathartic climax to Frances Ha. Instead there is a more realistic depiction of Frances’ growth. Like Gerwig’s performance, it’s natural, it’s realistic, perfectly believable.

The Handmaiden is everything, in that it is a mystery, a graphically erotic romance, a black comedy and a little bit of a horror story. And, of course, really good.

It is a terrifically entertaining film, alive from the start, following its Marvel mission (for good and bad) while rising above it.

It isn’t just a terrific movie. It’s an important one.

Riva, meanwhile, is astounding, not just in the way she portrays the physical manifestation of her decline, particularly later in the film, but also earlier, when she knows she is fading and does not wish to do so. The look in her eyes, the sadness in her face, is crushing.

Once it's done, you feel terrible for these people, for their lives, for their daughter, especially. Is that entertainment? To each his own, but it is compelling and, yes, rewarding.

It’s all a neat trick. Or exercise. Or brain-teaser. Whatever you want to call it, Upstream Color is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. But once you have seen it, once isn’t going to be enough

The trip through their history is a trip through the 1980s and ’90s, and Diamond and Horowitz offer the unique perspective of people in the middle of it then who are on the outside looking back, knowledgeable observers who know more now than they knew then. And isn’t that the idea?

The acting is uniformly terrific, just a marvel to watch.

Some of the behavior of Uriel and Eliezer will make you squirm. But Ashkenazi and Bar-Aba are so compelling in their performances of difficult men that you'll gladly suffer.

There are surprises and plenty of action. What's good about Snowpiercer is how they all blend together; each element informs the other.

In a world where film arguably celebrates youth more often than middle-aged people in Hollywood, it's refreshing to see the opposite artfully done with one step on the dance floor at a time.

The performances are remarkable. So is the way Farhadi tells the story.

The Shape of Water is a fantasy, a myth, a fairy tale, all that.

Farhadi again burrows deep into his characters to tell an achingly intimate story, spinning grand tragedies out of minor lives in which the past lingers in the air, a perfume that haunts long after its wearer has left the room.

It Comes at Night is soaked in uncertainty. It makes us uncomfortable because we want answers and can’t have them. And if there’s anyone who knows how to make an audience uncomfortable, it’s writer and director Trey Edward Shults.

This is a challenging, brilliantly constructed film that, despite its patience and quiet tone, is engrossing from its first moments, especially an opening scene that encapsulates Jandal's poignant contradictions.

In the hands of three gifted actors — Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen and Carrie Coon — it is a beautiful film, one of the best of the year.

And now with Tangled, a delightfully fresh spin on "Rapunzel," the entertainment powerhouse delivers its first classic-caliber computer animation outside the Pixar family.

Throughout the film Famuyiwa, who also wrote the script, uses split screens and backs up the film and jumps around and freezes the action, but he's not showing off. He uses these techniques to tell his story, and doesn't overuse them to the point of annoyance.

Frank is a true original, a film that heads in one direction only to veer off in another, yet never loses sight of where it's going.

It's a fine line between being gratingly self-conscious and really smart; more times than not, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl comes out on the winning side of that equation.

In addition to the performances — truly, everyone is good — what stands out is Sachs' direction. It's measured, patient. The scenes play out as one imagines the characters' lives would.

Ultimately, think of the movie as a puzzle box in which all the pieces fit together wonderfully well. Once you step back and take a look at how it’s all put together, you have to marvel at how cleverly constructed the whole thing is.

David O. Russell's film makes use of some terrific performances - Christian Bale is brilliant, as is Melissa Leo, even by their lofty standards.

My interpretation is that it’s a scary, funny film with a lot beneath the surface. And it’s certainly preferable to watching the news.

There is not a frame of The Power of the Dog, based on the Thomas Savage novel, that isn’t essential to the movie. This includes the first and certainly the last.

There is so much love and understanding of all the genres the film is skewering that What We Do in the Shadows transcends its lowbrow inspirations. It's a real treat.

McBaine and Moss expertly build tension leading toward the election. Last-minute surprises and frustratingly cynical attacks only increase the edge-of-your-seat aspect of the film.

It's a joy to watch Beckinsale attack the material — Lady Susan is one of those people whose interest in themselves and their own well-being is so great that it becomes contagious.

What Rukun wants, one suspects, is closure. What he gives the rest of us is a face in which to see the pain the butchers caused, a reminder that the architects of a massive tragedy remain present and unrepentant, the personification of the evil men do and a warning that it could happen again.

Olsen makes us understand, as best we can, Martha's plight. She has a tenuous grip on reality, and, thanks to Olsen's performance and Durkin's sure hand, by the film's end, so do we.

This is one of the strangest yet most satisfying movie experiences of the year, one of those films in which you can’t really appreciate what you’ve seen until it’s over. You just have to trust that the trip is worth the trouble. And it is.

A host of British acting royalty, meanwhile, roams around the film: Derek Jacobi as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Claire Bloom as Queen Mary, Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill and so on.

It actually is quite funny. It is also warm and empathetic, though a viewer's reaction to the film might vary depending how they view the subject of assisted suicide.

Director Craig Zobel (he made the creepily effective “Compliance”) lets the story unfold in wonderfully hushed fashion.

Only Yesterday is a mature work of art, no matter what the genre, no matter what the format, no matter what.

Kaufman and King somehow give felt puppets an independence they might otherwise have lacked. How? The magic of movies, I guess. Or, more likely, the magic of Kaufman’s mind.

Its images are classic, its story immediate and urgent. That's a pretty vital combination.

This is the kind of movie about teenagers that an adult audience should embrace. It's simply that good, and Stone is nothing short of wonderful.

The acting is outstanding all the way around. But Stewart is brilliant. She looks, sounds and moves amazingly like the real Diana, but this is no impersonation. Instead it’s Stewart getting to the heart of the truth through her performance, her Diana a prisoner of the fame and adherence to tradition at all costs that trapped her.

The Color Purple is a spectacle with big ensemble numbers, powerful solos and duets that will pull on your heartstrings. At a whopping two hours and 20 minutes, it never drags. The music propels the story instead of interrupting. Meanwhile, the performances will have you gasping and cheering.

There is so much beauty in Monster, and so much sadness.

Spare, haunting and in its own way beautiful, Ida is an absorbing film about discovering the truth, and the attendant price we pay to learn it.

Don’t forget to bring a box of tissues with you when heading to see “Sing Sing.” That isn’t because it’s a sad story necessarily, but one that moves you and makes you empathize with the main characters. It is real and raw.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a terrific film, if you give yourself to it. You should, because, with Amirpour's blending of influences and pop culture, she has created a true original.

Paul Schrader’s First Reformed is an amazing examination of faith, a film that stays with you long after you have left the theater.

The story is captivating from the very first moments.

Leave No Trace is a beautiful film, heartbreaking in the self-awareness — both existing and burgeoning — of its characters.

It’s a sumptuous movie, with gorgeous cinematography (also by Dweck and Kershaw). It won’t necessarily make you want to rush out and pay a fortune for truffles to shave over your eggs. But it will make you appreciate people whose love for something has so fully informed their lives.

A sense of dread hovers over all these characters, and, by extension, the audience. It's in the air of the place, like oxygen. And vodka. Lots of vodka. Yet Zvyagintsev's achievement, or one of them, is creating a film that is not one long downer. It's not exactly a laugh riot, but we do care about these people.

It's all or nothing with Black Swan. Either you embrace its headlong descent into madness brought on by the pressures of artistic perfection, compounded by smothering anxiety, or you reject it. It's that simple.

The most remarkable thing about Ira Sachs’ richly textured new film Little Men is how it manages to be about so much, and yet so little.

The characters in the film don't shed tears, but you'll be fighting them at certain points. Pain and Glory stays with you, and grows richer with reflection.

It’s fun, it’s smart and yes, it actually does have something to say. Delivered in this way, I think people are more inclined to listen.

I knew nothing about the real story of the Agojie before I saw "The Woman King." I thought it was a breathtaking, creative and powerful film. And despite knowing the history now, I still do.

The catharsis found here is far quieter, and much more effective, whether it be the pain expressed in a student's essay or the honesty found in a simple gesture, one that ends the film in beautifully moving fashion.

Exceptionally well made, tougher than you'd think in its depictions of a troubled marriage and full of deep performances — it's outstanding.

Call Me by Your Name is a lush, heartbreakingly beautiful film about first love, but also the glories of youth, when everything is new and any number of paths open before you.

It is undeniably fun to see such a great movie sliced and diced and put back together in so many ways. Too often when we see a movie we like, we just say it’s good, recommend it to someone and leave it at that.

Blanchett navigates this journey with ferocious power — even as Lydia is losing her own. It sounds like a cliche, but her performance is so believable, so natural, which at times means so disturbing, that it doesn’t seem like she’s acting. She’s just being.

It's clear-eyed and remarkably honest, and Macdonald shows a flair for illustrating how Houston's life fits in the bigger picture

The film is slow at times, despite bursts of action, and Chandor could have let it breathe a little more. The seriousness grows stuffy every now and then, but these are small quibbles. A Most Violent Year is an outstanding movie about business and marriage, not necessarily in that order.

It doesn’t just maintain the momentum built in the previous chapters but further ramps up the emotional stakes and physical complexity. It’s like gorging on candy for two hours, only you get to walk away from the theater without a stomachache.

The film is not an epic. It's not a masterpiece. But it is an involving study of men searching, searching for answers, for belonging, for a foothold in life at a time when footholds were hard to find.

Even at its most disgusting, and it does get disgusting, the film is engrossing. It’s not that you can’t look away. It’s that you want to look and look again. That’s the lure of the vampire. And it’s the lure of “Nosferatu,” Eggers’ best film (at least so far).

Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street is absurd, ridiculous, over the top, overindulgent, overlong, overstuffed, over-everythinged. And that is precisely the point.

As its title suggests, This Is Not a Film may not be what we're used to in a movie, but in many ways it's much, much more.

If Greene had simply told the story in more straightforward documentary fashion, Bisbee ’17 would be an interesting film. By telling the story within the story, he’s done something more: He’s made an urgent, powerful one.

Chomet's defiantly two-dimensional artwork is warm, inviting, beautiful, establishing immediately a comfort level, at least for audiences of, ahem, a certain age.

Neville, who won an Oscar for "20 Feet from Stardom," could have gone a different route, maybe try to dig up some dirt. But there really doesn't seem to be any. I don't know if it's Rogers' influence, but I like this film just the way it is.

The hidden magic in De Palma is Baumbach and Paltrow’s editing. The pacing is just right, and the stories flow, one from another. Sit back, relax, watch, listen and learn. It’s a good time at the movies.

Vartolomei’s performance is amazing. The way her face registers everything she endures, from grim determination to frustration to mental and physical agony, seems genuine, authentic.

Mostly it's brilliant, challenging, deliberate, scary as all get out. It's as much a portrait of a dysfunctional family as it is a horror movie. But don't let that relax you. It's definitely a horror movie.

It’s fascinating and funny while forcing us to consider the line between technology and art.

It's great when a movie messes with your head. And Ex Machina, screenwriter Alex Garland's directorial debut, does just that, pretty much from start to finish. The writer of "28 Days Later" and "Sunshine" purports to examine A.I., or artificial intelligence. What he's really after is something at once more exotic and more relatable — and infinitely less predictable: human nature.

It's Gerwig’s movie, Gerwig’s take on childhood and the patriarchy and feminism and love and death — boy, death — all wrapped in a package that continually surprises. So yeah, it’s not what you think it is. It’s better.

James Ponsoldt’s film, and its stars, Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley, continually take us in unexpected directions, giving the film an unexpected depth. It feels real, its emotions earned.

As a love letter to a talented and endearing soul, it's hard to fault Love, Gilda. Like its subject, it feels remarkably honest and genuine.

In Praise of Love has virtually no plot, no characters and is not about love, and there is precious little praise in it. It's an essay in film, and it's not always consistent in that: You'll never quite know what he's trying to say. But the film remains great because of the way he says it. Memorable images and dialogue worm their way into your psyche and won't let go. [18 Oct 2002, p.8P]

Passing is Rebecca Hall’s first feature film as a writer and director. You’d never know it. With her meticulous eye for detail, her beautiful framing of shots (in stunning black-and-white) and the wondrously moving performances she gets from her actors —to say nothing of her handling of the material (she wrote the script) — you’d think Hall had been at this for a while.

It doesn’t always make sense. But it is fascinating — and fun — to watch.

It's Douglas' movie - and you've got a fine movie.

The Cabin in the Woods is a fantastic poke in the eye of our horror-movie expectations.

It’s a brilliant performance, Boseman coaxing so many emotions and feelings out of a deceptively complex character. His expressive eyes tell a lot of the story for him.

127 Hours is based on Ralston's memoir, and it's a really good movie because director Danny Boyle is a genius.