I'll go ahead and call Drug War the best Hong Kong action movie since "Infernal Affairs" (the 2002 film that Martin Scorsese remade as "The Departed"), even though technically it's a Chinese film.

The Departure is an excellent example of a filmmaker finding a perfect wavelength with her main character.

Polish actress Joanna Kulig has been waiting for years to show what she can do, and in Cold War she gets the chance. She takes the role of a lifetime between her teeth, chomps on it, pounds it into the ground and never lets go for a second. Ferocity and intensity are present in every moment of her performance, even when she’s contained. With Cold War, Kulig breaks out as a lioness of international cinema.

Chilling, superbly acted.

Cool, chiseled and savagely funny, Kubrick's cautionary doomsday farce never ages but gets more relevant with time. [12 March 1999, p.D15]

You could rightly call it a thriller, but a slow-burning one, and a film that’s driven by character, not plot points. And that won’t do in Tinseltown. So enjoy the original, preferably in a theater, and revel in the rich, layered performances of veteran actresses Emmanuelle Devos and Nathalie Baye (men are incidental in this movie, another Hollywood no-no).

It is, all in all, off its rocker. But it's gorgeous.

Documentaries can be informative, entertaining and provocative, but rare is the documentary that makes you feel so engaged (and enraged) that it prompts you to action somehow. Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion is that kind of film.

The experience of seeing this film is cumulative, sober and profound.

Ailey weds forthright interviews and archival footage of abstract beauty with those sweeping dance sequences to conjure a haunting portrait of what it means to be an artist — from the triumphs to the empty, lonely feeling that you’re never as good as you’re supposed to be.

Typically, films about '60s subculture recycle the same set of media cliches and teach us nothing. Harron approaches the milieu with curiosity, compassion and an anthropologist's eye.

Glatzer and Westmoreland live in Echo Park, and they have given their film a remarkable sense of place.

A first-rate thriller about arrogance at the top.

Climate change is never explicitly mentioned in the documentary The Biggest Little Farm, one of the year’s best films, but it hangs all over the deep, rich story of the Chesters, a pair of hardscrabble idealists who move from the concrete jungle of Santa Monica to start a 200-acre, sustainable farm from scratch.

A terrific documentary.

A film of wisdom, emotional subtlety and power.

Tigertail, mostly a period piece that’s also a well-wrought portrait of a man closed off from life whose despair is etched in every line on his face, isn’t satiric or comedic in the slightest.

The director has said that, though the story was inspired by the deaths of his parents, he hoped to make a film "brimming with life." He's succeeded.

Comedy is getting more and more nasty and more and more funny. But it’s hard to imagine any movie more nasty-funny than Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates.

Allen's most satisfying film since "Bullets Over Broadway" (1994) and his most compelling since "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989).

To say it is about a debilitating disease is as reductive as saying "Little Miss Sunshine" is about a beauty pageant. Both are intimate stories of family ties that bind but sometimes also choke.

The most important mainland Chinese film this decade.

The resulting film is neither better nor worse than the Swedish film, but it's more cinematic.

An ungainly masterpiece, but Chaplin's ungainliness is something one can grow fond of.

Funny People is a true brass ring effort, a reach for excellence that takes big risks. It's 146 minutes, with a story that's more European in feeling than American.

A hell of a movie.

Nothing about Of an Age seems forced. The film delicately embraces grand sentiments without ever being sentimental. And throughout the journey, we can’t help but be enthralled.

Bujalski's writing is so good, and every shot and edit seems exactly right. Hopefully, there will always be a place for a film like this on a theater screen, no matter the whims of the marketplace.