He lacks Scorsese's raw inventiveness, but there's no denying De Niro's skill in keeping this pungent street epic brimming over with action and laughs without sacrificing intimacy. He is a supreme director of actors.

You could gripe about the excess of carnage and lack of philosophical substance. But surviving nature is Iñárritu's subject, and he delivers with magisterial brilliance.

Side Effects is Soderbergh in full, flinty vigor. It's anything but a formula murder mystery.

The Avengers has it all. And then some. Six superheroes for the price of one ticket... It's also the blockbuster I saw in my head when I imagined a movie that brought together the idols of the Marvel world in one, shiny, stupendously exciting package. It's "Transformers" with a brain, a heart and working sense of humor. Suck on that, Michael Bay. [10 May 2012, p.74]

Buoyed by a Latin-flavored score and Favreau's knack for improv inspiration, Chef is the perfect antidote to Hollywood junk food. Like the best meals and movies, this irresistible concoction feels good for the soul.

This movie wins you over, head and heart, without cheating. It's just about perfect.

Broken Flowers may be too low-key for laugh junkies, but Jarmusch fills his sharply observed comedy with wonderful mischief. The mix of humor and heartbreak brings out the best in Murray.

This remarkable movie will haunt you for a good long time.

Wake up, people. Tarantino lives to cross the line. Is Django Unchained too much? Damn straight. It wouldn't be Tarantino otherwise.

These two glam stars of French cinema – Riva in 1959's "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and Trintignant in 1966's "A Man and a Woman" – give performances of breathtaking power and beauty. Prepare for an emotional wipeout.

A film of female empowerment that resonates deeply.

It's Collette, giving the performance of her career, who takes us inside Annie's breakdown in flesh and spirit and shatters what's left of our nerves. Her tour de force bristles with provocations that for sure will keep you up nights. But first you'll scream your bloody head off.

What makes Asif Kapadia's documentary a devastating don’t-miss dazzler — like the lady herself — is the way he lays out her story without editorializing.

You'll hoot and holler as it strips down its targets and sticks it to them, hardcore. Baron Cohen is the pure, untamed id of movie comedy.

It's hot, fierce, funny, vicious and ready to bite, baby.

Brooklyn is easily the year's best and most beguiling love story. The surprise is that it also goes deeper, sadder and truer.

You won't know what hit you after watching Tyson. This power punch to the gut is one of the best movies of any kind this year.

A groundbreaking film that leaves you in stitches while quietly breaking your heart.

Mamet's incendiary writing and the potent performances are teasingly ambiguous. Though he exposes the widening gulf between the sexes, Mamet leaves the audience to find ways to explain it. That's what makes Oleanna such a powerhouse; it's a brilliant dare.

Portman's portrait of an artist under siege is unmissable and unforgettable. So is the movie. You won't know what hit you.

What makes this documentary more than just a feature-length DVD supplement is how these peeks behind the curtain are offset by a connect-the-dots case study of obsession and devotion taken to extremes.

Penn, in tandem with the superb cinematographer Eric Gautier (The Motorcycle Diaries), captures the majesty and terror of the wilderness in ways that make you catch your breath.

Deadpool 2 throws everything it has at you until you throw your arms up in happy surrender.

This baby dazzles like nothing else anywhere.

Simple story, beautifully told.

The flaws don't cripple what is a fiercely funny, exciting and provocative detective story about the crimes of corporate culture — crimes that transcend race and geography.

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

Ford hits it out of the park again in Nocturnal Animals, a stunning film noir that resonates with ghostly, poetic terror.

This one belongs with the leaders of the scare pack. Isn't it time that we give Romero his due? It's hardly an accident that Stephen King, Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo del Toro, Simon Pegg and Wes Craven recognize Romero as a master. He is.

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

David Fincher's shockingly good film version of Gone Girl is the date-night movie of the decade for couples who dream of destroying one another.

The movie brims over with action -- check out Alex's run through traffic on the Paris beltway -- but Canet scores a triumph by plumbing the violence of the mind.

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.

Craig gives us James Bond in the fascinating act of inventing himself. This you do not want to miss.

Forget "Hero" -- that cult hit was just Zhang Yimou's warm-up for this martial-arts fireball that throws in a lyrical love story, head-spinning fights and dazzling surprises.

The worst thing I can say about this savage, sexy and ferociously funny screen translation of three stories from Frank Miller's Sin City series of graphic novels is that it's too much of a good thing.

A spellbinder that features Richard Gere in one of his best performances ever.

With the smashing Jones giving us a female warrior to rank with the great ones and a cast that knows how to keep it real even in a sci-fi fantasy, Rogue One proves itself a Star Wars story worth telling.

A ruthlessly clever musical, a punchy political parody and the hottest look ever at naked puppets -- the first film, porn included, in which a woody is actually made of wood.

As Hanna confronts her past, the movie becomes like nothing you've ever seen. I'd call it a knockout.

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

Whether it's the "best" documentary of 2017 is a matter of opinion. But it is assuredly the most vital.

Kidman and Bateman make a potent team in a provocative film that questions the limits of art in a world that forgets to be human. The result is funny, touching and vital.

It's a powerhouse of claustrophobic suspense and fierce emotion, mostly because Tom Hardy, best known as Bane in "The Dark Knight Rises," is a blazing wonder as Locke.

This bracing, original comedy may be mostly smoke and air, but it's not insubstantial. Mystery Train insinuates itself into the memory and lingers on.

It's a tender love story that never goes soft on its provocations. It's a defiant cry from the heart.

Once The Rider hooks you – and believe me, it will – there's no way you will ever forget it.

At the end, with Sean's condition scarily deteriorating, the raw and riveting BPM musters the emotional power to floor you.

A film of awesome power and blistering provocation.

Fresh comic thinking spices up this smart cookie of a satire from director-writer Paul Weitz (About a Boy). He makes it sexually provocative and subversively hilarious.

Not your typical biopic. But it is one of the best times you'll have at the movies this year.

The film’s genius is the way it applies the lessons of Sound City to any job. “The human element,” says Grohl, “that’s what makes the magic.” In his directing debut, Grohl shows the instincts of a real filmmaker. Sound City hits you like a shot in the heart.

Jonze is a visionary whose lyrical, soulful meditation on relationships of the future cuts to the heart of the way we live now.

Scott Pilgrim is a breathless rush of a movie that jumps off the screen, spins your head around and then stealthily works its way into your heart.

Bejo (The Artist) digs deep into the secrets and lies that have afflicted all her relationships, in a wonderfully affecting film that haunts you long after it ends.

The Way Way Back gets it wittily, thrillingly right. It turns the familiar into something bracingly fresh and funny. It makes you laugh, then breaks your heart.

Smart, witty and alert to the buried resentments that poke through the shiny surface of affluence, Holofcener's film recognizes that money is the new sex.

Hartley's debut deserves heralding; he combines a rigorous social conscience with the exuberance of fresh comic thinking.

The Gatekeepers cuts deeper than any political thriller. It's a powerhouse.

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.

Like its predecessors (Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and The New World), Tree delivers truths that don't go down easy. No one with a genuine interest in the potential of film would think of missing it.

It's a popcorn-movie deluxe.

Crowe -- fierce, funny and every inch the hero -- gives a blazing star performance.

Lee is a true master, and his potently erotic and suspenseful Lust, Caution casts a spell you won't want to break.

All the acting is exemplary. Brody, new to Wes' World, is revelatory as Peter.

It’s one of the blackest comedies to hit the screen since Dr. Strangelove. Spurlock proves himself a supersize talent; he makes you choke on every laugh.

A mesmerizing look at an asthmatic, rich-boy medical student in the act of discovering his insurgent spirit.

The result is raw and riveting.

Reichardt has crafted a haunted dream of a movie to get lost in.

An adventure in pure imagination that plays to the smart kid in all of us.

Evocative, mysterious and shot through with bruising humor and heartbreak, A Monster Calls gets you where you live and where there's no place to hide. There's magic in it.

His (Anderson) abiding love for a vanished past, real and imagined, is at the core of The Grand Budapest Hotel. The thrill comes in watching as this rare talent gives his movie wings.

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

This suspenseful survival tale, smartass to its core, slaps a smile on your face that you'll wear all the way home.

If Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) had more surprises and James Cameron's Aliens (1986) more thrills, David Fincher's austere, low-tech, darkly funny Alien 3 has more sharply observed characters.

What makes Ratatouille such a hilarious and heartfelt wonder is the way Bird contrives to let it sneak up on you.

While you're remembering new high-impact names, add Arnold. In only her second film, after 2006's "Red Road," she keeps the screen filled to bursting with the beauty and raw terror of life.

The best social documents on film do more than show you what's wrong in the world – they make it personal. Bully does that with a passion.

Scott and Davis could not be better. You're in for something special.

From "The 39 Steps" and "The Lodger" to "Rear Window," "Psycho" and all stops in between, this film gets us drunk on Hitchcock's movies again. My only problem with Hitchcock/Truffaut is that it's too short at 80 minutes. More please, and soon.

Keep "Survivor" and "Fear Factor," and give me this spellbinding mind teaser, the ultimate game for movie buffs.

Sleepers, for all the doubts it raises, is the work of a man who speaks for absent friends and "for the children we were." It's his secret heart.

The result is an acting duet that will haunt your dreams and break your heart.

The Doors is a thrilling spectacle - the King Kong of rock movies - featuring a starmaking, ball-of-fire performance by Val Kilmer as Morrison.

Without an ounce of phony Hollywood uplift, Winterbottom's film cuts right to the heart.

A sequel of twisted thrills and sly surprises.

Sometimes a movie comedy just clicks. Welcome to one of those times.

There's not a timid, sympathy-begging minute in it. Even better, you leave Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work with the exhilarating feeling that the lady is just hitting her stride.

As Joe blurs the line between reality and the supernatural, his haunting and hypnotic film exerts a hold you don't want to break. It's a beauty.

As a director, Franco succeeds beautifully at bringing coherence to chaos, a word that accurately describes the making of this modern midnight-movie phenomenon. Do you need to see "The Room" to appreciate The Disaster Artist? Not really.

Watching his struggle is illuminating, unnerving and unforgettable.

It's unmissable and unforgettable.

No fair giving away the mysteries of The Dark Knight. It's enough to marvel at the way Nolan -- a world-class filmmaker, be it "Memento," "Insomnia" or "The Prestige" -- brings pop escapism whisper-close to enduring art.

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

Delicate business is being transacted in Columbus, a whisper-soft debut from Kogonada that nonetheless results in something unique and unforgettable. It's pure cinema.

No one who cares about movies and those rare actors who can elevate them into something unforgettable would dream of missing this scrappy, loving tribute to a virtuoso. Lucky may not believe in God. But what kind of fool doesn't believe in Harry Dean Stanton?

The Artist encapsulates everything we go to movies for: action, laughs, tears and a chance to get lost in another world. It just might leave you speechless. How can Oscar resist?

It's instructive to note what a killer actor Richard Gere can be when a movie rises to his level. Arbitrage is such a movie, a sinfully entertaining look at the sins committed in the name of money.