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.