The actors make it unique and unforgettable.

But fantasy elements aside, this Disney movie has the one essential that makes a nature documentary fly: a thrilling sense of wonder.

The Dry is solid and appreciably sad but, for all the virtues of its rough symbolism and intriguing backstory, almost too jampacked with discovery for its own good.

Don't get me wrong – the movie lays on the raunch, and there are more gut-busting laughs than you can count. But no one gets objectified or patronized.

Green Book is a movie about class as well as race, and Farrelly rightly refuses to paint a pretty picture.

Come for the way this film twists a disaster-movie premise into sociological commentary while still bringing the weirdness. Stay for how Kircher and Duris embed a father-son story into the fantastical elements, and transform a far-out tale of genetics run amuck into an elegy about the pain of letting go.

The reason that Boy Erased hits you like a shot in the heart can be found in Jared’s relationship with his parents. Kidman brings stirring compassion and a growing strength to a woman who learns about herself the more she learns about her son. And Crowe is magnificent as a believer who can’t quite storm the barricades his faith erects around a true reconciliation with his son.

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]

Stimulating entertainment, as rigorously challenging and painfully funny as anything the Coens have done. But it's necessary to meet the Coens halfway. If you don't, Barton Fink is an empty exercise that will bore you breathless. If you do, it's a comic nightmare that will stir your imagination like no film in years.

Anderson packs the film with atmosphere spiked with intrigue. And Hamm gives his role a James Bond-meets-Don Draper appeal, tossing off one-liners with a weary insouciance. His scenes with Pike give the movie a resonant power it wouldn't otherwise have.

As ever, Freeman delivers miracles; he's as good as it gets.

Messed up as it is, you can't tear your eyes away from this explosion of brutal sounds and images.

Sensational, sicko fun -- you won't believe your eyes -- and just the thing to shake up the creeping conservatism that is draining the vulgar life out of pop culture.

It wants to be a slasher, but it isn’t reckless enough. It wants to be funny, but it only has two jokes, and it repeats them ad nauseum. It wants to be tense, but it takes advantage of almost none of the tension that this scenario and its McMansion setting have to offer.

Yes, The Piano Lesson hits a few bum notes. Its melody nonetheless remains intact.

Like Kathryn Bigelow's "Detroit," set half a century ago, Chon's Gook uses the past to speak to a tumultuous present. Chon has created a hardass yet hypnotically beautiful film that snarls and sparks to incite, not a fever in the blood, but an urgent conversation about what makes us human. Godspeed.

Blue Story is a 91-minute assault of sound and image that leaves no doubt about the vicious cycle of gang violence it presents. Prepare to be wowed.

As something that seeks to confuse and delight you in equal measures, this is seven courses of absurdity, served with a side of tongue in cheek from a trio who know what they’re doing, even if you’re not always sure what that is.

First-time director Peter Care crafts something darkly funny and touching from a coming-of-age fable that might have drifted into formula without deeply felt performances from Culkin and Hirsch and dazzling animation from Todd McFarlane (Spawn) that brings the boys' comic fantasies to jolting life.

By the time these two comedians are served dessert, they’re bickering over Coogan’s level of fame regarding a fake eulogy and trading celebrity impersonations. Fourth verse, same as the first. Only the scenery has changed.

Despite a gimmicky premise, Chronicle fuels its action with characters you can laugh with, understand and even take to heart.

Yes, the sets and costumes elicit swoons, but it's the peerless Sondheim score, however truncated, that makes this Woods a prime destination.

At first glance, you might mistake What They Had for one of those well-meaning family dramas about what to do when your mom is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. But that would discount the exceptional accomplishment achieved by debuting director Elizabeth Chomko, enlivening her scrappy script with a cast of actors who truly are as good as it gets. You laugh as much as you cry, which means you believe in the movie’s truth.

The whole thing is a blast, which doesn’t mean you don’t sense that the stakes are high or that the tension between this threesome isn’t threatening to smother a great creative collaboration in the crib.

To try and wrap your head around the plot of Predestination can only lead to madness. Don't get me wrong: The movie itself is a trip. Just jump off the cliff and go with the Spierig brothers, Peter and Michael, as they whoosh into the labyrinth of their own fervid imaginations.

Peck has long cratfed impeccable, politically charged fictions, docs, and docudramas, whether it’s his 2000 biopic on Patrice Lumumba or his peerless portrait of James Baldwin (the aforementioned I Am Not a Negro). With this latest magnum opus, the Haitian filmmaker has given us not just an invaluable, iris-out look at our present moment but the scariest movie of 2025 by a wide margin.

Tenet sweeps you away on waves of pure, ravishing cinema.

Eyes sees what it wants to see, but it's a riveting glimpse.