This dramedy, which began filming in 1970, is more than just a museum exhibit for film geeks. It’s a solid, entertaining, complex story packed with eccentric performances.

This is a compelling and comprehensive guide to one of the most Kafkaesque crime stories in American history.

A little gem.

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.

Gyllenhaal and Mulligan are in fine form here, but too much of the screenplay, written by Dano and Zoe Kazan, doesn’t ring true.

It isn't every day that one witnesses, via a camera mounted with the driver, some of the final images in a man's life before he crashes into a wall at enormous speed. Whether you'll feel good about yourself after watching is up to you.

Thanks to a superb performance by Isabelle Huppert, it's compulsively, gruesomely watchable.

Smart, funny and ingeniously detailed with terrific vocal teamwork.

What this means is that at times the pace of Beyond the Hills is nerve-wrackingly slow. But Mungiu has his own way of creating suspense, and he has a gift for making a known outcome as shocking as a twist.

The very sex-positive The Sessions treats intimacy with an explicitness and honesty that's very rare in movies. It may be the first film that doesn't turn premature ejaculation into a punch line.

A remarkable, eye-popping nature documentary.

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

A charming, (mostly) briskly unsentimental love story, written, directed and acted with remarkable assurance.

Despite the high quality of the acting, Spring Forward is for the most part sleepy, long-winded stuff.

You'll have to look long and hard to find a performance as emotionally raw as that of Moon So-ri in the startling South Korean love story Oasis.

A witty, well-acted, visually gorgeous ensemble drama.

Ambitious and messy, Annhilation will likely leave you with more questions than answers. Mine is: “When can I see it again?”

Like a bomb exploding in a fireworks factory: It's fierce and shocking and dazzling and wonderful.

This is a look at the joy, confusion and heartbreak of adolescence that's both culture- and locale-specific and, at the same time, universal.

Stephen Beresford’s script’s has its cornball fish-out-of-water touches to be sure, but Pride is a bona fide crowd-pleaser — wearing its heart on its sleeve as the film builds to an ending that’s as satisfying as it is surprising.

One of the year's best.

It’s hard to imagine audiences being more glued to another movie this year, so sexy and stirring the story is from start to finish.

Special note should be made of real-life sister and brother Aoi and Masaru Miyazaki, who give beautiful performances as the children.

Utterly delightful.

A documentary that exerts a car-wreck fascination as it follows the icon through her 75th year (she's now 77) while looking back over her tumult-filled life and career.

Beautifully filmed, and the star-crossed lovers, both played by first-time actors, are a match made in art-film heaven. But I must admit, the pansori singer got on my nerves about halfway through.

A far more impressive and affecting piece of filmmaking and storytelling than most movies put out by Hollywood this year, and offers, as a bonus, a glimpse into a fascinating, contradictory society.

The quirky High Fidelity really deserves being called the first must-see movie of the century.

This is mostly a sad and bloody tale, as the Panthers are decimated first by the machinations of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, and then by dissension in their own ranks.

Moreover, in attempting to update the play to a buzzing CNN world, Ralph Fiennes proves that as a director, he makes a fine actor.

A Most Violent Year is a small picture, but each brushstroke is laden with detail and craftsmanship.

As things pick up in the second half, the splendid photography and tempestuous John Adams score cannot quite conceal that the film is uncomfortably close to being an extravagantly elongated, Fendi-clad episode of "Dynasty."

A glossy, empty and ultimately unsatisfying — if undeniably entertaining — movie.

Ultimately fails to make its case that five teenagers were sent to jail for a crime they didn't commit solely because of institutional racism.

All it takes is the majestic E-flat that opens "Das Rheingold" to make you realize that, despite what Wagner's Dream insists on showing, "the machine" really isn't the point.

It's as purely entertaining as it is thought-provoking and timely.

A chilly, pretentious and talky drama.

Inside Beautiful People, . . . there's a terrific film trying to get out.

A misleadingly bland title for a gripping documentary.

The late Akira Kurosawa's shamelessly sentimental last film is a fond and fitting farewell.

A smart, funny, stylish and very violent British gangster movie.

Nor does the movie try to use the game to make some larger point. Here's one: Even at its best and luckiest hour, Harvard can aspire only to equal Yale.

“It’s a little self-congratulatory and light on story,” says one student of another’s film project in Dear White People, which feels like director Justin Simien getting out ahead of inevitable (and accurate) criticism.

Audiences will laugh, mainly to prove they're awake, but the humor is pretty thin.

Silence comes to us billed as 30 years in the making. Unfortunately, it plays like 30 years in the watching.

Scott Thomas' reserve as an actor - which probably helped keep her from top stardom after an Oscar nomination for "The English Patient" (1996) - makes her perfect casting for this French film, the auspicious debut of director Philippe Claudel.

Hard-core Hitchcock fans will not find much in the way of revelations.

The oddly compelling documentary Moving Midway is an engineering tale combined with a family history and a ghost story.

Beach ("Windtalkers") gives a tremendously moving, Oscar-caliber performance as Hayes, portrayed by Tony Curtis in an earlier movie and celebrated in a song performed by both Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan.

In a season of hyperven tilating political docu mentaries - witness Michael Moore and his imitators - Ross McElwee shows just how far subtlety can go with his latest charming effort, Bright Leaves.

The film could have been improved if it had been less aggressively limp. But the post-adolescent, pre-adult moodiness is spot on: Everyone's favorite author is a bitter recluse, and the soundtrack heaves with the suicide sounds of Joy Division. Trier's intent is to reproduce a sweet, hazy vision of the agony of youth. Ever so elliptically, he succeeds.

Very slowly builds to an emotional payoff in a devastating scene where the three main characters simultaneously seek relief in sex.

As he did so ingeniously with “Pan’s Labyrinth” and the Spanish Civil War, del Toro explores fantasy, myth and childhood in a time of oppressive fascism; the specks of light that escape the darkness.

Look at Me is on the talky side, but like Jaoui's directing debut, "The Taste of Others," it offers uniformly excellent performances and smart observations on social and family interactions.

Our blockbuster drought is over, thanks to a brilliant sequel set on a sweltering desert planet.

The bureaucrats in Beijing want to get rid of the sex and full-frontial nudity and scenes of cops beating protesters in Tiananmen Square. I would keep all that but cut out some of the flab in the second half of the 140-minute drama.

It's fun, but the script, credited to Hossein Amini ("The Wings of the Dove"), is short on characterization and long on plot twists and wisecracks.

A lively score by Danny Elfman and some of the most dramatic sound-effects work since the Three Stooges only add to the appeal of Deep Sea 3-D.

Pity the boxing movie that thinks it can be both "Raging Bull" and "Rocky."

The doc consists of interviews with the absurdly grandiose Jodorowsky (whose fans include Kanye West) plus acolytes like current director Nicolas Winding Refn and film nerds, all of whom walk us through storyboards and tell us how awesome this “greatest film never made” would have been.

Sure to be a favorite with racists, Beasts of No Nation sheds no light whatsoever on Africa’s civil wars but turns its gaze on black people brutalizing one another with machetes, howitzers, rifles and anything else that comes to hand. I picture Calvin Candie, the plantation owner in “Django Unchained,” yelling, “Yeah! Git ’em!”

No "Crouching Tiger." It lacks the richness of theme and performance that made Ang Lee's film so emotionally satisfying. In fact, watching Iron Monkey makes you realize just how Western and literary the sensibility of "Crouching Tiger" was.

The wry situational humor leaves less of an impression than the near-perfect sense of the heat-drenched wistfulness of summer.

With The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, directors Ethan and Joel Coen venture to the frontier once more, after “True Grit” and “No Country for Old Men.” But this time, there’s only a little grit in this very slow country.

Best movie I've seen so far this year? Hands down, it's Tom McCarthy's superb The Visitor, which turns Richard Jenkins, one of the best character actors in the business, into a full-fledged star.

Patrick Stewart has a blast playing against type as a soft-spoken white supremacist holding a punk rock band as his temporary prisoners in Jeremy Saulnier’s nicely crafted, low-budget comedy-thriller.

With such smarts and outstanding special effects, I eagerly await a second Iron Man movie, which of course is virtually promised in the final scene.

Engrossing.

As is his custom, Reygadas uses a mostly nonprofessional cast; and, as expected, he draws remarkably realistic performances.

Whatever the unanswered mysteries of Jay’s personal life, just watching this magician’s hands at work with a deck of cards is positively mesmerizing.

Legendary hipster filmmaker Jim Jarmusch’s wryly funny exercise in genre bending hits so many grace notes it ends up being his most satisfying film in years.

Never becomes maudlin. Rather, it retains an upbeat air of hope, and even humor, as two brave men battle fate.

My own voice-over would go something like this: “This summer. One woman. Will see this movie. Again.”

Brilliantly acted and directed, Ava DuVernay’s towering Selma is Hollywood’s definitive depiction of the 1960s American civil rights movement — as well as perhaps the most timely movie you’ll see this year.

Summer blockbusters don’t get much better.

The story is ornate but easy to follow. It's the dreamy look and sound of Tabu - half old, half modern - that give the film its haunting strangeness.

Never seen, but often heard bellowing profanities from the other end of Jane’s desktop landline, the boss and his eyebrow-raising closed door meetings dubbed “personals” provide the menacing undertone of this day-in-the-life drama.

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

Astonishingly sharp and stunningly beautiful images of galaxies as far as 100 billion light-years away.

There have been many documentaries about the Holocaust in recent years, but this one really stands out.

The film's earthy frankness is refreshing.

A compelling, at times bone-chilling study of the male character in crisis.

Not a very visually interesting documentary its simply one head talking to the audience, with no film clips, photographs or other diversions. But its awfully hard to turn away.

Even at his best, Sharma doesn't have sufficient acting chops - or enough Hanks-like charisma - to hold the screen alone for more than 70 minutes with the CGI Richard Parker (as well as a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a rat who quickly become food for the ravenous tiger).

The scariest, creepiest and most elegantly filmed horror movie I've seen in years - it positively drives a stake through the competition.

Honorable, worthy and windy, Fences is essentially a PBS episode of “Great Performances” that is inflated for the big screen without ever quite belonging there.

Sounds boring, but it's not, thanks to Marker's whimsical irreverence.

Solomon and Genovese remind us that all witnesses can be unreliable, in one way or another. The emotional impact comes from the gentle way the film reveals Kitty Genovese as a loving, vibrant person, and not as a symbol.

You’ll begin “Twinless” with basic expectations, and you’ll end it with your mouth agape. And then you’ll ask the most satisfying question there is after first encountering an exciting young filmmaker’s work: When’s the next one?

This strange and eerie noir is more a collection of knockout scenes than a fully realized story.

Beautifully photographed over the four seasons - including Christmas, for the park's century-old bird census - Birders: The Central Park Effect is full of grace notes.

While I needle “Conclave” for being far from realistic, its meticulous detail is evidenced immediately by the ceremonial removal of the papal ring from the corpse and the sealing of his apartment. Visually, the entire film’s a stunner.

Mother is yet another winner by Bong, one of Asia's most talented directors.

A tough, well-acted little indie.

Trouble is, while the social milieu is nicely realized, other parts of the drama are not. Too often Burshtein cuts off a scene prematurely, darting away just as the crucial moment of emotion or confrontation appears.

Compelling viewing, even for people who don't care a bit for the punk scene.

Director Malik Bendjelloul expertly paces this strange and moving film, half mystery and half meditation on art, fame, the music biz and the definition of a meaningful life.

Carney’s film (unlike his disappointing previous effort “Begin Again”) is mad, irrepressible youth incarnate, by turns as exuberant as “The Commitments” and (nearly) as heartfelt as “Once.”