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.

It all comes down to affirmation vs. denial. Leigh chooses affirmation. And the result is life-affirming.

Eden is the kind of movie that hits you when you least expect it. Just when I thought it was a mess, its aimlessness began to make complete sense.

Remarkable documentary.

Funnier than his criticism of egos on the rampage is Guest's rare talent for double-edged satire that tweaks one convention by means of another.

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

Wadjda is a movie about freedom - and nothing represents freedom with the metaphoric simplicity and symmetry of a bicycle.

One might shudder at the occasional Yakin visual metaphor, as when Fresh and a friend enter their young hound in a dogfight. Yes, it's a dog-eat-dog world. But even more powerfully at work here is that Yakin, aided by the coolly honest performance of young Sean Nelson, makes us see that it's really a king-eats-kingpin world. [31 Aug 1994, p.F02]

A spare document featuring one talking head. But what a talking head and what a story!

With its icy symphonic score (courtesy of Iceland’s Johan Johansson) and a palette of rainy-day colors, Arrival is at once majestic and melancholy. It’s a grand endeavor, and Adams, at the center of it all, brings pluck and smarts and a deep-seated sorrow to her role. This is her movie, no doubt.

Like its heroine, the film's glib - and sometimes sidesplittingly funny - patter at first diverts viewers from its poignant insights. Happily, as Juno grows in experience and maturity, so does the film.

There's a loose, vérité vibe here, and times when both Williams and Gosling root down deep to deliver something resonant and true. But this modern-day kitchen sink drama is ultimately too painful, too labored, to care much about at all.

An intimate epic of infinite grace.

Gorgeous work, and its imagery and themes dovetail perfectly: a story about creating art, artfully created.

A truly refreshing break from the Hollywood humdrum, the film is a perfect vehicle for Rock's range of talents, giving him plenty of breathing space to launch into his trademark stand-up riffs while grounding him in a story as moving as it is funny.

Structured in three beautifully paced, keenly observed acts, Living in Oblivion is that rare picture that leaves you gasping in disappointment at the end - gasping, that is, because it's over and you don't want it to be. [04 Aug 1995, p.05]

Using a screenplay polished and honed by the Coen Brothers, Spielberg dips into John le Carré territory (you can't help but think of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold when Donovan looks onto the newly erected Berlin Wall, in the searchlights, in the snow).

A frequently amusing exercise in camp horror that misses being wholly satisfying because it has too many people to kill. [21 Apr 1973, p.8]

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.

It's the old cliche, but (like most cliches) it's true: It's impossible to imagine this picture without this actor.

Foxcatcher is a story of wealth and the lack of it, of family connection and disconnection. But more than anything, it is a story of a mind unraveling. The result is devastating drama for those of us looking on.

With deft and subtle performances and an uncomplicated but savvy script, Autumn Tale gets to the inner lives of its characters.

Never mind Hollywood's big-star, big-budget hand-wringing about Africa - Bamako is the real thing.

What's refreshing about Beginners is its sympathy for all of its characters, which translates into the characters' sympathy for each other.

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

It is a fever dream of a movie, tracking its subject as she tries to maintain control, maintain her composure and her sanity, and as she tries — shellshocked, quaking with grief, but also fiercely determined — to shape and secure her husband’s legacy.

It's not just the grainy stock and bad sound - technically, we've come a long way. It's the cheesy sex, the awkward edits, the hammy symbolism, the mix of art-house aesthetics and exploitation cliché. Strange creature, this is.

Tonally askew (Altman-esque one minute, Austin Powers-esque the next), Inherent Vice is a sun-glared, neon-limned muddle of noir plotline and potheaded jokery that not only doesn't make sense, but actually seems to try hard not to.

All in all, this phenomenal film illustrates Alexis de Tocqueville's observation that "The people get the government they deserve." In both meanings of the word, Il Divo is sensational.

It's oppressive and claustrophobic, confused and scary in there. But it's also compellingly real.

A political drama, a personal drama, a sharp-eyed study of how the media manipulate us from all sides, No reels and ricochets with emotional force.

Not only is it the best documentary in a vintage season for nonfiction films (see "American Splendor," "Capturing the Friedmans," and "Spellbound"), it's also one of the best films of the year. It's as lyrical about the particulars of Kahn as it is about the universals of fathers and sons.

It's bloody carnage - or it's ketchup, or bolognese sauce, at the very least.

This cunning and provocative Romanian film requires patience, but its rewards are many: It's hard to imagine how a scene in which a police captain barks an order to bring him a dictionary can be loaded with suspense, but, really, it is.

Haunting and sad. And absolutely worth seeing.

Is Django Unchained about race and power and the ugly side of history? Only as much as "Inglourious Basterds" was about race and power and the ugly side of history. It's a live-action, heads-exploding, shoot-'em-up cartoon. Sometimes it crackles, and sometimes it merely cracks.

Amirpour clearly studied their films and listened to some Sergio Leone spaghetti Western scores while she was at it. The music in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night pulses with a late-night Persian vibe, reverby and twanging, soulful, hypnotic.

Moana 's great heart and great humor actively subvert the violent, egocentric, macho mind-set that dominates so many popular stories. It can hardly be expected to change prevailing attitudes on its own. But it’s a start.

In part, the documentary answers the question of why some couples flourish and others flounder.

The pair are scrappy and smart and riff off each other like a no-budget, indie version of Tracy and Hepburn. It's impossible not to like them, and there's absolutely no reason not to.

The accomplishment of The Eel is to be both sardonic and compassionate - often at the same time. [23 Oct 1998, p.16]

Skyfall is certainly the most cultured Bond film to come along in some time. It's also the first of the three Craig endeavors to seriously (and wittily) acknowledge its pedigree.

Melancholia is a remarkable mood piece with visuals to die for (excuse the pun), and a performance from Dunst that runs the color spectrum of emotions.

Dense, richly textured, and emotionally fraught - uplifting and devastating in equal parts - Shane Carruth's masterful sophomore effort is an abstract, elusive, but emotionally engaging love story that's more tone poem than drama.

The photography is lush, the dialogue uproarious, and the crazy action sequences unforgettable.

Goblet of Fire, fourth in the fantasy franchise, is the most fun and the most fraught with conflict.

While I liked the film's aesthetics and its futurist imaginings, its most important attraction is how it engages. Some movies massage you; others tickle you. This one jacks you into cyberspace, involving you psychically and physically.

A superb, violent, jarring and daring documentary.

A rocking, rollicking crowd-pleaser.

(Director Lionel Coleman) wisely opts for a straightforward approach with long takes that capture Cho's kinetic rhythm and rely on her talent and honed timing to carry the evening.

Throw bouquets at Marshall, who instead of dissecting it to death, neatly resurrects the Hollywood musical.

The $200 million result is an irresistibly entertaining, if grandiose, saga of doomed love and directorial hubris.

Next to the cheerleader grunts and aerobic struts that pass for dance numbers on most music videos, the sequences in the compilation film That's Entertainment! III are like treasures from a highly evolved ancient civilization. [06 Jul 1994, p.E01]

The raw emotions on display need no translation. David Mackenzie directs the film in a piercingly realistic style. His ingenious decision to forgo a score makes Starred Up even more immersive, because all you hear is the dehumanizing din of prison.

Midnight in Paris is not a perfect movie - as in "Julie & Julia" one senses its creator's impatience to leave the bleached-out present for the colorful past. But it is warm and effortless, qualities that make it embraceable.

Lindholm's mastery of film form is matched by his willingness to engage with some of the most intractable moral quandaries that haunt contemporary life.

While it's too slight a movie for overpraise, there are such a serenity of vision and clarity of purpose to these characters that we easily are caught up in the boys' struggle to reunite mother and child.

Smart, funny, and gross (often at the same time).

There is a lot of shield-your-eyes ickiness in District 9, a lot of violence and gore. What there is not a lot of, however, is humanity - even in the film's depiction of the inhumanity humans are capable of.

Ai Weiwei comes off as a man on a singular mission: to record the life around him before it is erased or distorted by a repressive government terrified by the smallest sign of nonconformity. His primary weapons: video cameras and Twitter.

A masterful epic charting love's labyrinths.

It is, without doubt, a transcendent endeavor, from its exhilaratingly smart screenplay - director David O. Russell's adaptation of the novel by former South Jersey teacher Matthew Quick - to the unexpected and moving turns of its two leads.

The most challenging obstacle encountered by reformers like Canada and Michelle Rhee, the embattled chancellor of education for Washington, D.C., are the unions extending tenure protection to teachers who underperform.

Through Herzog's eyes it is a desolate, strangely beautiful frozen Edenish hell where the planet, having shaken out its pockets, lets the loners, fanatics and cosmologist-crackpots fall to bottom.

The Martian is never less than engaging, and often much more than that.

Brevity is the soul of wit, lingerie and Ridicule, a keen and silky costume drama set circa 1783 in Versailles. [06 Dec 1996, p.03]

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

It's a haunting, scary, funny, sad portrayal from Rourke.

Though Daldry elicits brilliant performances, particularly from Meryl Streep and Claire Danes, on balance The Hours is more pretentious than penetrating about existential despair.

Paul Scofield contributes a telling performance as an art-obsessed German officer who cares more about Monet than the lives of his men. [20 Jul 2002, p.E01]

Brilliantly detailed, richly painted portrait.

Although The Secret in Their Eyes has neither the power, the artistry, nor the electric energy of its fellow Oscar nominee, France's "A Prophet," the Argentine film nonetheless engages with style, suspense, and seriousness of intent. Criminal intent and otherwise.

It's not a pretty picture. But Food, Inc. is an essential one.

Tony Takitani, fablelike and beautiful, requires a certain amount of patience, but its small, peculiar charms work their way into your soul.

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

As lovingly written as it is beautifully rendered.

The heroine of this story is the eloquent Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett's mother, who recalls her fight to have an open-casket funeral for her son.

The Queen of Versailles combines the voyeuristic thrills of reality TV with the soul-revealing artistry of great portraiture and the head-shaking revelations of solid investigative reporting.

Reverberates with the power and passion of Greek tragedy.

A loving, dopey documentary about the bird man of a place with a view of Alcatraz.

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

Bielinsky's movie builds like a poker game in which the players, having invested everything, cannot afford to fold.

A superbly researched and edited documentary about the women's movement in the 1960s.

Like Connery - but in different proportions - Craig is earthy and erotic, holding himself like a smoking gun.

Saraband, flat and static both visually and thematically, doesn't begin to approximate the austere beauty of the director's art-house classics.

In refusing to pigeonhole its characters, Nine Lives is less like those L.A. road-rage melodramas "Short Cuts" and "Crash" than those all-of-us-are-interconnected dramas "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams."

Its daring dive into the mind of Brian Wilson feels right. God only knows (to borrow a Pet Sound song title or two), but you still believe in . . . Brian.

Taste of Cherry takes its title from an anecdote that celebrates the things in life - such as the savoring of a delectable fresh fruit - that we take for granted. Kiarostami's film won the top prize at Cannes last year, an honor that has infamously gone to some overrated movies over the years. In this case, the award was less than a superb picture deserved. [12 June 1998, p.04]

True Grit is probably the least ironic picture in the Coen Brothers' worthy canon, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of their signature oddities, that it doesn't take a few dark, strange turns.

Kore-eda, deploying a Western pop score by the Japanese indie-rock band Quruli, just lets these kids be kids.

There's a fine line between bag lady and belle of the ball, and Apfel instinctively knows it. Her sense of style is uncanny.

The Force Awakens is half reboot, half remake, and all fun.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer contrasts the mundane and the domestic with the appalling. The tone doesn't vary at all, and it's not a pretty picture, but movies that burn their images into your consciousness like this one are very, very rare. It is admittedly hard to look, but this is a portrait that demands to be seen.

I love this movie, and I love the pride, spirit and sportsmanship of the kids who represent the best of American pluck and luck.

OK, first off, anyone who shares his or her life with a dog, or has done so in the past, go see My Dog Tulip.

White God offers a dark - very dark - take on the way humans exert authority, and superiority, over our fellow creatures.

The rhythms of Whale Rider are hypnotic as the ebb tide, haunting as the song of the humpback sea mammal, bracing as the ocean spray. It's a movie that rewards the patient viewer.

Taut entertainment that juggles brainy ideas about perception, predetermination and free will - and drops things in a messy third act where the vintage noir gets bathed in a bit too much Spielbergian glow.