It haunts you, you can't forget it, you admire its conception and are able to resolve some of the confusions you had while watching it.

Before Sunrise is so much like real life - like a documentary with an invisible camera - that I found myself remembering real conversations I had experienced with more or less the same words.

The thing about a movie like this is, the characters may be French, but they're more like people I know than they could ever be in the Hollywood remake.

Thanks to Villeneuve’s masterful direction, the aforementioned brilliant technical elements and a star-studded cast of actors who pour themselves into the material — you can practically see them shaking the sand out of their boots after a long day’s filming — “Dune Part 2” makes for a wondrous viewing experience.

This film is a wonder - the best work yet by one of our most original and independent filmmakers - and after it is over, and you begin to think about it, its meanings begin to flower.

The entire film, in fact, seems much more real than the usual action-crime-chase concoctions we've grown tired of. Here is a movie with respect for writing, acting and craft. It has respect for knowledgable moviegoers.

There's something cheerfully perverse about filming a thriller and then tossing out the parts that would help it make sense, but Wim Wenders has a certain success with the method in The American Friend.

The weakness of the film is the weakness of the leading role. That's not a criticism of Mark Wahlberg, who has a quite capable range, but of how he and Russell see the character.

[A] diverting documentary.

The Five Obstructions clearly calls for a sequel, in which Leth would require von Trier to remake "Dogville," despite Obstructions 6 through 10.

Fukunaga is a dazzling stylist, and at times the shifting palettes of the cinematography and the brilliant camera moves (he’s also the DP on this film) are so impressive as to be marginally distracting.

Astonishing things happen and symbolism can only work by being apparent. For me, the film is like music or a landscape: It clears a space in my mind, and in that space I can consider questions. (Review of Original Release)

What is important about this film is not that it serves as a history lesson (although it does) but that, at a time when the threat of nuclear holocaust hangs ominously in the air, it reminds us that we are, after all, human, and thus capable of the most extraordinary and wonderful achievements, simply through the use of our imagination, our will, and our sense of right.

Basically aimed at audiences who want elaborate fight sequences and fidget at the dialogue in between. It's for the fans, not the crossover audience.

It tells its story calmly and with great attention to human detail and, watching it, I found myself drawn in with a rare intensity.

These characters and their quest began to grow on me, and by the time the movie was over I cared very much about how their lives would turn out.

If six people walked into a screening of the Coen brothers’ Western anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs at six different times, they too would come away with vastly contrasting impressions.

Regaled for 50 years by the stupendous idiocy of the American version of Godzilla, audiences can now see the original Japanese version, which is equally idiotic.

The cinematography, the set design, the all-important soundtrack, the editing: all first-rate. This is one smart chiller.

[An] uplifting and inspirational and just plain cool documentary.

Everything's laid out for us and made clear, we understand the situation we can see where events are leading... and then, in the last 30 minutes, he springs one concealed trap after another, allowing his story to fold in upon itself, to twist and turn, and scare and amuse us with its clockwork irony.

You hire an actor for his strengths, and Downey would not be strong as a one-dimensional mighty-man. He is strong because he is smart, quick and funny, and because we sense his public persona masks deep private wounds. By building on that, Favreau found his movie, and it's a good one.

The film's buried message is that there is a reservoir of admiration and affection for America, at least among the educated classes in the Arab world, and they do not equate the current administration with America.

What the film is really about is people who see themselves and their values as an organic whole. There are no pious displays here. No sanctimony, no preaching. Never even the word "religion." Just Johan, Esther and Marianne, all doing their best.

This film is a documentary about the young man's devilment. He seems perfectly happy — ecstatic, even — seated at a table in front of a three-sided mirror and practicing card moves over and over and over again. As a kid, he learned moves from his grandfather. He moved away from home in his early teens.

Using Syed and shooting on actual locations in Bombay, director Mira Nair has been able to make a film that has the everyday, unforced reality of documentary, and yet the emotional power of great drama. “Salaam Bombay!” is one of the best films of the year.

Jim Jarmusch stocks his latest low-key indie with more than his usual characters in low-velocity drift. The Akron-born auteur infuses the title couple of Only Lovers Left Alive with his taste for culture, if not cuisine.

Love proves she is not a rock star pretending to act, but a true actress, and Harrelson matches her with his portrait of a man who has one thing on his mind, and never changes it.

The film appealed to me for two reasons. First, because of its unabashed, lurid melodrama, in which the days are filled with scheming and the nights with passion and violence. Second, because of its visual beauty.

Before this movie, Lake Bell seemed to have a nice and comfortable career path ahead of her. She was an actress who always provided a spark, whether the vehicle was mundane or first-rate. Now, she’s a name that provokes keen anticipation. Can’t wait to see what Lake Bell the filmmaker does next.

Working from a script by Paul Webb and aided by stark, beautiful, sometimes startlingly realistic cinematography by Bradford Young, DuVernay has delivered a powerful and moving portrait of Martin Luther King Jr.

Though this direct prequel can’t match the sheer creative audacity and heavy metal awesomeness of “Fury Road” — which was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won six and is widely considered to be one of the all-time great action movies — it’s still a rousing and thunderous and fiery dystopian thrill ride that only occasionally pauses to take a breather over a 2 hour and 28 minute run time.

Poltergeist is an effective thriller, not so much because of the special effects, as because Hooper and Spielberg have tried to see the movie's strange events through the eyes of the family members, instead of just standing back and letting the special effects overwhelm the cast along with the audience.

Thieves doesn't have the Hollywood kind of ending, where everything is sorted out by who gets shot. It is about the people, not their plot. It is about how the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, and the grandsons.

No blood is shed. No bodies turn up. And yet The Assistant is one seriously chilling monster movie.

This is an “Apes” for the ages.

De Palma's Untouchables, like the TV series that inspired it, depends more on cliches than on artistic invention.

A movie like this can get you thinking.

Not the worst of the countless recent movies about good kids and hidebound, authoritatian older people. It may, however, be the most shameless in its attempt to pander to an adolescent audience.

Intriguing in the way it dances in and out of the shadow of Bergman's autobiography.

Nolte and Coburn are magnificent in this film, which is like an expiation or amends for abusive men. It is revealing to watch them in their scenes together--to see how they're able to use physical presence to sketch the history of a relationship.

Hustlers is slick and sharp and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, with writer-director Lorene Scafaria delivering a film that often feels like Scorsese Lite — a breezier, infinitely less violent, pole-dancing, glitter-covered riff on “Goodfellas.”

Is it real? Is this whole story real? I refuse to ask that question. Life of Pi is all real, second by second and minute by minute, and what it finally amounts to is left for every viewer to decide. I have decided it is one of the best films of the year.

Those hoping to see a "vampire movie" will be surprised by a good film.

What works: the brilliant dialogue, and the raw intensity of the performances. It’s a privilege to watch Washington and Davis lay it all on the line.

Kimi is filled with the kind of sparkling cameos and supporting work we’ve come to expect from a Soderbergh cast — but always and throughout, this is Zoë Kravitz’s vehicle, and she delivers a smart, empathetic and badass performance in this nifty gem about a woman who has to step outside in more ways than one.

There is much to admire about “Conclave,” but in the end, all of its lofty aspirations come tumbling down due to that poorly constructed Jenga tower of a plot.

The movie is sure to be appealing to younger viewers (they may find it more accessible and certainly less frightening than "Jurassic Park"), and it's smart enough to keep older viewers involved, too.

The film is labyrinthine and deceptive, and not in a way we anticipate. It becomes a pleasure for the mind.

By dropping in on this couple from time to time for the kinds of moments one of them might remember, the film is more honest than its characters.

A sympathetic, lay­­ered portrayal, rich with detail, that earns its more complex and resonant conclusion.

Rogers Park is poetic and lovely and muscular and unforgiving at the same time, much like the area itself and the city as a whole.

The cast is outstanding, with Mikkelsen leading the way in a nomination-level performance as Martin. Another Round is filled with memorable sequences.

The information they eventually dislodge about Rodriguez suggests a secular saint, a deeply good man, whose music is the expression of a blessed inner being. I hope you're able to see this film. You deserve to. And yes, it exists because we need for it to.

Keane is played by Damian Lewis. Here he inhabits an edge of madness that Lodge Kerrigan understands with a fierce sympathy.

In the middle of all the wince-inducing, limb-bending, bone-crunching, face-exploding bloodshed, Vaughn turns in a legitimately great performance that ranks among the finest work he’s ever done.

Perhaps because the Beatles were considered such a draw, perhaps because the songs were counted on to sell the film, there was no agenda to dumb down the material or hard-sell the story. Instead of contrived urgency, there's unpressured whimsy, and the movie exists as pure charm, expressed in fantastical imagery. And then there are the songs.

The kind of movie you settle into. It's supple and sophisticated, and it's not about much. It has no message and some will say it has no point. But it is a demonstration of grace and wit.

Its most impressive accomplishment is to gather a bewildering labyrinth of facts and suspicions over a period of years, and make the journey through this maze frightening and suspenseful.

Morris' visual style in The Thin Blue Line is unlike any conventional documentary approach. Although his interviews are shot straight on, head and shoulders, there is a way his camera has of framing his subjects so that we look at them very carefully, learning as much by what we see as by what we hear.

It's an astonishing film: weird, obsessed, drawing on subterranean impulses, hypnotic.

Spaeny, with the aid of Coppola’s finely honed script and the first-tier makeup and wardrobe teams, does a marvelous job of capturing Priscilla’s transition from a ninth-grader who finds herself starring in her own fairy tale to a 28-year-old mother who knew her marriage was over long before it was finally over.

I would not want to see a sequel to the film, and at 81 minutes it isn't a second too short, but what it does, it does cheerfully, with great energy, and very well.

The One and Only Dick Gregory is a comprehensive biography of a mercurial, brilliant and wildly funny artist-activist.

A full-bore melodrama, told with passionate intensity, gloriously and darkly absurd. It centers on a performance by Natalie Portman that is nothing short of heroic.

Suffice to say Levine has fashioned a twist-filled gem that leaves us a bit drained but also a little bit exhilarated by all its peaks and valleys and sharp curves.

As 16 Shots so well documents, this was a seminal moment in Chicago history, as “just another justified police shooting” turned out to be anything but that.

The movie makes no attempt to soften the material or make it comforting through the cliches of melodrama.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is crazy good.

This is one helluva compelling film that presents us with several of the very best performances of the year. Lerman and Letts, in particular, present us with fully-developed characterizations that will remain with audiences long after they leave the theater.

The Devil's Backbone has been compared to "The Others," and has the same ambition and intelligence, but is more compelling and even convincing.

Bird wisely does not attempt to "explain" Parker's music by connecting experiences with musical discoveries. This is a film of music, not about it, and one of the most extraordinary things about it is that we are really, literally, hearing Parker on the soundtrack.

Somehow the movie fails to connect with the amazing energy of Hawking's ideas. We're left wanting to know more about either his theories or his life, but what we get is a little of each.

Francois Girard’s “Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould” brilliantly breaks with tradition and gives us a movie that actually inspires us to think about what it was like to be this man.

Gandolfini is effortlessly, quietly great.

The documentary is at its best when we observe Fox in quiet, warm and funny moments with his wife and their four children, and when it’s just Fox facing the camera, talking with his typical candor and humor about his condition and refusing to be painted as some kind of martyr.

Play Misty for Me is not the artistic equal of Psycho (1960), but in the business of collecting an audience into the palm of its hand and then squeezing hard, it is supreme. It doesn't depend on a lot of surprises to maintain the suspense. There ARE some surprises, sure, but mostly the film's terror comes from the fact that the strange woman is capable of anything.

It’s a film that works almost too hard to surprise us; some late developments are so absurd they lessen the impact of the main story. Still, Schimberg is a unique talent who excels at delivering provocative work.

Unlike most remakes, the Nolan "Insomnia" is not a pale retread, but a re-examination of the material, like a new production of a good play.

The movie will seem slow to some viewers, unless they are alert to the raging emotions, the cruel unfairness and the desperation that are masked by the measured and polite words of the characters.

What draws us into Private Property is how so many things happen under the surface, never commented upon.

One of the most perceptive of rock music biopics.

Maverick is a movie made for “Top Gun” fans BY “Top Gun” fans, including director Joseph Kosinski, who wisely follows Scott’s directorial playbook nearly page for page and gives Cruise and the outstanding supporting cast breathing room to shine in alternating scenes of hotshot pilot banter and dramatic emotional impact.

Thanks to the clever, docudrama style direction by Matt Johnson, a crackling good screenplay by Johnson and Matthew Miller and searingly good performances from the ensemble cast, the scenes where BlackBerry crashes and burns are just as enthralling as the triumphant moments when an unlikely team of ragtag techno geeks based in Waterloo, Ontario, briefly revolutionized the mobile device world.

The movie is carefully modulated to draw us deeper and deeper into the situation, and uses no contrived plot devices to superimpose plot jolts on what is, after all, a story involving four civilized people who are only trying, each in a different way, to find happiness.

One of the most visually inventive films I have ever seen.

The footage on the Paris Island obstacle course is powerful. But Full Metal Jacket is uncertain where to go, and the movie's climax, which Kubrick obviously intends to be a mighty moral revelation, seems phoned in from earlier war pictures.

A bitter, unforgettable poem about alienation.

The movie is well and fearlessly acted, and the writer-director (Fatih Akin) is determined to follow her story to a logical and believable conclusion, rather than letting everyone off the hook with a conventional ending.

An intriguing movie, ambitious and inventive, and almost worth seeing just for Anjelica Huston's obvious delight in playing a completely uncompromised villainess.

It is sophomoric, obvious, predictable, corny, and quite often very funny. And the reason it's funny is frequently because it's sophomoric, predictable, corny, etc. Example: Airplane Captain (Peter Graves): Surely you can't be serious. Doctor (Leslie Nielsen): I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley. This sort of humor went out with Milton Berle, Jerry Lewis, and knock-knock jokes. That's why it's so funny.

Glory is a strong and valuable film no matter whose eyes it is seen through.

It's intense and involving, and it doesn't let us go.

One of the delights of The Taste of Others is that it is so smart and wears its intelligence lightly. Films about taste are not often made by Hollywood, perhaps because it would so severely limit the box office to require the audience to have any.

One of the truest films I've seen about the ebb and flow of a real relationship.

The story, about an ant colony that frees itself from slavery to grasshoppers, is similar in some ways to the autumn's other big animated release, "Antz," but it's aimed at a broader audience and lacks the in-jokes.

What it comes down to is: Pierre is a lousy adulterer. He lacks the desire, the reason and the skill.

Perhaps the documentary The War Room will bring a deeper dimension to the profession's image. At the very least, it may dispel the notion that campaign managers pervert the course of democracy with behind-the-scenes omniscience; the surprise in the film is that they're often as confused as their candidates sometimes seem to be.