The movie is all color and music, sound and motion, kinetic energy, broad strokes, operatic excess.

I saw more important films at Sundance 2003, but none more purely enjoyable than Bend It Like Beckham, which is just about perfect as a teenage coming-of-age comedy.

Marley, an ambitious and comprehensive film, does what is probably the best possible job of documenting an important life.

This movie will cheerfully go for a laugh wherever one is even remotely likely to be found. It has political jokes and boob jokes, dog poop jokes, and ballet jokes. It makes fun of two completely different Hollywood genres: the spy movie and the Elvis Presley musical.

Cars 2 is fun. Whether that's because John Lasseter is in touch with his inner child or mine, I cannot say.

It's a funny, engaging comedy that takes the familiar but underrated Emma Stone and makes her, I believe, a star.

Liev Schreiber is outstanding as the hulking, rough-edged, amiable and charismatic Wepner.

With crisp and assured direction from Byron Howard and Jared Bush (with lead screenwriter Charise Castro Smith co-directing), a bounty of catchy new songs by the ubiquitous treasure that is one Lin-Manuel Miranda and fantastic voice work from the ensemble cast, Encanto is a magical and warmhearted journey with lovely messaging about the importance of family, some genuinely funny set pieces and those stunning visuals that fill every corner of the screen.

The famous faces make it difficult, at first, to sink into the story, but eventually we do; the characters become so convincing that even if we're aware of Keaton and Streep, it's as if these events are happening to them.

A harrowing look at institutional cruelty, perpetrated by the Catholic Church in Ireland, and justified by a perverted hysteria about sex.

There is an old saying: Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it. The Piano Teacher has a more ominous lesson: Be especially careful with someone who has asked for you.

Not just a cute romp but an involving story that has something to say.

The unexpected thing about Made in Dagenham is how entertaining it is.

The chilling and stylish and aggressively creepy Stoker begins at the end and takes us on a shocking and lurid journey before we land right where we started, now seeing every small detail through a different lens. It's disturbingly good.

I figured it wasn't important for me to go into detail about the photography and the editing. I just wanted to scare the bejesus out of you, which is what Food, Inc. did to me.

In the middle of all the wince-inducing, limb-bending, bone-crunching, face-exploding bloodshed, Vaughn turns in a legitimately great performance that ranks among the finest work he’s ever done.

Like "The Exorcist," the best film in the genre, it is inspired by some degree of religious scholarship and creates believable characters in a real world. That religions take demonic possessions seriously makes them more fun for us, the unpossessed.

Sometimes it's all about the casting. The notice of a screening came around, I read the names Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin, and it didn't matter in a way what the movie was about - although it didn't hurt that it was a crime movie.

Entertaining and surprisingly amusing, under the circumstances. The film is in a better state of mind than its characters. Its humor comes, as the best humor does, from an acute observation of human nature.

In the alternately exhilarating and heartbreaking documentary Whitney, the Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald (“Touching the Void,” “The Last King of Scotland”) does a magnificent job of taking us through the paces of Houston’s life and times.

In its complexity and wit, this is one of his (Allen's) best recent films.

This is one of the most entertaining movies of the year.

There is a scene in The Fabulous Baker Boys where Michelle Pfeiffer, wearing a slinky red dress, uncurls on top of a piano while singing "Makin' Whoopee." The rest of the movie is also worth the price of admission.

It's manipulative, yes, but clever and persuasive in its manipulations.

The movie is a dazzling song and dance extravaganza, with just enough words to support the music and allow everyone to catch their breath between songs.

For all its influences and roots in similar types of comedies, Emergency is an original work, very much of its time.

The acting here, by Sean Penn, is a virtuoso tour de force - one of those performances that takes on a life of its own.

Under Fire surrounds these performances with a vivid sense of place and becomes, somewhat surprisingly, one of the year's best films.