Gifted isn’t the best or most sophisticated or most original film of the year so far — but it just might be my favorite.

The most harrowing movie about mountain climbing I have seen, or can imagine.

The patter is always fascinating, and at right angles to the action. [Mamet]'s like a magician who gets you all involved in his story about the King, the Queen and the Jack, while the whole point is that there's a rabbit in your pocket.

Weird. Brilliant. Stunning. Under the Skin is by far the most memorable movie of the first few months of 2014.

Fantastically powerful despite its flaws. (Review of Original Release)

This movie is NEW from the get-go. It could be your first Bond. In fact, it was the first Bond; it was Ian Fleming's first 007 novel, and he was still discovering who the character was.

The movie crackles with energy and life, and with throwaway slang dialogue by Mamet, who takes realistic speech patterns and simplifies them into a kind of hammer-and-nail poetry.

A red-blooded adventure movie, dripping with atmosphere, filled with the gruesome and the sublime, and surprisingly faithful to the novel.

The Revenant is a visceral sensation, filled with unforgettable visuals and memorable set pieces.

When interesting people have little to say, we watch the body language, listen to the notes in their voices. Rarely does a movie elaborate less and explain more than Tender Mercies.

It's a real movie, full-blooded and smart, with qualities even for those who have no idea who Stan Lee is. It's a superhero movie for people who don't go to superhero movies, and for those who do, it's the one they've been yearning for.

The result is one of the smartest, funniest and most visually captivating movies of the year.

Damage, like "Last Tango in Paris" and "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," is one of those rare movies that is about sexuality, not sex; about the tension between people, not "relationships"; about how physical love is meaningless without a psychic engine behind it. Stephen and Anna are wrong to do what they do in "Damage," but they cannot help themselves. We know they are careening toward disaster. We cannot look away.

It is so rare to find a film where you become quickly, simply absorbed in the story.

Seibei's story is told by director Yoji Yamada in muted tones and colors, beautifully re-creating a feudal village that still retains its architecture, its customs, its ancient values, even as the economy is making its way of life obsolete.

What we have here is a superior historical drama and a powerful personal one.

Singin' in the Rain is a transcendent experience, and no one who loves movies can afford to miss it.

Like a flowering of talent that has been waiting so long to be celebrated. It is also one of the most touching and moving of the year's films.

This is an inclusive, diverse, multi-level, multi-layered, funny, warm, cool, richly detailed, lovingly rendered, friendly neighborhood instant classic.

Why should anyone care about a movie about two scabrous vulgarians? Because the subject of a really good movie is sometimes not that important. It's the acting, writing, and direction that count.

A lot of rock stars and other showbiz heroes have the notion that because they’re successful in other areas, they can direct a movie, too. Usually they’re wrong. But Mellencamp turns out to have a real filmmaking gift.

The movie has been both attacked and defended on feminist grounds, but I think it belongs somewhere outside ideology, maybe in the area of contemporary myth and romance.

Edward Zwick’s Pawn Sacrifice is an enthralling piece of mainstream entertainment that captures the essence of Fischer’s mad genius, perfectly re-creates the tenor of the times AND works as a legit sports movie about the great game of chess.

It probably is unforgivably bourgeois to admire a film because of its locations, but in the case of The Last Emperor the narrative cannot be separated from the awesome presence of the Forbidden City, and from Bertolucci's astonishing use of locations, authentic costumes and thousands of extras to create the everyday reality of this strange little boy.

"Batman" isn't a comic book anymore. Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is a haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy. It creates characters we come to care about. That's because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production.

I think you have to see Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York twice. I watched it the first time and knew it was a great film and that I had not mastered it. The second time because I needed to. The third time because I will want to.

It confronts the relationship between Fonda and Voight with unusual frankness -- and with emotional tenderness and subtlety that is, if anything, even harder to portray.

In “Banshees,” Gleeson and Farrell once again are pure movie magic together, with Gleeson’s gruff and rugged and imposing persona the perfect counterpart to Farrell’s handsome and wide-eyed transparency, which at times borders on the, well, the not-too-bright. Earnest, but not too bright.