This movie achieves a rare grace: it tells a story that could only exist in the form of a movie (or, perhaps, as a piece of poetry). The story is told not so much in customary narrative structures, but in glimpses, hints, and intimations. It has a way of taking the solid and making it chimerical.

The balloon will resurface throughout, but far more interesting, and substantial, is the slow reveal of Simon's domestic situation.

There’s real magic in every paired-off scene where two characters confront each other – creating wonderful clashes of physical human contact that challenge the disassociation insisted on by the system they’re all being run through.

A carefully constructed thriller whose clever dialogue keeps pace with its fascinating lead actress.

These characters have become so dear; I longed for something more climactic, more cathartic for them. Still, for the time we have with them, they make terrific company.

Roeg's points about the contrasts between noble savages and civilized effetes don't stand up terribly well over time.

It's huge and bewildering and it hurts to watch, but it hurts so good it's gorgeous.

Definitely not for the squeamish, Wake in Fright is calibrated for maximum psychic impact. Its madness is viral and disconcerting. Truly, you're going to want a stiff drink and a hot shower, or a noose, after visiting the Yabba.

The pictures are gorgeous, and the words, well, if you listen hard enough, the words say exactly what one needs to hear: that is, to wake up and live.

Lowery’s version works because, like Brian Helgeland and Curtis Hanson’s rewriting of L.A. Confidential, it captures the nature and meaning of the story rather than getting caught up in individual events or plot beats.

Greengrass and co. may have made one of the best action movies in recent memory.

Part 2 is something else altogether. Such digital effects as the marauding giants that squash baby wizards like bugs or the inky terror that is the Death Eaters – acolytes to the mad, bad wizard Voldemort (Fiennes) – are magnificent and experienced in one long, clutched breath. But what's missing is what has been the chief pleasure of the series: the chemistry between its young leads.

In the end, Tea With the Dames peters out as a conversation, given there’s no real beginning, middle or end to the film. It’s a privilege, however, to have been given a tableside seat to listen to this foursome reminisce and ruminate for an hour and a half, with laughter punctuating the conversation every few minutes.

Take Shelter is a deeply unsettling movie. Writer/director Jeff Nichols (an Austin resident and director of the award-winning 2007 feature "Shotgun Stories") doles out information as strategically as a government official.

Rana’s voice comes roaring back in the film’s held-breath third act, in which these amateur actors return to their old apartment to enact a drama with life-or-death stakes. This final 30 minutes are the film’s pièce de résistance.

Writer/director Lonergan succeeds at capturing eloquently the disappointments of growing up and growing old. But he isn't always successful at reining in the schmaltz.

Szpilman takes to performing sonatas in thin air, eyes closed, those jittery fingers stroking nothing but air. It's a wonderful moment in a wonderful, ghastly film, and one of the most moving arguments for the redemptive powers of art ever made.

Not only does this genre exercise deliver the little jolts and inside laughs that keep modern horror fans pleased, Get Out is also one of the smartest, funniest, and most socially astute films to come around in a while.

Spielberg suppresses his worst tendencies in the uncharted territory of his first movie musical. His solid direction respectfully doesn’t oversentimentalize the material.

To extend the boxing analogy, poker’s Raging Bull is the 1974 Robert Altman masterpiece, California Split.

In a genre dominated by computer-generated compositions and design, its old-school simplicity is sweetly anachronistic, while its hand-drawn elegance is often something to behold.

The gut-wrenching Amy is, in the end, as much an indictment of our celebrity-obsessed (global) pop culture as it is of the perils of rampant success arriving unexpectedly fast, tires squealing and driving a hearse.

In The Edge of Heaven, a more tempered Akin seems content to allow the incidental lives of incidental people merging incidentally to pass quietly and at their own paces. Which indicates a much-needed maturation of the "Babel/Crash" formula but also fails to rattle your bones the way those movies did. Pick your poison, I suppose.

Jenkins' superlative work proves her first film was no fluke; let's hope it doesn't take another nine years to hear from her again.

But for all our Tony Montanas and Pablo Escobars, both imagined and real, I guarantee you have never seen a drug-trafficking movie like Birds of Passage.

A distinctive story with universal appeal.

The scoped camerawork is a shrewd tactic; only occasionally does its flat, proscenium effect make the action feel overly staged.

It’s a slow burn of a film, one that creeps through the consciousness. But it is not without levity.