“Moonlight” is a hard act to follow, and while Beale Street might not quite reach the heights of Jenkins’ instant classic of a best picture-winner, it is its own kind of marvel, lovely, transcendent, heartbreaking and as smooth as its jazzy soundtrack.

Rarely have the hues of black and white, cinematographically speaking, looked so beautifully lush as in Passing, the hugely impressive directorial debut of actor Rebecca Hall.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years, from composer Terence Blanchard.

Unlike many of its more hollow predecessors, Black Panther has real, honest-to-goodness stakes. As the most earnest and big-budget attempt yet of a black superhero film, Black Panther is assured of being an overdue cinematic landmark. But it's also simply ravishing, grand-scale filmmaking.

Miss Streisand excels in all departments. [21 Nov 1983]

Hysterical. [26 Aug 1985]

With tenderness and toughness, Greengrass has made a great film about a terrible act.

This should be a no-brainer for anyone who watched the saga unfold on television, but even those who weren’t glued to the screen in 2018 should seek it out. The Rescue is easily one of the best documentaries of the year.

Shelton takes us right to the street hoops and slam dunks a winner. The movie is funny, it's fast and it's funky. [26 Mar 1992]

The film handles Maverick’s personal stuff — wooing the barmaid, repairing his relationship with Goose’s kid — while also fulfilling its promise as an action movie. There are jets pulling 10Gs, the metal sound of cockpit sticks pulled in gear, epic dogfights and the whine of machinery balking at the demands put on it. The action even takes a few unexpected and thrilling turns.

Not since Rocky has a modest, unheralded movie proved so satisfying. [31 Oct 1983]

Eighth Grade is a revelation of both a remarkably natural young performer and a clever, sensitive young filmmaker.

Soul turns out to be not an exploration of the afterlife but a wondrous whirligig of daily life.

Navalny is so taut and suspenseful you’d think John le Carré had left behind a secret manuscript that’s only just coming to light now.

Kranz’s film isn’t perfect. As the conversation ebbs and the four parents stagger out of the room and awkwardly part, the movie, too, struggles with how to walk away. But in this plainly photographed, mournful, restrained movie, the back-and-forth is bracingly sincere.

With an immense sense of scale ranging from mosquito to (Jason) Momoa, Dune renders an age-old tale of palace intrigue and indigenous struggle in exaggerated cosmic contours. Like any drift of sand, Dune feels sculpted by elemental, primal forces.

Goldin might not have known it when she started photographing her LGBTQ friends, but her work has always been about looking at the so-called fringe cultures in society, about showing the problems that the masses would rather just ignore and making them so urgent that you can’t look away anymore.

Everyone knows this story and how it turns out. But “Cyrano” does a wonderful job of letting you cling to the hope that it might go differently, as agonizing as it might be.

It’s a preposterous and tasteless ode to the messy, nonsensical struggle and bliss of being human.

Tess is as rewarding a film as you'll encounter all season. It has a veracity to its period that matches Tom Jones and a pictorial beauty that is breathtaking. [29 Dec 1980]

Rankin’s film, his second following the also surreal “Twentieth Century” (2019), is propelled less by narrative thrust than the abiding oddity of its basic construction, and the movie’s slavish devotion to seeing it through without a wink.

Çatan and co-writer Johannes Duncker, who in fact attended school together, are making the point that even a middle school is a microcosm of society and all its tensions and ills.

Birdy is a rare and rewarding film, certain to be cherished by filmgoers seeking an alternative to the standard formulas. [12 Feb 1985]

It might not be masterpiece material, but it has a soul and is an undeniably beautiful, worthwhile addition to the canon.

Although the event and aftermath were widely, exhaustively covered, I don’t think I’m the only one who lost the thread early. This not knowing is part of what makes Ryan White’s extraordinary documentary Assassins, about the trial of the two young women, so compulsively compelling.

Thanks to Kilmer’s relentless drive to document things, Val is a remarkably intimate film and a moving one, too. For a performer who has come off as chilly and difficult, this doc doesn’t counter those perceptions as much as explain them.

DaCosta can make a stroll down a well-lit, modern and clean hallway somehow creepy. This is confident, smart filmmaking. There’s a stunning scene in which the Candyman mirrors his prey’s movements and one in an elevator where blood droplets create their own horror-inside-horror.

Could the movie have hit harder at the self-involved stars we often worship? Of course. But what makes it powerful is not the Hollywood drama. This is a movie for any of us who have missed a child’s school recital, asked an assistant to work late or skipped a family dinner because a client was running behind. It’s about time. It’s about where we choose to spend our time.