In-depth performances by De Niro and Gooding Jr. provide the oxygen for this extremely shipshape biopic.

With its dry wit and all-star household, Baumbach's movie resembles Wes Anderson's "The Royal Tenenbaums" without the heavy whimsy.

Denis -- who has called the film a tribute to the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu -- keeps dialogue to a minimum as she delicately examines how immigration is changing the face of France.

There are a couple plot threads I found weird — particularly in the final push — that don’t land as powerfully as they intend to. But the resolution is immensely satisfying regardless of a few blips. It’s Payne’s finest work in years.

Not for the squeamish, but it is a beautifully crafted and thoughtful film that genuinely provokes.

A stunning display of a filmmaker adventuring on the far side of what's possible.

Balibar's dreamy voice (I'm reminded of Billie Holiday) is complemented by Costa's hypnotic camera work. The result is a visual and aural delight.

Sobering and important.

The surprise of Ted is that it goes for honest Spielbergian wonder, too, and even earns some tears.

For two hours of breathless drama, you forget you’re watching actors grunting like chimps and hope two rival civilizations can work together.

The highly stylized, often outrageously funny biopic is anchored by a devastating performance by Toni Servillo as Andreotti, brilliantly capturing the gnomic politician's trademark slouch and inexpressive face.

Banshees, reuniting Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell from “In Bruges,” is a scream from start to finish-erin.

For all its flaws, The Tree of Life is a stunning exception to the rule that you can safely check your brain at the popcorn counter until after Labor Day. That's enough to place it among the year's best movies, or at least most-talked-about ones.

Stunningly photographed, largely with a hand-held camera, by Rodrigo Prieto (another member of the "Amores Perros" team) on gritty locations in Memphis and Albuquerque, 21 Grams is also a visual tour de force - and a rare Hollywood product depicting class differences with any kind of honesty.

Despite its shock value, Thirteen rises above dysfunctional-family-drama cliches, thanks to the truthfulness of its script and the keen eye of a sympathetic director.

A masterful ode to one of life’s most universally awkward phases.

If the director had more gospel and less blues in him, it might have brought him closer to really understanding these talents. Still, I can't wait for "Rize 2: Electric Boogaloo."

An ideal antidote to the big-budget bores that studios put out in late summer, The Tao of Steve is a charming, funny and refreshingly smart Gen-X romantic comedy in the tradition of "When Harry Met Sally" - with the bonus of an engagingly laid-back Southwestern flavor.

Watching Chadwick Boseman in his final movie, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, is pure heartbreak.

A bit more context about some of the topics the witnesses discuss would have been welcome, but Whitaker's stark, unshowy style is probably the most effective way to approach 9/11.

Beyond simply embodying the quirks and look of a historical figure, Kaluuya’s passion makes you believe the masses would actually follow him.

This “Poppins” sequel has an entirely new score, with exactly none of the cherished songs from the great Julie Andrews movie. Once you accept that, you can move on — and enjoy the countless other joys this follow-up has to offer. It will be a jolly-er holiday with Mary Poppins Returns.

If The Past doesn’t equal the masterpiece that preceded it, it’s still an exceptional film from a man who is clearly one of the best working directors.

Starts slowly but builds, Hitchcock-style, to a terrifying crescendo. And don't fool yourself into thinking you know what's going to happen.

Confirms Leigh's reputation as one of the world's master filmmakers - and showcases Staunton as one of its great actresses.

If you enjoy intelligent, challenging filmmaking, Tropical Malady is for you.

The sharpest, wildest and most unpredictable thriller I’ve seen this year.

Extremely unsettling and thought- provoking.

Hilariously overblown, "Cruelty" fairly pops at the seams with the beloved eccentricity of Joel and Ethan Coen, from the fiendishly ludicrous scenarios and casually tossed off visual gags to the razor-sharp repartee.

Indignation is devastating, haunting and important.

Lacks the humor and charm that fills the book and makes it so much more than a catalog of suffering.

Quirkily likable comedy-drama about a family trying to coping with loss, contains three of the best performances you're likely to see in an American movie this year.

The movie that deserved to win the Oscar for foreign-language film, and one of the best movies ever made about life behind the Iron Curtain.

As Callas so devastatingly starts to lose it, “Maria” satisfyingly stirs our insides in the mysterious way an opera does.

Altman and Rapp skirt the fine line between satire and caricature, stopping just short of ridiculing the women who pack Dr. T's office.

The style and tone of writer-director Dan Scanlon’s movie has elements of DreamWorks’ “Shrek” and “How To Train Your Dragon” mixed with the siblings-with-secrets aspects of Disney’s “Frozen.” But Onward is better for the change-up. That stylistic and narrative departure gives us Pixar’s most heartfelt story in years.

Five people did escape, and they contribute their stories to the spellbinding documentary.

The real find here is Gourav, who gives a pressure-cooker turn as Balram, a guy who can no longer smile and nod at his own oppression. He switches rapidly from sweet to deranged, gullible to Machiavellian, generous to bloodthirsty. This guy’s got more layers than spanakopita.

The film’s slightly confusing ending doesn’t spell anything out, but that’s all right: We’re left sitting in the dark shivering, reassured there are still some directors who can leave us well and truly creeped out.

Sheen, who is also reprising his stage role and appeared as Tony Blair in the Morgan-written "The Queen," is highly effective as Frost - though the stakes for Frost are nowhere near as interesting as those for Nixon.

Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan are superb as the couple, who use the occasion to drop bombs on each other.

Impressively, however, director Elizabeth Banks keeps the powder gags fresh throughout, as the mammal maims her way through a Southern forest preserve. The movie about blow never blows.

Daring, mesmerizing and exceedingly hard to forget.

Good for Lee for being a director of many ideas in a heartless Hollywood of sequels and franchises.

More than lives up to its clever positioning as the first movie of the new millennium.

It's brilliant work.

Isn't just scary, charming and delightfully unpredictable - it's also smarter and subtler than any new movie out there.

A dizzying lowlife saga that’s fast, smart, wicked, sort of ambitious and blazingly ironic. It’s as unpredictable as a Lindsay Lohan drive to the grocery store, as overstuffed as the pictures on Anthony Weiner’s Twitter feed and as hilarious as me on the bench press.

An entertaining piece of pulp fiction.

The best thing Baldwin has done in years, and a triumph of low-budget storytelling by a director to watch.

Saltburn has a brain, no doubt about it, but it also has a script that’s written in jet fuel.

Captain Fantastic isn’t only one of the year’s best movies, but one of the best cast and best acted, right down to the smaller roles.

Brilliant star Michael B. Jordan does double-duty in “III,” returning to play Adonis Creed and directing a film for the first time — the man is a champ at both athletics and aesthetics.

You won’t see a better performance by an actress on film this year than Julianne Moore as a linguistics professor struggling to hold onto her personality after a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s in the unforgettable drama Still Alice.

Chico and Rita beguiles first and foremost as a bebop romance that evokes a bygone era as well as, or maybe even better than, "The Artist."

Miami Vice isn't an action flick but a neo-noir: tough, quiet, moody and hard.

At age 76, Loach also decided to offer his characters, and audience, some hope — at the bottom of a glass.

Uses the compelling true story of the triumph of the Enigma code-breakers as background for an invented but believable story of love, betrayal and heroism.

A remarkable accomplishment. It takes one of the century's vast tragedies...and makes it heart-rendingly real and intimate.

Mighty entertainment that makes you feel sorry for the saps next door in the multiplex.

It is an important, thoroughly bewitching work of art.

Isn't quite as accessible or as deeply moving as his masterpiece, "All About My Mother." It's a tad too self-consciously a work of art for that. But it's still a must-see for anyone who's halfway serious about film.

If you want to celebrate the life of legendary actor Brian Dennehy, who died last month at age 81, start with one of his final films: Driveways. His performance as a widowed veteran is right up there with his finest screen work, which makes his passing all the sadder.

Few documentaries have covered such an important matter so convincingly and with such clarity. When it comes to public education, we are all New Jerseyans.

Engrossing and exhilarating documentary.

What a gift Zeitlin has with children. He showed that special skill with “Beasts,” but does even more so here, with the kid ensemble being full of personality and entirely unrestrained. The freedom and unbridled joy they find on the island are infectious, like their movie.

What a trippy delight it is.

Blue Caprice takes a minimalist, documentary-style approach that proves harrowingly effective.

This small movie carries great allegorical weight as it echoes the Manson Family, the long list of failed utopian communes that culminated in Bolshevism and the one-child policy that in China has prevented the births of untold numbers of girls.

There are superb performances by Iranian-Canadian Nikohl Boosheri as Atafeh, the more rebellious of the two women, and French-born Sarah Kazemy as the less-privileged Shireen.

During a moment in which movies tend to be either cynically corporate or bleaker than a black hole, “Project Hail Mary” dares to be about that once-great driver of drama: friendship.

There are more than ample rewards for discerning adults: Some of the best dialogue in a recent movie and a gallery of unforgettable performances.

The Law in These Parts more than accomplishes its goal of provoking a discussion about imposing laws on people who have no say in making them.

Williams triumphs by exceeding both in sheer actor's craft - and the depths he plumbs in his character's tortured soul.

Very few actors would have the courage to allow von Trier to put them through what Dafoe and Gainsbourg experienced in the name of art.

The movie has enormous force - because it's about a genius, yes, but even more so because of the intelligence, passion and wit of the people who knew Marley.

Vigorously played as a young man by Chris Pine, Kirk is a brilliant, sports-car driving, bar-brawling rebel who is finally shamed into joining Starfleet Academy.

This movie sends you into the night thinking, maybe even a little afraid. Bravo, Mr. Fincher.

What makes the movie so delightful is that Wadjda isn’t trying to make trouble; she’s just being herself. A shot of the system of wire hangers attached to her radio so she can pick up Western music stations sums up her can-do attitude.

Hilarious sweet and sour David Mamet comedy.

The details are true and funny, played brilliantly.

A long, messy cinematic novel full of hate, love, murder, ghosts, madness, poetry and Catherine Deneuve.

Cannily weaving cross-cultural comedy with we-can-do-it humor in the spirit of "The Full Monty," the film builds to a rousing climax.

One of the year's best.

The experience is akin to being blindfolded and thrown into a trunk — except fun!

Billed as a dramedy, the film has plenty of “WTF” funny moments, but it’s always laughter tinged with darkness.

The movie could -- should -- be a symphony, and it frequently makes excellent use of spare classical music. When Brosnan pipes up, he is as welcome as a car alarm.

Wladyka keeps the film lively with a sparkler aesthetic and a flair for musical storytelling.

Like Emerald Fennell’s shapeshifting mystery, “Challengers” is, at once, artful, addictive and deceptive. The salivating viewer believes it’s one thing, becomes sure it’s another and then leaves with a different theory altogether.

What "Rent" should have been, Once is: a Bohemian rhapsody.

Forget the hype, and the backlash. The Phantom Menace is captivating.

Another remarkable addition to Eastwood's directorial canon.

An improbable but hilarious combine of losin’-it comedies and the rarefied, Europhile air of the Cinema du Twee.

In other words, this punkish, sleek film about beautiful kids wallowing in purloined Prada could have been written by a grumpy 65-year-old white guy in gabardine, provided he had a sense of irony. The Bling Ring is the bridge between Coppola and Bill O’Reilly.

A crowd-pleasing ensemble piece, whose story goes exactly where you want it to.

A gut-wrenching, politically neutral documentary that spends more than a year with a platoon of American GIs in a valley that's been called the most dangerous spot on Earth.

This wonderful party of a movie, as totally original as its hero, stamps on a smiley face that will linger for hours.

Overall, this gorgeously designed and photographed movie artfully depicts the immigrant experience in ways that transcend its setting, melding Hollywood and Bollywood storytelling techniques to weave a tale a large audience will relate to.