It's an extraordinary film.

More unconventional and downright weird on a moment-to-moment basis than it is in overall design and intent, it's a singular work played out mostly in small rooms that harks back to psychological melodramas of the 1940s/50s but hits stylistic notes entirely its own.

Alfred Hitchcock has concocted an elaborate tease in The Birds, as if to prove that suspense and thrills can be induced as much by the expectation of horror as by horror itself.

A stirring requiem of rage and resistance.

A terrifically engaging picture of life beyond the headlines, My Perestroika lifts the veil of Cold War mystery.

Blurring the confines between documentary and fiction, it takes the empathetic viewer on an incredible journey that can be almost as painful to follow vicariously from a theater seat as it must have been on the pilgrims.

The distinctive British filmmaker is at the height of her powers in this semiautobiographical work.

Enyedi is a master stylist who knows how to create a certain mood, mixing visual poetry with deadpan humor, and big ideas with quotidian foibles, in a film that explores our mysterious relationship with both the green world and one another.

An exhilarating fish story in the perfectly cast comic adventure.

Schilinski doesn’t spare us all their pain and suffering, nor does she hide the joy and wonder they sometimes experience. Her brave girls carry their forebearers within them from one generation to the next, surging toward the future both damaged and victorious.

Sugarcane’s sensitivity to the ongoing pain of its subjects is one of the film’s principal achievements. NoiseCat and Kassie offer an affecting portrait of a community that endures in spite of colonial genocide.

The drama really sparks into high gear once the trial gets under way, a shift signaled by arresting cathedral-like shots of the Old Bailey's Neo-Baroque domed ceiling accompanied by the dissonant strings of Mica Levi's sparingly used score. The transition also gives the excellent principal cast ample opportunities both for impassioned oratory and amusing disruption.

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

If cinema is an empathy machine, to paraphrase the late Roger Ebert, then Agnieszka Holland’s new film is one precision-tooled specimen.

What's most immediately remarkable about the film is the raw intensity of its hyper-realistic encounters, hugely enhanced by the superb acting of newcomer Rahim.

This is a big, ballsy, serious-minded cinematic event of a type now virtually extinct from the studios. It fully embraces the contradictions of an intellectual giant who was also a deeply flawed man, his legacy complicated by his own ambivalence toward the breakthrough achievement that secured his place in the history books.

Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski's latest film, is bittersweet and unbearably lovely, a sad ballad of two lovers who can't stand to stay apart but also sometimes can't stand each other either.

The film has enormous charm and zero pretense.

Whatever the movie lacks in surprise or sophistication, it makes up for in sly comic verve and a soulfulness that sticks with you.

Despite its successful attempts to show how oil has affected everyday citizens in nearby Nigeria, the film remains fairly dry.

One of the singular aspects of Fox's script is that it honors the messiness of real-life events, even if that means the film itself sometimes feels messy.

Unassuming, idiosyncratic and set in the run-down eponymous New Jersey city that has produced more than its share of noted personalities, this is a mild-mannered, almost startlingly undramatic work that offers discreet pleasures to longtime fans of the New York indie-scene veteran.

The Fits is a lovely character portrait, abstract and yet highly evocative, given an other-worldly feel by deft use of slow-mo, sinuous tracking sequences and music that ranges from ambient drones to discordant strings and the percussive claps, clicks and stomps of the drill routines.

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

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

Utterly compelling account of a true-life criminal investigation where "truth" can never be pinned down.

An infectious blast of funky jazz played by a terrific cast and a director at the top of their respective games.

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.