The rare film possessed with the courage required to shine a light into that abyss knowing full well that down is the only way out.

You may often find yourself second-guessing the film, questioning how—and if—it will all come together. But by the time of the intense and impassioned climax, a storm of emotion is ensured: a great movie rising before you like a delusion, like a dream.

It sits at the mature end of Tarantino’s work, bringing his tongue-in-cheek storytelling together with exquisite craft and killer lead performances from Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio. And yet, it’s still very much a Tarantino film, trading in genuine emotion one minute, unapolegetically silly the next.

Much of the movie’s revolutionary impact should be credited to the city itself: The Dakota looms menacingly, every bit the Gothic pile as any Transylvanian vampire’s mansion.

It’s a more self-consciously artful film than its predecessor, an admirable spectacle rather than an entrancing human story. But as a work of pure, imaginative cinema, it comes close to genius.

Prepare to fawn at Bergman’s most metaphysically profound film; you may even laugh.

Matthew McConaughey finally locates his perfect métier as the town's Fordian skeptic, a district attorney who smells a rat.

Like the wood-grained farmhouse itself — a beautiful piece of production design by Julie Berghoff — The Conjuring has an analog solidity that makes the terror to come almost unbearable.

Turning the on-location Tokyo streets into the perfect backdrop for a cartoonishly colorful version of hardboiled drama - call it Pulp Art - House of Bamboo keeps its story line about an undercover Army cop (Stack) battling a gangster (Ryan) on the lean and mean side.

This San Fernando Valley palimpsest is so buoyant and bubbly, it practically floats off the screen. It’s the giddiness that grabs you in the Californian’s latest gem, and the dizzying sense of possibility and innocence. It left me with a contact high.

The beauty of this movie, both a nostalgic romp and a futuristic scream, is its stubborn insistence on getting all the trapped-in-amber details right.

Whatever your favourite side to the limitlessly faceted David Bowie, this magnificently mind-bending film serves it up in a 140-minute career-spanning opus that races by in a snap of the fingers. It’s almost as extraordinary as the man himself.

The understated film builds into a gut punch that’s more painful than anything in the superficial, recent Roger Ailes exposé "Bombshell."

Nothing about the film’s coming-of-age narrative, nor the rise and fall of its core romance, is intrinsically new or daring, yet Kechiche’s freewheeling perspective on young desire is uncommon in its emotional maturity.

The entire film is less moulded in light than carved in stone: it's magisterial cinema, and almost unbearably moving.

A remarkably assured debut for Coen, formerly assistant editor on The Evil Dead.

It’s Robinson’s mastery of tone that makes Withnail endure

She’s charming, authoritative, and ferociously intelligent. ‘I think she captured the essence of what it means to be human, to be alive and to be here on this Earth,’ says Winfrey. She’s speaking about one of Morrison’s characters, but it goes double for the author.

There’s an edge to The Circus that suggests a man gazing deep into the void, laughing at the darkness and urging us to do the same.

The Lighthouse leaves you dazed, terrified and elated, and it signals Eggers as one of the most exciting directors working today.

An epic indictment of media manipulation, this avant-doc delivers its coup de grâce once the camera finally demands accountability - leaving the disgraced despot staring into the lens, and the abyss of history staring back into him.

The trial scenes are scripted and played with electrifying skill, as every turn and twist is amplified through Close's emotions. But it is much more than a courtroom picture. These days it is almost unheard of for a movie to keep you guessing until the last frame, but this one does, partly because Marquand plays it so beautifully straight.

Though it runs an epic five-and-a-half hours (it was made for French TV), Carlos books like no film since "Goodfellas." You will not be bored, ever.

An astonishing, compulsive film, directed with a crackling energy.

A sweet, deeply personal portrayal of female adolescence that's more attuned to the bonds between best girlfriends than casual flings with boys, writer-director Greta Gerwig’s beautiful Lady Bird flutters with the attractively loose rhythms of youth.

It remains a how-to model for making something that fancies itself a slow-burn thriller—until it isn’t slow-burning whatsoever.

Beautifully written and directed by Bergman, this paradoxically modern slice of nostalgia energetically revives the long mourned 'oddball' comedy. For once, Cage is pleasantly understated, playing the straight guy beset by nine shades of madness: lunatic mothers, deranged mobsters, singing Chieftains, and sky-diving Elvis impersonators by the dozen, they're all here in this joyous, uplifting romp.

There’s a touch of diet Brando about Elgort’s reformed bad boy-turned-lovebird, but Zegler brings a lovely brand of innocence and conviction to Maria. And don’t be surprised to see Moreno winning another Oscar. Or, for that matter, Spielberg.