Foster was born to this kind of role, rugged but soulful, and he’s outstanding. The surprise is Pine, giving by far his best performance.

It’s delightful to see filmmakers and actors take such big swings. It’s even more delightful when they connect, and in Poor Things, they do.

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

Brooklyn often feels like a throwback in the best way, while Ronan has an old-time star turn, and she makes the most of it.

Yun's performance is genuinely beautiful, a haunting expression of life, of its disappointments and its possibilities, rendered in a way that befits the title.

Jenkins brings an urgency to If Beale Street Could Talk, along with the melancholy of problems still yet to be solved.

Birdman is a treat. But it's also more than that. It's a full-fledged wonder.

Director Marielle Heller delivers a solid movie with fantastic acting, creativity and engagement.

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.

In Return to Seoul, 25-year-old Parisian Frédérique Benoît (Park Ji-Min), aka Freddie, copes with learning about her Korean heritage during a spontaneous trip to South Korea. And the journey to finding herself and accepting her background is anything but linear.

Whether it’s the next in a long line or a summation of a fun series, Mission: Impossible — Fallout is a movie that all but defines escapism at its finest.

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.

Jane is a compelling movie, one that shows us not just more of the world, but also our place in it.

The girls bring a passion to the band that they can muster nowhere else in their lives. Not everyone gets what they're doing — well, no one, really — but that's the point. This is a knowing film, and a liberating one.

Marielle Heller’s debut directorial effort is incisive and universal, despite its very specific and detailed setting.

If it sounds like so much backroom politicking, it is. But it's exceptionally interesting, entertaining backroom politicking.

It's a sort of slow-boil Russian noir, if that genre exists, and if it doesn't, it does now. It's also a statement on class discrepancy in post-Soviet Russia. Arrogance, betrayal, crime and violence are all part of the story, directed and co-written by Andrei Zvyagintsev.

It feels like a filmmaker’s exercise rather than an involving motion picture. Although you may never be bored with All Is Lost, you are rarely fully engaged.

It's visually stunning, well written and the acting is top-notch. But without context, the plot falls flat, leaving behind an unsettling and bizarre 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.

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.

Any fan of acting — any fan of movies — will be thrilled.

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is not the first film about family secrets coming to light through grief, but it may be the most original.

It breathes youthful life into a tired franchise and makes the smartest transition yet of characters from the comics to the big screen with clever animation and thoughtful storytelling.

Greed, the lust for power and the willingness to do anything to obtain it are all on a lot of people’s minds just now. Washington offers a glimpse into that dangerous combination, one that resonates as strongly as ever.

Particle Fever does an excellent job of laying out what's at stake as it documents the creation and fine-tuning of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

Life Itself is a joy for people who love movies or who love anything with an unwavering passion.

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

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.

On some level Moneyball is about loyalty: loyalty to an idea, loyalty to a partnership forged by desperation, loyalty to the values you believe in. Whether that was Lewis' intention in the book, or Beane's intention in taking the risk, doesn't matter. It's the formula Miller came up with for the film, and with the team of Pitt and Hill, it's a winning one.

The easiest way to describe My Golden Days is as a coming-of-age romance, but Arnaud Desplechin’s film, with its memories and carefully nursed grudges and moments of heartbreak and betrayal, feels weightier than that.

Ostlund's film is beautiful, capturing both the stunning scenery and the danger of the slopes and the mountains. Sure, everything looks great, but it could all fall apart in disastrous fashion at any moment.

While Diane is perhaps 96 of the most depressing minutes on film this year, its quiet honesty is compelling. treating aging and death with a respect to the inevitability of both.

Rodriguez and Taylor are terrific. Their confidence is infectious, yet they never let us forget the challenges their lives offer.

Watching the film, emotions range from sadness, of course, to frustration to outright anger.

Room is a terrific movie, one that has two outstanding performances, confident direction and a story line that is both harrowing and moving.

Nebraska is as cold and unforgiving as its setting, yet just as stunning.

The movie is emotional without feeling manipulative. It’s progressive without feeling heavy handed. It’s dazzling without feeling like it was made completely on a computer, despite literally being made on a computer! Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is exhilarating, touching, creative and a shoo-in for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards again this year.

Krisha is a unique film, honest and searing.

The Babadook is a terrific horror film.

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.

Mark Ruffalo, in just the right amount of stubble, grease and leather, plays Paul, about as cool an instant dad as a SoCal kid named Laser could hope for.

Of its many brilliant aspects, the film does illuminate the numbing grind of real life when you’re trying to make art.

The whole film is an exercise in trust and the lack thereof. In the end, it’s a kind of horror film, really, a reminder that these sorts of things were endured by so many for so long, with hope an unlikely ally.

Schoenbrun’s direction is masterful, both in terms of what they get out of the actors (Smith and Lundy-Paine give committed performances) and in their visual language. The look of the film is both haunting and inviting — not unlike that of a nightmare, or a horror film. “I Saw the TV Glow” has elements of both, and more.

Moore captivates as a woman who is either emotionally stunted and unaware or viciously in control of the whole chess board. Director Todd Haynes never cracks to let you know just which one she is. It’s possibly purposeful, but a lack of conclusion left me unsatisfied at the end of an otherwise deliciously disquieting movie.

It’s a Fellini-esque carnival of humanity on display, a more debauched phantasmagoria reminiscent of “La Dolce Vita.” But “La Dolce Vita” created the paparazzi; The Great Beauty takes place in a world where the paparazzi have existed for decades.

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.

It’s an outstanding debut for someone who obviously knows her way around both sides of the camera.

It’s a terrific example of a movie that doesn’t work too hard to make you love it. It’s patient as it waits for you to come around to its considerable charms.

Simply put, Argo is why we go to movies.

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.

City of Ghosts isn’t merely about the personal sacrifices of these men, but a testament to the necessity of a free and open press the world over.

Ernest & Celestine draws on plenty of classics, animated and otherwise, for inspiration, but the film manages to be delightful on its own offbeat terms.

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

There’s a hint of artificiality to it. Maybe it’s an allegory, but the meaning hidden therein seems simply to be: go faster. Nothing wrong with that. It’s not as if Wright was shooting for something deeper and missed.

A mixture of magical realism, Southern gothic, coming-of-age movie, star turn for first-timers, disaster story and out-and-out strangeness. It's unlike any film you've seen.

The themes in One Fine Morning are familiar: love, loss, loneliness. Hansen-Løve treats them with dignity, allowing the audience to experience Sandra’s emotions fully. Even so, the film as a whole doesn’t pack the punch it could have.

With “A Real Pain,” Jesse Eisenberg — who wrote, directed and stars in the film — pulls off a kind of magic trick. He’s made a movie with backdrops of pain and despair, both personal and existential, that is also funny, charming and something approaching uplifting. Ta-da!

It's a movie that should be seen, a throwback to a looser, freer cinema. Wake in Fright has a tremendous '70s vibe to it, a "they-don't-make-them-like-this-anymore" feel that is as welcome as a cold beer in the Outback. [25 Oct 2012]

Moviegoers who are familiar with the source material for The Green Knight might find it a thought-provoking, updated take on the ancient poem. The film does offer interesting ideas on masculinity and honor. Just don't go into it expecting action or thrills along the way.

With shifting loyalties, unlikely heroes, truths revealed and a little help from friends, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 winds the series up in a most-satisfying fashion.

Not just a fascinating character study but a kind of horror movie as well.

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

A scathing examination of race, a take down of phony liberal sympathies that sticks it to racists of every stripe.

West Side Story is timeless, because of the source material. Tragic romances never go out of style. Spielberg’s version successfully makes the classic contemporary.

Song of the Sea is a lyrical treat for those willing to sit still and let it wash over them.

[An] exhilarating, brutally depressing documentary.

Chen captures with both humor and heartbreaking realism the complicated mechanics of the family dynamic and how outside forces work to shape it.

The Rider is a beautiful movie, a Western of sorts that isn’t limited to that classification as it chronicles the life of a down-on-his-luck cowboy who simply keeps on living, as difficult as that sometimes can be.

The transition between junior high and high school is exhilarating, traumatic, funny and horrifying, and Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade captures the whole experience perfectly.

A sparkling documentary in which we can't trust that anything in it is true. And yet you would never call it a hoax.

April and the Extraordinary World is a visual delight, an animated French steampunk adventure that is smart, exciting and wonderfully weird.

It's just as accurately described as a bunch of British guys sitting around acting. But what actors! The cast includes Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Mark Strong,Ciarán Hinds and Toby Jones.

The Taste of Things is marinated in warm sunlight, bottles of red wine, sweat from a hard day's work and a touching comfort between lovers. It reminds you of the indulgences of rich meals and genuine connections, going beyond finding someone who remembers date night to someone who knows how to list the ingredients of a bordelaise by taste.

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.

If you're willing to let a movie wash over you and work at what it might mean, you'll love "Holy Motors," Leos Carax's surreal ode to … identity? Movies? Performance?

Everybody Wants Some!! is a terrifically entertaining movie that proves Linklater once again a master of perfectly capturing moments in time without judgment or apology.

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.

Black Bag, Steven Soderbergh’s outstanding new film, is sleek, cool, polished, smart, smooth — if Soderbergh were a thief, he’d leave no fingerprints.

Beautiful, baffling, poetic, pretentious, it's one big ball of moviedom. Malick tackles the whole shooting match, pondering (and showing) the creation of the universe, life itself, death and the afterlife, and everything in between.

The way Park composes each frame is masterful. Sometimes the set-ups are intended to throw you off the scent of what’s happening, but wow, who cares when a film looks like this?

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

Engagement with the enemy isn't a possibility here. It's a certainty. The unit will face fire daily, sometimes as often as four or five times. The stress is incredible, the courage displayed even more so.

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.

Greenwood is fantastic; his Meek occasionally lets down his facade of omniscience - but only occasionally. And Williams gives Emily not dignity exactly, but a calm, steely insistence on survival.

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

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.

Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret is a delightful film, just lovely.

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.

The story is infuriating — not in the way King presents it, not at all, but in its details. The manipulation of justice is heartbreaking. Though sadness isn't what you'll most likely feel while watching. Anger is. The betrayal in Judas and the Black Messiah extends far beyond the title character, making it an even greater tragedy.

Tarantino has always worn his love of cinema on his sleeve, fetishistic and in the form of homage. But here, that love is reverent.

Abe’s performance is compelling in the way it captures the gap between who Ryota has become and how he wants to see himself, and Japanese screen veteran Kirin Kiki gives a terrifically nuanced turns as his again mother, pulled between the disappointments of the past and a fierce determination to find joy in her present.

There isn't a false note among the performances. It's the first movie for Hayward and Gilman; whatever awkwardness they display is appropriate. Willis may never have been better. Norton is fantastic. Murray and McDormand are also ... well, you get the idea.

What’s most remarkable about the film, which was shot in Iraq, are the performances. The cast members are not actors. They’re non-professionals, at least, acting for the first time. Yet their performances feel so genuine, so lived-in.

Sinners is a fascinating movie, overflowing with creativity and bold ideas.

McQueen is an intriguing look at genius, its inspiration and ultimately its cost.

The pacing and writing are as smart as the film's title. Early moments are worth a chuckle, but the laugh-out-loud, top-shelf jokes happen when night falls.