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.