You can add Sean Wang’s Dìdi to the short list of films that fine-tune the personal into the universal, and turn a magic-mirror reflection of its creator into a shared wavelength.

As you find yourself instinctively reviewing those own seemingly insignificant moments in your own life, the ones that you hold so dear, while following this cyber-compassionate movie to its conclusion, it’s almost impossible not to be moved by the long game that the film’s creator is playing.

Hollywood retreads of foreign films are rarely a good idea (did you see Miss Bala?), but Gloria Bell is a playful, pleasure-giving exception.

There’s a specific, singular madness that this movie conjures up that’s completely its own, a spell it casts that goes way beyond homages or spot-the-reference pastiches.

Want to see great acting, from comic to tragic and every electrifying stop in between? See Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine.

You want horror that screws with your head? This is your ticket.

A surprise package of fun, fright and untamed imagination.

The pitch-perfect performances help Holofcener stir up feelings that cut to the heart of what defines an ethical life. There's no movie around right now with a subject more pertinent. It'll hit you hard.

With Brando around, The Freshman has a snappy madness that’s hard to resist.

We came into this series tickled by the element of surprise. And we leave Chapter 4 with the distinct feeling of satisfaction.

Enys Men is for us. It’s a cult classic that didn’t feel the need to kill time in order to be called cult or classic.

You do not need a documentary to prove that the tour guide of No Reservations and Parts Unknown contained multitudes. Any viewer could see him mature and mellow out, or at the very least become more meditative, as seasons progressed. But Roadrunner, Neville’s portrait of the late, beloved Bourdain, would like to give those other sides a bit more screen time.

It needs a Soderbergh, who invests this tale of outrunning and outgunning organizations — be they sports leagues or studios tied to old distribution/exhibition models — with a sense of energy, verve and mischievous glee.

Every one of the performances is, to say the least, an example of what talented actors can bring to a piece of character-driven tragedy; there’s not a single weak link in this chain, while the collective chemistry suggests an instant history of affection, conflict, and shared cringing.

The movie has real moral terror at its center. It gets ugly: It gives that word fresh resonance. This is where it gets things right — what will, one hopes, make it worth remembering.

What the Beatles did in 1964 alone continues to change the world—and Beatles ’64 is testimony to that ongoing story.

Bigelow's artful handling of the magic & menace of the night is hauntingly apparent.

Fueled by gripping suspense, dark humor and outraged humanity, the film is a modern horror story that means to shake you, and does.

Anderson orchestrates a comic romance like no other. The effect is intoxicating. Sandler and the movie will knock you for a loop.

If there is personal expression abound in Stewart’s debut, there’s also precious little ego. Nor are the tics that too often prick or sink the work of actors feeling out what it’s like to call the shots.

A hot-wired crime thriller that captures Thompson's flair for hard action, malicious wit and fevered eroticism.

I, Daniel Blake, a new Loach landmark which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year, sums up everything that has kept he muckraking motor running for decades.

The sheer scope of Nolan's vision – with emotion and spectacle thundering across the screen – is staggering. The Dark Knight Rises is the King Daddy of summer movie epics.

Hunnam is slow to grab us as Fawcett, but the implosive force of his performance soon takes hold.

Writer and director Carl Franklin ("One False Move") scores a triumph in using the brooding atmosphere and racial tension of the sun-kissed, seedy City of Angels to reveal character and reclaim a neglected past that ace cinematographer Tak Fujimoto brings to vivid life.

The movie hits you like a shot in the heart.

Isaac's brilliant take on this bearded, buzz-cut and barefoot Dr. Frankenstein is a tour de force of shock and awe. Ex Machina springs surprises that will haunt you for a good long time.

As always with Park Chanwook, you just hold on and let him rip.

Despite grim doings involving sexual hysteria and chopped-up body parts (don't ask), Ramsay and Morton fill this character study with poetic force and buoyant feeling.

Audiard recently won the Silver Lion as Best Director at the Venice Film Festival. Watch The Sisters Brothers and you’ll have no trouble understanding why.

Portraits of great men given the movie-star treatment usually accentuate the positive. Linklater finds it more interesting to look at a self-sabotaging artist’s greatest misses. It’s a tribute that’s really a cautionary tale.

Getting lost in the hypnotic Half-Blood Prince is what gives the movie its haunting power.

A tour through the byways of Zootopia is a bracing blend of color and richly detailed design.

Waggish fun like this is too good to miss.

There’s a genuine sense of admiration for these two middle-aged characters emanating from behind the camera, and you get the feeling that Walker-Silverman, a young filmmaker with a handful of shorts to his name, isn’t that interested in too-cool-for-film-school showboating.

If you're looking for action movie heaven, try Speed, a crackling blend of suspense and fun that gives you the rush of a runaway roller coaster.

The famous Assayas light touch keeps his film above the fray of didacticism. So dig in as an expert cast puts a scintillating spin on every verbal volley. Non-Fiction is a bonbon spiked with delicious wit and malice.

Mira Nair’s lush, heartfelt romance glows with humanity and desire; it puts the “passion” back in “compassion.”

Whedon, without skimping on the tale’s tragic undercurrents, has crafted an irresistible blend of mirth and malice.

British actor Harris Dickinson gives a smashing breakthrough performance in Beach Rats.

The exquisitely wrought tale of four British women of different backgrounds who rent a villa in Portofino, Italy, is delivered with a witty feminist twist by director Mike Newell (Dance With a Stranger) and an outstanding cast.

While Barbarian‘s unexpected popularity outside of die-hard genre circles can be attributed to old-fashioned, organic word of mouth, it’s also a first-rate horror movie, full stop.

Tracks is an exhilarating adventure that opens up an unknown world to most of us and does it so well that we feel we're living it too.

One of the best movies of the year--startling, innovative, hugely funny and powerfully, courageously moving.

Some might qualify If I Had Legs I’d Kick You as a comedy, albeit one brimming with barely contained rage, while others might describe as a horror movie. Either way, it’s the kind of film that makes you want to call your own mother and apologize.

It’s neither del Toro’s best nor his worst, but this feels like the movie he was born to make, and the one he would have died trying to get done.

Oakland-based rapper Boots Riley scores a knockout debut as a director with Sorry to Bother You, a no-mercy satire that gets up in your face, breaks all the rules – and then invents new rules so it can break them too.

The burning intensity of MacKay’s face, reflecting the ferocity and futility of war, leaves an indelible mark. His fervor, coupled with the creative passion that Mendes infuses in every frame, makes 1917 impossible to shake.

The Substance won’t reset society’s fixation on youth or cure Hollywood’s sexist ills. It will, however, remind you that when you’re chasing your past by any means necessary, you are always your own worst enemy.

A funny and touching film that is gorgeously acted by a British cast to rival Gosford Park's.

It's a terrific, twisty, funny-as-hell crime flick about so-called hicks who decide that making America great again starts right at home.

With Denis there’s always more than meets the prism of snap judgements. Let the movie mess with your head.

While there’s a fine line between loving a movie and being slavishly devoted to it, Eggers thankfully never crosses it. Rather, he molds the man-meets-vampire, things-go-awry story into his own rigorous type of horror filmmaking, and comes up with something stylish but not slick, feral but not overly fussy in its attempts to channel that old-fashioned folkloric feeling.

Cynthia Nixon is simply magnificent as Dickinson, finding the sharp wit and searching mind of a woman out of step with the codes and formalities of her time.

Does the plot spin out of control? You bet. But dumb fun this smart is a gift.

Howard lays off the manipulation to tell the true story of the near-fatal 1970 Apollo 13 mission in painstaking and lively detail. It's easily Howard's best film.

The movie comes not to bury this legend but to praise him. Inhuman endurance or not, you worry it may end up having to do the former regardless.

This teeming film sometimes bursts at the seams, but it’s abound with an exuberant energy that honors Dickens without embalming him in the literary past. It’s irresistible.

If you want to see what great acting is, watch Alfre Woodard deliver a master class in Clemency.

A black-comedy gem.

Before this trippy, mesmerizing movie swerves out of control, it delivers an exhilarating and challenging ride.

When it flies, it soars.

Chukwu’s script, co-written with Michael Reilly and Keith Beauchamp, is interesting for all of the predicaments it stares down and quietly works its way through.

This is a movie that knows the power of images. It has learned, from the greats of the genre, that what we fear most is what can’t be seen, what’s merely implied.

If Finding Dory lacks the fresh surprise of its predecessor, it still brims with humor, heart and animation miracles.

It’s an unabashedly style-over-substance take on a particular type of modern horror story. This is less a serial-killer thriller than a feature-length nightmare vibe.

One terrific movie... Pacino and Depp are a match made in acting heaven, riffing off each other with astonishing subtlety and wit.

In Washington's haunted eyes, in the stunning cinematography of Roger Deakins (Fargo) that plunges into the mad flare of combat, in the plot that deftly turns a whodunit into a meditation on character and in Zwick's persistent questioning of authority, Courage Under Fire honors its subject and its audience.

It's funny. So is Nicole Kidman, very Cruella De Vil as Millicent Clyde, a taxidermist with an eye on adding Paddington to her stuffed collection. It's an excuse for some chase scenes and physical comedy (Paddington gets his head stuck in a toilet bowl) that manage to suggest both the Marx brothers and Wes Anderson. I mean that as a good thing.

There’s a sensitivity in even the most grand-gesture flourishes Polley and her editors Christopher Donaldson and Roslyn Kalloo throw in, but you also know there’s a voice behind this camera. And it belongs to an artist who definitely has something to say.

The movie needed great performances, and it gets them from Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn.

Coppola gives Suicides a haunted quality that is undeniably affecting, a feeling intensified by a wonderfully funny and touching Dunst.

This no-bull spellbinder is allergic to sentiment. Unlike porn, Wetlands keeps its humanity intact. And if Oscar didn't have a stick up his ass, Juri would be a nominee for Best Actress. Yup, she's that good. Your move.

Ed Harris, who plays Pollock and makes his debut as a director - doing both jobs superbly, by the way - is angst incarnate.

In this risky, riveting film, our most prolific and provocative moviemaker uses his wit to touch a nerve. Crimes and Misdemeansors is so funny it hurts.

Through haunting home movies, Mina's diaries and interviews with Mike, a raw, riveting portrait emerges of what a child sees in his parents' relationship and what lies beneath.

Writer-director Damián Szifron hasn't made one film — he's made six, stitched together under one title and sent out to a world that may not be ready. Screw the pussies. Wild Tales is gleefully out for blood.

Corpus Christi doesn’t skimp on the humanity; the film earns the slow smiles it brings to your face.

The Sound of My Voice ends with a very different voice, as we see Ronstadt, filmed this year, attempting to sing a Mexican folk song with a cousin and nephew. Parkinson’s has clearly weakened her, but she still watches her relatives attentively and opens her mouth to verbalize along with them as much as possible.

It grows thrilling to watch. Rathjen’s careful script and intensive eye for environmental details deliver all of this to us with a steady rhythm.

It's pure cinema, a hypnotic and haunting dream that tempts us to jump in and get lost. Do it.

All credit to a finely tuned Brosnan for packing so much intensity and wayward wit into his scenes with McGregor. Their verbal duels make for a dazzling game of cat-and-mouse.

In the hands of first-time feature director Shannon Murphy — who crushed it in both of the Season Three Killing Eve episodes she helmed — and screenwriter Rita Kalnejais, who adapted her own play, Babyteeth rips past the hackneyed tropes of illness drama to dig out what’s fresh in the familiar.

A visual marvel that cuts a direct path to the heart.

As the cases mount and institutional reps succeed best by playing dumb, The Hunting Ground becomes a energizing call to action, a potent provocation that’s been too long coming.

Comedy really is hard. So it's a kick when a filmmaker gets it right, as Noah Baumbach does in this stingingly funny take on aging.

For three years, the camera focuses on the Chicks as wives, mothers, entertainers and political flash points. Their fight to stay uncompromised is inspiring.

For those of us who’ve been enthralled by what Collins has done on the periphery, the chance to see him occupy center stage — and in something so suited to his skill set — is enough to make this worthwhile. But the way in which he keeps both the rest of the cast and the story itself in the pocket without making it feel like a showreel, even down to his final here’s-the-big-payoff sequence, is what makes this special.

It’s a music doc that takes its music-doc responsibilities seriously.

McConaughey makes sure we feel his tenacity and triumphs in the treatment of AIDS. His explosive, unerring portrayal defines what makes an actor great, blazing commitment to a character and the range to make every nuance felt.

It’s all a very by-the-books music biopic, which the sole exception of which species is singing about manufacturing miracles and angels contemplating his fate.

A movie that offers hard speculation and harder truths. You won't be able to get it out of your head.

The Promised Land is, if nothing else, a nod to both its nation’s and the movies’ past. The feudal warring over unclaimed Jutland territory may be strictly Danish, but the excitement, romance, and awe-inspiring visual spectacle of this melodrama is vintage Hollywood.

The film belongs to Firth. Uncanny at showing the heart crumbling under George's elegant exterior, he gives the performance of his career.

Its truths are personal. It means to shake you. And does.

No wonder Kurt Cobain was a fan. But it's the way Feuerzeig walks with him on the line between creativity and madness that digs this haunting and hypnotic film into your memory.

Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent creates a woman’s revenge tale fueled by a righteous anger at the evil men do. There’s not a whit of audience coddling. You’ve been warned.