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).