An exhilarating piece of popular entertainment.

Fiennes and writer Abi Morgan mercifully forsake the gee-golly traditions of similar fame-minded fare...in constructing a narrative as emotionally repressed as its subjects must have been, with each character existing within their own arena of personal and social compromise.

What's best about the film is not the hot romance, but the coldness that lies at its heart.

Don't miss it.

There are some cheap shots, and there's an argument to be made about whether the film is sending up stereotypes or simply perpetuating them. But for every dubious moment, there are plenty that connect.

He’s taken what, on paper, boils down to an extra ridiculous episode of “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” and passes it off as high cinematic art.

Like it or hate it, Titanic lives and breathes as a piece of pure cinema.

Given the enormous praise, the film falls short.

An insistent, insinuating film -- both in terms of its plot and characters, and in its impact on the viewer -- Harry's effects are small-scale but so perfectly pitched that they never seem small.

The result is a movie that turns the financial phenomenon of Web startups -- the crazy kids with ideas, and the crazier bankers with more money than sense -- into a moving human drama.

Levinson is at the top of his game with Liberty Heights, his instincts acutely cinematic, his purpose clear.

A very funny film that never sacrifices the lives of its characters to the needs of its story.

Even when it seems mercenary and muddled, X-Men Days of Future Past is enjoyable and well-made and actually about character, a necessary shot of adrenaline born of both inspiration and desperation for a franchise that desperately needed one.

The movie on its own is great, but with this music it's sublime.

The animation is beautiful, the music is catchy and the lyrics are clever.

While it’s only modestly effective at the serious stuff, at least it’s free of sanctimony and preciousness.

Heartfelt and haunting, sympathetic while still aware of the limits of sympathy, Wild incorporates beautiful direction, smart writing and brave acting.

Hanks gives possibly the most compelling performance of his career.

Drags on far too long.

For those seeking even a little adventurousness in their filmgoing experiences, the movie will wear thin very quickly.

Rush is one of those rare sports movies that’s compelling as both a drama and a spectacle.

Undiluted Jackie Chan, not the watered-down stuff he's been doing stateside.

Unlikely to draw the audience it deserves, but those who do see it will have a hard time shaking its gentle, ghostly echoes.

Stars the cult celebrity Om Puri, widely considered by cinephiles to be one of the best actors in the world.

A strange and lovely combination of cinematic nostalgia and offbeat (gay) love story.

The point of this film is the spell it weaves and, by and large, it is successful. It’s the music, it’s the cinematography, it’s the score, it’s Casey Affleck’s hollow speaking voice — they all add up to something that resembles a fever dream facsimile of an eventful movie.

The human imperative informs every aspect of After Tiller, resulting in an unexpectedly warm film.

When the writing is good, Go is good, and when the writing is flat, things fall apart.

If it weren't so pushy about selling itself, The Dish might have been a very special movie.

An often affecting, if standard-issue, Hollywood biopic.

You'll feel moved and uplifted after watching this well-written, funny movie.

Fascinating noir, which will long be remembered for its extraordinary lead performance by Catherine Deneuve.

There's something thin about the picture-both in its ideas and its visual texture.

Cage, not one known for subtlety of late, is truly great in this sad, funny and tender role.

A potent encapsulation of how fame and finance beget fear and grief.

Surely, there will be audiences that see South Park as one of the signs of the coming apocalypse, which may be exactly why another audience finds it so ruthlessly, irresistably funny.

Perhaps you have to have lived through the 1960s to relate.

Show Me Love has the pulse of teen life down-pat, shaming its many sleek and glossy American counterparts at every turn.

The film is starved for the kind of nuance Kore-eda wields effortlessly elsewhere. What’s left without it is something merely schematic.

I’ve given A Field in England two tries now and each time found it to be occasionally ferocious and funny, severely trippy for stretches and at times outright tedious. With that said, I still can’t wait to see what the man does next.

The film is very theatrical and admittedly "staged," but always purposefully.

While the final act might not surprise or stun, it does feature some classic le Carre movements, some trademark Corbijn ease, and a terrifying Hoffman bellowing at the sky – not so bad for just another spy film.

It's not a profound film, but it is heartfelt, and Burns has done his best to keep it clear and emotionally direct.

It gives the audience something serious to ponder. That's rare these days.

An absurdist Eastern European version of "The Godfather," starring the Marx Brothers (and sisters and nephews and...).

This might have been a very good movie if it had lost about one of its three hours.

Delivers its humor with clockwork reliability.

An exercise in outrageous style over substance.

Takes an easy target and turns it into something naggingly weird.

Authentic contemporary heroine.

Simple but charming.

I really wish a younger man than Clint Eastwood had directed it.

Prince Avalanche occupies a strange space between [Green's] broadly comedic fare and devoutly character-driven dramas, and while we’re happy to see him closer to the latter mode once more, let’s hope that he’ll be back in a bigger way the next time out.

This is a story told in shards; Wong is so obsessed with visual details – faces refracted as if in a broken mirror, or fragile arcs of blood being traced out on the pavement by the feet of two feuding kung fu masters – that the story he’s trying to tell is partly obscured by them.

Retains enough of Soderbergh's usual indie sensibility to make some sly but contentious points.

The first live-action endeavor from director Brad Bird (The Incredibles, The Iron Giant), Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is filled with the verve and clarity of his animated action sequences while lending just enough gravity and remote plausibility to the stunts and gadgetry to keep it from becoming a glorified cartoon in and of itself.

Definitely worth a chance: although everyone in this fog-shrouded setting makes grand sacrifices, all you'll lose are a few tears.

A good-natured farce. It's also really, really funny.

A two-hour slice --of comedy pie.

It's Lathan -- with her passionate performance, physical grace and drop-dead-gorgeous looks -- who makes Love and Basketball so entertaining.

A gorgeous dreamscape of a movie...one of the most exhilarating experiences of pure cinema that will be offered this year.

In the House is crafty and juicy and ought to delight anyone whose ever thumped their chest about being a storyteller. I must confess, however, that somewhere in the third act the air started to leak from the balloon.

Strangely enough, this movie provides a lot of the James Bond veneer that has been missing from recent James Bond movies.

Its series of quiet but moving realizations of the utter ubiquity of the Nazi horror in every single aspect of life, even something as hidden as a sexual sub-culture, is powerful indeed.

The kid performances are impressive and the subtext of a region still shaking off the effects of a long-ended war gives seed to some much needed discussion.

Pussy Riot: A Punk’s Prayer is about an interesting topic, but the film itself is not quite up to snuff.

Not as touching or boldly transgressive as its ultra-violent peers.

By no means any kind of masterpiece, but viewed as one might any number of American or European independents of similar theme and nature, it not only stands its ground, but is at times one or two notches better than many of them.

Egoyan and Hoskins fans will definitely want to see this film. Others will feel their fingernails grow as they watch it.

A fascinating portrayal.

Certainly one of his (Scorsese's) most profound works.

Strong, stirring, triumphant and tragic, The Imitation Game may be about a man who changed the world, but it’s also about the world that destroyed a man.

Its honesty and insights are refreshing.

This is a beautiful, surprisingly uplifting movie, made by someone who actually understands people.

A highly recommended treat.

Good luck finding a modern martial-arts epic that can even hold a candle to it.

The script also happens to be quite literate and laceratingly funny, and Damon -- no big surprise here -- turns out to be the perfect actor to deliver Will's zingers.

A mix of forward-looking sci-fi, classic themes, deft plotting and superb writing and direction, Edge of Tomorrow may be the pure-pleasure blockbuster to beat this Summer.

A very small film, as they say in the movie business, but its stylish suspensefulness is nicely leavened by Connell's obvious, and welcome, love for his hapless characters.

22 Jump Street is a success, as there is a little good ol’ fashioned “heart” beneath its post-modern veneer.

Among the stronger American horror films of the year.

Sometimes feels like an acting class gone berserk, with Penn indulging his high-powered cast

This is a pretty leaden cinematic experience.

Like the political turmoil which inspired it, Shadow Dancer is fueled by the fire to do the right thing and the sacrifice that must follow, and for 100 minutes, it’s a crackerjack ordeal to behold.

Although Mansfield Park is an enjoyable film, you can't help but wish that it were as brave, feisty and unconventional as it keeps telling us its heroine is.

Eventually falls into the same candy-coated trap it's trying to expose. But the fact that a movie can acknowledge the trap exists is a step in the right direction.

Love it or hate it -- and I suspect, frankly, most people are going to hate it -- this is like no other film you've ever seen.

Gorgeous and troubling.

If only this movie were rich enough, strong enough to be worthy of this (Dafoe's) performance.

Best of all is a Halloween party where the Falls are complimented on their "costume," then outed.

What we remember are the visions of genius and the total turkeys. Rarely do you get both in the same movie, but director Tim Burton pulls it off in this oddly affectionate bio-pic of Ed Wood.

In a film about how hard it is to know what you want, and then to express it, Swanberg gets to the heart of the matters of the heart with disarming doses of both charm and wisdom.

Sunshine's historical reference-heavy narrative walks a fine line between novelistic tragedy and comically overstated melodrama, falling down on the job more than once.

Taylor’s film so egregiously picks and chooses from Brown’s life that the result is a holey and unsatisfying document that fails to give due respect to much of the singer’s life (especially the more unsavory stuff).

Rarely a moment is ever wasted, a consequence ignored, and though the climax is a corker, the final shot is even better. Prisoners requires and rewards your attention in equal measure. Be ready.

A crowd pleaser, but there's something a bit prim and pre-determined about its conclusions.

Quills -- like the Marquis himself--is a posey, pungent, ultra-theatrical yet weirdly seductive mess which wants to have its cake, eat it too and discuss the whole concept and context of its meal (constantly, contradictorily) while it does so.

The nuanced performances by Maud Forget and Lou Doillon help give Bad Company its extraordinary credibility.

Hamlet, like its title character, is a mopey, dopey thing that you just want to scream at: Do something!

An instantly and enduringly compelling documentary.

Too slow-moving and too understated in much of its humor.

For fans of science fiction...Galaxy Quest is a sweet, funny valentine to their obsessiveness.

But the movie is so confused about where it wants to go, it suffers from the same identity crisis as its protagonist.

A superb tearjerker in between beautiful bluegrass ballads.

Kusama understands her subject intimately, and it shows.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier neatly and entertainingly puts into motion some big changes in the Marvel universe, while still sticking to its own charms — no easy feat, but one fit for a hero.

As with Bill Clinton himself, Primary Colors forces one to take the disappointing with the good, the letdown with the promise, the compromises with the hope.

Questions loom heavily over this entertaining but not-too-deep film, making it more a commercial than real exploration.

Gitai, a veteran documentary director, refuses to find an easy resolution to the story, and that will frustrate as many people as it pleases.

Unfailingly energetic, 10 Things is like a puppy that can't stop wagging its tail, begging for attention...Even more than "Cruel Intentions," this movie plays like an awkward high-school production of a classic.

The design of the film is wonderful, the animation everything one comes to expect from a Disney picture, and the jokes fly by so fast.

Post Tenebras Lux works so well because – even at its most random – it always feels like more of a single portrait of a man in crisis than it does an impish bouquet of provocative incidents.

The evidence Herzog serves up is impossible to dismiss.

Swanberg’s most mature and satisfying film yet.

Palo Alto is one of the best movies ever made about high school life in America (admittedly a low bar), blurring the lines between how unique it is to be a teenager, and how universal it is to feel like one.

For all the cynicism on the soundtrack and the occasional lapses in tone, this is a remarkably generous comedy.

In the end, Butterfly is an infuriating film because it's so very contrived, so annoyingly phony.

The Fog of War is the superior film, but The Unknown Known is more unsettling.

A gorgeous and enduring piece of work.

Feels like a first draft, in need of toning, pruning, and a little old-fashioned discipline. As an outline, the picture is full of possibilities.

White Reindeer concedes that much about Christmas is funny — its notions quaint, its fixtures cliched. But it proposes that beneath this sometimes lurid veneer lay something to cherish all the same.

Despite being very much a “filmed play” it doesn’t come across as too theatrical. Polanski uses plenty of close-ups and keeps the action moving.

This fantasy-tinged romance leaves a distinctly bitter aftertaste.

This reprehensible and deeply unfunny film is obviously critic-proof.

The landscape is a definitive presence throughout the film, which has almost no music and very little dialogue. The film is short (approximately 80 minutes) and maintains a good sense of dread throughout.

A Melancholy Delight. Its pacing will undoubtedly seem too deliberate to some, but I found first-time director Deborah Warner's The Last September a delight from beginning to end.

Fascinating.

A movie with the power and quality of dreams, where reality merges into symbolism and oddly juxtaposed elements crystallize into a single, electrifying whole.

It's a testimony to Tammy Faye's own integrity and enormous charisma that the film holds our attention as tightly as it does, and doesn't become an insufferable exercise in weak filmmaking.

The risk pays off for Clooney and the Coens, as O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a nicely off-kilter exploration of American gumption.

Little Voice is that rarity, a filmed adaptation of a stage play that actually works.

The film has enough charm and humor to keep it appealing to a wide audience, and dumbing things down doesn’t feel particularly smart or canny, and proves to be a minor distraction to an otherwise majorly entertaining feature.

A perfectly enjoyable and occasionally charming ride.

Simply put, Sightseers is a deliciously inappropriate and hilariously weird comedy.

Its grimness is so unrelenting that I can only recommend it to filmgoers who need a movie to tell them that incest is bad.

The graphic battles may grow repetitious toward the end, the final scenes are almost sadistically drawn out, and the script often lacks humor. But this movie moves.

It has its moments.

Wan has marshaled his crack sense of supernatural menace into making his most satisfying scare story yet.

A Place at the Table is a fairly no-frills effort, but the ideas behind it are sound.

The Homesman certainly wins a few points for trying a different type of Western. There are no greedy land barons and no gunslingers drawin’ at high noon. But being unique isn’t enough if the story remains uneven and the characters don’t feel real.

This is a movie that proposes a genuine, intelligent solution, both for the main character and for us. It comes at you kinda quickly (and economically, in about three wordless shots), but it hit me like a bag of dumpster-dived apples to the gut.

The collapse of Office Space's second half is so egregious that one can't help but suspect Judge's Achilles heel may be his writing. It's not that he can't write -- it's just that his ideas tend to shine better within a pool of fellow scribes, as proven in his television career.

As a primer on the arcana surrounding the profession of personal injury lawyer (more familiarly known as ambulance chaser), A Civil Action is deeply, and even passionately, informative. As a drama and character study, though, it mostly misses the mark.

As he did in "Run Lola Run," he has clearly patented an original combination of cinematic eye and ear candy and a profound, irresistible fascination for the role of chance in this world.

Though its uncluttered simplicity and refreshing lack of cliches render it sublimely enjoyable, the film never digs deep enough to give itself much weight.

Europa Report doesn’t entirely sell out to convention by the end, but the steps it takes to reach its noble conclusion reflect a lack of imagination and invention, especially for a film that initially seems to champion such qualities.

Cronenberg’s map doesn’t lead to a satisfying destination in a typical story sense, but it is a remarkable quest. For a movie that has so many problems, it is one of the more watchable ones.

Faxon and Rush’s screenplay doesn’t deviate too far from formula, but their sturdy direction, bolstered by handsome production values, evokes a wistful sense of carefree summers and conjures up a potent amount of simmering teenage angst beneath the frequent chuckles.

If the Favreau-written “Swingers” concerned itself with the pursuit of meaningful romance and the Favreau-directed “Made” tackled the pursuit of a better living, then the slight if continually amusing Chef is clearly his paean to rekindling one’s passions, whether as an artist, a husband or a father.

When it counts, this film is absolutely successful.

The Double taps into a deep reservoir of psychic turmoil even as it navigates the script’s abundant jokes, and the nightmare of the heart of the film is doubtless universal.

The genius of Kikuchi’s performance is that – by the end – her slow descent into mania humanizes Kumiko precisely when it would have been so easy to reduce her into caricature.

There is true beauty in the despair that pervades The Place Beyond the Pines, a film plotted out in triptych, a treatise on the moral compromises we all make to protect and provide for our loved ones.

It's irresistible.

What makes the film so special is that while tickling your postmodern funnybone, it never forgets to make you care for its characters, in a welcome, and almost traditional way.

A Mexican film that reaches for a very weird and risky tone, and, I think, fails.

You’ll laugh if you’re young, you’ll laugh if you’re old.

The execution of that script – is so clumsy and over-written that nothing in it sticks. There’s a symphony of visuals here, and big strange ideas, but when it comes to the actual characters, we get automatons sleepwalking through clichés.

The warm humanizing element in all the cool stuff is Crowe.

Bluebird is undoubtedly a remarkable achievement, especially for a first-time filmmaker.

This overdone project dissipates its energy in strange ways (sudden shifts to black-and-white, as though hailing the spirit of Oliver Stone and that other Costner JFK movie), and makes you wish its makers had shown the same restraint the government did during the crisis.

Occupies an odd middle ground between their Apatow-produced bromances, the giddy gruesomeness of the recent “Aftershock” and the confined social abrasiveness of “It’s a Disaster.”

It certainly has a place among the year's more accomplished productions.

The film version of this civilized beauty, captures the amusing gloss of the story but not the sense that something grave is going on beneath it all.

It is a rather sly affair, slipping in some genuine food for thought amongst its snickering.

When the film is sexy, it's truly sexy, assuming that you believe sexiness has something to do with the exploration of a connection between people.

A good, though unremarkable, film.

[Ritchie] cranks up the laughs and tension with equal aplomb, throwing wrenches in the plot so that the audience has no idea what to expect next -- and that's part of the film's thrill.

If Tom at the Farm is occasionally impenetrable as a drama, it’s seldom less than gripping as an exercise in suspense, especially when Dolan’s precise sense of timing revitalizes otherwise familiar moments.

The Sapphires may be your stock triumph-over-adversity show-biz story – but then, how is it that we never get tired of seeing that story?

It is a shaggy dog road movie, and a drug-hazy one at that, but beneath the silliness and character-based gags, Crystal Fairy is, I feel, an unusually insightful look at self-imposed false identities and group dynamics.

The humor and drama don’t neutralize each other; in what’s perhaps Stewart’s most successful achievement as a director, the changes in tone work in a harmony, not at cross-purposes.

An unusually clear, compassionate, and grownup satire about a rare subject: the true psychological underpinnings of young manhood.

It may be a very good, very Brooksian sitcom, but it's accomplished entirely with the broad strokes and resolutely flat surfaces of television.

It always surprises, never bores. It's also just damn good, on every possible level -- so go see it. Now.

Disappointingly dumb.

A closer, richer examination of a slice of time as specific as it is short.

This portrait of the actor winds up being a parable about all of us.

Borgman‘s crafty, trickster-ish screenplay, always two steps ahead of you, keeps you rooting for clues, enough to put your ethics on temporary hold.

Has a real sense of the wonder of the early years.

Not many side-splitting jokes, but a goofy glee is smeared across it all.

A quiet film, certainly, but it's filled with small touches that manage to get deeply under your skin by the time the final credits roll.

This meeting of two giants of European cinema only briefly comes to life.

The prolific 76-year-old British creator of character-rich, social dramas steeped in natural realism (usually) has whiffed it and whiffed it hard with this one. It’s not that it’s just “lesser Loach.” It is, in my opinion at least, humiliating.

There's not a single moment when you forget it's Weaver; she always seems to be inhabiting this poor character's soul for her own purposes.

Uncharacteristically loose and deceptively frivolous, The Bling Ring is as much of an attack on The Hills Generation as any of Coppola’s previous films were an exercise in self-pity, which is to say not at all.

A funny, sly directorial debut

It isn’t just the bright colors and the costumes but every visual aspect of Byzantium that sings. Neil Jordan knows where to put the camera. It’s just a shame he wasn’t able to inject a little life inside that frame.

Craven creates his savviest and most frightening movie since the original "A Nightmare on Elm Street" by spoofing the horror cliches and simultaneously reinventing them to scare you all over again.

If anything saves this movie, it's the acting.

Consistently runs the danger of substituting cool but ultra-hyper, modern special effects for boring old human sentiment.

It’s merely somewhat better than last year’s meandering dud — a slight improvement on a movie that should have been pretty easy to improve upon.

The movie gives us episodes from her life, and although some of them are charming and all of them well-played, I occasionally found myself wondering why I should want to be interested in this person.

The best word to describe it is strange, though it could have been halfway decent (yes, all the way up to halfway decent) if the third act hadn’t succumbed to the crescendo of craziness that had been building for the first hour.

The film is brisk, funny, smart, and artful, a strong pairing of high concept and relatable storylines.

An energetic mix of Scream-like dark comedy, senseless violence, satisfying surprises, and good old-fashioned mayhem

Full of truth that's ultimately diluted by a lack of focus.

The Visitor might be a hot mess, the byproduct of tailspinning egos and the best drugs movie money could buy in the late 70s, but it certainly isn’t an accident.

It's a guy's film that doesn't just revel in testosterone, though -- it has a more purposeful agenda.

It's swell when a film really does capture a book in some exactitude.

It plays lots of cool mind games with the audience -- if in an occasionally incoherent way -- and ends up providing a surprising amount of fun.

It transcends the usual biopic limitations to tell a specific story about some well-known people with larger, universal implications.

By turns amusing, touching and horrifying, A Room For Romeo Brass is a film that defies expectation at every turn.