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.