Sure, there are holes in The Manchurian Candidate, and tenuous coincidences and too-convenient plot devices. But Washington, Schreiber, Streep and company - and Demme - have managed to make all the malevolent machinations seem relevant again.

A gut-punch of a movie, a potent, mesmerizing drama.

The real reason to see this slight but interesting documentary is to watch and listen to the radiant Aury.

A little gem that's everything a fine independent film used to be.

A jubilee for McDormand and jolly good fun for most everyone else.

The film is plush and passionate and graced with elegant performances. Best is that of Emma Thompson as Brideshead's matriarch, Lady Marchmain, who resembles a cross between Helen Mirren's Queen Elizabeth II and Pope Benedict.

If all this sounds like too much whimsy to bear, be forwarned. There is whimsy everywhere.

One of those movies where it's impossible not to find yourself cheering for the scruffy underdog hero.

A chick movie? Well, yes, but it's a whole lot cooler than that one with the "Ya-Ya's" in the title.

Frozen establishes a strong, confident tone: Cool mythology, rich, vivid animation, and 3-D effects that are actually worth seeing, not just migraine-inducing distractions.

This furry family comedy about a boy and his border terrier is irresistible, if not exactly in the league of "Babe."

Despite its title, The Exploding Girl is an oddly tranquil experience.

Fascinating and strangely involving piece.

Ranging in age from 30 to 96, the Berlevag men clearly enjoy being on camera and are unusually candid about their various pasts as Casanovas and hashish addicts.

Fast Food Nation picks up, and drops off, various members of its cast, sometimes without a satisfying resolution. But its final scenes, inside a real working meatpacking plant, on the killing floor, are brutally to the point.

At its best it is one of the most dynamic movies from a most dynamic filmmaker, now 76.

But the ending, at once ambiguous and obvious, is a letdown -- a frustratingly literal-minded, or literary-minded, conceit.

Maybe it's just the subtitles, but it would seem that Fontaine has a keener eye for the elements that made Chanel's style than she has an ear for dialogue. But she gets a splendid performance from Tautou.

Morel and his crew certainly know how to stage action: the fight scenes and shootouts, the stairwell pursuits and motorway mayhem, are as good, if not better, than anything to come out of Hong Kong in a long time.

Quite literally the blockbuster of the year.

Jolie's Maleficent is magnificent.

Heartbreaking and sometimes dazzlingly effective, the film still has flaws -- most of them in a too-often-maudlin script.

A pink-collar "Sex and the City" made urgent by the performance of Nathalie Baye.

Irreverent, provocative and provoking.

Einsteinian, Kubrickian, Malickian, Steinbeckian - Interstellar, Christopher Nolan's epically ambitious space opera, is all that. And more. And, alas, less.

A remarkably weird and wonderful exercise in psychological terror featuring a virtuoso performance by Scottish actor James McAvoy.

This unassuming and unexpectedly moving picture set in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood is a sugarplum-and-sofrito affair centering on the Rodriguez household.

Push has a cool, sinewy style, energy to burn.