The action scenes are exciting, the fantasy scenes are creative and the war scenes are brutal.

After half a century, does the story hold up? Eh, pretty much. In the end, the story doesn't really matter that much as this is really a vehicle for the amazing visuals.

This is a tale of friendship, corruption, betrayal and desperation masterfully told without an ounce of filmmaking flash and with an unflinching commitment to realism.

Parasites is a brilliant film and for a thriller, it’s absolutely unpredictable (except in one big way).

The tender story addressing the oppression of domestic workers includes brilliant moments of humanity, making the film attractive to the average viewer, but this film would not have received such praise had it come from a lesser known director.

There isn't really an overall arc present in Killer of Sheep, and that's the point. There's really nothing meant to be expressed in Killer of Sheep but the experience of poverty, and the inevitability of crime in the face of poverty.

Thompson pulled off an extraordinary feat. He introduced a whole new audience to a very impressive cultural event that could have been entirely forgotten. He also reminds us of where and what conditions we all came from as a country and where we’re headed now.

What makes Breathless a masterpiece along with its style is how Godard captures the overall malcontent, which still resonates with much of modern life as we know it and ultimately leaves us all breathless.

Stunningly animated, cleverly scripted, and genuinely humorous.

It’s a nearly perfect film.

The personal and the political intertwine, until lines blur and dissipate. Anderson punches your gut while warming your heart, and he leaves enough room for you to draw your own conclusions. What remains inarguable is that One Battle After Another represents the pinnacle of the man’s astounding career.

Rocks’ moments of brutal realism depicting the seriousness of its protagonist’s real-life drama will hit you hard or make you wonder why life is so unfair.

Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is a grinding, nightmarish machine.

The first masterwork of the post-modern pop culture generation...gets better with every viewing, and like good rock n' roll, needs to be played loud!

A thoroughly enjoyable film, and ranks with Pixar's best.

His Girl Friday probably shouldn’t be approached lightly. You don’t want to try and watch this when you’re half asleep. His Girl Friday is probably best seen in the middle of crystal meth adventure. If you’re not paying attention you’ll probably miss all the jokes and not understand this movie.

There’s something for everyone in Amazing Grace. I would definitely recommend checking this out if you’re a fan of concert docs, or of the queen of soul. Even if you’re none of those things, it’s an interesting historical document, so give it a go!

Complaints? Sure, I had a few: The liberal use of insta-sweat whenever the character in question is experiencing tension, Harvey's aforementioned accent, one over-used shot composition that places the action at a great distance with a giant-headed supporting actor in the extreme foreground. [Re-release]

It’s so much more than a story about mobsters. It’s a story of hope, success, and failure. It’s a sprawling behemoth of a film that surprisingly, considering its length, I already want to watch again.

Alexander Payne is becoming one of the greatest American directors of modern cinema and again, Sideways is on its way to being one of the best films of the year.

In the end, Past Lives plays with your brain and heart. It’s one of those films that leaves you thinking about and yearning for what might have been.

If The Return of the King was 2 1/2 hours long, it would have rocked. It would have been better than The Two Towers, which is the best film in the series.

The most important thing in Marriage Story really isn’t the divorce itself. It’s Charlie and Nicole as people on their own individual journeys through one of the hardest things a person can ever go through. It’s a beautiful character piece that revels in its protagonists’ quirks and tics.

Heartfelt and genuine sentiments abound, making Petite Maman one of the finest titles of the year, one that can appeal to the (weird) kid in all of us.

It still has everything a viewer could want from a movie experience.

Masculine, Feminine could be viewed as Godard's reaction to his own success and the state of the world around him.

Whatever bias you may have about Sandler’s comedies fade away here. Sandler gives a genuine and physically brutal performance of a man who’s trying to stay one step ahead of total collapse.

I’m here simply for the brilliant performance of Cate Blanchett. She’s imperfect, incredibly flawed, and a villain who doesn’t know it.

This may be an extremely bold statement to make, but there hasn’t been such an amazing character study in film since “Citizen Kane.” I honestly can’t praise it enough. From the opening to the ghastly ending, this film will sit in the depths of your stomach for some time to come.

A masterpiece that was certainly decades ahead of its time.

Schnabel's film is so steeped in the visual that it is surely the purest of cinema.

The Class is a one-trick show: once you spot its approach, the narrative falls into a routine. To the "nsiders," the film is as familiar as an an aerial virtual reality ride would be to an airplane pilot. (This is hardly a surprise, since Bégaudeau was himself once an insider, though now safe in a film critic's chair.)

Like all of the renowned filmmakers’ best movies, this faithful adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel hasn’t aged a bit, its poetry and beauty growing starker, its themes gaining more relevance. An edge-of-your-seat thriller and an elegiac, gut-wrenching meditation on the passing of time and generational devolution, the now-classic feature showcases the brothers’ skills at their most stripped-down and rawest.

This new interpretation of the beloved classic absolutely deserves to be seen in theaters.

As a fan of stop-motion animation and the works of Ray Harryhausen and Henry Sellick, King Kong will remain the granddaddy of the art form and remains a classic for all generations.

An amazing accomplishment by Newman as the best fight man has left in him. There’s also an Oscar winning performance by champion Foghorn Leghorn sound alike George Kennedy.

The story itself holds up fairly well though, twenty years later, does come off as thinner than I recalled. [2002 re-release]

In the end, my question is whether Never Rarely Sometimes Always is meant to be just a story or offer something political to say in the great abortion debate. I’m certain the film exists to highlight the stories of young women forced to travel across state lines for abortions. Either way, there’s not enough of either to make it a compelling movie in the end.

Probably the best comment I could give it is that after sitting through the first two and 1/2 hours, I would have happily sat through another five. How long am I going to have to wait for that DVD Box Set?

Glazer’s film is marked by supremely judged restraint.

A black-humored, unflinching look at the Ugly American at his psychotic worst. And Tobe Hooper is at his best as a writer and director here.

To me, the film is boring, lifeless, too dreary for its own good, and has really annoying quirks and habits that just irritate me.

A towering achievement in cinema, music, and life art. Funnier and more prescient every time I see it.

Filho masterfully turns a tale of survival into a deeply human story about love, loyalty, and the cost of integrity under tyranny.

Like a brooding nightmare, Burning washes over audiences with passing visions of multiple lives, secrets and betrayals, all leading to no single, clean-cut or simple explanation.

The layering of multiple narratives on top of each other invites the viewer to reflect upon the numerous themes at play. The drama touches upon notions of one’s own identity, whether we can ever know another’s true identity, and the role of secrets in even the most intimate of relationships.

Achieves the impossible in taking a genuine socio-political tragedy and turning it into an anvil drama which will fray the patience of the most sympathetic audiences.

This is quite possibly the best Canadian film of all time.

There isn't another American screen actor who could have given this performance, not one who so deftly could have navigated the razor's edge separating the wiseacre and the wise.

Because of Little Women‘s grandeur, opulence, and density, it is impossible to deny that the cast was not greatly directed.

Breathtakingly inventive story.

Through a bracing pastiche of methods, we are taken on a harrowing journey that must have A-list directors, this very minute clamoring for option rights. It is beautiful and gripping; Flee is a must-see.

The film has an innate sense of wonder in every moving landscape, colorful character, or evocative performance.

The documentary is the great American story of the outsiders coming in and rising up. You need to see it.

The tragic, violent true-life tale that concerns Waltz with Bashir is rendered even more powerful in animated form than it would likely have in life-action.

Hit the Road is a gut-punch of a film, strikingly gorgeous, as tender as a mother’s touch, as uncompromising as an aggrieved father. Panahi is acutely, painfully aware of the infinite nuances of family, how humans interact, and how to slow down the pace for things to sink in, or simply take a breather, or even sing a song. It’s the best film I’ve seen this year.

World War I was a new kind of war, because of its use of planes, tanks, and artillery for the first time. Add in the impossible conditions of trench warfare, where men lived in their own filth and alongside piles of decomposing dead comrades—all brought to you in glorious 3D. Even more haunting is the fact that this is real.

The laughs in Anora come in so fast and frequently that they almost eclipse the underlying tension; things are constantly on the edge of exploding, amusement on the verge of anxiety.

This is a work of art that embraces and embellishes all the joys of cinema while offering a more enjoyable and progressive revisionist history.

Arguably, the greatest horror film of the past thirty years.

Bambi is not a great film. The film has a few memorably winning sequences which have become part of Disney pantheon. But in between these sequences are fairly dullish stretches of Disney kitsch, with too-cuddly animals in extreme states of too-cute behavior; there’s also a song score which is among Disney’s least interesting.

The sequel is an uninterrupted 80-minute dialogue between two richly imagined and performed characters.

The Worst Person in the World is a wildcat in a world of domesticated dramedies and romantic comedies. Trier has made one of the best movies of this year or any year.

32 Sounds serves as a glorious pastiche of interviews with sound makers, found footage concerning sound, and interactive experiments for audience members to participate in.

By examining the subtleties of friendship, the film is transfixing and charming.

A gripping experience, and often downright sickening.

Though it has many moments of sarcasm and humor, the overall tone, like the comics themselves, is a depressing one.

We have an authentic Old Master working in our midst, and Gosford Park will at the very least remind everyone how masterful a helmsman Altman can be.

After four Pixar features under their belts, it is painfully easy to see the clichés emerging.

The electrifying performances, superb cinematography, and timeless subject matter make it a shoo-in for awards all over the place. Considering that it is a smaller piece of a more prominent statement makes it all the more interesting.

The smart dialogue doesn't hurt, of course, and perhaps the best work is done by Bird himself, who provides the voice of Edna "E" Mode, superhero fashion designer.

I cannot recommend The Swerve enough. It is one of the most depressing horror films I’ve ever seen, so maybe don’t watch it if you’re trying to feel super-sunshiney. It is an amazingly cathartic experience.

A biopic like Oppenheimer allows viewers to take pause and understand how the human mind has powers that propel life and change the world forever.

Wrapped in deepest melancholy, Cold War has no idle or frivolous scenes since everything fits and flows under Pawlikowski’s masterful direction.

A film of limited production values, a low-quality picture and the occasional flubbed camera move. But it makes up for these flaws with sharp observations, compelling characters and a great collection of music.

You’re unlikely to come across a more powerful film this year.

Whereas "Cuckoo’s Nest" is a brilliantly over-the-top accomplishment, The Passenger is more brilliant with the most effortless underplaying one can ever hope to witness on screen.

Let's discuss those extra four minutes for a second, shall we? I found them incredibly distracting. [Special Edition]

The combination of pen, ink and geopolitical strife have yet to yield anything quite like it.

Fresh, heartfelt and ultimately heartbreaking in its honest portrayal of a modern relationship.

von Donnersmarck creates a milieu so realistic that the attention-worthy setting becomes just a backdrop, while an intricate tale, as suspenseful as it is humanistic, takes over.

This minimalist masterpiece is one of the greatest American films to come out of the 1970’s.

Quite simply, House of Flying Daggers is a film that sets several new standards for production and entertainment values. It is a wild riot of color, music, passion, action, mystery, pure old-fashioned thrills and even dancing.

I give Killers of the Flower Moon a mild recommendation. It’s too long and predictable. The saving grace is its performance across the board.

Pre the events of 9/11, the film might have simply been an entertaining, high risk tale of a death-defying feat related in both interviews, archival footage and photos and Marsh's usual meticulous and creative re-enactment vignettes. Post 9/11 you find yourself marveling that a man in far away France became smitten with the twin towers long before they became the target of terrorist attacks.

The story is set in real world Mexico, not a cleaned-up movie world simulacrum.

For Sama will be the single most heart-wrenchingly honest film you have ever seen. No amount of acting, elite accolades or story manipulation will ever compare to the genuine truth captured by a woman with a camera in Syria. It is truly an honor and a privilege to see this film.

Grade A propaganda of the first order.

What We Leave Behind is about generations passing on their hard-earned wisdom. It offers an insider’s glimpse into our neighbor’s culture. Some may find its lack of emotional peaks – save for, perhaps, the ending – exasperating, while others may regard it as a well-edited and shot home movie. But look a little deeper. There’s real poetry here.

All hyperbole aside, “When the Levees Broke” is one of the most important film documents ever made. It’s an honest, fair and unflinching look at one of the greatest, and saddest, natural disasters to hit our shores.

Borat isn't just one of the funniest movies of the year, it might be one of the funniest movies of all time.

The Farewell is wonderfully specific towards the culture depicted, but there’s a universality to its issues regarding family. Just about everyone will be able to take something away from The Farewell.

Marty Supreme is a rare film that will become a watershed moment in cinematic history, in the same way that Taxi Driver and Pulp Fiction did. It will be spoken of in reverent tones in years to come, and will be endlessly studied and then copied by lesser filmmakers.

No End In Sight is the most important film of the year thus far and, more significantly, the most comprehensive, clear-eyed account of the Iraq debacle and the arrogance behind it that we have.

It is a worthy return to feature directing by Jane Campion and a thoroughly relevant film to our modern discourse.

This is a five star film because it is one of the most perfect science fiction thrillers of all time.

Filled with situations that mirror the social and racial preconception of the time, this hypnotic tale of punishment and atrocious colonialism is an engrossing experience.

The documentary is a deeply meditative look at what it means to truly live with purpose and meaning.