Murphy raw is better than the well-done ego served up in Beverly Hills Cop II. But he's become a brilliant wise guy, unlike his hero Richard Pryor, who can turn profanity into poetry and hipness into humanity. [11 Jan 1988, p.57]

Urgent, gritty, sometimes weirdly funny, The Fighter might be considered his first feel-good movie. But Russell's too honest and acute an observer to serve up affirmation without leaving a subversive aftertaste of ambivalence and unease.

Rabbit Hole deftly sidesteps sentimentality and still wrenches your heart.

Affleck directed, stars in, and co-wrote The Town, a suspenseful, fiercely paced movie about bank robbers that is also about love, brotherhood, and the desperate need to escape a crooked life. It proves that "Gone Baby Gone," his accomplished directing debut, was no fluke.

Crazy Heart gets to you like a good country song--not because it tells you something new, but because it tells it well. It's the singer, not the song.

The wonder of Invictus is that it actually went down this way.

A Single Man's sleek surface may go against Isherwood's crisp, understated prose, yet the story's beating, wounded heart and its spiky intelligence still come through, personified in Firth's moving, eloquently internalized performance.

There hasn't been a studio movie as unapologetically adult, sophisticated, and nuanced as Up in the Air in some time.

Slides gracefully between comedy and pathos (it aims for tragedy, but doesn't quite get there).

Hilarious, satirical and melancholy, Rudo y Cursi may not go as deep as "Y Tu Mamá También," but it has a similar vivacity. It turns this tale of brotherly bonds and sibling rivalry--a veiled allegory of the Cuarón boys themselves?--into one of the year's most memorable offerings.

An extraordinary documentary.

Though there was little surprise by the end--how could there be?--Notorious,' a movie about the life and death of rapper Christopher Wallace (a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G., a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, a.k.a. Biggie), still managed to stun, unsettle and move me.

Instead of losing myself in the story, I often felt on the outside looking in, appreciating the craftsmanship, but one step removed from the agony on display. Revolutionary Road is impressive, but it feels like a classic encased in amber.

Lyrical, original, misshapen and deeply felt, this is one flawed beauty of a movie.

The images of war that Folman and his chief illustrator, David Polonsky, conjure up have a feverish, infernal beauty. Dreams and reality jumble together.

Frost/Nixon works even better on screen. Director Ron Howard and Morgan, adapting his own play, have both opened up the tale and, with the power of close-ups, made this duel of wits even more intimate and suspenseful.

How you feel about Milk may depend on whether you've seen Rob Epstein's great, Oscar-winning 1984 documentary "The Times of Harvey Milk." Van Sant's movie lacks that film's shattering emotional impact. (Rage is not a color in the director's palette.) For those coming to Milk's story for the first time, however, this will be a rousing experience.

Australia is a shameless—and shamelessly entertaining--pastiche. It works because Luhrmann, a true believer in movie-movie magic, stamps it all with the force of his own extravagant, generous personality.

Desplechin is an inspired impurist. His Christmas Tale is untidy, overstuffed and delicious: a genuine holiday feast.

Eastwood tells his haunting, sorrowful saga with such a sure, steady hand, only a very hardened cynic could fail to be moved.

Let the Right One In unfolds with quiet, masterly assurance.

If we must have teen movies, let them all be as sweet and seductive as Sollett's smartly observed romance.

Most of the time, Demme's deliberately unstable mixture of moods and genres produces electric results. Rachel Getting Married takes a familiar subject--the raw nerves of American family life with--and draws fresh blood.

For a number of reasons The Duchess isn't all it could have been. It's fun, but falls short of fabulous.

That's the paradox that makes this parade of folly so much fun: it feels as if everyone involved is having a high old time, and their enthusiasm is contagious.

Tropic Thunder is the funniest movie of the summer--so funny, in fact, that you start laughing before the film itself has begun.

The remarkable thing about Jarrold's movie is how much of the book it manages to capture.

You may emerge more exhausted than elated. Nolan wants to prove that a superhero movie needn't be disposable, effects-ridden junk food, and you have to admire his ambition. But this is Batman, not "Hamlet." Call me shallow, but I wish it were a little more fun.