The movie, in fact, resembles Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" more than other, conventional time-travel movies.

It’s impressive how well director Malcolm D. Lee (working from a script by Kenya Barris and Tracy Oliver) balances the serious material with the bawdy, freewheeling comedy pieces.

By its nature, “Adios” lacks the thrill of discovery of Wenders’ doc. But like the 1999 film, it pulls at the heartstrings and never lets up.

Surviving Progress is a bright, entertaining (!), coherent argument in favor of these principles I have simplified so briefly. It's self-evident and tells the truth.

Not a great movie, but as a classic heist movie, it's solid professionalism.

This is one of the better musical biopics of the last 20 years.

Like Father, Like Son is always wise about the quandary faced by the two fathers and the two mothers.

David Klass, the screenwriter, gives Freeman and Judd more specific dialogue than is usual in thrillers; they sound as if they might actually be talking with each other and not simply advancing plot points.

This is a Noah for the 21st century, one of the most dazzling and unforgettable biblical epics ever put on film.

Thanks to Downey’s genius, Iron Man 3 is equally terrific, whether Tony’s fending off an army of villains or bantering with a kid in a shed on a cold, snowy night.

It’s one of the most visually striking and leanest versions of “the Scottish play” ever put on film, with blockbuster performances from Oscar winners Frances McDormand and Denzel Washington as Lady and Lord Macbeth, and a brilliant supporting cast.

Robert Redford has directed Quiz Show as entertainment, history, and challenge.

The real star of the film is writer-director Jordan Peele, who has created a work that addresses the myriad levels of racism, pays homage to some great horror films, carves out its own creative path, has a distinctive visual style — and is flat-out funny as well.

It's the film you need to see in order to understand why the ending of "As Good As It Gets" was phony.

A visual poem of extraordinary beauty.

It’s the kind of film that grabs you from the opening sequences and holds you in its grimy grip all the way through the closing credits, when the s- - - is still hitting the fan.

What's Love Got to Do With It ranks as one of the most harrowing, uncompromising showbiz biographies I've ever seen.

Filmmakers Cristina Constantini and Kareem Tabsch have fashioned an illuminating and insightful documentary/biography.

This is a dark and brutal cautionary tale that traffics in any number of familiar scary-movie touchstones, but does so in consistently clever and entertaining fashion.

Against all odds, the billion-dollar “Fast & Furious” franchise is actually picking up momentum, with “FF6” clocking in as the fastest, funniest and most outlandish chapter yet.

This is the kind of movie routinely dismissed as too slow and quiet by those who don't know it is more exciting to listen than to hear.

Like that damn disembodied hand, Talk to Me will keep you in its grips throughout.

Skate or Die is culled from more than 100 hours of footage shot by Ferguson in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and with a great assist from editor Zebediah Smith, the end result is an 84-minute, journalistically impressive documentary that knows how to get out of its own way and let the story and the subject matter come to three-dimensional life in a stylistically appropriate fast-paced fashion.

Dying Laughing is a movie about stand-up with no performance footage. It’s like a documentary about baseball with no game footage — but it’s great and it’s valuable and it’s wonderful, because we love seeing and hearing these all-time greats talk about what they do with such passion and candor.

The dialogue is peppered with funny one-liners that occasionally sound a little too spot-on (we can almost see the dialogue leaping off the page), but Helms and Harrison have slipped so seamlessly into their characters and are so good at making every line reading seem real and spontaneous, we stay involved.

Even if you’ve somehow never even heard of the story upon which this film is based, it’s a crackling good lawman tale.

A tough, bitter little sleeper of a movie that's about four times as good as you'd expect.

A wildly entertaining, over-the-top, blood-soaked, noir-Western from director/co-writer Scott Wiper that’s filled with stunning visuals of the breathtaking and sometimes foreboding countryside (with Morehead, Kentucky, standing in for West Virginia) and searing performances from the ensemble cast.