Altman, showing the ardor and assurance of a master, pulls us into his film with seductive power. You won't want to miss a thing.

Jamie Foxx gets so far inside the man and his music that he and Ray Charles seem to breathe as one.

The antithesis to the parent-friendly punks of Valley Girl, director Penelope Spheeris' stark, sobering look at the new generation gap pits aging California hippies against their disillusioned kids.

This is not a tale of a young man who can “pass” and, knowing that it may matter to his survival, toughens up, puts on a masculine drag. It’s a movie intent on showing us that this is all drag — it’s all put-on, all available to the play of identity.

Johnny Depp, who paid for the 2005 funeral in which Thompson's ashes were fired out of a cannon, narrates with just the right mix of awe and impertinence.

Shane Black creates a movie that is defiantly smartass and too cool for the room. I couldn't have liked it more.

The film is dawdling, sometimes maddeningly so, but Newman and Woodward deliver lovingly detailed and bruisingly true performances that not only command attention but richly reward it.

Inspired funny business that allows Martin to hilariously torpedo Hollywood's corrupt heart.

Malick and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki -- a grandmaster at blending color and natural light -- craft a tone poem that may throw some audiences through its use of interior monologues.

Fire Will Come is a movie that will go down easy for the right viewer, a movie strangely energized by an unexpected dash of suspense. But the film’s ideas, the questions it sends aloft as we watch, remain stuck in our throats.

Steve Carell, best known as a team player on "The Daily Show," "The Office" and such movies as "Anchorman," earns top-banana status as Andy. He is flat-out hilarious.

What makes it a Haynes film, besides the evocative camera genius of Haynes regular Ed Lachman, is something intangible and mysterious. The director’s admirers will think immediately of "Safe," the 1995 indie classic starring Julianne Moore as a wife and mother who thinks she’s being poisoned by something unidentifiable in the environment. That feeling of dread pervades throughout, and deepens the film’s scarily timely themes beyond the usual demands of docudrama.

A tornado of laughs based on the black experience as lived by these four insightful jokers, instead of as filtered through the Hollywood formula.

The film never digs deep enough into the pressures on Glass from his family, his peers and himself to achieve psychological depth. But as an inside look into the hothouse of journalism, it's dynamite.

It's those dark visions of destruction that stick, even when Spielberg pushes the script to an unlikely happy ending. Great foreplay, failed orgasm.

If you want to see explosive acting, just watch Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett ignite in this film version of Zoe Heller's 2003 novel.

This is a passable substitute for the real thing. It could have burrowed so much deeper.

It’s a movie that utilizes every bit of Gavras’ abundant chops and marshals them to make a coherent statement, tapping brains and heart and spleen in the name of forcing you to recognize what he’s putting in front of you.

OK, the plot is inane, Val-gal-speak is a clichT, and Heckerling was more incisive covering similar hormonal ground 13 years ago in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." But there's still wicked good fun to be had.

CODA knows how to work that conventional-to-a-fault indie feeling like a champ. You may exit smiling. Just don’t be surprised if you also experience the sensation of having just been Sundanced to death.

It’s a valentine to a communal gay experience, penned in a way that’s uniquely both insular and inviting.

[Eichner] wanted to make a gay rom-com. It isn’t a huge leap, however, to say that he’s both entertaining a mass audience and leaving his own mark on a long, storied history of fighting to be seen and heard — to tell stories that have been dismissed or neglected or suppressed. Mission accomplished.

Has the juice to get its hooks into you, knock you off balance and keep you that way for two hours. It's a triumph for director Sam Mendes. The passion and precision of his Road work is staggering.

It's one for the time capsule.

What Ammonite needs is to dig deeper and imagine more — to find a Mary Anning of its own to excavate what’s hidden inside it.

Buckley hasn’t had a million portraits sketched of him, much less to this degree. The singularity of It’s Never Over, along with the access and the candor, makes up for a lot here.

Gone Baby Gone is full of dark secrets, and how they unravel will keep you glued.

Still, the excitement is palpable, and Karam and El Basha (he justifiably won the Best Actor prize at the Venice Film Festival) give the kind of performances that keep you riveted. Even at its most blunt and obvious, this is a movie that stumps for empathy. Who can argue with that?

Fremont is neither game-changing nor revolutionary. It’s merely a throwback, in the best possible way, to a low-fi aesthetic and low-key way of storytelling you thought had gone the way of the Triceratops. That, in fact, is what makes this deceptively placid, supremely wry movie so damned moving.

Pfeiffer gives an incredible performance as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Zodiac Killer Project starts as an autopsy of a fail, and ends up dismantling the subgenre via a sort of cinematic jujitsu. You leave happy that Shackleton’s project ended up crashing and burning.

Magic Mike slowly degenerates into a simplistic cautionary fable. I didn't see that coming from a sharp observer like Soderbergh.

Straight Outta Compton plays better when it's outside the box, showing us N.W.A power and the consequences of abusing it. Would the movie be better if it didn't sidestep the band's misogyny, gay-bashing and malicious infighting? No shit. But what stands is an amazement, an electrifying piece of hip-hop history that speaks urgently to right now.

As for whether this is the last film Eastwood gets the opportunity to make, the jury is still out on that. But you can’t accuse him of resting on his laurels. Artists half his age couldn’t come up with a cinéma du airport read this intriguing.

The film doesn't take sides, but it does fairly, subtly and movingly represent them. Captain Fantastic takes a piece out of you.

Though the rest of All the Money in the World expertly skims the surface of this true-life drama, Scott makes it a hell of a ride.

Nanny starts as a movie about a reality that we’d rather not face — the plight of Black domestic workers, of immigrants, of the barebones fact of financial survival — and ends as a movie about reality that we cannot bear. That is the horror of it — and, in Jusu’s hands, the galvanizing thrill.

Cabin is a deliciously devious scare dance that keeps changing the steps until you lose your shit and fall helplessly into its demonic traps.

This thriller is so gritty it could chafe your eyeballs...Miami Blues is high on its own malevolence.

The whole of Friendship isn’t as attractive as the sum of its disparate parts, and you wonder if a more concise, focused version of this look at the self-consciousness of dudes trying desperately to bond wouldn’t have hit better.

Depp and Burton fly too high on the vapors of pure imagination. But it's hard to not get hooked on something this tasty.

Leigh isn't breaking new ground, but he knows how a daily grind can kill love. Strong stuff.

This volcanically funny and seriously scary look at America's obsession with guns is meant to shake us up good. And it does.

A fun ride, spiked with touching gravity, is not a shabby way to end the movie summer. Thanks to Jillian Bell, a comic force of nature with real dramatic chops, that’s what you get in Brittany Runs a Marathon.

Near the end, when Griet puts on that earring and Johansson magically morphs into the figure on that canvas, you'll be knocked for a loop.

The movie is often tremendously exciting.

The movie is sturdy and stylish, full of ideas and fun to watch, strange as it may seem to say. If it doesn’t always maintain the sharp effectiveness of its opening, it’s proof of a writer-director willing and able to stay ahead of the curve.

Love, Simon is a John Hughes movie for audiences who just got woke. And for all its attempts not to offend, it's a genuine groundbreaker.

Egoyan is an acquired taste, but once in, you’re hooked. Exotica is Egoyan’s most accomplished and seductive film to date — even tackling acute psychic distress, Egoyan’s deadpan comic eye never flinches.

In essence, City of Gold is a celebration of a critic who helped define a city by what it eats. And at a bargain price. So take notes, and dig in.

A wise man once said that every film is a documentary of its own making, and Philip Hartman’s No Picnic doubles as a chronicle not just of a lost paradise but a forgotten era — of downtown NYC, of genuinely independent moviemaking, of an alternate version of the “greed is good” go-go Eighties.

One of the more fun things about M3GAN, besides the batshit megabitch AI in pop starlet’s form at the center of the movie, is that this is all, immediately, such a bad idea.

If Belushi does nothing else, it does a fine job of scaling him back down to size without giving his immense talent short shrift.

Westfeldt and Juergensen are smart, sexy knockouts, finding just the right mix of fun and tenderness in their writing and performances.

Unabashedly hokey, but would you want it any other way? In an era of cynical junk (did anyone say “Bad Boys II”?), Ross restores the good name of crowd-pleasing.

Bong is a consummate cinematic craftsman, virtually incapable of creating a dull frame. What’s happening within those impeccable compositions, however, feels like its suffering from an overabundance of business and undernourished storytelling.

Everything goes to hell in a decorative handbasket. What starts out as a simple plan will be destined to become, well, "A Simple Plan" redux.

Happy End is a puzzle and it's our job to connect the pieces. If it doesn't drive you crazy first, you'll find yourself maddened and mesmerized to the bitter end.

His House is a strong debut, and exciting — even as its horrors risk redundancy as the film wears on — for its uncanny merging of political experience and the usual, perilous haunted-house thrills.

This blisteringly cynical satire, written by Paddy Chayefsky, is one of the darkest movies ever made, a cold-eyed lament for a society torn apart by upheavals of the Sixties.

It’s heavy, heady stuff, coming at you via a delivery system of catalog-worthy set design, magic-hour cinematography, and often tamped-down, deadpan performances. And somehow, it all works in harmony to create a ripple effect of feeling that reverberates strongly under its placid surfaces.

Superman returns with a bang. Singer tarnishes his hero's halo with just enough sexual longing and self-doubt to make him riveting and relatable. That "S" on his suit has a whole new meaning: He's a Soul man.

Sonnenfeld deftly orchestrates the intricate two-part harmony, and Smith and Jones -- a powerhouse comic pair -- make it all look easy.

So often, you can feel filmmakers straining themselves to come up with more extreme ways of shocking and awing you. With this writer-director, you get the sensation that such hallucinogenic, nerve-scrambling sensationalism comes naturally. You wouldn’t say that his agent provocateur touch is subtle. But it is expert.

Even readers with reservations about the ways the film fails to measure up to the book should appreciate a smart, passionate, steadily engrossing thriller in a summer of mindless zap.

Carlota Pereda's debut feature, Piggy, takes horror’s revenge trope and twists it just so. It isn’t so simple as a much-abused underdog getting a freakish chance to get her payback and painting the landscape with her enemies’ dispatched blood and guts, though in this case, as in many cases, you might forgive her if she did.

Ronan can’t save The Outrun from its limitations as a drama, or from its worst stack-the-deck instincts. But she does lift this film up and infuse the storytelling with a genuine sense of what it means to try living one day at a time for the rest of one’s life.

Moore brings a video junkie's passion to the movie game, and it's hilariously infectious.

Clearly a passion project for Jolie. Her adopted son Maddox, 16, was born in Cambodia and served as executive producer on the film. If there is such a thing as a cinematic labor of love, this is it.

My advice? Just go with ParaNorman. There's magic in it.

It’s riveting from start to finish.

A svelte jolt of everything that captures Prince at his most dazzling: the singing, the dancing, the multi-instrumental talent, the rapport with his band and those bolero-chic outfits.

The surprise MVP runner-up here is Connelly, despite her tendency to get kind of yell-y during key dramatic moments. Her lonely Amanda is a better written version of a typical long-suffering-spouse.

Funny, touching, vital.

Hellboy is on fire with scares and laughs and del Toro’s visionary dazzle. It’s the tenderness that comes as an unexpected bonus.

Ephron homes in on what's been missing in movies and in life: ardor, longing and smart talk about the screwed-up notions that pass for love.

Even when it seems at risk of spinning its wheels into oblivion, there’s an urgent pleasure in watching it spin.

Hail, Caesar! is basically a day in the life of this studio cop, whose job is his religion. And Brolin, in a heart-and-soul performance, takes this crazy quilt of a movie about a man surrounded by nut jobs and plays it for real. He's just tremendous.

Extending its litany of horrors to nearly three hours, the film is certainly an endurance test. Yet its potent presentation, notably Vladimir Smutny’s striking monochromatic cinematography, gives the film the raw impact of a documentary.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles is the ultimate Thanksgiving film: John Hughes understood that it's all about the buildup. No matter if your journey is filled with near-death experiences, cars going up in flames, punches to the face and other disasters – getting to enjoy Thanksgiving with family and friends make the odyssey worth it. Everything else is just turkey.

Even more than the gloriously gross-out stuff, designed for big laughs and OMG body-horror reactions, it’s the blunt, unfiltered way they treat the ties that bind these two women that sticks with you. The humor is hormonal. Everything else is pure heart.

Director Colin Trevorrow and writer Derek Connolly keep the film humming with funny and touching surprises. And Plaza is a flat-out enchantress.

Kudos to Abrams for going bigger without going stupid. His set pieces, from an erupting volcano to the hell unleashed over London and Frisco Bay, are doozies. So's the movie. It's crazy good.

Just know that Famuyiwa keeps the action spinning with vibrant speed and rare sensitivity. He's made a comedy of social expectation that plays like an exhilarating gift.

It truly is a solid match of moviemaker and source material. Yet none of this would work as well as it does without Craig.

You’re never sure which truth is out there, exactly, in Lanthimos’ caustic, chilling, and occasionally chuckle-inducing poke in the eye. You just acknowledge that no one seems to find one we can all agree on.

The fact that it adds an ode to intergenerational storytelling, a parody of time-travel narratives, some oddball left-turns, and a near-transcendent coda that feels very much in line with Kaufman’s body of work — all while still giving the kids what they want — makes this more than a cut above your average rainy-afternoon distraction. It’s really a low-key blast.

Your reaction to Author will come down the question that haunts the film, and assuredly Albert herself: Do the widely-praised writings of LeRoy become less praiseworthy when you know they were crafted under false pretenses? It's a question worth chewing on even if the film asking it stacks the deck.

The out-of-bodiness you feel from the filmmaking is almost more unsettling than the actual story. It’s pure cinematic dysmorphia: to watch this movie carefully is to feel completely out of place, right alongside the people onscreen.

Here's a movie that starts in your face and, amazingly, keeps coming at you. That's a good thing.

A movie handled with this kind of care is a rare gift. Refusing to hide from pain or bow to it, 50/50 makes its own rules. It'll get to you.

I lost it just watching Corky show off such memorabilia as "My Dinner With Andre" action figures and a "Remains of the Day" lunch box. Priceless.

This movie, a true beauty, will put a spell on you.

War Horse gets to you. It's one from the heart.

Killer-funny documentary.

The jokes are hit-and-miss. But Stone is one sassy babe and a breakout star who nails every zinger and brings genuine warmth to her scenes with her parents, played by the priceless Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci. You mean girls can eat it.

Simon Niblett's cinematography, utilizing drones to catch impossible scenes of flight, is extraordinary, especially in the winter hunting sequences that end the film.

When you have Vince Gilligan operating near the peak of his powers, and taking the time to fix one of the few things the show didn’t get quite right, it makes for one hell of an entertaining gift.