If it’s hard to understand exactly what Godard is trying to say in this brief scrapbook scamper—it clocks in at one hour, 25 minutes—just watching it is a strange, melancholy pleasure, and an open window into the world of things that worry its creator.

It's a long drink of water at the fountain of pop-social memory.

A movie like Selma should be a relic in a time capsule from 1965, a clue to how well we heeded King’s words and how far we have advanced. Instead it is a reminder that the “American problem” has yet to be solved.

"Shrek," this film's prime competition for the first Animated Feature Oscar, is a synoptic parody of fairy tales. In Monsters, Inc. the gags aren't as spot-on but the technique is miles ahead. The vision is grander and warmer.

Colombani has created uncommonly arresting entertainment.

It's a real family film, relatively light on the violence and funny without being overly crude; it even has some touching moments.

Luhrmann has sourced some rare Super 8 footage from the Graceland archives. This newfound footage, painstakingly restored, forms the fabric of EPiC, which, despite Luhrmann’s penchant for hurtling over the top—or maybe even because of it—manages to feel profoundly intimate.

I don't think it attains the Godfather level -- it lacks dark passion and grand-scale irony -- but it is an intelligent, well-made and seductive movie.

The sensible formality of Taylor Hackford's direction has the effect of cooling the film's narrative frenzies and helping the actors dig some simple, truthful stuff out of the hubbub.

[A] sexy, spiky love story.

The raunchy but charming Going the Distance is credible, intimate and more appealing than 90% of the romantic pairings in American movies these days.

Luckily, we have the benefit of being able to read the future even as we watch Thirteen Lives, and that leaves us free to enjoy Howard’s crackerjack storytelling skills, not to mention the picture’s bracing, casually heroic lead performances.

Petzold loves his romantic bargains, his meditations on longing, obsession and deceit, and he unfurls all of that seductive cloth of gold in Undine.

This is a movie of gentle but resonant pleasures; it slows the world down, a little, for the span of time you’re watching it. And couldn’t we all use a little of that these days?

Eventually you may come to think of Talk to Me as a true movie rarity -- a very honest yet curiously affecting experience.

For stretches of the film, von Trieria is as welcome as Siberia. You must stay to the end for a potent payoff, when the tragic magic of the opening scenes is reasserted.

Designed and destined to win no awards, Machete is expert, cartoon-violent, lighthearted fun. Just the thing to send Junior back to school in a good mood.

Indeed, the entire film is a kind of sock-hop benefit for Approaching Middle Age. This maturing generation never played Taps with such glamour or good humor. Play the music and let the big chill—the knowledge that "we're all alone out there, and we're going out there tomorrow"—melt away in the warmth of the feel-good movie of '83.

It is not as exciting as Star Wars itself, which had the advantage of novelty. But it is better and more satisfying than The Empire Strikes Back, which suffered from a hectic, muddled pace, together with the classic problems of being the second act in a three-act play.

This is a good, serious and absorbing movie -- especially, perhaps, for a reviewer who is roughly Kepesh's age and, of course, eagerly evading the issues his story forces up.

The storytelling isn’t always straightforward. But stick with it, go with it, and revel in the pleasure of being spoken to as an adult.

There is a looseness to the dialogue that suits the mood of the story-each character gets his or her own bombshell (or two) to digest and has to figure out how to cope with it.

One of the most perfectly constructed pictures of the whole year, a taut, magnetic, visually splendid little package anchored by a sly star turn from Blake Lively.

This documentary, a gallivanting time trip through a bolder film era, is Herzog's final collaboration with Kinski: an act of love and exorcism.

Transcending Holo-kitsch, In Darkness is often a thrilling adventure picture - as if Anne Frank had found an "Inglourious Basterd" to help her make "The Great Escape."

[Filmmaker John] Hughes must refer to this as his ‘”Bergman film”: lots of deep talk and ripping off of psychic scabs. But this film maker is, spookily, inside kids. He knows how the ordinary teenagers, the ones who don’t get movies made about them, think and feel: why the nerd would carry a fake ID (”So I can vote”), and why the deb would finally be nice to the strange girl (” ‘Cause you’re letting me”). He has learned their dialect and decoded it for sympathetic adults. With a minimum of genre pandering—only one Footloose dance imitation—and with the help of his gifted young ensemble, Hughes shows there is a life form after teenpix. It is called goodpix.

What’s wonderful about Bros is how un-different it is.

Till is an affirmation of just how much Emmett Till’s life mattered, and continues to matter long beyond his last breath.