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.

Succeeds at being three things at once: an enthralling animated film, a visual wonderment and a decent science-fiction story.

It is a great performance by Danny Glover, the portrait of a proud man who discovers his pride was entrusted to the wrong things.

It’s a fine brew, equal parts cynical and whimsical, dark and sunny. It’s fairly slight but nearly great.

It is easy to analyze the mechanism, but more difficult to explain why this film is so deeply moving.

What I will remember is the photography, and the bliss (just this side of madness) with which the Jeff Daniels character invents his foolhardy schemes.

We believe every frame of this performance, whether Harry is an emaciated figure in the ring in the concentration camp, a formidable opponent as a pro fighter in America or an older man who seems to have found some measure of peace in his life, though the horrific memories will never die.

In a film about a magician, the most impressive trick in Sleight is how director and co-writer J.D. Dillard is able to spin such a memorable and unique tale on a micro-budget.

It was produced, written and directed by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, who also wrote American Graffiti, and it has the same sharp memory for those specific moments when young people suspect they are doing certain things for the last times in their lives. So it is bittersweet, of course -- bittersweet, that indispensable street you travel through adolescence on.

The cameras simply follow Weiner’s every move, which includes disastrous public appearances, embarrassing press conferences, and media interviews that don’t exactly go Weiner’s way.

Even with all the shootouts and robberies and action sequences, this is also a wonderful showcase for screen-stealing acting, with virtually everyone in the all-star cast getting some center stage moments and knocking it out of the park. This is one of those movies where we sense the cast had just as much fun making it as we have watching it.

Good in so many subtle ways, I despair of doing them justice.

This movie had me smiling from start to finish. Murray can be a mercurial and elusive figure, but we come away from this doc convinced there is nothing cynical or self-serving or ego-driven about his interactions with “regular” folks.

Overall, this is a Boston Strong film about one of the worst terrorist attacks ever on American soil, and a community’s resounding response.

It shows how violent gangster movies need not be filled with stupid dialogue, nonstop action and gratuitous gore. Sonatine is pure, minimal and clean in its lines.

The end of the film understandably lays on the emotion a little heavily, but until then Courage Under Fire has been a fascinating emotional and logistical puzzle--almost a courtroom movie, with the desert as the courtroom.

A film that grows in reflection. The first time I saw it, I was hurtling down the tracks of a goofy ethnic comedy when suddenly we entered dark and dangerous territory. I admired the film but did not sufficiently appreciate its arc.

Hard Candy is impressive and effective. As for what else it may be, each audience member will have to decide.

The movie works like thrillers used to work, before they were required to contain villains the size of buildings.

I'm Not Scared is a reminder of true childhood, of its fears and speculations, of the way a conversation can be overheard but not understood, of the way that the shape of the adult world forms slowly through the mist.

Kudos to director Kelly Richmond Pope for applying just the right mix of “What the Heck?” whimsy and respectful, serious reporting to this incredible tale.

It's not often a thriller keeps me wound up as well as Headhunters did. I knew I was being manipulated and didn't care. It was a pleasure to see how well it was being done.

About half the scenes in Our Souls at Night consist of Jane Fonda and Robert Redford simply talking to one another. Those scenes are more exhilarating, more intoxicating and more memorable than many if not most gigantic action sequences in big-budget movies.

We have all the action heroes and Method script-chewers we need right now, but the Cary Grant department is understaffed, and Hugh Grant shows here that he is more than a star, he is a resource.

This is a scary movie that loves other scary movies.

Directed with grace and grounded style and a keen eye for outdoor visuals by Anders Lindwall, and filmed in beautiful Door County, Wisconsin, this is a warm and authentic slice of farm life, with magnificent work by the 80-year-old Craig T. Nelson, who looks every inch the world-weary Wisconsin farmer.

This is the scariest movie of the year.

The story is predictable, but the style had me on the edge of my seat.

Just about perfect for its target audience, and more than that. It has a great look, engaging performances, real substance and even a few whispers of political ideas, all surrounding the freshness and charm of Abigail Breslin, who was 11 when it was filmed.

Red Rock West is a diabolical movie that exists sneakily between a western and a thriller, between a film noir and a black comedy.

The movie's strength, then, is not in its outrage, but in its cynicism and resignation.

[Kogonada] is a work of transcendent beauty, where words are key, but imagery even more profound.

A wise and touching film with a lot of love in it. I may have given the wrong impression: It's not entirely about drinking, it's just entirely about a drinker.

The sweetest and most openhearted love fable since "The Princess Bride."

The seductive thing about Aronofsky's film is that it is halfway plausible in terms of modern physics and math.

Bottle Shock is more than the story. It is also about people who love their work, care about it with passion and talk about it with knowledge.

The whole movie has a winning sadness about it; take away the story's sensational aspects and what you have is a study in loneliness.

Kristen Wiig’s performance in the unfortunately titled Hateship Loveship is so beautifully muted it takes a while to appreciate the loveliness of the notes she’s hitting.

Sayles' film moves among a large population of characters with grace, humor and a forgiving irony.

The movie is not tidy. Like its heroine, it doesn't follow the rules.

There’s something quite beautiful and quite melancholy and sometimes achingly relatable about the tone of writer-director Elizabeth Chomko’s lovely and memorable What They Had, which is based in part on the Chicago-born Chomko’s own family history.

A delicious pastry of a movie -- You see it, and later when you think about it, you smile.

It seems aimed at people who loved "Pulp Fiction'' and have strong stomachs. Like it or hate it (or both), you have to admire its skill, and the over-the-top virtuosity of Reese Witherspoon and Kiefer Sutherland as the girl and the wolf.

Director Gillian Armstrong finds the serious themes and refuses to simplify the story into a "family" formula. "

Some of the resolutions of this myriad of conflicts and issues are perhaps a bit too tidy, but this is a richly layered and truly moving set piece, with a smart and insightful screenplay and great performances from the ensemble cast.

The music is terrific. Idania Valdes dubs Rita's sensuous, smoky singing voice, and the film is essentially constructed as a musical.

Mike Hodges' gritty new film noir I'll Sleep When I'm Dead begins in enigma and snakes its way into stark clarity.

Oculus is one of the more elegant scary movies in recent memory.

So yes, “MaXXXine” is sometimes more style than substance. Still, amid all the clever inside jokes and Easter eggs, writer-director-producer-editor West delivers a masterfully paced horror film set against the dichotomy between actor-turned-politician Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” and the reality of 1985 Hollywood and its grimy, exploitative, misogynist underbelly.

[Coppola] has the courage to play it in a minor key.

Moore and Bening are superb actors here, evoking a marriage of more than 20 years, and all of its shadings and secrets, idealism and compromise.

These animals aren't catering to anyone in the audience. We get the feeling they're intensely leading their own lives without slowing down for ours.

What is finally clear: It doesn't matter a damn what your will says if you have $25 billion, and politicians and the establishment want it.

With Rolling Thunder Revue, Scorsese remains at the top of his game, and is the perfect filmmaker to tell the story of a unique chapter in the life and career of a fellow creative legend.

The best thing about Spider-Man: Homecoming is Spidey is still more of a kid than a man. Even with his budding superpowers, he still has the impatience, the awkwardness, the passion, the uncertainty and sometimes the dangerous ambition of a teenager still trying to figure out this world.

The film's title is appropriate. A desperate Catholicism flavors the doomed city.

The real subject of the film is Douglas Bruce sitting on two years of memories and told there is a 95 percent chance that another 30 years may return to him. A lot of people don't want to know when they're going to die. Maybe they wouldn't want to be reborn, either.

The violence in this movie is gruesome (a scene involving the disposal of bodies is particularly graphic). But the movie has many human qualities and contains what will be remembered as one of Pacino's finest scenes.

Above all, it contains characters I care for, played by actors I admire.

In Klute you don't have two attractive acting vacuums reciting speeches at each other. With Fonda and Sutherland, you have actors who understand and sympathize with their characters, and you have a vehicle worthy of that sort of intelligence. So the fact that the thriller stuff doesn't always work isn't so important.

Because it is attentive to these human elements, Ladder 49 draws from the action scenes instead of depending on them. Phoenix, Travolta, Barrett and the others are given characters with dimension, so that what happens depends on their decisions, not on the plot.

Unstrung Heroes has been directed by Diane Keaton with an unusual combination of sentiment and quirky eccentricity.

Oh, God! is lighthearted, satirical, and humorous and (that rarest of qualities) in good taste.

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.

Starting with Mick Jagger, rock concerts have become, for the performers, as much sporting events as musical and theatrical performances. Stop Making Sense understands that with great exuberance.

[Keaton and Nicholson] bring so much experience, knowledge and humor to their characters that the film works in ways the screenplay might not have even hoped for.

Davidson delivers a fully realized, nuanced performance, tackling dark comedy and raw drama with equal aplomb.

All four of the actors playing the brothers are standouts, with Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White leading the way with some of the finest work of their respective careers. “The Iron Claw” isn’t an easy watch, but it’s one of the best films of the year.

As Sokurov examines a pivotal point in the Louvre’s history and gives us a virtual tour of the magnificent museum, he makes larger points about the vital importance of art throughout human history. This is one of the most beautiful films of the year.

This Netflix original from writer-director Jeremy Rush is one of the most gripping and entertaining action mysteries of the year.

Just plain fun. Or maybe not so plain. There's a lot of craft and slyness lurking beneath the circa-1960s goofiness.

The Forgiven holds us in its grips until the very last frame.

The thing about Funny People is that it's a real movie. That means carefully written dialogue and carefully placed supporting performances -- and it's ABOUT SOMETHING.

In its closing scenes, Hell and Back Again builds to an emotional and stylistic power that we didn't see coming.

The effect is strange and delightful; somehow the style lends quasi-credibility to a story that is entirely preposterous.

An ingenious little horror film, so well made it's truly scary.

Even when The Family Fang stretches credulity, we stay with it. Bateman knows how to tell a story.

To be sure, Scorsese was occasionally too obvious, and the film has serious structural flaws, but nobody who loves movies believes a perfect one will ever be made. What we hope for instead are small gains on the fronts of hope, love, comedy and tragedy. It is possible that with more experience and maturity Scorsese will direct more polished, finished films--but this work, completed when he was 25, contains a frankness he may have diluted by then.

Elstree 1976...is a sweet, quietly funny, fascinating and contemplative study.

It’s funny because it gets it RIGHT without ever being too mean-spirited.

The movie gets the feel right, and there's real energy in the concert scenes, especially the tricky debut of Buddy Holly and the Crickets as the first white act in Harlem's famous Apollo Theater.

You couldn’t ask for a more unlikely avenger than the ill-equipped sort-of hero of Blue Ruin, and that’s precisely why it’s far, far more suspenseful than the typical violent revenge thriller. It’s also why it functions equally well as a potent reflection on the futility of revenge.

As for Beatty, Reds is his bravura turn. He got the idea, nurtured it for a decade, found the financing, wrote most of the script, produced, and directed and starred and still found enough artistic detachment to make his Reed into a flawed, fascinating enigma instead of a boring archetypal hero. I liked this movie. I felt a real fondness for it.

This is about the residents of Ferguson, who reacted to the killing of Michael Brown by galvanizing a movement on the streets of their town and via social media. They knew the whole world was watching, and they had seized the opportunity to tell their stories.

Foster directs the film with a sure eye for the revealing little natural moment.

The film is poetic and erotic, creepy and melodramatic, overwrought and sometimes mocking, as if F. W. Murnau's "Nosferatu" (1922) had a long-lost musical version.

Odd is played by Baard Owe, a trim, fit man with a neat mustache, who may cause you to think a little of James Stewart, Jacques Tati or Jean Rochefort.

Infinity War might be the biggest and most ambitious Marvel movie yet, but it’s certainly not the best. (I’d put it somewhere in the bottom half of the Top 10.) However, there’s plenty of action, humor and heart — and some genuinely effective dramatic moments in which familiar and beloved characters experience real, seemingly irreversible losses.

Wood and Cage have a terrific dynamic together.

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.

Serkis is brilliant and memorable and sometimes absolutely heartbreaking as Caesar. The supporting players excel, with each getting a moment or two in the sun.

Southside with You is a sweet, intelligent, well-crafted, wonderfully romantic, no-frills re-imagination of the first date between Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson.

There is a long central section in the film which is a triumph of narrative technique.

Thanks to a legendary director at the top of his game, this is easily one of the best action movies of the year.

Guilty by Suspicion is about a period that is now some 40 years ago (although some blacklist members did not work again until the 1970s). But it teaches a lesson we are always in danger of forgetting: that the greatest service we can do our country is to be true to our conscience.

With spare and precise dialogue that often sounds inspired by Dashiell Hammett, a labyrinthine story with a few heart-stopping twists and pitch-perfect performances by Brosnahan and the supporting cast, this is one of the best movies of the year.

One of the more completely entertaining movies I've seen in a while--a well-crafted character study that, like a Hollywood movie with a skillful script, manipulates us but makes us like it.

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.