Mr. Turner is no barrel of laughs. It's a barrel of life - an extraordinary one.

Amazingly - and this movie is amazing - Room is a story of hope, of possibility. Sure, your stomach will be in knots, your fingers clenched, your heart racing. But it will also fill that heart with a sense of the goodness, the courage, the enduring love that is out there to be discovered - and to be held onto with the fierceness of life itself.

Big hair. Big mouths. Big scams. Everything about American Hustle, David O. Russell's wild and woolly take on the late-'70s FBI sting operation code-named Abscam, is big. And the biggest thing of all is the love story that beats at the heart of this rollicking disco-era ensemble piece.

35 Shots of Rum is visual poetry, but poetry that examines the human condition with insight and illumination.

A standout.

A tale of horror, heroism, unimaginable physical challenges, and, yes, cannibalism, Stranded offers the kind of real-life drama that can't help but bring up notions of God, fate, and nature's imposing will.

The Salt of the Earth, has the power to draw you into its world, transfix, and perhaps eventually transform you.

Is it dumb to say, "Wow?"...I don't care. Wow.

Brooklyn is that rare period drama that doesn't lose itself in its dogged re-creation of another time.

Wickedly smart and wickedly playful, Roman Polanski's adaptation of David Ives' Tony-nominated Venus in Fur works on so many levels, it's almost dizzying.

Blue Is the Warmest Color explores a life with a depth and force that would be scary - if it weren't so scarily good.

Modernizing the play with resource and ingenuity, Richard III holds a mirror to our blighted age. McKellen's Richard, a master of statecraft and cunning blackmail and manipulation, is a very contemporary tyrant. [19 Jan 1996, p.03]

With its feverish, percussive soundtrack and bravura cinematography, is like a bolt from the blue, chock-full of unexpected delight.

It's impossible to imagine anyone, right-leaning or left, coming away from this hugely important documentary unshaken by its representation of the United States and its military establishment.

A small, quiet film that walks tall and resonates long after.

We feel it, in our hearts. And therein lies the great power of this small, wise film.

The marvel of Brando's and Leigh's performances is that he is steely solidity and she airy evanescence, something frequently misinterpreted as his modern, realistic acting style and her quaint kind of theatrics. [Director's Cut; 18 March 1994, p.10]

A monumental achievement that documents a coordinated and complicated response to a monumental tragedy.

This is a movie that mines deep beneath the surface of human feeling. It will make you think - about love, about life, about two people who aren't real, except that they've become so for so many of us in this improbably successful indie franchise.

Its historical influence aside, Dragon Inn delivers pure cinematic pleasure. I'm not sure it can be overpraised.

Sustaining illusion with marvelous grace is, in a nutshell, exactly what Anderson is all about.

An unforgettable and profoundly inspiring film. [05 Mar 1999, p.04]

Remarkable movie.

Fulfills the promise of its title: It's transporting, it's magical.

As irresistible as Chan is irrepressible. In a movie season in which, it seems, all the blockbusters boast wheels, it's a treat to see a movie that has legs.

It's a trippy but tender examination of human emotions, relationships, all-consuming love.

A feast for the eyes and succor for the soul.

Symphonic and cinematic, full of melancholy and hushed magic.

This sad, staggering drama should be seen: out of the grimness, and the profound calamity, you can almost taste life in your mouth.

Asif Kapadia's extraordinary documentary, Amy, is filled with similarly soul-stirring, heartbreaking moments.

Throughout the film its makers pose the question of whether saving a work of art is as important as saving a human life. The question is not answered, and perhaps ultimately unanswerable. Yet Europa movingly shows how for many, art and artifacts are living things.

It shows us the everyday pressures and problems, the joys and pleasures, experienced by someone moving through life. And then that BART train pulls into Fruitvale, and the rest is history.

Intimate as a whisper, immediate as a blush, and universal as first love, the PG-rated film positively palpitates with the sensual and spiritual.

While White Material is very much the story of this one woman, it is also a story of postcolonial Africa, a place where Europeans staked their claim, and where disorder and destruction upended everything. A mournful, frightening, powerful film.

This is a sweet, gentle film - slow and sunny like a summer day, with a message that growing up can be hard, but can also serve as the wellspring of memories that will sustain you for a lifetime.

Among lovers of the genre, Shane is surely among the top five westerns ever made. [14 Jun 2003, p.D01]

Calvary is also just jaw-droppingly beautiful. McDonagh and cinematographer Larry Smith capture the four-seasons-in-one-day miracle that is Ireland, with its jagged stonescapes, roiling surf, fairie towns, and bracing skies.

Courageous, shattering and exceptional documentary.

That rare thing, a Hollywood teen flick transfigured into something like pubescent scripture: In the beginning, there was lust; in the end, there is knowledge.

A somber piece of film poetry about men so invested in a rigid notion of honor and revenge they become trapped in an endless loop of violence.

Gorgeous, and full of bittersweet whimsy.

A captivating cine-memoir, impressionistic and surrealistic, surveying Varda's formidable career as a still photographer, filmmaker, documentarian, and life force.

Kings and Queen, full of passion and humor, madness and grief, is close to a masterpiece. It's like life: messy, impossible, elating, unavoidable.

An overpowering and original piece of bravura filmmaking that constitutes one of the most breathtaking and impressive directing debuts in years.

The usual complaints and caveats about Anderson - he's precious, his characters have no grounding in the real world - can be made about Moonrise Kingdom, but so what? This is his seventh feature, he has been working with a gang of collaborators in front of the camera and behind, and his worldview gets richer, and more revealing, even as the view from his lens gets smaller, closer, almost two-dimensional in its oddball tableaux.

Moves from its protagonist's dream state to her memories to her waking present in imperceptible shifts - the effect is disorienting, at first, but ingenious.

A visually dazzling mood piece.

The narrative at the heart of Rust and Bone is a vehicle for sentiment and over-the-top histrionics if ever there was one, but Audiard and his two stars deliver the exact opposite: a film thrillingly raw and essential, life-affirming, sublime.

It's a quietly powerful work, pulsing with gentle humor and a gripping sense of imminent calamity and dread.

Crazy Heart is the real thing, and a real gem.

The Lobster is what would happen if Wes Anderson set about doing Franz Kafka, with a hefty dash of George Orwell thrown into the mix: surreal, comic, sad, strange, beautiful, sublime.

Like Hitchcock, only creepier, Haneke slowly cranks up the suspense.

A triumph.

This heartbreaking film, with its rich performances and simple eloquence, lays claim to greatness.

Under Hooper's deft direction, it packs the suspense of a thriller.

A wildly suspenseful zero-g tale of survival 350 miles beyond the ozone layer, Alfonso Cuarón's space saga is emotionally jolting - and physically jolting, too.

That is the sum of writer/director Steven Knight's movie: a man, a car, a hands-free mobile device. And it is extraordinary.

Unstoppable fun.

Persepolis, the superb film based on Satrapi's graphic memoirs of the same name, is a riveting odyssey in pictures and words. It's unlike any journal you've read or any animated movie you've seen.

This year's must-see film.

The movie is, start to finish, candy-colored angst.

It's aimed at adults as much as children, with jokes that work on multiple levels, and contraptions.

The first date that James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus embark on in Enough Said - has to be one of the great getting-to-know-you encounters in movie history.

Wondrously strange and just plain wonderful.

The movie may be the meditation of an old man, but rarely has a supreme artist's twilight been so richly illuminating. Faithless makes other films on the same subject seem clueless.

An immensely rich, deeply felt exploration of human relationships that draws you in and holds you fast for nearly three hours.

Yun's performance is remarkable. The journey Mija takes is painful and hard and - for us, watching - sublime.

Captain Phillips is harrowing, inspiring, a must-see piece of moviemaking.

At turns funny, sweet, sad, trenchant and telling. It's a gem.

It is the most influential movie you've never seen, deeply affecting many artists and experimental directors who saw it on the museum circuit in 1977 and 1978.

With no-nonsense narration by Peter Coyote and a soundtrack that's at once apt, ironic and really, really good, The Smartest Guys in the Room is anything but a dry dissection of a major Wall Street debacle.

For Piaf fans, La Vie en Rose is a must-see. For fans yet-to-be, Dahan and Cotillard's film is an opportunity rich with discovery.

Some of it is wistful, some of it whimsical, but it's all wonderful, impossibly so.

Moore is nominated this year, and whether she wins or not, her performance deserves attention. It is one of this very fine actress' defining roles. And it resonates with humanity and heartbreak.

Strangely, wonderfully, The Artist feels as bold and innovative a moviegoing experience as James Cameron's bells-and-whistles Avatar did a couple of years ago. Retro becomes nuevo. Quaint becomes cool.

Piercingly funny and unexpectedly moving account of that odd couple, Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) and HRH Elizabeth II (majestic Helen Mirren) and their back-channels affair.

Take Shelter, which, it should be said, boasts haunting but seamless visual effects, is a movie for this moment in time, this moment in our lives.

The film's climax involves a father and son reunion that is tense, tragic and, finally, as transcendent as Mohammad himself.

Wily, sad, funny, and full of life.

It's a masterpiece.

The chase influenced a generation of filmmakers, and Hackman's Popeye Doyle put an indelible stamp on the archetypal burned-out cop who was to become such a ubiquitous presence in movies. [12 March 1999, p.16]

By turns touching and funny, King George is the wittiest film in a long time, and anyone who savors the language will rejoice in its company. The cast is a top-flight representation of talent from the British stage and screen, but the film is dominated by Hawthorne. [27 Jan 1995, p.03]

A powerful film.

A mischievously inventive, surreal entertainment, one that celebrates not only Whipple Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight and Nutty Crunch Surprise but Busby Berkeley, Stanley Kubrick, the Beatles, and the outer-space acting choices of one Johnny Depp - not to mention those bushy-tailed rodents in all their bustling splendor.

Inside Out is the first psychological thriller that's fun for the whole family. Really psychological. And really fun.

If that sounds highbrow and pretentious, it's not. The neat trick of Tristram Shandy is that the whole thing comes off as a lark.

The new print does justice to Philippe Agostini's splendidly atmospheric cinematography.

Offers a view of war that is anything but epic. Instead of sweeping battles and swooping fighter planes, in Lebanon we are brought into the impossibly claustrophobic world of a lone tank crew.

For two hours I felt like a kitten chasing an elusive ball of catnip that remained just beyond my paw.

Manages the rare feat of being both bleak and deeply rewarding.

Wild and woolly, the movie is a breathtaking head trip that hails from a long tradition of backstage melodramas: "42nd Street," "A Star Is Born," "All About Eve," and, yes, that kitschy '90s relic, "Showgirls."

13 Assassins is, at turns, thrilling and funny, visually exquisite and emotionally charged.

Undeniable asset of an A list cast.

There is incredible tension in this ordeal, this effort to survive, to find rescue, and Redford - an icon of the American film experience for more than half a century now - makes that tension deeply palpable.

It's a relentless and relentlessly funny game of one-upmanship as the two men, playing somewhat exaggerated versions of themselves, roam the hills and dales, posh inns and poetic ruins of England's Lake District.

A movie like Everlasting Moments comes along maybe once in a decade.

A pitch-perfect portrait of a man full of inspiration and ambition - and full of himself.

Wendy and Lucy is modest, minimalist. But it nonetheless reverberates like a sonic boom.