The picture is exquisite, extraordinary, a unique gem of filmmaking.

Assaying [Sciamma's] first period film, an exquisitely executed love story that's both formally adventurous and emotionally devastating, she sticks the landing like a UCLA gymnast in peak condition. It's so good you'll want to watch again in slow-motion immediately afterwards just to see how she does it.

It is a searing and topical indictment of racial prejudice and hatred in America that makes for uneasy viewing and is not easily forgotten.

Charlotte Wells’ sharp and tender Aftersun is the rare father-and-child drama that leaves you wondering who the dad will grow up to be.

This potent work about stolen childhood deserves attention because of the freshness of the cast and because it confirms that Gavron is a director to watch.

Magnificent in its simplicity and its relentless honesty about old age, illness and dying, Michael Haneke's Amour is a deliberately torturous watch.

Tensely action-packed and muscularly directed by Kathryn Bigelow, this tale of an elite U.S. army bomb disposal unit in Baghdad is a familiar story in new clothes, targeted at the young male demographic.

The film's power steadily and relentlessly builds over its long course, to a point that is terrifically imposing and unshakable.

In Collective, Nanau's observational style of filmmaking reaches emotional depths.

As in all the director's work, the cast is given top consideration and their realistic acting results in unusual depth of characterization.

It is in the clandestine scheming of the sex-hungry man and the cunning woman, in the methodical method of their plotting the husband's murder that Wilder builds the suspense that pounds and drives to a staggering climax. There are at least three instances of suspense so great that the heart almost stops beating. The highest praise one can give the Sistrom production is to say that it is like a masterpiece of mystery fiction coming vividly to life on the screen. As you cannot lay down such a book until it has been read through, neither then can you shake off the witchery exerted over you by this film from its very opening scene.

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.

The writers have, wisely perhaps, toned down the language of the original version, although it is still lusty entertainment.

Blanchett makes an indelible impression as a woman who, through breeding, intense personal cultivation and social expectations, has brilliantly mastered the skill of navigating through life.

The work Richard Linklater and company started in 1995's Before Sunrise retains a clarity of spirit undimmed by 18 years.

Amazing Grace will not enter the pantheon of concert films — it's somewhat shapeless as a movie, and gives little sense of emotional insight into the performer. But it does contain moments of bliss: As astonishing as the sound of Franklin's singing in 1972 remains, watching her do it is even better.

Dunkirk is an impressionist masterpiece. These are not the first words you expect to see applied to a giant-budgeted summer entertainment made by one of the industry's most dependably commercial big-name directors. But this is a war film like few others, one that may employ a large and expensive canvas but that conveys the whole through isolated, brilliantly realized, often private moments more than via sheer spectacle, although that is here too.

This C.V. Whitney production is undoubtedly one of the greatest Westerns ever made. For sheer scope, guts and beauty I can think of no picture of the Indian Wars of the Southwest to compare with it.

Do not expect blazing emotional fireworks, just finely calibrated performances and deep reserves of inner torment.

Anchored by a masterful performance by Timothy Spall in a role he was born to play, and gilded by career-best effort from DoP Dick Pope, working for the first time on digital for Leigh to bridge the gap between the painting and cinematography, Mr. Turner manages to illuminate that nexus between biography and art with elegant understatement.

Scorsese's choice to make this a standalone feature and not a limited series seems mildly perplexing. Anyone hoping for the propulsive dynamism of, say, Goodfellas or Casino may be disappointed. But The Irishman is also on many levels a beautifully crafted piece of deluxe cinema.

The beauty of the film is that it doesn’t judge viewers for what they do and don’t know, but rather encourages us to open our minds to history and see the connections between then and now.

A sweeping romantic epic with a strong feminist backbone, the thoroughly entertaining Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon also happens to boast a generous offering of seriously kick-ass action sequences that make 'The Matrix' seem downright quaint by comparison.

It’s an audacious concept, and Docter’s imagination, along with those of his numerous collaborators, is adventurous and genially daft enough to put it over.

At times the movie feels so raw and unedited, it’s as if Loktev dumped all her footage onto the table without shaping it into a definitive cut. Perhaps a leaner two-hour version would have yielded something more dynamic, though the point of My Undesirable Friends isn’t to entertain us, but to capture every detail of a democratic movement that was doomed to fail.

Hysterically funny yet melancholy comedy.

The Apartment is an important and provocative film.

Director David Weissman brings a rewardingly fresh and personal perspective to the subject.