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.

The movie has the freshness and urgency of life actually happening.

Even though many of the segments are brief, Guevara-Flanagan does a remarkably thorough job in covering such a wide range of areas. The only complaint one might have about Body Parts is it easily could have been twice as long.

Crazy Rich Asians glimmers and sparkles, gives us characters to root for, and is pure escapist fantasy fun.

Too many films about the dead involve mourning, and too few involve laughter. Yet at lucky funerals there is a desire to remember the good times.

There is a word to explain why this particular film so appealed to me. Reader, that word is "escapism." If you understand why I used the word "reader" in just that way, you are possibly an ideal viewer for this movie.

Imagine music for a sorcery-related plot and then dial it down to ominous forebodings. Without Thomas Newman's score, Side Effects would be a lesser film, even another film.

It lovingly, almost sadistically, lays out the situation and deliberately demonstrates all the things that can go wrong. And I mean all the things.

The bold long shot near the end of Dear Frankie allows the film to move straight as an arrow toward its emotional truth, without a single word or plot manipulation to distract us.

So much of Luce is about what’s happening beneath the surface and between the lines. Everyone says they’re searching for the truth — even as they lie and obfuscate and bend the facts to suit their particular agendas and world views.

Here is a film that invites philosophical musing. Made without dialogue and often in long shots, it regards the four stages of existence in a remote Italian village.

So rich in atmosphere it makes Western films look pale and underpopulated.

The most heartbreaking scene shows survivors of the dead reaching through fence railings to scatter their ashes on the White House lawn, where presumably they still rest.

The film, written and directed by Joe Maggio, only has this handful of characters and looks at them carefully. The dialogue is right, the conflicts are simple and sincere, the hopes are touching.

Just when we think we’ve got it all figured out, Southbound serves up another deliciously bloody twist.

The film is a chilling study of an evil, dominant personality and his victims. It works primarily through an astonishingly good performance by Daniel Henshall as Bunting.

That's another thing about Carion's direction: He has an eye for unusual, atmospheric touches -- the kinds of striking little things you notice in the world and think: "Somebody should put that in a movie."

This is a time capsule — an expertly crafted time capsule — of an astonishing career.

A sublime meditation on solitude.

Diner is often a very funny movie, although I laughed most freely not at the sexual pranks but at the movie's accurate ear, as it reproduced dialogue with great comic accuracy.

Deliberately aimed at viewers with developed attention spans. It lingers to create atmosphere, a sense of place, a sympathy with the characters, instead of rushing into cheap thrills.