Lino Ventura is grand as a solemn resistance leader. He's backed by a knockout cast that includes Simone Signoret.

There is so much pain in Moonlight that it’s a little hard to breathe at certain moments. But there are others, of connection and redemption, that positively glow.

Nothing this year comes close to being as utterly unforgettable as Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, an extremely dark and disturbing fairy tale for audiences say, ages 12 and up.

Simultaneously funny and frightening, Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satirical masterpiece. [25 Apr 2004, p.3]

It is filmmaking as it should be but usually isn't.

This is a film that challenges moviegoers in a way that a Marvel movie or rom-com will not, and it is worth taking the time and concentration — and, if possible, the trip to the theater — to view a true master of the craft at work.

A Japanese cross between "Alice in Wonderland" and "The Wizard of Oz" -- is such a landmark in animation that labeling it a masterpiece almost seems inadequate.

Well-meaning films like “Lincoln’’ and “Lee Daniels’ The Butler’’ merely scratch the surface compared to the deep and painful truths laid bare by 12 Years a Slave. It’s about time, Scarlett O’Hara.

Affleck eschews all the actors’ clichés — burning intensity, soulful suffering, haunted brooding. It’s a magnificently interior performance, the sort of acting that doesn’t call attention to itself but draws us in to peer closer.

Bursting with energy and originality even after 36 years, A Hard Day's Night is easily the best show in town.

If there is a genius working in Hollywood today, it's animation director Brad Bird, who tops the delightful "The Incredibles" with arguably the finest 'toon in the Pixar canon, Ratatouille.

Compared by some to “2001: A Space Odyssey,’’ Cuarón’s relatively intimate space epic is equally groundbreaking in the spectacular way it depicts space.

With this visionary director — one of Hollywood’s best — it’s one winner after another.

Quite possibly the first truly great fact-based movie of the 21st century.

All great films have imagination; this one also has the sense of experience.

Stretched both timewise and for plausibility.

A truly superb courtroom drama. [02 Jan 2008, p.35]

Like the fictional Clarice Starling in "The Silence of the Lambs,'' Maya is a consummate professional who brilliantly performs her job in an often hostile work environment.

In the compelling but slow-moving Iranian film A Separation, a downbeat family drama of no particular distinction gradually turns into a mystery that raises painful moral questions. There may be several guilty parties.

A charming, hilarious robot love story aimed at the entire family.

This is in many ways a companion piece to Haynes’ “Far From Heaven” (2002), which remains one of my favorite films so far this century.

Making a movie this warm, funny, and rigorously truthful about lovers trying to remain partners is even harder.

Dunkirk satisfies as a brisk, gripping survival story. At only 107 minutes, it’s also astonishingly short in an era when most movies needlessly run on long beyond the two-hour mark.

At some point in her 50-year career, Rampling became one of the world’s great actresses. Driven by her and Courtenay’s work, and by director Andrew Haigh’s limpid style, the film is devastating.

Presents an intelligent, profound and at times heartrending slice of Taiwanese middle-class existence - as seen by characters at different stages of life.

Timothy Spall, a character actor best known as Wormtail in the “Harry Potter’’ series, delivers an Oscar-caliber tour de force as eccentric British landscape painter J.M.W. Turner in the exquisite Mr. Turner.

Scorsese is at the top of his game here. His film is never boring, and it explores some unexpectedly deep themes for mafiosos.

You have never seen a movie like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon because there has never been a movie like it.

A hilarious and touching animated masterpiece that takes a gloriously imaginative, sometimes scary leap into the mind of a girl on the cusp of adolescence.

A sublime variation on the buddy road movie, infusing the midlife crises of the two main protagonists with hope and poetry.

A majestic conclusion to a nine-plus-hours epic that stirs the heart, mind and soul as few films ever have.

Call this movie by its name: Masterpiece.

Carlos is exciting entertainment, even if its subject's two-decade reign of terror is reprehensible.

Don’t let its sweet title fool you: Director Noah Baumbach’s latest may just be the best war movie of the year.

La La Land deserves credit for high spirits even if it’s essentially a collection of glamorous throwback music videos for so-so songs.

You’re not dreaming. Billy Madison, Mr. Deeds, Happy Gilmore, Robbie Hart and the guy that sang “The Hanukkah Song” is doing the finest work of his career in Uncut Gems, a new crime comedy co-written and directed by Joshua and Benny Safdie. Pigs have flown, for Sandler is brilliant.

The Coens, so cutting to so many of their characters, are gentler with Llewyn, inviting us to wander and wonder along with him as he ponders why he must forever play the jerk.

Days of Being Wild is less accomplished than later Wong efforts like Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love, but it's smart filmmaking nevertheless. [19 Nov 2004, p.46]

The match of larger-than-life actress to larger-than-life role is perfection.

Between D-Day, the sheer ambition of Paul Thomas Anderson's historical epic and Robert Elswit's dazzling cinematography, this is a must-see movie - even though its emotional temperature rarely rises above freezing and the climax goes way, way, way over the top.

While Tarr's newest epic, Werckmeister Harmonies, isn't intended for the shopping-mall crowd, it is more viewer-friendly and will please adventurous moviegoers.

Brilliantly acted by the year’s most carefully assembled cast, Spotlight is one of the year’s best films, showing just how hard it is to uncover painful truths.

Sorry, the beloved Singin’ in the Rain isn’t the finest of the legendary MGM musicals. For my money, it’s a close second to The Band Wagon, which has better music, better dances, better direction, more lavish sets and costumes and a wittier script (by the same writers).

You won't have a more viscerally emotional experience at the movies this year.

For all its wit and intricacy, the film is often ponderous. [31 Dec 1999, p.038]

The Class offers no Hollywood ending, but is rewarding for those up to the challenge.

The first movie I've seen in a very long while that deserves to be called a masterpiece. It's such a stunning achievement in storytelling.

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.

Each scene is breathtaking, such as a long shot of a river at a key moment, and an unforgettable soccer game played with no ball. Timbuktu deserves every accolade it gets.

The cumulative impact is devastating, and very far from a simple Western condemnation of another country’s brutality. In forcing viewers to hear the boasts of genocide’s perpetrators, The Act of Killing puts a harsh spotlight on all celebrations of bloodshed, from Hollywood to the op-ed pages.

We now have the distance to see just how close to a flawless and utterly timeless a film Steven Spielberg and his collaborators crafted – one that transcended genres (sci-fi and kids’ movies) to become of one of the greatest and most durable of American movies. [2002 re-release]

You won't see any film this year as beautiful, and plain thrilling as Apocalypse Now Redux. Watching it after sitting through this summer's record number of dumb, dreadful movies is almost a painfully good experience. [3 Aug 2001, p.30]

So consistently involving because the excellent cast delivers their lines with the kind of utter conviction not seen in this kind of movie since the first "Star Wars."

Director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s film combines allegory, brutal melodrama, black humor and strikingly beautiful compositions, each frame dense with meaning. Leviathan stays absolutely gripping, right up to the O. Henry twist that slams the film shut.

May not be a masterpiece, but it still had me in tears at the end.

Hogg (“Exhibition”) sets The Souvenir in the 1980s but shoots her subjects with the long-armed reserve of a period piece; the ivory-complexioned Byrne bears a resemblance to 18th- and 19th-century European portraits glimpsed throughout.

A groundbreaking, highly influential film, A Man Vanishes is a fiercely brilliant piece of work, but it's more intellectual challenge than pleasure.

“The past is past. I don’t want to remember . . . the wound is healed,” says Kemat, an Indonesian man who survived the massacre of more than 10,000 people at the Snake River in 1965. As this documentary shows, nothing could be further from the truth.

A rousing indictment of a barbaric practice.

Panahi is keenly aware of his limitations — both governmental and budgetary — and has crafted a taut, intimate and blood-pumping story around them. Talk about great art being born out of impossible circumstances.

It is an important, thoroughly bewitching work of art.

It's impossible to conceive of this ruefully funny entertainment without Bill Murray, who is nothing less than brilliant.

At first, it seems stagy and slow and even to verge on the pretentious, but the film steadily accumulates dramatic power as its carefully sketched characters reveal their internal lives. By its end, After Life has developed into one of those haunting movies whose scenes can pop back into your consciousness hours or days after you have seen it. [12 May 1999, p.56]

Yet while Nemes criticized “Schindler’s List” as “conventional,” all that’s new here is the hyper-realistic technique: Saul’s quest is not very far from the girl in the red dress.

Jonze seems to be heading for a far quirkier ending than the one he actually delivers, but he does tap into the zeitgeist with his unlikely romantic fable.

This Little Women is two-odd hours of good cheer and lovely ensemble performances. It’s a warm fireplace hearth of a film, albeit one with a tendency to spit out fiery embers.

Chomet's wacky tale is so crammed full of eye-popping images, it's impossible to forget afterward.

The various witnesses tell contradictory tales that turn this into a real-life “Rashomon." The fact that two of the principals — Sarah and Michael, who delivers touching and eloquent on-camera narration that he wrote himself — are accomplished actors adds another level of confusion and interest that help make this compelling storytelling.

“Heron” is not as perfect as some of Miyazaki’s past movies. The trippy story is dizzying by the end as too many characters are introduced too late and we navigate a thicket of hastily explained narrative elements. But it nonetheless leaves a powerful emotional effect if you let it wash over you.

Often extremely funny, always thoughtful, the movie transcends its static nature to become a deeper picture of modern Iran than any news story could offer.

Both actresses are extraordinary, but Kulesza — bitter, sarcastic and tragic — carries the movie’s soul.

So minimalist in characterization and dialogue that the plot all but evaporates -- and so does any dramatic power.

Haunting is the best word for Waltz With Bashir, a striking animated documentary - not an oxy moron, despite how it sounds - from Israel.

Endlessly entertaining and frequently hysterical, “Anora” is one of the year’s best films and a formidable Oscar contender.

The performance everybody will be soon talking about is Olivia Colman’s royal turn in the entrancing new drama, The Favourite.

As hip, funny and truthful a sleeper as has ever flown under Tinseltown's radar.

Basically, Katharine Hepburn could do no wrong, and with Cary Grant, the ultimate screen actor, you've got an instant classic. Screwball comedy is one of the hardest to bring off, and director Howard Hawks realized that you have to play real to make it succeed. [12 July 1998, p.30]

The filmmaker doesn't speculate about why these men are talking, but he leaves you with an excellent guess.

To say I was never bored wouldn’t be quite right. Rather, I was always transfixed.

Chance encounters and fated love are the stuff of fairy tales, which is what makes the deliriously romantic sequel Before Sunset a small miracle.

A film of such cyclonic visual and emotional power, of such dazzling virtuosity and shattering humanity, that it is difficult to endure, yet alone describe. Savagely beautiful and savagely true, Saving Private Ryan is an excruciating masterpiece.

It was always going to be an emotional experience watching the late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son Cooper Hoffman make his acting debut. His father, an Oscar-winning genius, died in 2014...What we never could have imagined, though, is that Cooper’s freshman performance (he’s so green, his IMDB page doesn’t have a photo yet) would be one of the best of the year in what is easily the best film of 2021, Paul Thomas Anderson’s brilliant Licorice Pizza. This wonderful kid should be in the Oscar race, but we’re too predictably infatuated with big names. Let’s fix that.

This spectacularly great reboot is surprisingly owned not by Hardy, who is fine, but by Charlize Theron.

The main reason for Winter's Bone to exist is that it delivers a little voyeuristic thrill -- a bit of poverty porno -- for the critics who awarded it their highest honors at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

All hail the great Helen Mirren, who after her triumph in HBO's "Elizabeth," delivers the performance of a lifetime as that monarch's frumpy, 20th century namesake in Stephen Frear's witty, touching and engrossing The Queen.

As Viviane, Elkabetz is fascinating, wielding an incredible variety of contemptuous looks.

An astonishing re-creation of the Londonderry massacre of January 1972.

Mostly a routine love story elevated by one of the year’s most magnetic performances.

Davis, a hugely underrated actress..., is deadpan perfection as Joyce, wearing oversized glasses and a wig that makes her look like an older version of Thora Birch's character in "Ghost World."

At best, it’s a fairly enjoyable hate-watch of a farewell to DDL, charting the course of a twisted love affair between a real pill of a guy and a woman who inexplicably adores him.

It ranks among Robert Altman's best work ever, and that its many satisfactions derive in large part from a superbly written screenplay by Julian Fellowes that has no equal this year.

Daring and unique, La Commune makes perfect viewing for the Fourth of July, which commemorates America's own revolution.

So there is courage and cheekiness here. What there is not is a story, or much insight or even anger; anyone expecting an indictment of Iran will be sorely disappointed.

Summer hasn't even started, but you won't likely find a better catch this season than Finding Nemo, a dazzling, computer-animated fish tale with a funny, touching script and wonderful voice performances that make it an unqualified treat for all ages.

Revels in the sensual pleasure of music while capturing brilliantly the tension that grips any theater company before the curtain goes up.

Being John Malkovich, which contains not a frame of extraneous footage, is more than a must-see movie: It's a must-see-more-than-once event.

A spectacularly rendered tale of a family of superheroes, takes the art form to a whole new level.

An unqualified triumph, the year's best movie so far.