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

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

It's great to hear a director talking candidly about the actors he's worked with, dishing out good, juicy stuff.

The film speaks to fundamental issues of history, truth, and the philosophical conflicts of humankind.

It's a testament to Cage's canny performance and Jonze's seamless use of special effects that you believe Charlie and Donald are two entirely different people.

Witty and wonderful, Fantastic Mr. Fox is the perfect Thanksgiving entertainment.

A scabrously funny look at the cutthroat game of statecraft.

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

It's a feminist nightmare, the world brought to life -- in hard-hitting documentary style.

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

Beautifully observed, and beautifully acted by the novice thespian Polanco (culled from a New York City public school), Chop Shop is at once a heartbreaker and a story of hope and the American Dream.

1971 is a testament to a generation's idealism, heroism, foolhardiness, fearlessness.

Very few of us would like to think about the physical and emotional toll that life in captivity takes on these magnificent creatures. Gabriela Cowperthwaite's powerful, heartbreaking, and beautifully crafted documentary, Blackfish, forces us to do just that.

Easily the best stop-motion animated necrophiliac musical romantic comedy of all time. It is also just simply, wonderful: a morbid, merry tale of true love that dazzles the eyes and delights the soul.

Nim is as unforgettable as the treatment of him is unspeakable.

If you're a fan of the indomitable Canadian rocker - high-pitched voice, proto-grunge guitar, total immersion in the music - then you want to see Neil Young Trunk Show on the big screen, for sure.

I also like that when Our Hero starts swinging from skyscrapers, he's not just emulating Tarzan, but is working out the Newtonian physics of action and reaction.

Avatar delivers. Combining beyond-state-of-the-art moviemaking with a tried-and-true storyline and a gamer-geek sensibility - not to mention a love angle, an otherworldly bestiary, and an arsenal of 22d-century weaponry - the movie quite simply rocks.

The real 3-D experience of the season is Pina, Wim Wenders' shockingly beautiful and moving tribute to the late German choreographer Pina Bausch.

Like "The Square," the startling Down Under noir released a few months ago, Animal Kingdom explores the down and dirty side of human nature, fraught with greed, suspicion, and betrayal.

What about the kids and families who have no connection to Méliès, little familiarity with Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton? Will Hugo keep them in their seats? I'm not sure.

Andre Techine creates living characters instead of sociopolitical symbols.

It is social criticism written with tears. [15 Feb 1995, p.E01]

Gloria, spare and keenly observed, plays like a short story - there is no sweeping narrative arc, no momentous triumph or calamity. But there is a bit of justice meted out, and the act of its meting brings a slow, small smile to Gloria's face.

Spider is a difficult film, but an inspired one, the movie equivalent of eating a meal of artfully prepared eel or sea urchin. It's for those with adventurous tastes and no fear of squishy textures.

A Raimi-esque mix of gross-out madness and sick laughs.

The polar opposite of the J.K. Simmons character in "Whiplash."

Ryan may not be admirable, but Clooney makes him relatable. It's his deepest and nakedest performance.

For its mesmerizing first two-thirds, Van Sant keeps the film tightly focused on his subject, superbly played by Penn and intimately shot, home-movie style, by Harris Savides. But when the director pulls back to detail Harvey Milk's fight against gay backlash, Milk gets derailed. And - dare I say it? - didactic.

Terrific filmmaking, but it's hard to leave Moodysson's picture without feeling much of anything except hopelessness. Utterly.

Classic.

It is the more satisfying of the two installments - less over-the-top, arterial-gushing violence and more investigation into character, motives, back-story.

It does a masterful job of capturing a specific time and place while reminding us how timeless the abortion dialogue is.

A deeply creepy and mysterious noir.

It's a story of global consequences and historic proportions, and of astounding athleticism and synchronicity - and filmmaker Polsky ices it.

A film of haunting eloquence and justifiable fury.

The violence here is never in the service of spectacle, always of the story.

A richly observed coming-of-age drama about two teenage boys who are drawn to each other with a complicated mix of attraction, repulsion, tenderness, and aggression.

Ergüven's film, beautifully shot and beautifully performed, cuts its storybook tone with starker, more brutal truths. Anger - aimed at a conservative social order and those complicit in maintaining it - courses through this sad, striking tale.

An accomplished and compelling film by writer/director Josh Mond, James White is also pretty much a bummer.

A masterfully creepy and beautifully turned variation on the teen horror formula.

An immensely enjoyable, warmhearted, and gentle showbiz dramedy.

With Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Tim Burton gives new meaning to the term "director's cut."

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

It's a wondrous mix of the momentous and mundane, the profound and the perverse, with Cave blues-talking his way through the goofy juxtapositions, the darkness, and the light.

Terrifically satisfying film.

Creed is corny like the old Rocky films, but riveting like the old Rocky films, too.

Whatever number it is chronologically on the P&P parade, Wright's film ranks first in verve. Quite simply, it is the essential P&P.

The great thing about Venus - apart from its sharp eye for the daily routines and drab details of senior citizenry in a buzzing metropolis - is that it isn't soppy, or sentimental.

At 120 minutes, The Love Witch is too long. Biller has too much material on her hands and too many non sequitur scenes.

The Second Mother is an interesting look at generational and class divides in Brazil, without the feel of a lecture or lesson.

Ajami brings its audience into a world where the cultural conflict is fierce, emotions run high, yet the hopeful vision of peaceful coexistence shines through the cracks.

It's a coming-of-age story - blunt, mythic, gut-wrenching.

A terrific mystery, equal parts haunting love story and nimble thriller.

Gorgeous, and full of bittersweet whimsy.

The beautiful misery of The Deep Blue Sea - Terence Davies' crushing adaptation of Terence Rattigan's 1952 play - is almost too much.

We're in the company of a great character here, with a lot on his mind, a lot to say.

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.

Simply the best adaptation of any John le Carré thriller to make it to the screen.

Cronenberg's movie is eerily compelling and darkly humorous. And chilling - to the bone.

A baseball movie, a stranger-in-a-strange-land movie, a movie about real people facing real challenges in the real world, Sugar is all that and more.

Marwencol is about Hogancamp and his miniature alter-ego, about his photographs and his creative process. But it is also, on a deeper level, about how we process our experiences - good and bad, violent and mysterious - and how we try to build safe places in our lives.

Gripping, powerful, heart-breaking.

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.

The results are exhilarating, thrilling, and extend the wingspan.

Insightful, funny-sad memoir of divorce, intellectual style and emotional rebirth.

A breathtaking, disturbing look at urban angst and the emptiness of youth culture.

It's one of the great have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too performances of the year.

The result is more exciting than the last four ST pictures put together, more fun than a barrel of Tribbles, and the most satisfying action-adventure since last year's "Iron Man."

It's a tearjerker, sometimes, and sweetly funny at other moments. It's near perfect.

It is almost inevitable that Miyazaki, often compared to C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling, should have found in Diana Wynne Jones a kindred spirit.

Hunger is daunting and powerful work.

For Kudlow, for whom "music lives forever" - it's never over. And the opportunity to seize the day continues to present itself in this deeply human documentary.

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.

In the end, Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban offers what neither of its predecessors, for all their wand-waving and witch-brooms, had: real magic.

La Promesse is a compelling look at issues that - in a world where ethnic frictions grow more tense, even as national boundaries disappear - really are universal.

After Clooney, who gives a sterling performance as a tarnished figure, the standout performance belongs to Wilkinson, a geyser of manic eloquence. Also quite fine are Swinton and Sydney Pollack.

Has the arc of a Shakespearean tragedy, and all the essential components therein: loyalty and betrayal, conspiracy and delusion, self-destruction.

The Spectacular Now feels genuine in almost every respect, from the unflashy cinematography and the sparingly deployed music cues to the natural, unhurried performances of its two stars. They will get to you, truly.

Funny, fear-inducing, with periods of voyeuristic gore and an undercurrent of anxiety and dread, Let the Right One In is up there with the bloodsucking classics.

Resonant and surprisingly affecting.

That this purposefully twisting exercise takes place amid the sun-burnished cypresses and towns of Tuscany - where ancient statuary is as commonplace as pasta and wine - only makes this playfully enigmatic meditation the more pleasing.

So disturbing, on so many levels.

Is Steve Jobs a great film? I don't think so. It's an achievement, certainly, full of Sorkin flourishes, breathtaking and brilliant one-liners that reveal a lot about the characters who deliver them.

Marley celebrates the fact that its subject is still among us in the way that perhaps matters most: His music not only survives, it thrives.

Touching the Void is, indeed, about living, but not the exhilarating kind. It's about survival -- raw, real, by force of will.

The movie simply has the best use of music (Talbot is also a musician) that I’ve seen this year, starting with a gorgeous score by Daniel Herskedal , and embellished with the smart, eclectic use of songs that speak to the city’s cultural history.

An exquisite exploration into the realms of seduction, obsession, deception and disillusionment.

This is the kind of unusual but involving picture that's ripe for a Hollywood remake - but while you're waiting for the Sandra Bullock-Ethan Hawke edition (it's a good post-movie game: coming up with your own casting ideas), Read My Lips is well worth checking out.

Set against the backdrop of Montana's stunning wilderness, Certain Women portrays women at work and women in desire with the quiet confidence, simplicity, and directness of a true artist.

There is nothing sentimental or picturesque about the performances or imagery. The word that best describes both is elemental.

Love Is Strange has a gentleness about it, and an empathy, that inspire.

The Assassin is not "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and it is certainly not "Kill Bill". But Hou - a linchpin of Taiwan's New Wave movement, the director of "A City of Sadness" and "The Puppetmaster" - evokes the magic, the majesty, the artistry of the martial-arts movie tradition, and brings a Zen-like sense of observation to the proceedings

Macdonald's film brilliantly telescopes the '70s, an era when every physical action had its equal and opposite political reaction.

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

Exhilarating, alternately funny and horrific film.

Silva expertly maintains the tension, asking the audience to interpret Raquel's bizarro behavior. His diagnosis is a pleasant surprise.

This time around, Julien Temple gets it right.