Had Amy Winehouse not been a briefly famous musician – had she been an architect or a teacher or even a woman who mopped floors – the documentary Amy might have been nearly as compelling.

The Tony-winning Bosco, one of the great stage actors of the last 50 years, does a lot with a little in his restricted role; he's haughty, almost dignified by his angry silence. Linney and Hoffman stay pitch-perfect in their noisy desperation and sullen withdrawal.

Most of the movie feels like a loose, sometimes improvised lark among friends.

One of the most heartbreaking, unforgettable dramas in years.

Scorsese in his prime might've made better use of this hamming, but this picture feels like an exercise by a Scorsese clone who has tackled the master's themes - without his energy and economy of style.

This meditation on spirituality, loneliness and accountability could touch your heart's core.

The film requires close attention, especially while it jumps back and forth in time for the first half-hour, but all the pieces lock into place tightly by the end.

The movie is not credible, even in an inner-city setting. At the same time, it's touching.

A dark comedy that's as emotionally honest as any picture of 2002.

Breathtaking masterpiece.

Succeeds as an action film, character study and metaphor for our own terrorism-obsessed time.

If this project is some kind of huge in-joke, I’m willing to admit I didn’t get it. But if I did get it (and I’m afraid I did), it’s a huge disappointment.

The film could hardly be less American in tone: It has no villains. It provides complete and comfortable closure for none of its relationships.

The result is a film that has "Masterpiece Theatre" production values but not an ounce of dust upon it.

Like all his movies except "Badlands," a taut 1973 debut, "Tree" looks gorgeous, has philosophic ambitions, meanders wherever Malick's imagination takes him and stays dramatically inert.

I never thought I'd crack up watching a family mourn the death of a beloved daughter. But I've never seen a film quite like The Host, and that's far from the most bizarre thing in it.

It gives such a down-to-Earth view of the joys, terrors, boredom, anxieties and camaraderie in a war zone.

Keeps its sense of humor while dealing with serious issues.

Alfred Hitchcock once said, "Drama is life with the dull bits left out." Well, Rachel Getting Married is drama with the dull bits left in.

It's an honorable, straightforward, talking-heads-and-old-clips film that sometimes rises to profundity when it touches us deeply. [23 Apr 1999, p.10E]

A Kafkaesque series of interwoven stories that depict the hopeless lives half the populace there (Iran) must lead.

It'll hearten anyone who believed Lee had insights and merely needed to find the right vehicle to express them. Bus is that vehicle. [18 Oct 1996, p.1E]

It depicts a world close enough to our own to be terrifying, yet different enough to rouse curiosity.

(Mendes') film debut shows he can shock not only with noise and nakedness but with subtle observations.

Begins and ends quietly, like stirrings of thunder from a distant storm. In between comes a tragedy that rolls over us like a compact hurricane.

A wild, self-indulgent but completely captivating extravagance.

A handsome tribute to an era as quaintly distant as tail-fin Chevrolets and A-bomb scares.

(The Coens have) never again achieved the one-two punch of Blood Simple and "Raising Arizona" - the first darkly cynical, the second light-headedly comical.

The Witch is a horrifying film, one unique in my experience.

The leads blend as seamlessly as any young-old character coupling I've seen. The prosthetically altered Gordon-Levitt, unrecognizable at first, really resembles Willis.

As usual, Almodovar finds unusual camera angles to break up the straightforward storytelling. But for the first time I recall, not a single male character is crucial to his story, and no actor has a leading role. You won't miss them.

At bottom, all Payne's films make us smile, often ruefully but hopefully.

It's possible to groan, chuckle, wince and be moist-eyed, sometimes in a span of seven or eight minutes.

Greene's words haunt us like a prophecy from half a century and half a world away.

The grandest presence here is Eastwood. His directing, like his acting, is minimal: unhurried, spare, unforced, rather somber.

The real joke is that the picture's most conventional elements, the superbly acted entanglement between the complicated Orlean and the boastful but unexpectedly thoughtful Laroche, would have made a compelling movie all by themselves -- if written by someone other than Charlie Kaufman.

The film is visually sumptuous, morally ambiguous, dramatic and dreamlike, with a narrative as engrossing as any live-action movie of 2013. It’s easy to follow yet hard to shake.

This isn't a cheerful movie. But director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga tell these stories with authority and verve, making 2½ hours zip by.

This Oscar-nominated documentary does everything you want a documentary to do. It introduces us to a compelling character and, by the finish, allows us to feel we know him well. It makes larger points about the human toil and suffering he shot for most of his career, before he turned to nature to refresh himself.

Corpse Bride had me at the maggot.

Yet for all the fun the sequel provides, the series shows signs of wearing out quickly, unless characters get developed thoroughly and in unexpected ways.

Most documentaries put us inside people's heads. The dazzling, experimental Pina puts us inside people's feet.

Whatever you think of gay people (or politicians), you may find the movie compelling viewing.

If you're tired of false holiday cheer, Lilya 4-Ever will provide a corrective to the spiritual eggnog force-fed to us all season. The climax takes place during Christmas, though one that would make Tiny Tim grateful for his crutch and cold chimney corner.

Virtually all science fiction functions as metaphor, and I took this film to be a metaphor for the act of becoming fully human.

Cedar is mostly interested in the father-son dynamics, and he cast excellent actors. Lewensohn, a famous Israeli theatrical director, makes his film acting debut, while the veteran Ashkenazi ("Late Wedding") handles his low-key role with bearlike grace.

Deniz Gamze Ergüven, who makes her feature debut as writer-director after a couple of short films, tells the story exclusively from the girls’ point of view – both emotionally, as they have all our sympathy, and physically, as almost nothing happens that one of them could not be seeing.

What does it say about a picture when the highest praise must go to impressive scenery?

The collaboration started with a bang with 1950's "Winchester '73", which makes most lists, including mine, of the best of the genre. [09 May 2003, p.11E]

Nobody fires a shot. Nobody topples a kingdom. But as Ivan Locke’s life unravels behind the wheel of his car, which he drives almost from the first frame to the last, we can’t look away.

Pearce, who's in every scene except the Sammy flashbacks, dominates the picture through his feral performance.

Handsome and competently acted and prettily shot and all the other things critics say when what they really want to scream is "Aaaaaaaargh! No more Jane Austen adaptations, ESPECIALLY not Pride and Prejudice.

The result is one of the twistiest thrillers in recent memory.

He (Chomet) keeps us waiting for a narrative payoff that will equal that visual splendor, and he makes us think that many small inspired touches will add up to something memorable. But when he opens his hand at last, there's nothing in it.

Cinematographer Cesar Charlone, whose burnt-orange view of the favela made "City of God" striking, conveys Africa's slums with equal force in somber browns and simmering yellows. At times, the inhabitants seem to be on fire in their surroundings, a fitting image for a land consigned to a hell of unhappiness.

Lanthimos and Filippou have thoroughly imagined their world.

The results require immense patience but also reward it immensely.

Squid keeps you on your toes, but payoffs will have you smiling - maybe in rueful recognition of the truth - in scene after scene.

Somewhere inside "School" lurks a heartwarming or hilarious movie, perhaps both.

A picture from an old man working at the top of his game.

It settles into the typical reflective mode of Iranian films, but something IS happening: A human being is slowly, sullenly, silently approaching his combustion point.

Marty is full of magic; all through the show you find yourself thinking, "That's me up there." [15 Aug 1955, p.4B]

In an era when most scripts are written by committees of monkeys, hearing one man's intelligent voice is an almost forgotten pleasure.

Careful casting adds to verisimilitude. Nobody carries off a chilly authority figure like Tilda Swinton, who represents the chemical company; Pollack, who has more or less stopped directing, now embodies urbane amorality as an actor; Wilkinson, whose career has mostly been devoted to repressed or depressed characters, enjoys his turn as a bright-eyed fanatic.

Has an honesty few movies seek or achieve these days.

The most violent scene is dreamlike, and more direct killings are often seen at an angle or from a distance. The camera placement is thoughtful and effective, never titillating.

Gibney also made the Oscar-nominated "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," and he gets remarkable access to people you wouldn't expect to talk to him (including U.S. interrogators charged with crimes at Bagram).

Warms the heart while chilling the bones.

The two leads don't have sexual chemistry together, but that's part of the point.

Melissa Leo is one of America's most underrated character actresses, and Frozen River confirms that opinion.

The movie ends so abruptly you might wonder if a piece is missing, and it relies on one extraordinary coincidence I couldn’t swallow. Yet scene by scene, I found people I knew or wish I knew: Ben’s romantic advice to the straight but awkward Joey would give any boy confidence about himself.

If you used this guy's umbilical cord for fishing line, you could land a world-record marlin.

Reflective, touching, intimate portrait of a samurai facing action in his waning years.

As we bounce over rough seas on the Maersk, we know just what will be lost if the Somalis don’t keep their trembling fingers off their triggers. As the title suggests, this is not a movie about an incident: It’s a movie about a man who stays very real to us.

So wild an approach demands straightforward performances that don't draw attention to themselves, and that's what the actors supply.

A documentary that's as chaotic, rude and funny as the band could be.

Making a film with fine performances, adept direction, first-rate photography and a doltish screenplay is like starting a rock band with no drummer. The result may yield satisfying, even memorable moments. But every time you try to build momentum, the project falls apart.

He (writer/director David Gordon Green) fired his arrow straight at a worthwhile target, but it fell a little short.

You may not realize the imprint it has left until its last season comes to a close.

It mocks folk musicians of the 1960s, who could sometimes be full of hot air. It also acknowledges that protests 40 years ago, often spearheaded by bards and balladeers, blew much-needed fresh air into post-Eisenhower society.

Adams gives her best performance as a lonely woman who has to make a decision that will haunt her – though perhaps in a good way – for the rest of her life.

Comedy comes from an exaggeration of reality, not reality itself -- and on that score, Diablo Cody's first screenplay gets high marks.

After 30 minutes, I wondered why I was watching a drama about a quarrelsome couple who seemed so obviously wrong for each other. After 60 minutes, I knew. After 90 minutes, I cared. By the end, I was riveted.

They've made a thrilling traditional nautical picture from untraditional books.

The slender story seems overextended at times, with Lu finding new ways each week to insinuate himself into Yu’s life. Zhang doesn’t make a point once if he can make it twice, and the characters don’t change much over the middle hour.

Hanks gives one of his least showy and most credible performances.

His height didn't stop independent writer-director Thomas McCarthy from casting his friend in The Station Agent, scoring a triumph for both.

If you see Hot Fuzz, you'll never again watch a Michael Bay film without howling with disrespectful laughter.

The Big Short, which he directed and wrote with Charles Randolph from the book by Michael Lewis, jumps off the screen in every scene and pins an elusive subject firmly in place.

Cravalho shows spunk and a generically lovely voice, though she’s saddled with assembly-line anthems Disney has done better elsewhere. Johnson has exuberance, deft timing and a passable singing voice.

Best of all, we finally learn something about Bond's origins: The movie takes its title from his ancestral home in Scotland. (A nod to Connery, perhaps?)

The best thing about the picture is Harry's new maturity: For the first time, he dominates a picture named for him.

The film's an irresistible time capsule of that Camelot summer, blending girrrrrl power, social consciousness and faux-'60s pop with the fizz of a soda jerk whipping up a root beer float.

The usually quiet Zellweger is the revelation: Like her character, the actress seems happily amazed to find herself crossing a polished dance floor, sheathed in silk and diamonds, having the naughty, self-glorifying time of her life.

King Kong, a labor of love that's visually stunning and moving in its best moments, is also bloated, shallow, clunky, full of illogical scenes and at least an hour too long.

A hymn to that beautiful city, is among his least consequential efforts. It's attractive and easy to slip into, but he didn't put enough thought into the design, and it soon falls apart.

A peaceful, unforced film, and it inspires a feeling of relief and joy that's hard to describe.

South African director Neill Blomkamp set and shot the film around his native Johannesburg, so parallels to apartheid leap to mind. Yet the script he wrote with Terri Tatchell applies to any culture that bluntly excludes another.