A birth-to-death character study, “Train Dreams” is a meditation on the beauty of everyone and everything, how we are connected to both the earth and those who walked it before us.

This movie struck me as both Ceylan’s plainest, and perhaps his finest.

To Kill a Tiger tells an important story in a compelling manner that makes it worth watching, but its journey is so intense at times it might prove to be too much for some.

This story has been told several times before—and influenced other similar romances—but Cooper and Gaga find a way to make this feel fresh and new. It’s in their eyes.

Though superlatives can mischaracterize any movie’s qualities, it is not an overstatement, I think, to call Citizenfour, Laura Poitras’ film about Edward Snowden, the movie of the century (to date).

Massively entertaining.

It’s some of the absolute best work of Hopkins’ lengthy and storied career.

It is a formally gorgeous piece of work, the kind of film that exudes confidence in structure and tone, and it contains some of the most striking, memorable imagery of the year. Don’t miss this one.

This is a movie of visuals first and foremost; it’s no fluke that director Warwick Thornton shared cinematography duties with Dylan River. In addition to capturing stunning images, Thornton has a sleight-of-hand maestro’s joy in shuffling and fanning them. Lightning-fast cuts to flashbacks and flash-forwards keep the viewer on his or her toes in a bracing fashion.

Leave No Trace is, at times, heartbreaking, but it's also filled with glimpses of almost casual human kindness, throwaway moments of good will and inclusion piercing through what could be the bleakest of tales.

The Spanish maestro knows precisely how to get all the colors out of his charismatic muse, and in turn, the veteran star takes his material and makes it feel both fiery and grounded.

While moviegoers desperate to see anything that doesn’t involve a superhero may be willing to overlook its shortcomings, others will undoubtedly be disappointed to find that it's somewhat less than the sum of its parts.

In her search for closure to this bizarre chapter in her life, Tan recreates Cardona’s steps to make sense of why he would steal the teens’ work. Her journey takes several dark turns, which she captures in a crisp digital format which contrasts nicely against the dreamy footage of the original “Shirkers,” which was its own twisted take on melodrama, surrealism and existentialism.

It’s as if “Barbie” were actually about Weird Barbie, but even that idea doesn’t quite do it justice. A more apt description is: It’s the best movie of the year.

“A complete and utter love affair with your blackness.” That’s how one of the interviewees in this incredibly enjoyable documentary describes the tenor of Soul! a U.S. public television arts and chat show that ran from 1968 to 1973. Mr. Soul!, as the title indicates, is not just about the show, but about the visionary that created it and, a little reluctantly, hosted it, Ellis Haizlip.

The one constant of life is change, and our own individual relations to the place we grew up, or came of age, in are invariably complicated not by just the alterations in the landscape but the way our perspectives shift...The Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho understands this feeling just as well as I and maybe you do, and he’s made a lovely, enveloping film about it, called “Pictures of Ghosts.”

Braga has created a formidable force of nature in Clara.

The primary struggle of Chernov’s documentary is that it leans into the impersonal in an attempt at devastation. It can’t rely on the men as the crutch of the film’s emotion.

One of the year's best films, and one that transcends the superhero genre to emerge as an epic of operatic proportions. The numerous battle sequences that are staples of the genre are present, but they float on the surface of a deep ocean of character development and attention to details both grandiose and minute

The fantastical and surreal are presented with unshowy practicality. It's magical realism mixed with kitchen-sink drama, seasoned by a haunting sense of history as a sentient entity.

People have spoken about how understated and old-fashioned Brooklyn is, to the extent that it might come across as a pleasant innocuous entertainment. Don’t be fooled. Brooklyn is not toothless. But it is big-hearted, romantic and beautiful.

It's magnificent and unique, an adrenaline shot of wonder and skill.

Fonda’s own interviews are candid and insightful. Her regrets about the way she allowed herself to be used by the North Vietnamese are sincere but practiced.

Newtown is being characterized as an apolitical documentary, just a portrait of Newtown before, during and after the shootings, but that's not entirely true.

Not much has changed for people of color, which probably wouldn’t surprise the author. And yet, he’d demand we not give up. This film powerfully conveys that message. The struggle is real, but so is the joy. We live, we laugh, we love and we die. But we are not gone. Our story continues, carried onward by our storytellers.

Birdman is a complete blast from start to finish.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? comes from a place of understanding and love that few other biopics truly dive into, and it makes this difficult character a joy to meet.

Textured in ways that family entertainment is rarely allowed to be and even more visually ambitious that the other Cartoon Saloon films, this is a special movie.