Payne achieves an impressive control over the look and tone, so that, melancholy as the movie is, it comes off as both comedy and comment on the human condition.

The funniest comedy I’ve seen in years. There aren’t many of the hundred and four minutes of running time that doesn’t find the audience laughing its head off at the antics of Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe.

At times, Chicago has the feel of a revue, with the major characters taking turns at their own show-stopping numbers. If it's too much of a good thing, I say, bring it on.

As darkness falls over the movie landscape comes the year's darkest and best movie of them all - Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams.

A marvel of character-driven drama that no serious filmgoer should miss.

Zowie! What a picture! Humor, drama, romance, action, thrill! And how!

This bold movie may sound like a stunt, but it’s so much more than that. Linklater is an effortless, genial auteur, and his passions are woven through “Dazed and Confused,” “School of Rock” and the “Before Sunrise” trilogy. Here, his mellow groove becomes an everyday rhythm.

Despite his draw to tragic subjects, Lonergan holds onto a sharp, dark, Irish sense of humor, and a feel for the absurd that comes out at the most unexpected times. A playwright's sense of what actors do, too. Affleck gives a career-best performance here.

A sunny-looking movie about the darkest paranoia.

Here is something great and startling -- not necessarily the kind of comforting, consensus-creating film that wins Oscars, but unquestionably a movie that will live in the history of the medium.

Audiences of all ages are bound to fall in love with this bubbly, thoroughly enchanting fish story.

As important and eye-opening a documentary as you’ll see this year, A Place at the Table makes it impossible to think of hunger as merely another symptom of a shredded social safety net.

You might not agree with Stone that the man is a hero, but you probably do want to see the film so you can compute what the whole uproar was about.

It's said to be an autobiography, but that pertains only in the loosest sense. It's a comedy. It's a 1920s silent movie. It is practically indescribable. And it is pure genius.

We can't describe the grandeur and the punch and the appeal of Cimarron. This is one picture you cannot afford to miss. It is 1931's first great contribution to the screen. We loved every minute of it!

It shows that life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. And how, in case we forget, every age can predict the next.

Don't miss The Fast Runner. If you do, you will deprive yourself of not only one of the most intriguing feature-film projects in decades and enough plain-spoken anthropology for three credits at Harvard, but one of the most flat-out entertaining movies of the year.

Paramount may have made a more appealing, more tenderly human and amusing picture than Going My Way, during its many years of film-making, but if so, I have missed it.

Exquisitely moving story.

The new Star Trek is more than a coat of paint on a space-age wagon train. It's an exciting, stellar-yet-earthy blast that successfully blends the hip and the classic.

Among the funniest and most satisfying films I've seen in years.

It's the perfect antidote to overprocessed entertainment, for moviegoers of any age.

A masterpiece? Probably. Ingenious? Absolutely! Unforgettable? I'll see you at the 10th-year anniversary.

The overall result is a romantic comedy that indulges fantasies, calms insecurities (can an ordinary bloke stack up?), and breaks and mends hearts with surgical precision.

It is a realistic drama, conceived and written into a brilliant and provocative screen play. [11 Aug 1950, p.52]

Chimpanzee lets everyone feel like a mini-Jane Goodall.

This amazingly beautiful, and amazingly frightening, documentary captures the immediacy of what climate change is doing to the Arctic landscape.

In ferociously intense, chillingly brutal scenes, this bravely innovative, kingsized movie (one should be warned that it runs over three hours) enables one to fully understand why this particular war not only destroyed the hopes and dreams of America’s young men, but why it left so many of them permanently shattered and alienated from society.

A juicy noir stew of amorality that's the best thing since "Chinatown."

Brilliant performances are to be credited to Alec Guinness, as the British colonel, who insists on sticking to the rules of the Geneva Conference governing prisoners of war, and Sessue Hayakawa as the stubborn, cruel, proud Japanese officer.

Gyllenhaal is charming and makes unexpected choices in her performance, but this is Bridges' show, and he's as Best Actor-worthy as he's ever been.

If a documentary can be both alarming and oddly reassuring, it's the gripping splash of cold cinematic water Racing Extinction.

The story Stiller tells manages to float in a most peculiar, satisfying way.

Strap in, load up and hang on because Mad Max: Fury Road is a freaky, ballsy, phenomenal ride.

The focus in James Ponsoldt’s affecting, intelligent drama is a pair of teenagers, and in them is so much complexity and heart that this casually paced gem feels rich in scope. They’re two of the most carefully created figures on screen this year, and yet their normalness takes us by surprise.

Noah Baumbach’s sensational satirical drama While We’re Young is, finally, a movie for grownups to run out and see.

This hunt for revenge is really a quest for self-discovery. The story, acting and brilliant directing elevate Oldboy into a human struggle to know yourself and your place in the universe, and to live with that sometimes terrible knowledge.

One of the best movies of the year.

The film’s thoughtful script and astounding craft portray a tragic inner psychological battle.

Universally appealing story that plays as well now as it did on opening day a half-century ago. Maybe better.

Schrader and Nolte are both at the height of their expressive powers in a film that, in its concentration and sobriety, leaves a lasting impression.

Rarely has any film, fictional or documentary, captured the hypnotic effect of voices on the airwaves like this chronicle of Bob Fass.

Silence is a slowly unfolding, deeply thoughtful film about questioning yourself. About questioning authority. About taking stock of where you've failed as a human being, and wondering how you can make amends — to yourself, to others, and to God.

Each episode of director Leos Carax's film perfectly masters the exact tone of a different genre, finding precisely the saddest moment in each of its vignettes.

Based on a true story, the movie has abundant humor and uplift - but it's a heartbreaker of extraordinary dimension.

A film that is both deceptively modest and deeply resonant.

The picture is real, full of vitality and of so much human waywardness and nobility of spirit that it tears your heart out in sympathy with its tender and tragic passages and makes you want to shout with joy at its hearty humor.

When was the last time you had your mind blown by a movie? Because when Inception ends and the lights come up, you'll be sitting in your seat, staring at the screen, wondering what the hell just happened.

It's a white-knuckler all the way, with most of that tension coming from the smallest facial expressions exchanged in uneasy silence between compatriots who knew what they were getting into, but were nevertheless unprepared for the moral and emotional fallout of their patriotic actions.

Turns everything we know about the contemporary world on its head, and substitutes it with one in which spirits, monsters, magicians and animals mix it up in a carnival of energy, good humor and freewheeling illusion.

The best movie I've seen this year.

Amadeus is about as close to perfection as movies get. [2002 Director's Cut]

Kelly is superb as dancer and comedian, but a little less than that as a singer of Gershwin songs. Leslie Caron, who dances like an angel, is no beauty, according to Hollywood standards, but she is endowed with great grace and personal charm. She is an exquisite dancer. An American in Paris, in short, is definitely a picture to see.

Small victories that turn into defeats, long walks to gain little ground, little wounds that get deeper every day - growing old is a war, and movies rarely go there. Michael Haneke's amazing, dignified Amour is the exception.

It is nearly impossible to look at this brilliantly executed movie without being moved to tears.

One of the freshest, richest, most original films to come out of Hollywood in a very long time.

For film buffs and Lynch fans, this is a glorious high.

Will you relate more to the bitter, or embrace the sweet? The choice itself is Jonze’s ultimate gift to us: an invitation to leave his film ready to communicate, debate and, most crucially of all, connect.

The movie's Islamists aren't true believers but a bunch of thugs. A madwoman who dismisses them with a blunt word has much greater moral authority.

Normally the sound in movie theaters is of popcorn crunching. But the sound at theaters where Central Station is showing is of hearts breaking.

An extraordinary, must-see examination of what humans do to killer whales so that these amazing creatures can become one more entertainment.

Pure, eye-popping pleasure.

Among an excellent cast, Douglas truly is the nexus; he and Stone make this sequel pay off big-time.

Kore-eda does extraordinary work with his young cast, who deliver gentle, natural performances in a beautifully told story of heartbreak and hope. Deceptively modest and utterly lovely, it's one of the most magical films about childhood I have ever seen.

A faithful and beautifully impressive transition to the screen of Robert Bolt's superb historical play.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is awe-inspiring.

All the actors are wonderful, including Sacha Baron Cohen as a villainous Inspector.

Fincher is a fearless filmmaker who understands his audience’s intelligence (not to mention their cinematic blood lust). By the end of Gone Girl, we feel like we’ve lived through about four movies, not just one. Good luck letting go of any of them.

Masterful.

Smith's gleeful, touching documentary records the agony and the ecstasy of realizing your dream, and intangible ways that such dreams help keep people alive.

Stone, who wowed on Broadway in “Cabaret,” again shows off some beautiful pipes. She captivates completely from her first frame. Then again, so does La La Land — a singing love letter to musicals, romance and the City of Angels that feels almost like a gift from above.

Robert Wise has transformed the delightful Rodgers and Hammerstein musical stage production of "The Sound of Music" into a magical film in which Julie Andrews gives an endearing performance in the role of Maria, the governess.

Boseman is watchful, winning and confident, but never saintly. Yet he keeps Robinson’s moral spine aligned with his skill and self-respect, showing how he needed all of those to succeed.

Redford will surely earn a well-deserved Oscar nomination for this role, to which he commits with unerring dedication. But the real star is writer/director Chandor, whose painstaking approach is exquisite in its spare integrity.

It is light, it is charming, it is delightfully funny and completely captivating. It is all that, and something more. It has an undefinable spiritual quality that raises the spirits of the beholder into a happy, hopeful mood.

Judy Garland is perfectly cast as Dorothy. She is as clever a little actress as she is a singer and her special style of vocalizing is ideally adapted to the music of the picture.

Powerfully uplifting precisely because it's so horrifying.

There’s a great fever-dream quality to David O. Russell’s American Hustle that instantly reels you in.

Oliver! is a timeless classic that will be as lovable in 10 or 20 years as it is today.

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has perfectly wedded form to function by filming Boogie Nights in a style suggesting the grainy texture of porn and the ambivalence of the era.

Crucial viewing for realists and alarmists both.

These three films (adapted from David Peace's novels by different directors), each a singularly gripping work, together form a towering and emotionally complex achievement.

Hudson, taking over the role of Effie played on stage by Jennifer Holliday, is in charge of Dreamgirls from her opening scene, blowing away Grammy-winner Beyoncé Knowles, Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx and anyone else who gets in her way.

It stands alone as the best "Star Wars" entry since 1980's "The Empire Strikes Back." Yes, it's that good.

The result is an often-anguished monologue built on pride, despair and self-defense. Accuracy aside, Tyson does work hard to analyze his own, clearly complex character. So while we only get half the picture, it makes for consistently compelling viewing.

The Two Towers moves faster, covers more ground, has more action and -- with the introduction of the marvelous character Gollum -- packs some much-appreciated laughs.

Argo is movie magic. Ben Affleck's third directorial outing, is an entertaining, real-life, race-the-clock thriller that nabs you at the start and never makes a wrong move.

There’s never a false moment.

It's impossible to imagine how the action genre would have developed without Akira Kurosawa's watershed 1954 movie Seven Samurai.

A great movie -- and the best movie ever about the '70s rock era.

We're exhausted because we laughed so much and so heartily at City Lights that we feel considerably weakened. Here's praying that we fast regain our strength so that we may journey to the George M. Cohan theatre to see Charlie again - and again - in this new heart-breaking masterpiece of comedy which he offers pantomimically to a worldful of movie-goers...City Lights is excruciatingly funny and terribly, terribly sad. It makes you chuckle hysterically. You have the greatest time imaginable, and yet, occasionally you find little hurty lumps in your throat.

Gorgeous, fascinating and surprisingly suspenseful.

This is a great and glorious movie, and its makers have a right to be proud of themselves.

Joachim Trier's energetic, inventive debut takes such a novel approach to well-worn themes that it makes most movies look downright lazy.

As far as its entertainment value goes, the picture should be a smash hit, as its impresario has inveigled so many of the top players of the day to put in an appearance on the screen, that it is the most star-studded film of all time. It is also an eye-filling travelogue, an exciting adventure and a very funny film.

"Letters" isn't about numbers or the battle or even the morality of war. It's about the sanctity of life and how we value our own.

The dialogue is superb and the situations natural. The comedy touches are delightful. They spring from the inherent character of the people in the story, rather than the obvious contriving of playwright and director...A satisfying, heart-warming, deeply moving picture.

The most gorgeous movie of the year. This smashing martial-arts romance from Chinese director Zhang Yimou is stunning in other ways, too, like the eroticism that ripples just beneath the surface.