A fully believable, flesh-and-blood (albeit not human flesh and blood) romance is the beating heart of "Avatar." Cameron has never made a movie just to show off visual pyrotechnics: Every bit of technology in "Avatar" serves the greater purpose of a deeply felt love story.

It's rare for a movie to be at once so biting and so moving. If Ryan's future seems bleak, there's something exhilarating about a movie made with such clear-eyed intelligence.

Topped by a fine cast, a first-rate script by Nick Hornby and tight direction by Lone Scherfig, the film is a smart, moving but not inaccessible entry in the coming-of-age canon.

It's a superb cinematic work and an appropriately serious one, given its subject matter and its intentions.

No true fan of science fiction -- or, for that matter, cinema -- can help but thrill to the action, high stakes and suspense built around a very original chase movie.

Winsome, touching and arguably the funniest Pixar effort ever, the gorgeously rendered, high-flying adventure is a tidy 90-minute distillation of all the signature touches that came before it.

It is a work of great fantasy and charm that will delight children ages 3 to 100.

Hysterically funny yet melancholy comedy.

Daniel Day-Lewis stuns in Paul Thomas Anderson's saga of a soul-dead oil man.

Bale again brilliantly personifies all the deep traumas and misgivings of Batman's alter ego, Bruce Wayne. A bit of Hamlet is in this Batman.

Powerful, stripped to its very essence and featuring a spectacular cast (of mostly non-professionals), Matteo Garrone's sixth feature film Gomorra goes beyond Tarrantino's gratuitous violence and even Scorsese's Hollywood sensibility in depicting the everyday reality of organized crime's foot soldiers.

There's really very little to say about this film beyond that it's absolutely brilliant.

A ferociously entertaining film.

Director Julian Schnabel and screenwriter Ronald Harwood have performed a small miracle in adapting for the screen Jean-Dominique Bauby's autobiography The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

The visual design of Wall-E is arguably Pixar's best. Stanton, who wrote the script with Jim Reardon from a story he concocted with Peter Docter, creates two fantastically imaginative, breathtakingly lit worlds.

Shot rivetingly by cinematographer Brooke Aitken, who combines digital, night-vision and thermal-imaging formats into a formidable package, the footage is edited tautly by Geoffrey Richman and enhanced measurably by J. Ralph's suspenseful score.

Brad Bird and Pixar recapture the charm and winning imagination of classic Disney animation.

A film whose lightness of touch rides a wave of family conflict to perfectly balance smiles and tears.

The film has enormous charm and zero pretense.

Anne Proulx's 1997 short story in the New Yorker has been masterfully expanded by screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana to provide director Lee with his best movie since "Sense and Sensibility" in 1995.

Under Eastwood's painstakingly stripped-down direction -- his filmmaking has become the cinematic equivalent of Hemingway's spare though precise prose -- the story emerges as that rarest of birds, an uplifting tragedy.

Superbly made and winningly acted by Brad Pitt in his most impressive outing to date.

An epic success and a history-making production that finishes with a masterfully entertaining final installment.

Greengrass has made not only a thoroughly fact-checked film but a film that uncontrovertibly comes from the heart.

A ferociously entertaining thriller with sympathetic characters, stunning set pieces and pulsating excitement.

Capote represents something unique in cinema.…Most eye-catching for critics and audiences in the weeks to come will be Philip Seymour Hoffman's brilliant metamorphosis into the persona of the late author.

One of the best war movies ever made, Downfall is a powerful and artistically masterful re-creation of the last days of the Third Reich.

With a delirious mix of the sublime and the silly, Hong Kong comedy king Stephen Chow Sing-chi has taken the kung fu comedy genre to new heights of chop-socky hilarity.

Ron Howard and Russell Crowe bring the Braddock story to vivid life in a superbly acted, beautifully shot, highly engaging drama that ranks as one of Howard's best efforts.

Though it's difficult to work out what's going on, it's never boring.

The latest installment could well be Romero's masterpiece. Taking full advantage of state-of-the-art makeup and visual effects, he has a more vivid canvas at his disposal, not to mention two decades worth of pent-up observations about American society.

A wondrous flight of fancy, a stop-motion-animated treat brimming with imaginative characters, evocative sets, sly humor, inspired songs and a genuine whimsy that seldom finds its way into today's movies.

The best one yet.

One of the best film musicals in years -- exuberant, sexy and life affirming in equal measure.

An achingly eloquent rumination.

In this deep probe into modern-day medicine, the old guy is shuttled from hospital to hospital in a surreal, horrifying ordeal of errors, missed diagnoses and institutional malaise. At two hours and 34 minutes, we, seemingly, also endure his agony -- part of this Romanian film's power and, also, its Achilles heel.

Three Times offers a careful examination of the changing ways people have reacted to each other during the past 100 years. As such, it's an interesting essay but certainly a minor work from a master.

Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers does a most difficult and brave thing and does it brilliantly. It is a movie about a concept. Not just any concept but the shop-worn and often wrong-headed idea of "heroism."

The endearingly enduring 1952 E.B. White novel about friendship and salvation, has been turned into a beautifully rendered motion picture that's full of warmth, wit and wonder.

It is an intelligently written piece that only falters during the finale.

Succeeds so beautifully because of a compelling story, great acting, intelligent writing and sensitive direction.

U2 3D takes the well-traveled concert film to exhilarating new heights.

Although a little too open-ended to be wholly satisfying, Water Lilies is still an excellent directorial debut.

This over-the-top, ultraviolent, hyperkinetic action thriller pretty much has it all.

With writer-director del Toro given free license to go where his singular vision takes him, Hellboy II plays like Guillermo's Greatest Hits with even hotter visual effects.

It's a delightful piece of filmmaking with a marvelous cast topped by Meryl Streep in one of her smartest and most entertaining performances ever.

With Mark Ruffalo and Ethan Hawke registering personal bests in the performance category as well as playing magnificently and ultraconvincingly off each other, What Doesn't Kill You, a true story that is powerful and completely riveting from beginning to end.

It Might Get Loud offers a thrilling personal tour of three exceptional electric guitarists' careers that's equally appealing to musicians and rock enthusiasts alike.

This precision-controlled film once again highlights Alexander Sokurov's mastery of the medium. The third entry in his Men in Power series employs refined performances, a controlled script, excellent sound and fluid camerawork.

The film, narrated ably by Leonardo DiCaprio, who seems to share the audience's amazement at what is appearing onscreen, is over too quickly in a mere 43 minutes. So line up and see it again.

For me, The Deer Hunter is THE great American film of 1978. I realize that we still have a few major releases yet to come, like Superman, but I can't imagine anything more timely, more important, more uncompromising than this Universal-EMI production.

In this brilliant depiction of the early years of TV and the phenomenal powers it asserted in breaking down the walls of America's living rooms and homogenizing our culture, director Robert Redford has crafted a superb piece of cracked Americana. Buena Vista will win heartfelt plaudits from mature audiences and, come awards season, will certainly increase its viewership through anticipated nominations. [9 Sept 1994]

Steven Spielberg has done it again. He has created another instant American classic.

An elegy for the days when Taiwan was a major East Asian film production center.

In the lead roles, both Robbins and Freeman are outstanding, layering their performances with snippets of individuality: Their small, daily sustenances and minor triumphs are wonderfully inspiring.

Boyz n the Hood is a knockdown assault on the senses, a joltingly sad story told with power, dignity and humor. No mere studio genre piece preening as social significance because its characters are black, Boyz is straight from the neighborhood — Singleton grew up in South Central — and straight from the heart.

Festival Express should rightfully take its place in rock history as one of the great performance films of all time.

Kill Bill-Vol. 2 puts to shame doubts entertained about aesthetic strategies or structural imbalance provoked by "Kill Bill-Vol. 1." Now that the entirety of Quentin Tarantino's epic revenge melodrama is on view, "Kill Bill" emerges as a brilliant, invigorating work, one to muse over for years to come.

It is, as promised, "a majestic visual experience," quite unlike any film we have ever seen...These details are merely a means employed by Kubrick and his distinguished screenplay collaborator Arthur C. Clarke, to provoke the more limitless imaginings of the mind, to assault the viewer with tantalizing enigmas to force exploration of that personal universe in relation to time and space, meaning and potential.

Blade Runner is a cold, bold, bizarre and mesmerizing futuristic detective thriller that unites the British-born director of Alien with new box-office dynamo Harrison Ford for results that are as impressive as any film that's exploded through a projector so far this year.

This brutal, violently realistic drama, set against the sordid background of the New York waterfront, packs a terrific wallop that results in topflight entertainment.

With "instant classic" written all over it, Toy Story, the first full-length feature entirely composed of computer-generated animation, is a visually astounding, wildly inventive winner.

Lucas combines excellent comedy and drama and progresses it with exciting action on tremendously effective space battles. Likeable heroes on noble missions and despicable villains capable of the most dastardly deeds are all wrapped up in some of the most spectacular special effects ever to illuminate a motion picture screen. The result is spellbinding and totally captivating on all levels.

This Batman is a stunning achievement, especially through the incredible and unique visualization of director Tim Burton. The film may be disappointing to those expecting a campy cartoon, however, although the more dramatic stylization of this version is its strongest asset.

Writer-director Quentin Tarantino is one lethal storyteller. Reservoir Dogs, even for those of us with weak stomachs, is a masterful story setup, aided and abetted by all those colorful guys in on the thing.

Perhaps the most perfectly constructed horror story in our time.

Narratively, Titanic is a masterwork of big-canvas storytelling, broad enough to entrance and entertain yet precise and delicate enough to educate and illuminate.

A scrumptiously delightful moviegoing experience.

Anderson and Owen Wilson’s concise screenplay deftly avoids sentimentality but somehow manages to be touching anyway. The former’s astute direction displays an excellent knack for visual as well as verbal gags, and Robert Yeoman’s widescreen lensing is unusually beautiful and textured for a comedy.

Like a shooter whose skill allows him to take careful aim with a rifle rather than going for the easy splatter of a buckshot, director Eastwood's big picture is suredly calibrated: He points your eye to the tiniest specs, the most telling and powerful parts of this moral panorama.

Under Jonathan Demme's masterful cinematic surgery, we get into Lecter's twisted skull and, through this outrageous descent, we come to see this sinister in the everyday.

De Niro, however, is brilliant and his performance should be a leading contender in this year's Oscar competition.

A deliriously fractured film, ambitiously packed with bowling, bimbos and other great inspirations of latter-day thought. Closest in style and temperament to Raising Arizona, this Gramercy release should roll box office strikes with select-siters and score some winning spares with mainstream viewers.

An exhilarating fish story in the perfectly cast comic adventure.

This is one of the most wildly romantic movies in ages.

Not only (Kaufman's) most accessible and romantic screenplay, it's his most complete. The third act works like a charm and pulls all his themes, characters and conflicts together beautifully.

Baleful and brilliant, Dr. Strangelove; Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, will outrage a predictable percentage of the population and enthrall an even greater percentage.

Pixar again hitches top-notch storytelling to the very best in CG animation.

One of the year's most satisfying films.

A story that soars with breakneck pace but slows in all the tender moments. Visually, this train ride is both majestic and edge-of-your-seat.

Director Francis Ford Coppola, with a strong assist from cameraman Gordon Willis, has done an extraordinary job of capturing period and place.

What strikes one more than anything in Towers is the material's dreamlike quality.

Gene Hackman, as the older brother who literally takes the back seat to Beatty, is just about perfect, while Estelle [Parsons] creates a richly detailed characterization as his petty wife, a preacher’s daughter.

With Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn turning in superb performances, Roman Holiday is 118 minutes of sheer entertainment.

A brutally funny look at contemporary youth, encrusted with status symbols and guilt for gilt rejecting the weights of privilege to rail against the tides of society they would rather reject than succumb to, rather question than attend to. Both tuned and attuned to its subject and on target for most of its course, this second film from director Nichols will benefit from enthusiastic word of mouth, winning a large audience and corresponding profits from both sides of the 30 year demarcation line.

It is a great film and will be an exceptionally popular and profitable one.

The simplest of stories can be elevated by first-rate acting and directing. Consider Stephane Brize's Mademoiselle Chambon, a French film that achieves a subtle but devastating impact.

Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday is a superb and devastating piece of cinema that with justification can be compared favorably to Gillo Pontocorvo's classic "The Battle of Algiers" in its dispassionate yet sweeping journalistic inquiry into cataclysmic social and political events.

Superbly crafted psychological thriller.

The film lacks Hong's usual insight and narrative innovation. It occasionally even feels self-indulgent.

Claire Denis, not always an easy director, is in top form here directing an almost all-black cast with grace and delicacy. For the happy few, this is French art house cinema at its unpretentious best.

It is fresh and spontaneous, plausible at its most logically improbable, thanks to Altman's superior direction, Lardner's script, the fine selection of actors and to an omnipresent camera under director of photography Harold E. Stine and operator Bill Mendenhall.

The film comes down to a mesmerizing portrait of a man who in any other age would perhaps be deemed nuts or useless, but in the Internet age has this mental agility to transform an idea into an empire.

Key to the remake's ultimate success is the casting of the troubled young leads.Smit-McPhee and Moretz possess the soulful depth and pre-adolescent vulnerability necessary to keep it compellingly real.

Big crashes, lithe women and roiling testosterone, not to mention the addition of The Rock as a fire-and-brimstone federal agent – there's plenty to pull in the (mostly) young male audience.

Fully justifying the decision, once thought purely mercenary, of splitting J.K. Rowling's final book into two parts, this is an exciting and, to put it mildly, massively eventful finale that will grip and greatly please anyone who has been at all a fan of the series up to now.

Precise, lucid and thrillingly disciplined, this story of boundary-testing in the early days of psychoanalysis is brought to vivid life by the outstanding lead performances of Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender.

After a five-year wait since "Sideways," Alexander Payne has made his best film yet with The Descendants. Ostensibly a study of loss and coping with a tragic situation, this wonderfully nuanced look at a father and two daughters dealing with the imminent death of his wife and their mother turns the miraculous trick of possibly being even funnier than it is moving.