Everywhere in Nowhere in Africa, skill and art translate into vivid life.

In one form or another, motion pictures have been with us since the middle of the 19th century, but there's never been one like Gravity. What's new in Alfonso Cuarón's 3-D space adventure is the nature of the motion. It's as if the movie medium had been set free to dance in a bedazzling zero-gravity dream sequence.

A singular achievement -- romantic, sensuous, intelligent and finally shattering in its sweep and thematic complexity.

Just as Aubrey's authority springs from skill and knowledge, so does the film's power. They don't make movies like this any more because few people know how to make them.

An absolutely thrilling recreation, in documentary style, of a now-legendary story.

Jacques Audiard’s superb drama, which won the top prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, rises to the challenge with the power of art and not a scintilla of sentimentality.

A sociologist might call Time a longitudinal study, a document whose value is enhanced by the decades it spans. I’d call it a joyous tribute to love and resilience, and a case study in eclectic technique.

This extraordinary flight from the humdrum is not to be missed.

When we peruse this movie, we see a superb evocation of Turner’s latter years, during the first half of the 19th century, and a performance that’s symphonic in the sweep of its eccentricities, vivid in the spectrum of its passions.

His film makes it clear that these monstrous humans are very much a part of our species. In a way, I wish I’d never seen The Look of Silence, because now I won’t be able to forget it. But that’s the point, and the film’s purpose—calling attention to the cost of staying silent, and willfully forgetful, in the face of implacable evil.

Brokeback Mountain aspires to an epic sweep and achieves it, though with singular intimacy and grace.

Everything comes together brilliantly in Silver Linings Playbook - for the film's crazed but uncrazy lovers; for the filmmaker, David O. Russell, and best of all for lucky us.

However inward the hero may be, the movie around him is thrillingly outward, not to mention poundingly onward and relentlessly upward.

The first half hour of WALL-E is essentially wordless, and left me speechless. This magnificent animated feature from Pixar starts on such a high plane of aspiration, and achievement, that you wonder whether the wonder can be sustained. But yes, it can.

Rich, evocative, crafty and exciting, it’s one of the few standout movies of the year.

The first few minutes of Leave No Trace are as entrapping as the spider webs the camera notices in passing. They catch you up in a suspenseful wilderness tale that opens out to an urgent drama of conflict, beauty and growth.

More than anything, Of Gods and Men is a drama of character, and warm humanity.

Ms. Hogg has outdone herself with an even stronger film about grief, self-discovery, the daunting uncertainties of the creative process and, before and after everything else, the mysterious power of the movie medium.

Elegantly crafted, brilliantly acted film.

A severe and eerily beautiful German-language drama.

What's so remarkable about their decadeslong campaign, though, is how desperation led to inspiration - to the inspired notion that they, as nonscientists, could still take their fate in their own hands.

You’d never know Theeb was a debut feature from Mr. Nowar’s confident technique, and I found it astonishing, given the perfection of the performances, that all but one of the actors were Bedouin villagers who had never acted before.

With its exuberant images (cats, oodles of cats), quaint Victorian settings, damask palette, odd camera angles and old-fashioned screen proportions, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain might have been too clever by more than half, except for its startling tenderness and depth of feeling, and the brilliance of its starring performances by Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy.

Better than a feelgood movie, it's a feelgreat movie -- genuinely clever, affecting when you least expect it to be and funny from start to finish.

Mr. Akin's film is so full of life that it leaves you breathless.

Operates in an orbit somewhere between Oliver Sacks and Lewis Carroll. I can't remember when a movie has seemed so clever, strangely affecting and slyly funny at the very same time.

A huge delight.

This is not the kind of 3-D that sees things leaping off the screen, though a few wandering wisps of smoke appear to escape the frame; it instead lends these images a sometimes uncanny, sometimes mesmerizing sense of depth. While it doesn’t feel integral to the project, it does, now and then, enrich it.

Mr. Luchini gives one of the best performances of the year, in one of the best movies of the year.

As a piece of filmmaking, it's stunningly effective.

Weiner, an extraordinary documentary feature about the disgraced New York politician Anthony Weiner, has it all — the surreal spectacle of contemporary retail politics, the sizzle of media madness and the mysteries of psychodrama.

[Mr. Anderson's] screenplay soars above and beyond literal references by creating the oddest power couple you’ve ever seen. Whatever the psychodynamics between Gary and Alana may be, their bond has its own brilliant logic.

Not since the halcyon days of Archie Bunker and "All in the Family" has so sharp a wit punctured so many balloons.

Profoundly moving documentary.

The result is an enchanting story of love from an idealized past that endures in the mundane present.

A lot of talent to lavish on a single movie, but the result is uncommonly smart for the genre, and not just smart but tremendously enjoyable.

A deeply serious and seriously hilarious fable of the lunacy of war.

Paul Thomas Anderson's remarkable sixth feature addresses, by extension, the all-too-human process of eager seekers falling under the spell of charismatic authority figures, be they gurus, dictators or cult leaders. Or, in the case of this masterly production, a couple of spellbinding actors.

Sensationally entertaining.

Unstrung Heroes is a revelation. [15 Sep 1995]

Chess Story is a nerve-scraping exercise in grand deception.

Just as early youth means the endless fascination of new encounters, it also brings sudden, bewildering losses. “Little Amélie” brims with feeling for every precious moment of it.

As in previous films, Mr. Baker mixes amateur and professional actors to exceptional effect.

Watching Ahlo mix his explosives is like watching a Cordon Bleu chef whipping up a stupendous soufflé.

If the plot of Ponyo is small as a minnow, its themes--the relationship between parent and child, between the young and the elderly, between friends, between man and nature--are large and fully realized.

The Housemaid is a delightful hall of mirrors in which reality turns out to be subject to infinite modification.

Much of the fun of Marjorie Prime is in figuring out where it’s going, and why. It would be shameful to reveal much more of the journey save to say that the people who make it do a splendid job.

In the entertainment culture that surrounds us, words like "harrowing," "anguishing," "unfathomable" or "horrifying" don't sell movie tickets. Capturing the Friedmans is all of these things and more.

A startlingly beautiful movie.

Pulls you in with smooth assurance, then holds you hostage to extremely creepy developments in the most awesome haunted house since "The Shining."

The comedy is elegant, frequently dark and genuinely witty. The spectacle is gorgeous.

Rarely has so scary a thriller been so well made, and never has digital video -- by the English cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle -- been put to grittier use.

The new film, shot in vivid hi-def video, is part documentary and part fiction based on interviews; it uses on-camera interviews with workers, some played by themselves and some played by actors, to evoke a past of unimaginable toil, and suffering, in the service of the Communist state.

Cinema’s power to transport is vividly on display in Nigerian writer-director C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s eerie but beautiful visit to a rich and unfamiliar setting.

The Hand of God creates a reality that is by turns hilarious, heartbreaking and remarkable for its buoyancy and grace. It’s a film from the hand of a master.

It’s surely the most spellbinding documentary ever made about the mediation process.

Messrs. Soderbergh and Koepp have followed one of (Elmore) Leonard’s Laws—“Leave out the parts that people skip”—to construct an electric, fast-paced thriller that amounts to one climactic scene piled atop another.

We are all snapshooters these days, highly placed spectators to tragedy that seems to be beyond our comprehension, let alone control. Flee takes us down to sea level.

Taken on its own terms, the film is beautifully crafted, a sequence of events, many of them stirring, along a road to redemption that intersects with a winning group of high-school kids on a losing basketball team.

This stop-action animated feature is downright sweet and tender, as well as all the other things we've come to expect from him -- funny, bizarre, graphically stunning and blithely necrophilic.

Like his (David Gordon Green's) debut feature of three years ago, the exquisite "George Washington," this new one has my heart, and I think it will have yours.

There's no better fun for movie lovers than a small, unheralded film that turns out to be terrific -- unless it's a small, unheralded sequel that trumps the original.

At the center of it all is an incomparable singer brought to life by a sensational actor. With a huge soul to fill, Jamie Foxx has filled it to overflowing.

Much of the time, though, you're transfixed by the beauty of a spectacle that seems all of a piece. Special effects have been abolished, in effect, since the whole thing is so special.

The performances are nothing less than astonishing. It's easy to understand why the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival went to both actresses, though not easy for me to see why the movie itself was included in the unprecedented joint award.

The actress gets immeasurable help from the writing: Lisbeth's anger is matched by her intelligence and her physical prowess, which enables her to administer as well as absorb pain in megadoses. But none of it would register without Ms. Rapace's singular combination of eerie beauty and feral intensity. She's a movie star unlike any other.

There's an old-Hollywood feel to the movie's solid showmanship and unabashed sophistication. These days it's feature-length 'toons, sporting the newest-fangled technology, that take kids and adults alike back to the movies' good old days.

A hugely entertaining and scarily edifying documentary.

The silliness of Jump Tomorrow takes your breath away, and I mean that as high praise.

The director Penny Marshall has gone straight to the heart of this complex story and made a powerfully poignant and illuminating film. She doesn't hesitate to push for the grand sentimental moment, but balances the teary stuff with restraint and humor. To be sure, Awakenings seems calculated to induce weeping -- and it does, without making the weeper feel cheap. [20 Dec 1990, p.A14]

Joseph Levy's sneakily stirring documentary opens up feelings you would never have expected from the premise — a portrait of three American restaurants.

With this genuinely big entertainment, powered by a beating heart, Steven Spielberg has put the summer back in summer movies.

It is, simply and stirringly, a kind of beau ideal of education, a vision of how the process can work at its best.

A remarkable -- and harrowing -- debut feature that makes you think there's hope after all for the future of independent films.

An impressive and self-impressed documentary by Jennifer Peedom, has some of the best speck shots you could imagine—not spec as in speculation, though the film offers plenty of that on the subject of why human beings choose to climb tall peaks, but speck as in the size of a human seen against a stupendous alpine landscape.

Crumb pulls us in with rich detail, and with what it says, or suggests, about art, drugs, psychology and the subconscious.... Like last year's "Hoop Dreams," this documentary does justice to a great subject. [08 Jun 1995]

Now the movie can be seen for what it was all along, remarkable by any standards.

Get Out starts with a great title and a promising idea — a black man’s fear as he walks at night down a street in an affluent white suburb. Then it delivers on that promise with explosive brilliance.

Ms. Simón, who has used both of her young performers to powerful effect, also wants us to know how resilient children can be. Some creatures are able to grow new limbs. Frida, given more than half a chance after demanding it, achieves something no less remarkable. She grows new joy and hope.

Clint Eastwood and his collaborators have made one of the best aviation movies ever, although “Apollo 13” — also starring Tom Hanks — comes very close.

The new film may not qualify for masterpiece status, but it's an enthralling portrait of a man — an exceptionally brilliant and articulate man — who personified the courage, complexity and moral ambiguity of his tortured time.

Directed with such a confident, delicate touch. Nothing is insisted on, yet whole lives are discovered and revealed in vignettes that seem as spontaneous as a laugh or a gasp.

The film honors maturity and all its weighty deliberations without putting a sheen of sentimentality on the condition.

It’s a knockout: arch, unpredictable, thematically hefty and told at a gallop. In one or two cases, I thought the twists didn’t really work, but for the most part Mr. Hancock keeps the audience richly entertained.

While there seems to be a glut of b-ball documentaries right now, “Underrated” is, much like its subject, a highly graceful, even artistic entry into a muscle-bound medium.

Ben is the family’s rock, and Mr. Mortensen gives the story unshakable grounding. He’s a star who doesn’t act like a star, yet everyone in his orbit feels his power. He and this strong, adventurous film deserve each other.

I was riveted by the performance of Paulina García, the great Chilean actress who plays Tony’s beleaguered mother. To watch her is to see exactly how less can be more. Instead of acting, she allows her character to reveal her thoughts in words that are all the more powerful for being few, far between and softly spoken.

The movie is both a thought experiment about individual choices (and the conditions that influence them) and a formal exercise in repetition and variation.

The film feels freshly minted because the man who made it has such a lively mind and fearless style. At a time when all too many movies are selling bleakness and dysfunction, it also feels like a revenant from Hollywood’s golden age, when an entertainment’s highest function was to entertain.

As odd as it may sound, it's a remarkably beautiful movie.

This beautiful -- and beautifully controlled -- film is also an object lesson in how to hypnotize an audience.

A thriller with a quietly sensational performance by Tilda Swinton.

Density of detail and intensity of experience are the twin distinctions of A Christmas Tale, a long, improbably funny and very beautiful film.

It’s a fertile idea, beautifully executed.

Thanks to this new film, though, any questions about her potential have been dispelled. Alicia Vikander has fully and memorably arrived, a luminous presence with a gift for tenderness, an instinct for understatement and formidable reserves of passion—she not only rises to the challenge of Vera’s climactic speech, but elevates the pacifist rhetoric into furious poetry.

The team's (Merchant-Ivory) best adaptation yet of a Henry James novel.

Many of the boxing genre’s conventions are observed in the screenplay by Mr. Coogler and Aaron Covington, and the fight sequences are brutally effective.... But the film is full of life and loose humor...and Creed often transcends the genre by playing with movie mythology.

Yann Demange’s ’71, with an astonishing performance by Jack O’Connell, is big-screen storytelling stripped to its dramatic and visual essentials, and the result is nothing less than shattering.