The Outpost gets it crucially right by bringing home the meaning of heroism as a collective action. The you-are-there ferocity of this sequence, brilliantly abetted by the prowling, handheld camerawork of Lorenzo Senatore, ranks with the best interpretations of combat on film. Your nerves will be shattered, guaranteed.

It’s really a comedic road movie at heart, with as much yuks over a mismatched pair trying to get along as yucks involving the goopy innards of cosmic mastodons. Finally, the Predator cinematic-universe remake of Midnight Run that no one knew they, er, needed?

The Hidden World is the best Dragon yet — an animated action phenom with moonstruck passion in its heart and a spirit that soars.

No one would blame you if you prefer your gothic-lit tales straight with no meta-chaser. Yet, largely thanks to Pugh, Leilo’s semi-experimental attempt at blending an old-fashioned melodrama with Media Studies 101 commentary never makes you feel like you’re watching something created in a dorm-session smokeout.

With the help of cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, composers Isobel Waller-Bridge and David Schweitzer, and Alexandra Byrne’s spectacular costumes, the film captures the whirl of a predatory society that can no longer hide behind surface prettiness. That sounds a lot like right now.

Richardson is extraordinary; it’s a brave, award-caliber performance...The fiercely erotic and deeply moving Damage casts a hypnotic spell and without moralizing.

If you haven't seen Marion Cotillard play Lady Macbeth, you really haven't seen the role inhabited with the glorious fire and ice it needs to haunt your dreams.

It’s the perfect goodbye from an artist who lived to jolt you out of a sense of complacency. Mission accomplished.

Warrior aspires to myth. It's Cain and Abel battling it out in the face of a decidedly ungodly father before humanity goes down for the count. Strong stuff.

Vinterberg may rush the final act, but he gets pitch-perfect performances from Schoenaerts, Sheen and Sturridge and brings out the wild side in Mulligan, who can hold a close-up like nobody's business. She's a live wire in a movie that knows how to stir up a classic for the here and now.

The Perfect Candidate doesn’t burn the veil, but it does lift it briefly, allowing us a glimpse of Saudi womanhood that is idiosyncratic and individual — in short, as we very rarely see it.

No one interested in the power and magic of movies should miss it.

Watson and Everett, both superb, bring ferocity and feeling to their roles. But the one you won't forget is Wilkinson (In the Bedroom) in a towering performance of grace and grit that deserves to put him on Oscar's shortlist. Good show.

Jonze has filmed a fantasy as if it were absolutely real, allowing us to see the world as Max sees it, full of beauty and terror. The brilliant songs, by Karen O (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and the Kids, enhance the film's power.

It's impossible to quantify what it takes to be a quality director – but damn, you know it when you see it. And you'll see it clear and strong in Paint It Black, a staggeringly impressive feature directing debut for actress Amber Tamblyn.

A pitch-black comedy that dances around its central theme without ever facing it head on. But oh, the demented, delicious mischief it kicks up.

You just wish the film itself was half as compelling as its subject; not defaulting to piano-tinkling sentimentality or old-people-sure-are-adorable cutesiness at every opportunity would have been a bonus as well.

It's a mesmerizing spectacle.

No crime film in years boasts a cooler vibe than Michael Mann's dazzling Collateral.

Before it runs off course into excess, this brilliantly acted film version of the 1999 novel by Andre Dubus III moves with a stabbing urgency.

The plot ambles along, and Denzel is the essence of laid-back professionalism as he deals with corrupt officials, grisly crimes, lustful housewives, and his own divided loyalties. It's an odd, captivating little movie.

Allenphiles will have a field day mining the film for inside dope. Are the clips from Shanghai and Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity — movies in which men are set up for a fall by dangerous women — a sly dig at Farrow? Better to see Manhattan Murder Mystery for what it is: Annie Hall replayed in a minor key by a filmmaker who sees the comedy, tragedy and transience of love and can’t stop playing the game. Allen’s readiness to step on a laugh in favor of feeling may cost him at the box office. But in this time of private hell and public scorn, it will help him endure.

What makes this so memorably nerve-frying is the way Alvarez and cinematographer Pedro Luque use night-vision and every trick in the book and ones not invented yet to trap us in their vise. Claustrophobics, you've been warned.

Molly's Game bristles with fun zingers, electric energy and Sorkin's brand of verbal fireworks – all of which help enormously when the movie falters in fleshing out its characters.

But this is Washington's show, his Scarface, if you will, and his smiling, seductive monster is a thrilling creation that gives Training Day all the bite it needs.

It’s actually exciting to watch a star whose stock-in-trade has been arrested development flourish in a mature midlife period. Now he seems to be setting up future Sandler generations for success. Bat Mitzvah is about a girl growing up. But her dad seems to be doing some of that as well.

Sure it’s cornball, but Chadha revels in it. You will, too, as the movie becomes an irresistible blast of pure feeling.

Baker makes the strongest impression not just with photography on the surf and underneath it – kudos to "water cinematographer" Rick Rifici – but through understanding how surfing allows these boys to aspire as well as dare.

Just for starters, no movie about the Dutch Resistance during World War II has any right to be this wildly entertaining, not to mention this provocative and potently erotic.

Whenever the drama drifts into soap opera, the actors restore the balance.

So, you're probably asking, what kind of a movie is this? A damn fine and funny one, thanks to the way the estimable director Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters, The Queen) conducts the piece.

The Theory of Everything, referring to Hawking's dream of finding an equation to explain all existence, is riveting science, emotional provocation and one-of-a-kind love story all rolled into one triumphant film.

Prepare to be scared senseless, and then, when you think you have it figured, your certainty will be shaken by scenes built to scare you even more.

Eastwood grabs the reins and draws Costner's scrappiest performance since Bull Durham. In going beyond chase-yarn duty, Eastwood and Costner do themselves proud.

This is where Fonte comes in. An actor who can make Marcello seem like a pitiful beta-male grotesque one second and a noble, sympathetic hero the next, he’s the thrumming motor behind this fairy tale of dogs and monsters. It’s hard to underestimate how his award-winning performance — good call, Cannes Film Festival — shapes the film and sets its humanistic tone.

When Boseman shows us Brown doing his thing onstage, the movie comes alive.

It’s not Blitz’s sensory-overload sturm und drang that leaves you gasping for breath. It’s the sneak attack.

The Brink, Alison Klayman’s insightful and often unnerving look at one of the most divisive figures in recent memory, isn’t a particularly fun or easy watch.

This breezy, funny entry keeps things light with a hilarious and heartfelt package of nonstop kid-friendly kick-ass.

The subplot involving a tragic romance between a soldier and one of the living statues (the lovely Kelly Reilly) is hell on the humor and on a movie that stays content to do the trite thing.

It's the scenes of the boys on horseback, riding this moonbeam of a movie to a fairy-tale ending, that provide the essential ingredient: a sense of wonder.

Schrader is out there again, testing the limits of audience tolerance. Good for him. Buoyed by his questing spirit and Dafoe's mesmerizing performance, Light Sleeper might just keep you up nights.

Some will write off Prisoners as shameless exploitation. But like Clint Eastwood's "Mystic River," to which it's been compared, Prisoners is so artfully shaped and forcefully developed that objections fade.

The buildup is steadily engrossing. That's because Nolan keeps the emphasis on character, not gadgets. Gotham looks lived in, not art-directed.

Logue hits every note of humor and heart in his breakthrough role. Don't miss him. He's that good.

Thou wilt be dazzled.

A savage comedy of sexual extremes; the barbed laughs draw blood.

The movie goes soft in its final stages, but Rudd and Segel keep it real. "Sweet, sweet hangin'," says Peter of knowing Sydney. The same goes for the movie.

Tyrnauer’s flashes of compassion for this self-hating Jew and homosexual — taught from childhood to feel ashamed of what he was and who he was — remind us that his subject’s toxic, insidious amorality did not go to the grave with him. It’s all around us, among opportunists still looking for their own Roy Cohn — just one of several reasons why Tyrnauer’s doc hits you like a punch in the gut.

Ignore the tell and focus on the show, spectacular in every sense.

It's a feast of smart, sexy, glorious talk. The Oscar for best foreign film belongs right here.

What gives this pulpy creation such a savory flavor and lasting bite isn’t just the puncturing of romantic clichés cemented 24 frames per second over decades, or the low-hanging-fruit pokes at society’s reliance on technology taken to extremes. It’s the way it makes you suddenly start questioning the whole notion of finding your soulmate if, given the opportunity, you can just purchase them and pay on installment.

It’s not as gamechanging as that snare drum that opens “Like a Rolling Stone.” But it still feels damn near electric.

You don’t expect director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer — partners on such benign jokefests as Splash! and Parenthood — to catch the mad-dog anarchy of the newsroom. But they nail it...What’s missing is the bite.

Thornton gets inside the coach's skin. It's a subtle, soulful performance in a movie that otherwise goes for the jugular.

It’s a moving-picturebook, drifting from hazy barrooms to muddy-track brawls to working-class homes and haunts, and with an eye on the cumulative effect of so much vintage cool on display.

It's Sagnier, a young Bardot, who lifts the movie, and Rampling, 58, who gives it nuance, not to mention a nude scene that shows off a body Demi Moore would envy. These two make it seductive fun to be fooled.

A no-bull throwback to 1970s action films. It zips along with B-movie verve while adding the rich details and go-for-broke acting that heralds something special.

Last Stop Larrimah is ultimately a pitch-black comedy — a digressive slice of cultural anthropology that chuckles into the abyss.

Though Hollywood hyperbolizes the Gregory Poirier script -- Mann is a fictional character -- John Singleton ("Boyz N the Hood") directs the film with riveting urgency.

Woody Allen's sexiest movie ever.

Public Enemies comes at you like Dillinger did: all of a sudden. It's movie dynamite.

Should you want to spend 90 minutes watching Nazis get shot, stabbed, gutted, blown up, run over, and beaten with a variety of inanimate objects, in the most violent and gory manner possible, this war movie is the answer to your pulp-cinema prayers.

Based on a play by Athol Fugard, Tsotsi is South Africa's entry in this year's Oscar race for Best Foreign-Language Film. This remarkable movie means to shake you, and boy does it ever.

In Final Portrait, art achieves a permanence that trumps an evanescent feast. What holds us through all the exasperating starts and stops is Rush, a live-wire actor of such effortless charisma that we’re drawn to his every utterance and gesture. Hammer, as a stand-in for the audience, can only stare in wonder as we do.

Her Smell is a berserker infused a mad poetry. In her third film with Perry, following "Listen Up," "Phillip and Queen of the Earth," Moss takes a character who makes Courtney Love look like Mother Teresa and exposes the shards of humanity that once vitalized and defined her music. The effect is shattering.

There are even times when Black seems to be letting Crowe and Gosling make the whole thing up as they go along. Not a bad thing.

Robbins’s debut as a director is exceptionally accomplished. He shrewdly balances his sense of purpose with a flair for mischief.

What Button shows is that Ben is ultimately not the hero of his own life or his own movie. He gets inside our head, that's for sure, but, frustratingly, we never get inside his.

A sharply observant and witty film that plumbs unexpected depths of feeling.

A strong, stinging film, alive with conflicts that defy glib resolutions.

The question posed by this impressive, if somewhat overheated take on a theater-canon staple is not, in the end, “What curse is it that makes everything I touch turn ludicrous and mean?” It’s more like: Why kill when you can overkill?

Keaton has crafted something rare: a screwball comedy that cuts to the heart.

[Siegel and McGehee] get that this isn’t just a story about a woman bonding with a dog — it’s a tale of loss and sorrow that inherently knows such heavy feelings aren’t confined to a single species.

Damned if this wildly witty and surprisingly touching swing at movie madness and gender politics isn't on to something deep.

The butt of the hilarious and heartfelt screenplay by Paul Rudnick (Jeffrey) is homophobia, and his sting is wickedly on target.

The result is both exhilarating and exasperating, swinging so wildly all over the map that you may want to pre-emptively wear a neckbrace before viewing.

Maron may not go wide in terms of range yet. But damned if he can’t go deep.

Patel’s pet project is as much a mash note to a way of presenting bloody-knuckled spectacle as it is a standard thriller.

Comedian Patton Oswalt triumphantly nails every comic and dramatic nuance as Paul Aufiero, a New York Giants obsessive who has long ago moved from fan to fanatic.

The thrill of the film is watching Ant-Man and the Wasp team up and raise hell together. Rudd is a winning combination of sass and sincerity. And it's a kick to watch Lilly break out and let her star shine.

The subject’s virtues, however, outweigh any of the film’s weak spots.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is every rousing, whup-ass thing you want in an escapist adventure.

Brace yourself for Thirteen -- it'll cause a commotion.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when this random, scattershot, overreaching movie stops spinning its wheels and starts flying on a cumulative power that floors you. But when it happens – kapow! By the end we’re looking at Elvis, America and ourselves with new eyes and wondering, once again, if the truth really can set us free.

If it’s an ASMR video for pandemic-raddled emotions you’re after, you could do so much worse.

A riveting and indispensable record of the war in Iraq because it comes from the men who lived it.

Even when the film's frigid elegance, perfectly captured by cinematographer José Luis Alcaine, becomes off-puttingly clinical, Almodóvar's passion burns through. The skin he lives in is alive to challenge no matter what warped form it takes.

The final effect is stunning, but also sadly impersonal.

Fusing animation and live action with a series of outrageous props, Gondry veers dangerously close to being precious. But make no mistake: Gondry's hallucinatory brilliance holds you in thrall.

To those who see no purpose to this film, I say the purpose is learning not to turn a blind eye. The unique and unforgettable Elephant keeps its eyes wide open.

You may have doubts about which side to choose, but there's no doubt about this mind-bender. It'll pin you to your seat.

Sidney works as a tribute, or a beginner’s course. More probing questions about Poitier’s “meaning,” the impossibility of his position, the way it served as a measuring stick for taking stock of Black politics over many decades — these are problems bigger than, and largely beyond, this movie.

In this roaringly comic and powerfully affecting road movie, Terence Stamp gives one of the year's best performances.

You can always count on del Toro to put the “grand” in Grand Guignol. Nightmare Alley is no exception, though it’s a little dreamier than it should be.

Gere gives 'em the old razzle-dazzle with his roguish charm and sharp comic timing. The surprise is the unexpected feeling he brings to this challenging role.

You won't see more explosive acting this year.

Look, it's fun to watch Shepherd hate on bratty children, classical music and liberal pieties. Smith's acid tongue makes any line sound better. But the subplot about a blackmailer (Jim Broadbent) who terrorizes Shepherd in the dead of night adds nothing, least of all a purpose.