All credit to O’Sullivan, Thompson and a tone-perfect cast for creating a film that moves to the rhythms of life as its lived rather than fantasized. Saint Frances retains its rough edges to that last. And that’s some kind of miracle.

The movie dissects the universal gap between the haves and the have-nots with shocking wit, stinging topicality and gut-wrenching violence. It’s explosive filmmaking on every level.

It's the no-bull performances that hold back the flood of banalities. Robbins and Freeman connect with the bruised souls of Andy and Red to create something undeniably powerful and moving.

Thanks to the clever, caring touch of director Ismail Merchant, working from a script by Caryl Phillips, this steadily engrossing film captures the book's bracing humor and humanity.

A mesmerizing film spinning from hilarity to heartbreak.

Pedro Almodovar's transfixing tragicomedy -- the best foreign movie of the year -- is also the best showcase for actresses in ages.

What the film does so movingly as a portrait is show the isolation that comes with creative success.

Kingsley creates an unforgettable monster. Acting rarely gets this hypnotically explosive.

Mamet -- crafts tangy, well-seasoned dialogue that a good cast can feast on. And this cast is prime.

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.

The French-Canadian filmmaker has delivered an expansion and a deepening of the world built off of Herbert’s prose, a YA romance blown up to Biblical-epic proportions, a Shakespearean tragedy about power and corruption, and a visually sumptuous second act that makes its impressive, immersive predecessor look like a mere proof-of-concept. Villeneuve has outdone himself.

For all its fancy pedigree, the spellbinding Dancer in the Dark aims right for the heart and aces its target.

Forget Oscar, Ocean's Eleven is the coolest damned thing around.

Even when the film doesn’t entirely work, there is, simply, joy in watching Anderson work.

A marvel of delicacy and humor.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is enthralling on every level. In her hypnotic and haunting film, alive with humor, heartbreak and swooning sensuality, Sciamma has created nothing less than a timeless work of art.

In The Farewell, Wang builds a funny, touching and vital film about what makes a family in any culture. It’s simply stunning.

Wilson is flat-out hilarious, playing this cowboy like a surfer dude zapped back in time.

Not only the coolest Spider-Man epic ever, it’s one of the best movies of the year.

The filmmaker brings everything he has as an artist to this raw, resonant thriller. The screen damn near explodes as his genre caper suddenly encompasses a whole social strata (race, class, politics, gender). You’re in for a hell of a ride.

Easily one of the best and most modestly brilliant piece of nonfiction filmmaking you’ll see this year.

The film is alive with delicacy and feeling...It's a beauty.

What’s never in doubt, however, is the compassion the movie shows to its protagonist, partly based on the women in the filmmaker’s own family and embodied by a great actress at her intuitive, indelible best. In capturing what Jones calls “the rhythm of living” even in the face of death, he has turned this character study into a shattering portrait of resilience — and an essential work of art.

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.

Elegantly witty and haunting . . . McKellen gives the performance of his career . . . and Brendan Fraser excels.

Ali is a bruiser, unwieldy in length and ambition. But Mann and Smith deliver this powerhouse with the urgency of a champ's left hook.

Delivers frisky fun for bruised romantics regardless of age, sex or nationality.

Watching De Niro take Paul through his first panic attack ("I'm crying like a woman") is an unalloyed joy.