12 Years a Slave has some of the awkwardness and inauthenticity of a foreign-made film about the United States. The dialogue of the Washington, D.C., slave traders sounds as if it were written for "Lord of the Rings." White plantation workers speak in standard redneck cliches. And yet the ways in which this film is true are much more important than the ways it's false.

An important new documentary that cites countless examples of self-censorship, under-reporting of serious issues, and -- worse than this -- deliberate neglect and outright conflicts of interest.

Beautiful, romantic and frantically funny. In its brief, often frenetic 85-minute running time it manages to be a riot of entertainment, embracing the best of old-fashioned merriment as well as savvy, up-to-the-minute contemporary humor, thanks in large part to an extraordinary performance by Robin Williams. [25 Nov 1992, p.E1]

My Penguin Friend is what you’d expect from an animal picture, except that it’s better — lifted by a smart script, sensitive direction and a truly beautiful performance by Jean Reno.

Deliciously witty and entertaining… A first-rate thriller, one that's likely to generate as much word-of-mouth as “Alien,'' “Carrie'' and “Psycho'' did in their time. [23 Aug 1991, Daily Notebook, p.F1]

Perhaps the best teen date movie ever set in the year 1914, "Tuck" represents a brave leap against the tide. No sex, no car crashes and minimal violence. It just might be a hit.

I loved the picture, without being blind to its faults. But you don't judge a movie with a scorecard but by what it gives you, and this one gives more than anything I've seen in months. [04 Oct 1991, p.D1]

I think what I like best about Light Sleeper -- more than Dafoe's peculiar magic or Schrader's wise, sympathetic writing -- is the fact that it gives you so much to chew on. So many contemporary films seem to evaporate as soon as you walk out of the theater. Light Sleeper resonates. [04 Sep 1992, p.C1]

Make no mistake, Blue Is the Warmest Color constitutes a breakthrough, in addition to being the best film of 2013.

A wonder of a film -- a luminous, beautifully executed drama that gathers the best cast of the year -- the best American film of the year.

A mind-boggling, heart-rending, stomach-churning expose on the food industry.

Throughout the film, Pitt exudes charm and a philosophical nature, but also the possibility of explosiveness. He doesn’t show you everything. What do you say about a performance like this? Scene by scene, Pitt seems to know what to do, all the time — and he never makes it look like work.

An exquisite and powerful documentary -- one whose elegance only heightens its devastating impact.

Qualifies as director Giuseppe Tornatore's second full-fledged masterpiece. His first: "Cinema Paradiso."

The Two Popes is movie nirvana, but anyone watching could appreciate the clash between these opposing dispositions and world views.

Nostalgia for the Light is a strange and stunning work of art: a poem disguised as a movie about astronomers in the Atacama desert of Chile.

It’s a movie about a geeky teenager living in the Los Angeles hood, and something about it, or rather everything about it, feels real.

There is no turning away from the screen.

Exquisite and moving documentary.

For the most part, Cowperthwaite keeps the preachiness in check, letting the scientists, former SeaWorld trainers and other witnesses tell it as it is. Indeed, the scary training scenes - uniformly gripping - do most of the talking.

Original, truthful and moving.

Rocky might not be the brightest guy, but he knows things. He has his limitations, but he is, in his own way, extraordinary, and when we look at his/Stallone’s face, we can have no doubt that Rocky has gone through life and learned things. He has been awake all these years, and growing. With no exaggeration, this is a beautiful and moving thing to see.

One of this year's better studies of the human soul.

A film filled with beauty and pain that moves at the pace of molasses and snails. That is to say, some of it is in real time. Audiences would be advised to stay caffeinated.

Her (Anderson) performance is a study in the difference between hubris and pride, remarkable for how unshowy but profoundly devastating it is.

They are naturals at acting, not because they're good at lying but because they can't be phony.

It's a movie that seems simple, yet its subtle and brilliant complexity is not to be denied.

A mesmerizing film that is the most stunning, tempestuous love story in a decade or two of movie making.

The movie explores the real essence of determination, and it’s not what people imagine as they recite affirmations to themselves. Nyad shows us determination almost at a level of pathology, as a single-mindedness that could be considered sick, except that Nyad wasn’t delusional about her capacities.

A gorgeous piece of work. It pulls every heartstring a good romance should, yet bursts with G-rated fun, wonderfully human characters and several solid and hummable songs.

The very best thrillers -- a select group to which The Clearing clearly belongs -- exploit subconscious fears that bubble up at vulnerable moments.

Enter the Dragon goes far beyond the philosophical, of course. Its best sequences, and the only real reason for seeing it again, involve Lee's phenomenal physical and emotional presence.

The aerial cinematography is breathtaking: We can feel the fragility of the planet, but also its power to heal — if only we give it a chance.

On a deeper level -- and this is where When We Were Kings exceeds its expectations and becomes a great film -- Gast examines African American pride.

The humor manages to be simultaneously sophisticated, supremely silly and very dark.

Delirious, over-the-top, gorgeous to look at and with comic timing delivered at a machine-gun pace, Spain’s My Big Night is not only the fastest-moving film of the year so far this side of “Hardcore Henry,” but one of the most entertaining as well.

The movie is a total blast, and what a surprise.

Handily beats back the evils of boredom.

A breathtaking story of defiance and triumph that has to be considered one of the year's most sublime films.

Powerful and outrageous.

Best “performances,'' however, are given by the movie's almost agonizingly beautiful historical settings -- luxurious households, rich architecture, furnishings, ornaments, draperies, fineries and such are often more captivating than the hushed tones of the lovers. [17 Sept 1993, Daily Notebook, p.C1]

Ghobadi infuses his movie with a humor that can almost be called Seinfeldian, and it's this mix of laughter with tears that gives Marooned in Iraq its big impact.

The studio made a great film.

An outstanding gangster film -- loaded with style and ambience -- that boasts one of Christopher Walken's finest performances. [28 Aug 1991, p.E3]

Economically and stunningly, Almodovar combines a high sense of style with a deep sense of humanity, along with a touch of erotic beauty that has always characterized his work.

It's impossible not to be moved and shocked by The Last Days, the haunting documentary about five Hungarian Jews who survived Hitler's "final solution" to exterminate the Jewish people.

The Past makes conventional movies feel artificial. Watching the characters interact in this movie feels like "Here is real life," and real life just happens to be strangely compelling.

Each element combines to make Glory one of the few Civil War movies that reach into the very guts of that conflict. [12 Jan 1990, p.E1]

Though specific to the stories of its central characters, this documentary is as complicated as life. It’s happy, sad and uncertain — genuinely moving and uplifting, yet never reassuring.

The experience of Southpaw is rather like seeing the truth behind the cliches, revived in all their pain and power to surprise.

An ideal introduction to Toback's output as well as a welcome elucidation for longtime fans. Apart from those worthy functions, The Outsider is also shrewdly made, illuminating its subject in a variety of settings and, at times, subtly assuming the style of Toback's films.

Delivers a full emotional palette without undue sentimentalizing.

You needn't have colorful Italian relatives, like myself, to enjoy this boisterous and warm-hearted film, which sidesteps cliche while embracing the hope and love in loony dysfunctional families everywhere.

Extraordinary and beautiful.

Kore-eda weaves these images and others, building a multilayered fugue that contemplates death, asks if mourning ever truly ends and addresses the ephemeral nature of love, family and home. Everything we value and use to define and frame our lives, he suggests, is always at risk.

An original, inspired piece of work.

A Hologram for the King has great energy, and also a languorous, lived-in quality.

Potent.

With Diane, as in life, it feels like nothing’s going on, but everything’s going on.

As a film, "Levees" is a significant and exhaustive achievement. Although it can be argued that it might have been even more effective if it had been edited down a bit, the power of its human stories compensates for whatever minor flaws it has.

Moviegoers will love or hate Oliver Stone and his politics until the end of time. With well-made movies such as Snowden, though, his skill as a filmmaker becomes much harder for the detractors to debate.

This is a movie that you will admire both for its courage and its creativity.

It's not enough to say that Inglourious Basterds is Quentin Tarantino's best movie. It's the first movie of his artistic maturity, the film his talent has been promising for more than 15 years.

The animation, sparkling and graceful, also ranks as the studio's best traditional work in ages.

A gentle movie. It’s valedictory, with a sense of the ephemeral nature of life, the inevitability of regret, and the bittersweetness of looking back on past happiness.

Not a heist film, a thriller, a twisted romance, a film noir or a character study, but a unique concoction that bends all these genres to its vision.

It is an exhilaration from beginning to end. It's the movie equivalent of that rare sort of novel where you find yourself checking to see how many pages are left and hoping there are more, not fewer.

Kurosawa's film is heavyweight fare: disturbing, slightly over the top, but satisfying, like a rich meal with a powerful aftertaste.

Kim's masterly, poetic ending is the cherry on top in this anime, good for a rainy day or any day.

Two hours of nonstop, nail-biting tension and anxiety.

At its best, Fury examines the psychological experience of warfare.

“It’s not what it looks like” is both the marketing tagline for Emergency and an accurate description of this ingenious independent film.

It is possibly Kurosawa's most underrated masterpiece, rich in characterization and structure, yet lost in the shuffle among such classics as "Rashomon" and "Seven Samurai." [14 Sep 2008, p.N31]

Stir of Echoes is much more down and dirty (than "The Sixth Sense"), and the thrills are more visceral.

Cagney, the film's best asset, is irrepressible. [07 May 2006, p.34]

This horror-slasher-thriller-tragi-romance is certainly going to leave some squeamish, but there's no denying that this is high-quality filmmaking.

That Robyn succeeds reaching her geographic destination is hardly a surprise. But this movie is not driven by plot but rather the delicate emotional ballet performed so expertly by Wasikowska.

Jewell is not just a man, but a type, and his story is a warning, not just about the excesses of power, but about our own reflexive assumptions. Paul Walter Hauser gives us the soul of a man that deserved respect even before he did something heroic, but one that people might never have noticed.

A vicious horror flick with an actual beast and someone who just acts like one.

The real wonder becomes how British filmmaker Sandra Goldbacher was able to write and direct such an accomplished, touching and original movie her first time out.

An intriguing document, and the first significant film ever made about a former U.S. president.

It’s a perfect package of whimsy, sass and sweetness.

Unique and courageous. It may be counted as one of the year's few steps forward in cinema.

A seriously good movie, a challenge to viewers, a rebuke of the way many Americans live their lives.

It's a remarkable film: A gritty, gut-churning, crime thriller based on a true story. Its greatness lies in its unwavering fidelity to human nature and the unstoppable laws of the wild.

From the standpoint of humanizing Sudan's continuing refugee problem, Lost Boys is a gem. It doesn't preach. It doesn't prettify.

Dumont makes movies that almost nobody wants to see. That doesn't make him a great filmmaker, but he's a great filmmaker all the same.

A great visual artist documentary has to be more than a series of images set to narration like an art history course. The best films find some compelling reason in the present to spend time with them. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed filmmaker Laura Poitras’ searing, urgent portrait of photographer Nan Goldin finds that in the opioid crisis.

It’s a sophisticated piece of work, slightly haunted, with an underlying sorrow that can’t be resolved or remedied.

This is an amazing record of a group of lives -- and probably more resonant than anyone could have imagined when the project began.

Immediately has you in its thrall and doesn't let go -- a reminder of how powerful and moving cinema set in wartime can be when all the elements align.

Wise, delicate and impeccably performed, Yi Yi is a three- hour drama that looks at one middle-class family in transition -- and does so with such a kind and probing eye that we all see our lives reflected through Yang's lens.

Forestier's performance is a tour de force of comic acting, maintaining astonishing alertness and energy from shot to shot and scene to scene.

I'm as reluctant to stop writing about this movie as I was to stop watching it: At 166 minutes, it flies by, and you don't want to leave that world. But one thing is certain: This isn't the last word. People will be writing about this film for years - and looking at it to discover the lost history of our time.

An actors' feast.

Riveting.

[Apichatpong’s] films are well-thought-out experiences, unique, disciplined, gorgeously composed and irascibly moving to their own rhythm. What sets Memoria apart from his other work is a new setting: Colombia.

Moaadi is the standout here, subtly evoking filial worry and fatherly pride in one scene, popping off with rage in another: He's believably decent, believably flawed. A Separation touches on religious strictures and the role of women in Iran, but it does so with a light hand and not a twitch of condemnation.