Before it traps Ralston, 127 Hours gives us ample evidence of his energy, zest and boyish charm and wit.

Simple enough for children, deep enough for adults, clever enough for cynics.

Incendies was likely a crackling thing to read, but it's not quite so vivid as a finished film.

Reigns as the most assured, provocative film so far this year.

There's quality, wit and emotion throughout.

There are moments that stir, and it's always lovely, but it's generally too remote to gain hold of you truly.

The problem here is we never get much more than the pretty, the quaint and the comfortingly familiar. There's a place for such stuff in the world, yes, but that doesn't make it art.

Somewhat marred by Bruno Coulais' treacly New Age score -- as well as by Perrin's somewhat daft and repetitive narration. But the key word is "somewhat." In the main, Winged Migration is an unforgettable piece of moviemaking.

Crowd-pleasing, feel-good stuff.

A hilarious, touching, profound and inspiring film about art and dreams and self-belief and the goggle-eyed hope that you can will a miracle into reality through sheer effort and desire.

The Trip doesn't really go anywhere you didn't see it heading, but it's worth the journey.

At once spare and dense, chilly and thrilling, literate and visceral, it feeds in gray areas, teasing ambiguities and conundrums out of shadows and making strengths of inconclusiveness and uncertainty.

Credit the great Bruno Ganz with creating a vivid Hitler: furious, unsteady, crushed and frankly cracking up.

It may, finally, be the best and last word on the man, his music and his myth that we ever get on film -- an estimable achievement in itself.

The tension between the comely and comforting manner of the film and its undecided and beguiling content is, arguably, Haneke’s signature touch.

The notions of sacrifice, patriotism, race and self-identity are compellingly questioned, and the battle sequences are realized with stirring intensity.

Because make no mistake: The Dark Knight is many things, some of them deliriously fun, some of them deeply impressive, and some of them puzzling and frustrating. But most of all it is dark.

It's not a happy film, but it feels true.

Not only does this film make you think, it makes you want to think. Few films -- few works of art of any stripe -- can claim that.

With its wide-open setting and taciturn, macho characters, it's a film that earns the right to use the "Once Upon a Time" title that Sergio Leone made so perversely famous.

The film is somewhat sketch-like in its episodes and in placing Raquel within a larger world. But it’s very surefooted when it stays close in on her and her universe of chores, rituals and fears.

Cronenberg has, as Guillermo del Toro did in "Pan's Labyrinth," crafted both a drama and a fairy tale -- and he's done it in an entertainment as cracking as you could wish for.

It's Cronenberg's most mainstream work, and yet it has all the power of his creepiest nightmares.

It's surreal, erotic, creepy, frustrating, absorbing, transporting and torturous in the way only a Lynch film can be.

Quick and charming and irresistible.

It’s a fascinating story about ambition and vanity and pride, and in Sheen’s performance and the atmosphere capture by Hooper it contains truly fine and rare things.

It's a wonderfully crafted work, handsome, lively, stirring and utterly convincing in its depiction of the perils and thrills of sea life. But I'm not sure that my personal enthusiasm for it will translate entirely for viewers whose favorite movie about the high seas is, for perfectly good reasons, "Pirates of the Caribbean."

Like a picture postcard vision of his life and work: absolutely accurate as far as it goes but not too keen on looking too close for fear of uncovering anything untoward.