Tom has enlisted our identification and sympathy, but he seems hopelessly isolated within his own bubble of despair. How much that happens is in his mind?

Above all, the dialogue is complex enough to allow the characters to say what they're thinking: They are eloquent, insightful, fanciful, poetic when necessary. They're not trapped with cliches.

A movie with the nerve to end with melodramatic sentiment--and get away with it, because it means it. Expect lots of damp eyes in the audience.

John Trank's Chronicle grows into an uncommonly entertaining movie that involves elements of a superhero origin story, a science-fic­tion fantasy and a drama about a disturbed teenager.

This is a grand, confident entertainment, sure of the power of Adjani, Depardieu and the others, and sure of itself.

This moving, Oscar-nominated documentary is an odyssey of a tragic observer.

Mass feels like a staged play brought to the cinema, with unobtrusive camerawork that gives us the feeling of eavesdropping on this intense and emotional and hopefully cathartic gathering.

Perhaps some viewpoints WILL be changed by watching this documentary, which carries no distinct political slant and employs an old-fashioned “fly on the wall” technique, thus allowing the footage and the comments from participants on both sides to speak for itself.

The ending is an explanation, but not a solution. For a solution we have to think back through the whole film, and now the visual style becomes a guide. It is an illustration of the way the materials of life can be shaped for the purposes of the moment.

Cahill has not only made a thoughtful and compelling movie about science, but he’s also given us an intriguing story that delves into the age-old debate of faith vs. hard proof involving the possibility of a higher spiritual power.

Simply amazing.

The inspirational speech that Pa (Fess Parker) gives his son (Tommy Kirk) may seem sentimental because of its aw-shucks delivery, but there's nothing phony about its lesson: "Now and then, for no good reason a man can figure out, life will just haul off and knock him flat. … But it's not all like that. A lot of it's mighty fine." This is the type of straight talk that is missing from movies aimed at kids today. [24 May 2002, p.13]

Clint Eastwood's Firefox is a slick, muscular thriller that combines espionage with science fiction. The movie works like a well-crafted machine, and it's about a well-crafted machine.

Pearl isn’t really about the jump scares and tropes we see in so many horror films. It’s more of a case study of a disturbed mind going completely off the rails, filled with ghastly images (you can imagine what happens to a roast pig left on the porch for days) and exquisitely constructed tension-build moments.

Relic is the feel-dread movie of the year.

Giamatti's performance is one of those achievements. He is making a career of playing unremarkable but memorable men.

There’s a lot to admire in Cold in July, but its chief virtue is unpredictability. Most movies these days sleepwalk through their formulaic paces, but you’ll never guess where this one is going based on the way it begins.

Director John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love,” the “Exotic Marigold Hotel” movies) expertly juggles the various subplots while never losing his main focus, which is to showcase Jessica Chastain’s nearly infinite palette of acting shades.

Despite our narrow angle on Nepal, Manakamana peers into lives at close range.

Mississippi Grind is the cinematic equivalent of the unassuming, quiet player at the poker table who allows you to believe you have him pegged — and that’s when he springs the trap on you and shows you something you never saw coming.

The Equalizer features some gruesomely creative violence, but it’s equally memorable for the small, gritty moments set in that diner, or on the rough-and-tumble streets of Boston. And most of all, it’s got Denzel going for it.

An enormously entertaining movie, like nothing we've ever seen before, and yet completely familiar.

What an anguished story it tells, of a marriage from hell.

Lee uses visual imagination to lift his material into the realms of hopes and dreams.

The film is founded on three performances by Annette Bening, Kerry Washington and Naomi Watts. All have rarely been better.

It has been a good long while since I have felt the presence of Evil so manifestly demonstrated as in the first appearance of Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs.

This is no ordinary musical. Part of its success comes because it doesn't fall for the old cliché that musicals have to make you happy. Instead of cheapening the movie version by lightening its load of despair, director Bob Fosse has gone right to the bleak heart of the material and stayed there well enough to win an Academy Award for Best Director.

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.

While it strikes a different visual tone and moves at a faster pace than many of the TV show episodes (as one might expect from a feature-length story), thanks to Gilligan’s masterful writing and directing, and the bold and powerful and layered performance from Aaron Paul, it’s an extended epilogue quite worthy of the “Breaking Bad” brand.

A powerful and affecting film, so well played by Goldberg and Spacek that we understand not just the politics of the time but the emotions as well.

A musical and a biography, and brings to both of those genres a worldly sophistication that is rare in the movies.

One of the pleasures of Beginners is the warmth and sincerity of the major characters. There is no villain. They begin by wanting to be happier and end by succeeding.

An inspired example of the story in which the adolescent hero discovers that the world sucks, people are phonies, and sex is a consolation. Because the genre is well established, what makes the movie fresh is smart writing, skewed characters, and the title performance by Kieran Culkin.

The film's title is never explained. What does Moore mean? Maybe it's that capitalism means never having to say you're sorry.

This is a family drama, all right - but not one of those neat docudramas in which every character comes attached to a fashionable problem, and all the problems are solved in the same happy ending. The family in Light of Day is more like your average, everyday, unhappy family in which the biggest problem is that some of the members quite simply hate each other.

Rarely have two actors been so effective playing the same character while taking totally different approaches.

Pure slam-bam space opera.

Submarine isn't an insipid teen sex comedy. It flaunts some stylistic devices, such as titles and sections and self-aware narration, but it doesn't try too hard to be desperately clever.

Goodnight Mommy is the kind of movie you should experience without watching the trailer or learning too much about it — and then experience again with the full knowledge of what happened, so you can admire the ways in which the puzzle was put together.

It's clear that this movie has an affection for Popeye, and so much regard for the sailor man that it even bothers to reveal the real truth about his opinion of spinach.

Here is another Western in the classical tradition.

In Thunderheart we get a real visual sense of the reservation, of the beauty of the rolling prairie and the way it is interrupted by deep gorges, but also of the omnipresent rusting automobiles and the subsistence level of some of the housing. We feel that we're really there, and that the people in the story really occupy land they stand on.

Zoë Kravitz’s “Blink Twice” is a radical blend of trippy and unnerving social satire and blood-spattered horror, with Kravitz taking a big swing in her feature directorial debut and connecting with bone-rattling impact. It is a film that takes one big leap after another and sticks the landing far more often than not.

It's strange how the earlier movies fill in the gaps left by this one, and answer the questions. It is, I suspect, not even possible to understand this film without knowing the first two, and yet, knowing them, Part III works better than it should.

This is a brave, unflinching, sometimes virtually unwatchable documentary that makes such an effective case for both pro-choice and pro-life that it is impossible to determine which side the filmmaker, Tony Kaye, stands on. All you can conclude at the end is that both sides have effective advocates, but the pro-lifers also have some alarming people on their team.

The Trip to Bountiful has a quiet, understated feel for the small towns of its time.

Although Bad Hurt traffics in tough material, it is filled with little moments of heart.

Sands' death is shown in a tableaux of increasing bleakness. It is agonizing, yet filmed with a curious painterly purity.

Rarely, but sometimes, a movie can have an actual physical effect on you. It gets under your defenses and sidesteps the "it's only a movie" reflex and creates a visceral feeling that might as well be real. Open Water had that effect on me.

The film's second half is the most touching, because it shows that our lives are not merely our own, but also belong to the events we set in motion.

Here is a film that dabbles in fantasy yet gets everything right about that fleeting summer when you’re between the end of your youth and the beginnings of adulthood.

A threat to the Bond franchise? Not a threat so much as a salute. I don't want James Bond to turn crude and muscular on me; I like the suave style. But I like Xander, too, especially since he seems to have studied Bond so very carefully.

In ways sometimes subtle and sometimes anything but, writer-director McQueen tells a story that on one level is a conventional tale of valor but is also a cutting commentary about how even as war-torn England was united in its staunch repudiation of Hitler, racism and classicism were all too commonplace in its own backyard.

It's a quality movie even if the material is unworthy of the treatment. As a result, yes, it's a druggie comedy that made me laugh.

Safety Not Guaranteed not only has dialogue that's about something, but characters who have some depth and dimension.

The first movie I’ve seen about the disease that is told from the sick person’s point of view, not that of family members. The director, Yukihiko Tsutsumi, often uses a subjective camera to show the commonplace world melting into bewildering patterns and meanings.

After that first second we quit wondering: This is magic, after all, so who wants to know where Henson is?

Director Enrico Casarosa is making his feature-length debut here, and he and the vast Pixar animation army have delivered a gorgeous and lovely coming-of-age fantasy with plenty of slapstick laughs, the obligatory heartwarming family moments and a friendship for the ages.

Polanski's film is visually exact and detailed without being too picturesque. This is not Ye Olde London, but Ye Harrowing London, teeming with life and dispute.

Imperium is a well-spun, tight thriller, thanks in no small part to Radcliffe’s excellent, sharply focused performance.

What a thoughtful film this is, and how thought-stirring. Marc Forster's Stranger Than Fiction comes advertised as a romance, a comedy, a fantasy, and it is a little of all three, but it's really a fable, a "moral tale."

Begins as an ominous rumble of unease, and builds to a shriek. The last 20 minutes are searingly intense: A paranoid personality finds its mate, and they race each other into madness.

American Sniper isn’t some flag-waving political movie. It’s a powerful, intense portrayal of a man who was hardly the blueprint candidate to become the most prolific sniper in American military history. And yet that’s what happened.

El Dorado is a tightly directed, humorous, altogether successful Western, turned out almost effortlessly, it would seem, by three old pros: John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and director Howard Hawks.

The visuals are spectacular, the 3D technology is artfully used and the storyline is jam-packed with so many funny lines, it’s hard to catch all the jokes that are delivered in rapid-fire succession.

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

If what you’re after is insane, mind-bogglingly violent martial arts action, “The Raid 2” is quite possibly the ultimate.

I Am Big Bird is a loving, respectful (if at times shamelessly sentimental) portrayal of Spinney.

Antal's visuals create a haunted house where the lights are off in most of the rooms and there may, indeed, be a monster in the closet.

Beautiful. Even on the small screen. Yes, it’s a shame that American audiences won’t be able to see Niki Caro’s spectacular live-action epic “Mulan” in theaters, but the good news is this is such a great-looking film, with amazing set pieces and dazzling action and colors so vibrant they would dazzle a Crayola factory, it will still play well on your home monitor.

This is one badass movie.

With an eclectic soundtrack that features...well-timed editing and crisp cinematography — and of course that terrific cast led by the great Del Toro — A Perfect Day is a rough-edged gem.

This Is Elvis is the extraordinary record of a man who simultaneously became a great star and was destroyed by alcohol and drug addiction. What is most striking about its documentary footage is that we can almost always see both things happening at once.

To my surprise, Ratner does a sure, stylish job, appreciating the droll humor of Lecter's predicament, creating a depraved new villain in the Tooth Fairy (Ralph Fiennes), and using the quiet, intense skills of Norton to create a character whose old fears feed into his new ones. There is also humor, of the uneasy he-can't-get-away-with-this variety, in the character of a nosy scandal-sheet reporter (Philip Seymour Hoffman).

One of the more thought-provoking sports movies I've seen.

La Promesse was written and directed by the brother duo of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who were previously known as documentary makers. They bring an unblinking realism to the story, but aren't limited by documentary-style objectivity. They tap into the interior lives of the characters with tremendous subtlety and originality. [22 Aug. 1997, p.36]

This is a movie for those who sometimes, in the stillness of the sleepless night, are so filled with hope and longing that they feel like -- well, like uttering wild goat cries to the moon. You know who you are.

Original, absorbing and curiously moving.

Surprisingly moving.

It is violent, funny, scary, contains boldly outlined characters, and gets us involved. It also has a lot of style.

The writer and director, Michael Schorr, is making his first film, but has the confidence and simplicity of someone who has been making films forever.

The result is a genuinely fascinating film, one that may tell more about MGM musicals, and aspects of American society, than a film devoted to still more highlights from musical numbers that did make their way into films.

Not very much happens in Metropolitan, and yet everything that happens is felt deeply, because the characters in this movie are still too young to have perfected their defenses against life.

It is poetic and unforgiving, romantic and stark. Death is the subject we edge around.

For people who love London and yet are thoughtful about it, this film is indispensable.

You might think a documentary about the obituary writers at the New York Times would be a depressing, sobering, scholarly work — but it’s anything but.

Thymaya Payne's Stolen Seas is a documentary of such ambitious scope that you might need a remote control and a notebook to keep up with it.

Jurassic World is pure, dumb, wall-to-wall fun. When they hand you your 3-D glasses, you can check your brain at the door and pick it up on your way out.

"Black Hawk Down" was criticized because the characters seemed hard to tell apart. We Were Soldiers doesn't have that problem; in the Hollywood tradition it identifies a few key players, casts them with stars, and follows their stories.

Finds a tone that remains more entertaining than depressing, more absorbing than alarming.

While it took all these decades for “Are You There, God?” to finally gets its day in theaters, it was worth the wait, as writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig (“The Edge of Seventeen”) has delivered a near-perfect adaptation of Blume’s novel that wisely retains its 1970 setting yet no doubt will be as relevant as ever to audiences of all ages.

The movie is also uncanny in what it does with its last three shots. I watched them, and could not believe so much could be implied so simply. Leave the movie before it's over, and you miss almost everything, because what Connie does at the very end of the film is necessary. It makes "Smooth Talk" the story of the process of life, instead of just a sad episode.

Come As You Are has a wonderful way of making even the most obvious situations seem fresh and funny and original.

The movie seems to be a fairly accurate re-creation of the making of a film at Pinewood Studios at that time. It hardly matters. What happens during the famous week hardly matters. What matters is the performance by Michelle Williams.

The screenplay packs a punch and a sharp bite, the visuals are dazzling, the camerawork captures the fever-dream madness of the story — and the performances from the young cast (and a few solid veterans) are spot-on.

Hogtown is the most original film made in Chicago about Chicago to date.

Maestro is sure to garner multiple Oscar nominations, and deservedly so.

The Road evokes the images and the characters of Cormac McCarthy's novel. It is powerful, but for me lacks the same core of emotional feeling.