Both heartfelt and tough-minded.

Hypnotic and intense throughout, the brilliantly executed Hereditary taps into the ghosts within all of us — the insidious roots of family dysfunction — and turn them upside down and all around. It’s an audacious supernatural thriller where the psychological fallout is just as disturbing as the apparitions that come chillingly to life.

Bucking the lava tide of computer special effects gushing out of Hollywood this season, the makers of Breakdown use old-fashioned ingenuity -- plus a compelling star, a fast- paced mystery and a deadpan villain -- to come up with a sizzler.

Welles is lovely in the film, open and vulnerable, and Keith Baxter as Hal is quite good. [28 Sep 2016, p.Q39]

Robert Redford's sensitive, unhurried movie of A River Runs Through It is so faithful to the book that it becomes that rare thing - a beautiful celebration of the power of literature. [09 Oct 1992]

Director and co-writer/producer Gavin O’Connor’s meticulous drama feels authentic all the way around. The basketball feels real. The high school kids seem real. Jack’s relationship with his estranged wife Angela (Janina Gavankar) is very believable.

Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind captures that special quality that Williams had, the extra quality that went beyond the laughs, that communicated his whole being.

A steady undertow of sex gives this French thriller a scintillating surface.

This intricately plotted Japanese epic has so many twists and turns - not to mention bizarre characters with even more bizarre backstories - that the time will fly by. As the old cliche goes, you will not have another moviegoing experience quite like this one all year.

A powerful new documentary that addresses the issue of "hypocritical" male politicians.

Ultimately, Collin’s film is one of forgiveness. That’s not the usual way great tragedies end.

This is a transcendent film, deeply committed and beautifully wrought. It will make anyone who sees it look at the world with new eyes.

Tough, mean and unsparingly honest, Ladybird, Ladybird is the kind of movie that people resist going to, feel edgy while sitting through and then can't shake off for weeks afterward. [31 Mar 1995, p.C3]

Altman has delivered a lot of surprises in his long directing career, and his new comedy, Cookie's Fortune, is one of the most refreshing -- not because it's so good, but because it's so sweet and affectionate.

By any measure, the horrifying yet powerfully uplifting Schindler's List from director Steven Spielberg is a milestone in the art of filmmaking. [15 Dec 1993]

This is a vision of hell conveyed in a simple, documentary style, far removed from the sumptuous American Mafia fables.

A small gem.

More than on "Prime Suspect," more than any film in recent memory, Le Petit Lieutenant conveys the relentless toll of big-city police work.

The actors keep their clothes on, but everything else is naked in Like Crazy, a romantic drama that makes other romantic films look obvious and calculated in comparison.

It’s Lively’s movie, and it’s she who kicks this superior thriller up an extra notch, to the point that it’s not only worth seeing for the excitement and thrills, but for her.

Writer-director Caroline Vignal could have made "My Donkey” into a 90-minute monologue, with Antoinette talking to the donkey. Instead, there’s lots of variation, smart turns of story and well-drawn, well-defined characters. Vignal makes even the bit characters, the ones with just three or four lines, vivid.

It's that rare kind of movie that comes along only a handful of times each year -- gut-level entertainment that's oddly profound.

A rage-inducing expose.

Both very funny and a bit of a tearjerker, with an on-the-money performance from Ricky Gervais.

An exquisite tale about coming of age and coming to terms.

Ultimately, Marriage Story celebrates life and the journeys all of us are on. Noah Baumbach is the writer-director, and to watch such an incisive, deep-feeling script be given life by actors — Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and those around them — at the top of their game is to rediscover movies as a powerful medium of personal expression.

There’s something so deeply right about this movie, so true to the time depicted and so welcome in this moment; so light in its touch, so properly respectful of its characters, and so big in its spirit that the movie acquires a glow.

Either Live Free or Die Hard will go down as the summer's best action blockbuster, or it's going to be one exceptional summer.

Doesn't sanitize its tale of African American loss and survival -- the way Steven Spielberg's “The Color Purple'' did -- but delves deeply, heartbreakingly into an American tragedy.

In color, style and humor — even in its graphics and editing — it’s very much like a Godard film from the mid-1960s. Thus, the experience is like watching an actual Godard film — the first great Godard film since “Masculin Féminin” in 1966.

Hauntingly tells a story older than the Odyssey and as timely as today's body count from Iraq.

Don’t mistake his movie’s lack of sentimentality for callousness. Babylon is coarse, hard and wild, but its emotion is undeniable. Babylon is what movie love really looks like.

A movie that's loving and wistful and often hysterically funny.

The latest in the wonderful "Before" series does three important things: It breaks out of the courtship formula, yet retains the series' quality, and it moves the lives of Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) forward in ways that are satisfying and believable. True, a romance you once envied might now be a relationship you'd not want to be in, but as long as Celine and Jesse are still talking, there's hope.

This was Davis' return to the screen after her own legal battle with the studio to get meatier roles. She got one here, and she gives it her all. [09 Jul 2006, p.32]

The most coolheaded of the Iraq war documentaries, the most methodical and the least polemical. Yet it's the one that will leave audiences the most shattered, angry and astounded.

So comically fertile and yet so grounded in the reality of its characters that it's really a kind of marvel.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man is one of Chevy Chase's best movies. Though more or less a comedy, the picture gives Chase a chance to do much more than smirk and be a wise guy, while providing a good showcase for his dry style of humor. [28 Feb 1992, p.D1]

Stuns with writing, acting, direction.

Every year, we get only a few of these, movies that come out of nowhere, that are different, unexpected and wonderfully right. Moonlight is that kind of movie, one of the gems of 2016.

The complexity, richness and fullness of what Leo does here is acting at its most illuminating and useful.

One of the most incisive and perceptive Hollywood films about Hollywood.

If you liked Whitney Houston before, you’ll like her even more after seeing this. You’ll also admire her and feel pity for her and feel frustrated by her.

In a deceptively low-key manner, Danish filmmaker Michael Madsen has beautifully crafted one of the most provocative movies of the year.

Benedetta continues Verhoeven’s strong run with as good a movie as he’s ever made.

A bittersweet film that tells the story of Palestinian life as eloquently as anything ever done.

The film documents how Lucy used her clout to get her husband cast as her co-star. It was a way for them to see each other. The rest is history, but a really interesting history.

It is full of joy and laughter, as well as tears. It is about many things, among them sisterhood, the difficulties of parenting, processing trauma in a patriarchal society, and religious extremism. But most of all, it’s filled with life, and all the triumphs and pleasure, pain and disappointments that go with it.

Evans pays careful attention to atmosphere, while giving wide berth to cinematographers Dimas Imam Subhono and Matt Flannery, who find beauty among the mayhem. Everything on screen is crystal clear and vibrant, like a city street right after the rain.

Three Identical Strangers tells a remarkable story. In fact, it tells several. It’s already extraordinary 20 minutes in, and then it goes to unexpected and yet more amazing places, like a narrative feature by a master storyteller.

A fascinating documentary that seems to unfold over real time.

An unforgettable, poetic romance from Italy whose disarming humor, blushing encounters and bittersweet flavors are certain to set off a groundswell of smiles, tears and regret.

In every way, Miss Potter is a very beautiful thing.

With Boogie Nights, we know we're not just watching episodes from disparate lives but a panorama of recent social history, rendered in bold, exuberant colors.

Haynes elicits two great performances and provides the perfect frame for them, not just in terms of setting, but through smart casting and attention to the smallest of performances.

No, T2 is not a great film, but its pleasures are great — and so rare and accomplished that they raise T2 to a level approximating greatness. There is something to be said for a movie this enjoyable. T2 is great enough.

The River Wild may be the season's most exhilarating family entertainment. [30 Sep 1994, p.C1]

An unnerving thriller that never goes quite where you’d expect, this feature writing/directing debut from Zach Cregger (“The Whitest Kids U’Know”) also does monstrously amazing things with lighting, sets and special effects makeup.

Director Duncan Jones achieves a strange and winning amalgam, a gripping action film that also works as poetry.

What Mackenzie has crafted here is a crowd-pleaser with undeniable art-house elements.

The Substance gets more wonderfully appalling as it goes along, but it’s impressive from its first moments, and it never lets up.

The Secret Garden unfolds like a richly illustrated storybook. It's an enchanting film, full of visual surprises and a story so simple and wise that it makes most ''children's'' entertainment seem gaudy and facile and overly explicit. [13 Aug 1993, p.C1]

Emotionally sophisticated, humane and worth talking about for hours.

As finely crafted as a great work of literature.

It is the best and most enjoyable American film to be released this year.

It is quite simply one of the great “making of” documentaries of all-time — a short list that includes the George Hickenlooper-Eleanor Coppola documentary “Hearts of Darkness.”

A must-see for anyone still coming to terms with the chaos in Iraq.

The Blue Caftan, like its title garment, has a handmade, lived-in quality, an authenticity that marks Touzani — a former journalist making her second feature — a director to watch.

One of the most haunting and vital movies of the year.

Sanders likes to mention Monet’s colorful influence, but the realistic, primeval wilderness of “The Wild Robot” is what stirs the soul.

It packs a lot in its 81 minutes, and does it well.

This is a profound saga that makes for a great American movie.

The best thing about Scare Me is that, for all of its entertaining qualities and acute cuts at white male fragility, this is one excellent guide to writing and filming good horror.

Longlegs is a conjuring of dark, poetic cinema where the devil is definitely in the details.

It turns out that Pepe Le Moko is even better than "Algiers."

in addition to the quality of its dialogue, Levinson’s script is a testament to the value of talking and listening, past the point of discomfort, past the point it hurts.

With outstanding performances by Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as the embattled father and daughter, the film is a remarkably mature treatment of conflict in a family whose members are fully involved in the problems of our times. [15 Mar 1991]

The result is a film of sadness and power, the first great 21st century movie about a 21st century subject.

This new film is exceptional and one of Ozon’s best.

A sensitively wrought work.

If The Harder They Fall doesn’t make Westerns popular again, I don’t know what can.

Even more so than the original, the gravity-defying Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is as close to a moving comic book as one can get.

Henry Fool is far and away writer-director Hal Hartley's best movie.

A delicious comedy that starts out promisingly as a pleasant gag comedy but then turns unexpectedly into a bright social satire.

Rather than simply reveling in nostalgia, “Vinyl Nation” becomes a forward-looking story about connections: between artist, tradesperson, retailer and listener. And also between families, friends and strangers.

This illuminating film by director Gini Reticker and producer Abigail Disney is a much-needed attempt to put the spotlight on a moment of history that still inspires, especially because that moment led to Taylor's exile and to Liberia's election of Africa's first female head of state.

Toback has found a documentary subject as tragic and ridiculous, as bizarre and driven, as the heroes of his other films.

It stands out as one of the best films of the genre, on the strength of the storytelling and wonderful performances.

The well-crafted 13 Assassins, a remake of a 1960s samurai film, is one of his best; it shows that Takashi could be a great filmmaker if he'd only slow down.

Jackson has called "Creatures" a "murder story about love, a murder story with no villains." His generous approach makes it an unforgettable experience.

This small film's accomplishments are many, but not the least is its ability to take a human story and frame it as a parable, without losing a bit of credibility or irresistible heart.

The sequel is filled with crowd-pleasing action, adventure and characters — sometimes too many characters. But it rises above its crowded narrative with an intense emotional core, taking a protagonist whose affliction had been played mostly for comedy, and exploring the emptiness and loneliness of her plight.

The suburban world Owen and Maddy feel so out of sync with, seen mostly at night, flickers with blue, magenta and sickly green light. It’s unnerving, yet mesmerizing, like a small-screen nightmare that won’t let your psyche go.

Family entertainment at its best.

Casino Royale is fresh, actually fresh.

It’s revolutionary due to Sadiq’s care and close attention to detail with all of his characters. It’s a love letter to a place and people he knows intimately, and I hope to see much more of his work soon.

A film of great sadness, but also a galvanizing depiction of heroism.

An old-fashioned prisoner-of-war movie that becomes much more because of writer-director Werner Herzog's admiration for the remarkable true story of its protagonist, Dieter Dengler.