First and foremost, Iris is a magnificent story about the enduring bond between two eccentric, astounding souls who somehow managed to find each other and hold on for dear life.

Underneath its sometimes frothy and often witty trappings, it’s a wistful meditation on the inevitable losses that accompany growing up and moving on. The real mood is captured perfectly in Judy Garland’s bittersweet rendition of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. [16 Dec 2012]

Leave it to von Trier to conceive an intergalactic sci-fi metaphor for a psychological disorder – and then make it work so astonishingly well.

This is a beautiful movie.

Contains all of the hallmarks of classic genre Spielberg: It shows you things you've never seen before, instills an accompanying sense of awestruck wonder, and delivers long stretches of heightened, delirious excitement that remind you why people started going to the movies in the first place.

The interpretation is so painstaking and moving that almost every moment delivers a shuddering jolt to the head and the heart.

White God is the rare sort of movie in the era of computer-generated special effects where you can’t believe your eyes, because what you’re looking at is real.

This poignant, wise and subtle picture -- which, yes, happens to be the best movie of the year -- should be approached with humble expectations. Lee's approach to this delicate material is suffused with melancholy, metaphors and small, telling touches that favor subtlety over exclamation points and rough-hewn simplicity over grandiloquence.

The Lion King is everything you'd expect it to be: utterly charming, dazzling, rapturous entertainment. It's one for the ages. [24 June 1994, p.G4]

Brilliant, suspenseful, absolutely riveting film.

The best teen horror flick ever made, an emotionally involving, sublimely acted tale of an archetypal ugly-duckling loner (Sissy Spacek, who earned an Oscar nomination) who wreaks revenge on her tormentors, with apocalyptic results. [24 Aug 2001, p.21G]

And the animation, ultimately, is what makes Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs worth seeing again on the big screen. Aladdin may have grossed more than $200 million, but even its state-of- the-art, computer-assisted animation can't surpass the detail and fluidity, the denser-than-reality feel, the astonishing palette (check out the red on the poisoned apple) of the film. Watching it, you don't forget it's a cartoon: You relish that it is. What bigger compliment is there than that? [2 July 1993, p.G5]

It’s a cry of despair and soul-shaking desperation, leavened with shades of Dostoyevskyan angst.

That song (Jefferson Airplane's Somebody to Love), which becomes a sort of mantra to the movie, is the key to understanding what the Coens are after: When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies, you better find somebody to love.

Hana-Bi is a film by an artist too creative -- and too talented -- to set limits for himself. He is a rarity among filmmakers nowadays: A genuine original. [17 Apr 1998]

In a larger sense, Adaptation is a movie about the simple act of enjoying life -- of really embracing it -- without constantly worrying about what others think.

What you come to see are the strokes of a visual master. You will not be disappointed.

A terrific yarn, one so engrossing and surprising that the nature of the story's structure -- each question Jamal gets asked on the show corresponds with a traumatic or momentous moment from his childhood -- never feels like a contrived framing device.

One of the best things about 12 Years a Slave is that McQueen renders all the characters with the same depth and complexity as his protagonist.

Make no mistake, Racing With the Moon is a modest film; that's one of the reasons it works so well, being a meticulously made miniature. And it's a joy. [28 Mar 1984, p.C7]

Silence feels like a career summation for a filmmaker who has spent his life exploring his faith through his work. Here is a movie about the importance of religion that will move you, regardless of whichever God you worship — or don’t.

Likely The Great Ziegfeld will be catalogued as the most sumptuous cinemusical ever produced. Truly a "colossal" show, it is the musical spectacle to end all such. [12 Apr 1936, p.39]

What makes it the best movie of the year -- is its insight into human behavior.

This is the sort of small, intimate drama about unpleasant subject matter Hollywood rarely deals with, but Haneke isn't worried about turning off his audience, because death is something everyone has in common. It fascinates us, the way it also scares us.

Here is a celebration of the artistic drive that is also a daring feat of showmanship, as technically accomplished in its own way as “Mad Max Fury Road” or “The Revenant."

Project X is an astounding, superlative movie about adolescence - a brutal, unapologetic comedy about the fantasy every high school kid carries around in his head about being popular and cool and beloved.

Jeanne Dielman is not for all tastes. But for those with the necessary patience, it is a game-changing masterpiece. [11 Sep 2009, p.G18]

Rousing, exhilarating entertainment.

The movie is quiet and serene, but it stirs and inspires and amuses. In the small details of an ordinary life, Jarmusch finds wells of beauty and empathy. The movie is an exploration of the deep pleasures of creativity.

This is the most vibrant, exciting and invigorating movie-movie of the year.

Brave has a manic, almost daffy energy and sense of humor.

Tom Hooper's terrific, Oscar-worthy film is not merely a spot-on period piece; it's also a heartfelt study in the shadings of courage, a film about duty and friendship that's often warmly funny and sometimes painful to watch.

Up in the Air is also optimistic about the perpetual themes that preoccupy so many movies that endure the test of time: Life is better with company. And everybody needs a co-pilot.

The film is precious and adorable, but it isn't naïve, and the movie breathes so deep that Anderson even gets a real performance out of Willis (this is his best work in years).

In The Act of Killing, director Joshua Oppenheimer pulls off the impossible: He confronts great, incomprehensible evil and puts a human face on it.

Like every war before it, the U.S. invasion of Iraq has generated its share of movies. But The Hurt Locker is the first of them that can properly be called a masterpiece.

Richly enjoyable on its own terms: modest, funny and sad. It is Woody Allen at the top of his art. [28 Jan 1984, p.D1]

The movie, shot in lovely, grainy 16mm by cinematographer Ed Lachman, is so elegantly staged you can practically smell the characters’ perfume. Haynes’ direction is methodical and precise without being fussy or oppressive. Every detail has been weighed and considered.

Although it is technically a sequel, Before Sunset stands perfectly well on its own. In fact, the new movie plays better if you haven't seen the original for a while, so its details have grown appropriately fuzzy.

A visually thrilling experience.

The Straight Story truly is one from the heart, and it is wonderful.

Ever the satirist, Payne mines humor from his characters, be it Randall's cockeyed pyramid-scheme ideas or the banality of a ridiculous wedding toast.

Feels like a miracle, a movie that exceeds even the most formidable expectations without straying from its singular path. All hail this King.

Basterds isn't so revolutionary or so finely crafted as "Pulp Fiction" was, but it crackles with the same energy and imagination and chutzpah.

Inside Llewyn Davis is one of the Coens’ smallest movies — this one doesn't have the broad appeal of "True Grit" or "No Country For Old Men" — but like Llewyn’s music, it comes from the heart and it is deeply felt. It is also one of their best.

The movie itself is a nominee for Best Animated Feature, and it's good enough to pull a surprise upset over the beloved Finding Nemo. It's a mad masterpiece.

But this is also his funniest, nimblest picture: There are long stretches in it that could pass for a comedy.

A best picture Oscar winner, and one of the finest of all American films. [04 Aug 1989, p.37]

With compassion, a touch of melancholy and a sense of wonder, Brooklyn reveals the profound truths in a simple, familiar story, ending on a note that’s achingly bittersweet, no matter where you’re from.

The movie has such a profound and compassionate understanding of human behavior, family ties and the way ordinary people respond when they're forced into a moral quandary, I can't imagine anyone not being transfixed by it.

Sometimes, the simplest, smallest things require the greatest courage. Moonlight is Miami’s first bonafide movie masterpiece.

It's the filmmakers' refusal to sugarcoat their tale's darker subtexts that makes Finding Nemo such a resounding piece of storytelling.

Spotlight is simply a great story exceedingly well told, through characters whose fingers are perpetually stained with ink.

One of the most searing experiences to be had at the movies this year.

Spike Lee is one of a handful of great filmmakers working in mainstream movies today, and he has a moral vision that is pure and simply uplifting. See his movie. See it often. [7 June 1991, p.G5]

A thoughtful, audacious meditation on love and relationships that finds a group of wildly disparate talents clicking together in perfect unison.

It's so rare to be swept away by a presentation of this magnitude. By all means, go.

A truly great and deceptively simple work, redefining the power of film.

Intentionally designed to rile as much as entertain.

A model of pitch and modulation and craft. For two hours, the Coens hold you in their grip so tightly that for long stretches it feels a little hard to breathe.

There isn't a moment in the movie where you don't feel Spielberg's passion, and this time, the film is worthy of his enthusiasm. It's a knockout.

This is not the sort of movie you can just leave behind in the theater. And like any true finale to a trilogy, the picture doesn't work nearly as well if you haven't seen the previous two installments: It's not designed to stand alone, and it pays off all that has come before with an exuberant, thrilling high.

If it had been a drama, The Wolf of Wall Street might have been unwatchable: There’s simply too much of everything. But Scorsese and screenwriter Terence Winter (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire) hit on the genius idea to turn the story into a riotous comedy, one that keeps topping itself everytime you think it can’t possibly get crazier.

Movies that demand to be seen by everyone -- not only for their entertainment value, but for what they say -- are precious rarities. Spike Lee's Get On the Bus is one of those films. You walk out of it feeling the world's axis has tilted ever so slightly: No matter who you are, or what your perspective was going in, the movie will make you look at last year's Million Man March -- and all of black America -- through different eyes. [16 Oct 1996, p.1D]

Though not on the epic scale of Fantasia or Bambi, Lady and the Tramp is one of the more charming animated features ever made and has depth enough to keep adults as well as children occupied, if not enthralled. [15 Feb 1986, p.C6]

One of the many pleasures of this beautifully composed, measured movie is how it reminds you of the power of pure storytelling -- an art that's too often overlooked in contemporary films in the rush for sensation and excitement.

Has the feel of an instant classic, a melodrama with an exacting precision and a visceral, propulsive energy.

Delivers the heady, rib-tickling rush of an action picture, and it gradually builds to an emotional wallop that blindsides you.

The movie is an absolute triumph of culturally relevant filmmaking – a film that will thrill and fascinate sport junkies and non-fans alike. If you like baseball, you will love this movie. If you hate baseball, you will still love this movie.

Part of the accomplishment of Carlos is the sheer accumulation of detail the movie amasses, and the longer running time gives you a deeper sense of the terrorist lifestyle, and when and why Ilich gradually succumbed to ego and self-glorification without realizing it.

So Woody Allen has turned nostalgic for at least a movie. He remembers the old days. He knows it's a cliche to think of those old days, whenever they were, as simpler, sweeter times. But Allen can turn the cliche on its head, and convince us that they were indeed, if not more innocent, more interesting times. And not just for him. [30 Jan 1987, p.D1]

An extraordinary movie that ruffled many feathers when it first came out. Almost 40 years later, it retains the poignancy it delivered back then. Its message is not lost in our present state of affairs.

The Little Mermaid is teeming with life, and best of all, it may show the young ones that the oceans are, too. [17 Nov 1989, p.G4]

Remains a remarkable, almost timeless study.

The new version is a glorious, thrilling throwback that never sacrifices its solid roots in the western genre despite a sharp modern update that actually improves on the original.

The movie gives you what you think you want, and then gives you some more, and just when you think things can't get any worse, Haneke swoops in and smashes the wall between fiction and reality, turning the viewer into a direct accomplice to what's transpiring onscreen. It is an astonishing film, sure to be controversial, and quite simply unforgettable. [30 Jan. 1998, p.6G]

Raising Arizona is the best comedy about kidnapping ever made. Small category, admittedly. This is a film that gets a laugh -- legitimate, unqualified, not a sick laugh at all -- out of a running gag in which a baby is left in the middle of an Arizona highway by thugs on the lam. Cars bear down, a "biker from Hell" attacks. How many filmmakers could get away with baby-in-jeopardy jokes? [10 Apr 1987, p.D1]

In Rappeneau's hands -- and in his choice of the face of Gerard Depardieu as Cyrano -- self-hatred, not a nose, ultimately becomes Cyrano's nemesis. Nothing in the middle of Depardieu's beautiful face -- no protuberance, no scar, no blemish -- could destroy the nobility and honesty of his eyes. [21 Dec 1990, p.G11]

This is a story that in hindsight we can see was waiting for Scorsese to come along. He did. The result is wonderful. [17 Sept 1993, p.G5]

A rich, marvelous movie -- the kind that enchants on so many different levels, it leaves you feeling giddy.

Her argues that sometimes, crazy can be wonderful.

The good news is you’re feeling stuff, you know? And you’ve got to hold on to that. You get older, and you don’t feel as much, your skin gets tough.” This remarkable, wonderful movie helps you remember.

Makes the Columbine shootings seem both abstract yet more painful and vivid. It also gets you excited all over again about the things movies can do.

Seydoux says that when the film was completed and released shortly after the end of the war, it became a symbol of freedom.

If ever a movie may be said to have perfect pitch, then Eight Men Out is the one. It is a triumph of ensemble playing, so intent on giving each player equal time that in the beginning it is a little difficult to keep them all straight. But this approach pays dividends in the end when we understand and feel for them all, the ringleaders as well as the more innocent victims. [08 Sept 1988, p.D3]

It's a beautiful, strange tone poem about childhood and innocence, set in a strange but still recognizable world where the polar ice caps are melting, crayfish shacks float down rivers and enormous aurochs, an extinct breed of bison, are sloughing their way toward our tiny, adorable narrator.

This is a big, beautifully designed movie in which the filmmakers' intelligence is everywhere; it's the product of a special vision. And Brian De Palma continues to be good news from Hollywood. [3 June 1987, p.D1]

The fact that that character happens to be so repellent -- and yet so endlessly fascinating -- is one of the film's many strokes of genius.

With Mad Max: Fury Road, director George Miller delivers the sort of jumbo-sized entertainment that makes you spontaneously break out in appreciative laughter: The breadth of his imagination and showmanship makes you giddy.

Lester managed to come up with a movie that not only holds together as a film but one that has proven timeless and rewards repeat viewings.

Sensational documentary.

It leaves you feeling exhilarated at the invigorating power a well-told story, no matter its subject, can have. If you like Harry Potter, you will love this movie. If you don't like Harry Potter, you will still love this movie.

This remarkable, continually surprising documentary turns out to be something far richer and more complex, closer in spirit to "Crumb," another devastating film about a family's gradual self-destruction.

Easily the best thriller of this or any other recent year...It's the film that marks him as a genius, that proves the auteur (or authorial) theory of filmmaking all by itself. It's the movie that shows a distinctive stamp, the movie that could not possibly have been made by anyone else. And most important, Vertigo is immensely entertaining. It has great peformances from its stars, an overtly Wagnerian score from the celebrated Bernard Herrmann and a plot that is almost hopelessly complex. Almost. [23 Dec 1983, p.D1]

A masterpiece of pop filmmaking -- a fantastic, exuberant entertainment that manages to be both sleek and substantial without being patronizing.

Seeing the Earth from the point of view these men saw it -- ''like a jewel hung in the blackness'' -- tends to put things in perspective.

A worthy and delirious final chapter to this hallowed animation franchise.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is an example of Disney animators at the very top of their craft -- and at their most daring. [21 June 1996, p.5G]