It is a great film about greatness, the story of the horse and the no less brave woman who had faith in him.

Jeff Bridges is a virtual certainty to win his first Oscar, after four nominations.

Oldboy is a powerful film not because of what it depicts, but because of the depths of the human heart which it strips bare.

Soaring. Exhilarating. Magical. Heartbreaking. Unforgettable.

Good Morning, Vietnam works as straight comedy and as a Vietnam-era MASH, and even the movie’s love story has its own bittersweet integrity.

This film is true about human nature. It is not universal, but within its particular focus, it is unrelenting.

So often movies keep our attention by flashy tricks and cheap melodrama; it is an intellectually cleansing experience to watch this intelligent and hopeful film.

Best of all, this movie is inhabited by a real cinematic intelligence. The audience isn't condescended to. In sequences like the one in which Travolta reconstructs a film and sound record of the accident, we're challenged and stimulated: We share the excitement of figuring out how things develop and unfold, when so often the movies only need us as passive witnesses.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle works so well because Eddie is played by Robert Mitchum, and Mitchum has perhaps never been better.

Only a few films are transcendent, and work upon our minds and imaginations like music or prayer or a vast belittling landscape...Alone among science-fiction movies, 2001 is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe.

A remarkable film.

Inception does a difficult thing. It is wholly original, cut from new cloth, and yet structured with action movie basics so it feels like it makes more sense than (quite possibly) it does.

The best film ever made about filmmaking.

Body Heat is good enough to make film noir play like we hadn't seen it before.

Alexander's performance makes the film possible to watch without unbearable heartbreak, because she is brave and decent in the face of the horror. And the last scene, in which she expresses such small optimism as is still possible, is one of the most powerful movie scenes I've ever seen.

This is a movie about spies, but it is not a thriller in any routine sense of the word. It's just the meticulously observant record of how naiveté, inexperience, misplaced idealism and greed led to one of the most peculiar cases of treason in American history.

I think this is an important movie. Devastating, violent, hopeless, and important, because it holds a mirror up to a part of the world we live in, and helps us see it more clearly. In particular, it examines the connection between fame and obscurity, between those who have a moment of praise and notoriety, and those who see themselves condemned to stand always at the edge of the spotlight.

Chocolat is a film of infinite delicacy. It is not one of those steamy melodramatic interracial romances where love conquers all. It is a movie about the rules and conventions of a racist society and how two intelligent adults, one black, one white, use their mutual sexual attraction as a battleground on which, very subtly, to taunt each other.

The darkly beautiful sci-fi film manages to feel bold and original while paying homage to countless great movies.

The actors, as sometimes happens, create those miracles that can endow a film with conviction. Moadi and Hatami, as husband and wife, succeed in convincing us their characters are acting from genuine motives.

In its heedless energy and joy, it reminded me of how I felt the first time I saw "Raiders of the Lost Ark." It's like a film that escaped from the imagination directly onto the screen, without having to pass through reality along the way.

It’s all perfectly, wonderfully, fantastically crazy. Amidst all those ingenious, power-packed road warrior sequences, Fury Road contains a surprising amount of depth and character development.

The funniest movie I have seen in a long time.

Films like this are more useful than gung-ho capers like "Behind Enemy Lines." They help audiences understand and sympathize with the actual experiences of combat troops, instead of trivializing them into entertainments.

Here is a strikingly beautiful, bold, funny, heart-tugging otherworldly journey almost dizzying in its multi-leveled complexity, and yet containing the simplest and most enduring Capra-esque messages about how we don’t know what we’ve got until it’s gone, and how we should embrace every waking moment because it can all vanish in the blink of an eye.

This is a brave, layered film that challenges the wisdom of victory at any price. Both of its central characters would slip easily into conventional plot formulas, but Bahrani looks deeply into their souls and finds so much more.

It's a movie based on an idea, and all the conventional wisdom agrees that emotions, not ideas, are the best to make movies from. But Being There pulls off its long shot and is one of the most confoundingly provocative movies of the year.

At times Can You Ever Forgive Me? is actually quite funny and of course McCarthy is great in those scenes — but she’s equally effective in the darkest, most dramatic moments. It’s one of the finest performances of the year.

As a portrait of a deteriorating state of mind, We Need to Talk About Kevin is a masterful film.

A few great directors have the ability to draw us into their dream world, into their personalities and obsessions and fascinate us with them for a short time. This is the highest level of escapism the movies can provide for us.

Sully is an absolute triumph.

Carl Franklin's film is true to the tone and spirit of the book. It is patient and in no hurry. It allows a balanced eye for the people in its hero's family who tug him one way and another.

It is a full-bodied silent film of the sort that might have been made by the greatest directors of the 1920s, if such details as the kinky sadomasochism of this film's evil stepmother could have been slipped past the censors.

The performance by Flora Cross is haunting in its seriousness. She doesn't act out; she acts in.

It is a luxury to be enveloped in a good film.

Seductive and beautiful, cynical and twisted, and one of the best films of the year.

Jacques Tati is the great philosophical tinkerer of comedy, taking meticulous care to arrange his films so that they unfold in a series of revelations and effortless delights.

Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris is one of the great emotional experiences of our time.

Those tensions and conflicts produced, I believe, the right film for this material. I don't require that its makers had a good time. I'm reminded of my favorite statement by Francois Truffaut: "I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between."

The Gatekeepers has a cold air to it: washed-out colors, tan ominous soundtrack, eerily floating satellite footage… The most chilling aspect, however, is the blunt commentary about the work itself.

This movie is one amazing piece of work, not only for the Hoskins performance but also for the energy of the filmmaking, the power of the music, and, oddly enough, for the engaging quality of its sometimes very violent sense of humor.

It’s an unusual mix of big-picture issues, grindhouse pulp and pure, rough entertainment, bolstered by one of the better ensemble casts of the year. This movie is not, um, fussing around.

News of the World works at the highest levels as a story of two lost souls who find one another, and as a crackling good, blood-spattered Western.

Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid and Dennis Haysbert are called on to play characters whose instincts are wholly different from their own. By succeeding, they make their characters real, instead of stereotypes.

Kill Bill: Volume 1 shows Quentin Tarantino so effortlessly and brilliantly in command of his technique that he reminds me of a virtuoso violinist racing through "Flight of the Bumble Bee" -- or maybe an accordion prodigy setting a speed record for "Lady of Spain."

This film is so good it is devastating.

The affirmation at the end of the film is so joyous that this is one of the few movies in a long time that inspires tears of happiness, and earns them. The Color Purple is the year's best film.

Once is the kind of film I've been pestered about ever since I started reviewing again. People couldn't quite describe it, but they said I had to see it. I had to. Well, I did. They were right.

Rendition is valuable and rare. As I wrote from Toronto: "It is a movie about the theory and practice of two things: torture and personal responsibility. And it is wise about what is right, and what is wrong."

While so many films about coming of age involve manufactured dilemmas, here is one about a woman who indeed does come of age, and magnificently.

By now, everyone knows who wins, but the scenes before the fight set us up for it so completely, so emotionally, that when it's over we've had it. We're drained.

Harrelson is an ideal actor for the role. Especially in tensely wound-up movies like this, he implies that he's looking at everything and then watching himself looking.

Trumbo has taken the most difficult sort of material -- the story of a soldier who lost his arms, his legs, and most of his face in a World War I shell burst -- and handled it, strange to say, in a way that's not so much anti-war as pro-life. Perhaps that's why I admire it.

Here's a movie filled with drama and excitement, unfolding a plot of brilliant complexity, in which the central character is solemn and silent, saying only what he has to say, revealing himself only strategically.

It's satirical, exciting, funny, and an influential masterpiece of art direction.

The film becomes a sort of boxing match, getting more intense with each round, building to an exciting finish.

A brilliant nightmare and like all nightmares it doesn't tell us half of what we want to know.

Then there are the miracles of the performances by Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski and Hunter Carson.

It is more of a wonderment, lolling in its enchanting images--original, delightful and funny.

One of the pure joys of this job is experiencing a breakout performance or discovering a new director destined for great things. Saint Frances gives us both.

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.

With Cillian Murphy’s quiet, almost small and yet grand performance carrying the story every step of the way, “Small Things Like These” is quite possibly the best movie I’ve seen so far this year.

It's a compelling visceral film -- sound, images and characters combined into a decidedly odd visual experience that evokes the feel of a graphic novel. It seems charged from within by its power as a fable; we sense it’s not interested in a plot so much as with the dilemma of functioning in a world losing hope.

Sean Penn never tries to show Harvey Milk as a hero, and never needs to. He shows him as an ordinary man, kind, funny, flawed, shrewd, idealistic, yearning for a better world.

IT...carried me along from the opening frame, rarely missing a beat.

The work of a born filmmaker, able to summon apprehension out of thin air.

Chazelle’s script is hopeful and sweet and clever and rich. His direction is innovative and captivating.

What Fred and Ginger had together, and what no other team has ever had in the same way, was a joy of performance. They were so good, and they knew they were so good, that they danced in celebration of their gifts.

The Searchers contains scenes of magnificence, and one of John Wayne's best performances.

The movie is a great American document, but it's also entertaining. (Review of Original Release)

Here is a children's film made for the world we should live in, rather than the one we occupy. A film with no villains. No fight scenes. No evil adults. No fighting between the two kids. No scary monsters. No darkness before the dawn. A world that is benign. A world where if you meet a strange towering creature in the forest, you curl up on its tummy and have a nap.

The dialogue is so spare and cynical it has not grown old-fashioned. Much of the emotional effect of Casablanca is achieved by indirection; as we leave the theater, we are absolutely convinced that the only thing keeping the world from going crazy is that the problems of three little people do after all amount to more than a hill of beans.

Fred Zinnemann’s The Day of the Jackal is one hell of an exciting movie. I wasn’t prepared for how good it really is: it’s not just a suspense classic, but a beautifully executed example of filmmaking. It’s put together like a fine watch. The screenplay meticulously assembles an incredible array of material, and then Zinnemann choreographs it so that the story--complicated as it is--unfolds in almost documentary starkness.

It is one of the year's best films.

I believe this film should be seen by every medical student. Like Kurosawa's masterpiece, "Ikiru" (1952), it fearlessly regards the meanings of life, and death.

The costumes and everything else in the film--the photography, the music, above all Shakespeare's language--is so voluptuous, so sensuous.

The most unconventional biopic I've ever seen, and one of the best.

It's a superb film -- funny, insightful and very wise about the realities of political life.

It is a surprisingly entertaining film - funny, wicked, sharp-tongued and devious. It does not solve the case, nor intend to. I am afraid it only intends to entertain.

One of the best films of the year.

It just might be the most impressive piece of filmmaking I’ve seen in 2015, and it features a great lead performance by a rising star, a memorable supporting role by a familiar veteran — and one of the most amazing acting jobs by a child I’ve ever seen.

The peculiar quality of Vanity Fair, which sets it aside from the Austen adaptations such as "Sense and Sensibility" and "Pride and Prejudice," is that it's not about very nice people. That makes them much more interesting.

The more you consider Sunrise the deeper it becomes -- not because the story grows any more subtle, but because you realize the real subject is the horror beneath the surface.

The movie makes no attempt to psychoanalyze its Kit Carruthers, and there are no symbols to note or lessons to learn. What comes through more than anything is the enormous loneliness of the lives these two characters lived, together and apart.

The French Connection is routinely included, along with "Bullitt," "Diva" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark," on the short list of movies with the greatest chase scenes of all time. What is not always remembered is what a good movie it is apart from the chase scene.

A friend asked: "Wouldn't you love to attend a wedding like that?" In a way, I felt I had. Yes, I began to feel absorbed in the experience. A few movies can do that, can slip you out of your mind and into theirs.

As Soderbergh lovingly peels away veil after veil of deception, the film develops into an unexpected human comedy. Not that any of the characters are laughing.

Schrader doesn't speak to the deeper and more human themes he's introduced. Too bad. But Hardcore, flawed and uneven, contains moments of pure revelation.

Superman is a pure delight, a wondrous combination of all the old-fashioned things we never really get tired of: adventure and romance, heroes and villains, earthshaking special effects, and -- you know what else? Wit.

Keke Palmer, a young Chicago actress whose first role was as Queen Latifah's niece in "Barbershop 2," becomes an important young star with this movie. It puts her in Dakota Fanning and Thora Cross territory, and there's something about her poise and self-possession that hints she will grow up to be a considerable actress.

Has maturity and emotional depth: There are no cheap shots, nothing is thrown in for effect, realism is placed ahead of easy dramatic payoffs, and the audience grows deeply involved.

Radio Days is so ambitious and so audacious that it almost defies description. It's a kaleidoscope of dozens of characters, settings and scenes - the most elaborate production Allen has ever made - and it's inexhaustible, spinning out one delight after another.

This profound and immensely touching film in only 75 perfect minutes achieves the profundity of an epic.

Junebug is a great film because it is a true film. It humbles other films that claim to be about family secrets and eccentricities. It understands that families are complicated and their problems are not solved during a short visit, just in time for the film to end. Families and their problems go on and on, and they aren't solved, they're dealt with.

Here's a technological sound-and-light show that is sensational and brainy, stylish, and fun.

This restored 35mm print, now in art theaters around the country, may be 37 years old, but it is the best foreign film of the year.

“At the Max” is a rock concert brought to a point approaching virtual reality.

It is not a "dirty movie," and in fact takes spirituality and morality more seriously than most films do. And in the bad lieutenant, Keitel has given us one of the great screen performances in recent years.