Schindler's List, despite blatant compromises, is a rending historical document. But the film's near-certain victory is based less on merit than on the marketing of its ambitious intentions. The academy doesn't judge movies, it weighs them by subject matter. On that basis, Spielberg's epic tips the scales.

You leave WALL-E with a feeling of the rarest kind: that you've just enjoyed a close encounter with an enduring classic.

Haynes' commitment to outcasts, then and now, makes Carol a romantic spellbinder that cuts deep. It's one of the year's very best films.

Whatever a modern love story is, Before Midnight takes it to the next level. It's damn near perfect.

It’s the closest thing to witnessing a miracle — just some cameras, a crowd and a voice touched by God.

Dunkirk is a landmark with the resonant force of an enduring screen classic.

A mesmerizer that will creep into your dreams whether you let it or not.

A marvel of delicacy and humor.

Leigh embraces the contradictions in Turner. And in tandem with cinematographer Dick Pope, a master of light, he shows us the world as Turner sees it. The effect is harsh and ravishing. Leigh's beauty of a movie touches the heart not by sentimental gush but by the amplitude of its art.​

With The Irishman, America’s greatest living director creates his late-career masterpiece, a deeply felt addition that vibrantly sums up every landmark in his crime-cinema arsenal, from 1973’s "Mean Streets" through "Goodfellas," "Casino," "Gangs of New York," and the Oscar-
winning "The Departed."

Ang Lee, a world-class director working at the top of his elegant form, has done something thrilling. For all the leaping action, it's the film's spirit that soars.

The idea has been tried — remember TV's "Herman's Head"? — but never with the artful brilliance of filmmaker Pete Docter (Up; Monsters, Inc.).

It’s one of the best films of the year, full stop. But now it’s both invaluable and something of a warning for many of us on the shape of things to come.

Pure movie bliss.

Sheer perfection – that's the phrase that springs to mind when describing the humanist miracle that is Faces Places, the year's best and most beguiling documentary.

A movie that liberates your tears and makes you fall in love with it. It is almost assuredly predestined to be the single best movie you see this year.

This is a film in which ideas resonate as well as action. Gandalf’s words to Pippin about death have a muscular poetry.

It's a swooning new classic and one of the very best films of the year.

The movie crawls hypnotically into the skin of this global assassin and astonishes you with its brazenly violent and sexual audacity.

How does a small tale of love found and lost emerge as a major triumph and one of the very best movies of the year? Marriage Story is more than just a career high for writer-director Noah Baumbach (The Meyerowitz Stories, The Squid and the Whale); it’s a peerless showcase for its stars, Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, who turn this tale of a contentious divorce into a "Kramer vs. Kramer" for the 21st century.

What makes La La Land such a hot miracle is how the passion for cinema and its possibilities radiates from every frame.

Sciamma is weaving a spell here, so pure in its emotional resonance that it breaks your heart even as it heals wounds.

Just when you think there's nothing original or exciting left to mine from a coming-of-age story, along comes the totally irresistible Lady Bird – a reminder that no genre is played out when there's a new artist around to see it with fresh eyes.

What makes it such a mesmerizing, wickedly witty entertainment is the revealing portrait it paints of an era in which everyone is presumed guilty where greed is concerned... It's an often chilly movie, but the chill cuts to the bone.

Kapadia, as masterful a filmmaker as they come, is happy to let viewers wonder where these stories will intersect, and how they’ll collide into or off of each other.

Like the late Jonathan Demme, director of Stop Making Sense, Lee is here not just to document but to heighten. There are close-ups on Byrne’s face, his eyes, even his feet; dynamic roving views from onstage and off; a keen awareness of the audience. And, of course, there’s the thrill of seeing people standing up in their seats, clapping along, silhouetted against Byrne’s bright, inviting presence onstage. All of it lends a sense of alive-ness to this live performance.

It’s impossible to experience the deep-seated compassion of this film and not be moved to tears.

If you're looking for the best and most beguiling foreign-language film of the year, you'll find it in Maren Ade's Toni Erdmann, a German father-daughter story that will leave you laughing and choking back tears, often simultaneously.