A great movie, an astonishing achievement on nearly every level.

A great movie, a look inside a world so foreign that it might as well be another planet, yet so universal that its observations are painfully familiar to anyone, anywhere.

Riva, meanwhile, is astounding, not just in the way she portrays the physical manifestation of her decline, particularly later in the film, but also earlier, when she knows she is fading and does not wish to do so. The look in her eyes, the sadness in her face, is crushing.

Toy Story 3 is very much a worthy entry in the series, a movie well worth making (and seeing). It continues the legacy. It just doesn't expand upon it.

Using the interviews along with news footage and occasional re-enactments, Moreh conducts a kind of primer in the organization’s history, which is, in its own way, a history of modern Israel. It’s fascinating.

A genuine triumph, a great movie with astounding performances so natural, so genuine, that you forget it's a movie.

As its title suggests, This Is Not a Film may not be what we're used to in a movie, but in many ways it's much, much more.

Yun's performance is genuinely beautiful, a haunting expression of life, of its disappointments and its possibilities, rendered in a way that befits the title.

The Artist is such an engaging, delightful film that, if you like movies, you will walk out of the theater with a smile. You just will; it's that inspired.

To say that the film is uncomfortable to watch is an understatement. It's searing. Yet it's also invaluable.

Scarier than anything you'll find in a horror movie this time of year.

A host of British acting royalty, meanwhile, roams around the film: Derek Jacobi as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Claire Bloom as Queen Mary, Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill and so on.

It's a sort of slow-boil Russian noir, if that genre exists, and if it doesn't, it does now. It's also a statement on class discrepancy in post-Soviet Russia. Arrogance, betrayal, crime and violence are all part of the story, directed and co-written by Andrei Zvyagintsev.

With shifting loyalties, unlikely heroes, truths revealed and a little help from friends, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 winds the series up in a most-satisfying fashion.

It's a movie that should be seen, a throwback to a looser, freer cinema. Wake in Fright has a tremendous '70s vibe to it, a "they-don't-make-them-like-this-anymore" feel that is as welcome as a cold beer in the Outback. [25 Oct 2012]

On some level Moneyball is about loyalty: loyalty to an idea, loyalty to a partnership forged by desperation, loyalty to the values you believe in. Whether that was Lewis' intention in the book, or Beane's intention in taking the risk, doesn't matter. It's the formula Miller came up with for the film, and with the team of Pitt and Hill, it's a winning one.

If it sounds like so much backroom politicking, it is. But it's exceptionally interesting, entertaining backroom politicking.

Watching the film, emotions range from sadness, of course, to frustration to outright anger.

Mark Ruffalo, in just the right amount of stubble, grease and leather, plays Paul, about as cool an instant dad as a SoCal kid named Laser could hope for.

The whole film is an exercise in trust and the lack thereof. In the end, it’s a kind of horror film, really, a reminder that these sorts of things were endured by so many for so long, with hope an unlikely ally.

Simply put, Argo is why we go to movies.

The film is not an epic. It's not a masterpiece. But it is an involving study of men searching, searching for answers, for belonging, for a foothold in life at a time when footholds were hard to find.

A mixture of magical realism, Southern gothic, coming-of-age movie, star turn for first-timers, disaster story and out-and-out strangeness. It's unlike any film you've seen.

A sparkling documentary in which we can't trust that anything in it is true. And yet you would never call it a hoax.

It's just as accurately described as a bunch of British guys sitting around acting. But what actors! The cast includes Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Mark Strong,Ciarán Hinds and Toby Jones.

Not just a fascinating character study but a kind of horror movie as well.

Engagement with the enemy isn't a possibility here. It's a certainty. The unit will face fire daily, sometimes as often as four or five times. The stress is incredible, the courage displayed even more so.

Beautiful, baffling, poetic, pretentious, it's one big ball of moviedom. Malick tackles the whole shooting match, pondering (and showing) the creation of the universe, life itself, death and the afterlife, and everything in between.

Greenwood is fantastic; his Meek occasionally lets down his facade of omniscience - but only occasionally. And Williams gives Emily not dignity exactly, but a calm, steely insistence on survival.

If you're willing to let a movie wash over you and work at what it might mean, you'll love "Holy Motors," Leos Carax's surreal ode to … identity? Movies? Performance?

There isn't a false note among the performances. It's the first movie for Hayward and Gilman; whatever awkwardness they display is appropriate. Willis may never have been better. Norton is fantastic. Murray and McDormand are also ... well, you get the idea.

Although it can be harrowing and disturbing, Joachim Trier's film -- and Lie's performance -- are so masterful that the movie seems more like a searing portrait of self-discovery and realization, with the understanding that not everything you learn about yourself will be pleasant.

Gordon-Levitt has been so terrific for a while now that he's become a magnetic presence; Willis is also on a nice streak, not as strong here as in "Moonrise Kingdom," but still quite good.

It is particularly rewarding to see Clooney outside his comfort zone of self-composed cool in The Descendants, Alexander Payne's beautifully gentle, funny and moving film.

The catharsis found here is far quieter, and much more effective, whether it be the pain expressed in a student's essay or the honesty found in a simple gesture, one that ends the film in beautifully moving fashion.

At times hilarious but ultimately heartbreaking, Project Nim is a great chronicle of the 1970s and all the nutty ideas that implies; academia in particular comes in for a hard reckoning.

For anyone with an interest in dance, Pina is a must-see. For anyone not interested in contemporary dance, Pina is a should-see. It could change your mind.

The naturalistic style Michod employs adds to the sense of dread.

What Scorsese has really made is a beautifully crafted love letter to movies, the passion of his life. What sounded like an odd pairing winds up being a perfect fit.

What makes 56 Up, like the “Up” films before it, so remarkable is how it puts these stories together, giving us an ensemble of characters as interesting as any in a scripted drama.

It's this simple: If you like movies, you need to see Side by Side.

127 Hours is based on Ralston's memoir, and it's a really good movie because director Danny Boyle is a genius.

Chomet's defiantly two-dimensional artwork is warm, inviting, beautiful, establishing immediately a comfort level, at least for audiences of, ahem, a certain age.

Villeneuve's telling of her story - and of her children's - is painful, searing and something close to brilliant.

The only flaw here is the score. It's beautiful but so obtrusive, particularly at the start, that it threatens to turn the proceedings into melodrama.

Some of the behavior of Uriel and Eliezer will make you squirm. But Ashkenazi and Bar-Aba are so compelling in their performances of difficult men that you'll gladly suffer.

It is gripping from the start, not just because of the quality of the music, but because of Marley's magnetic, challenging personality, as well.

Slow, stark and sometimes surreptitiously beautiful, Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon is as cold and clinical an examination of evil as you could imagine.

Le Havre is a small bit of movie magic, a story that plays more as a fable even as it deals with something as topical as immigration.

There is no particularly cathartic climax to Frances Ha. Instead there is a more realistic depiction of Frances’ growth. Like Gerwig’s performance, it’s natural, it’s realistic, perfectly believable.

The Secret in Their Eyes never lets you forget that you're watching a movie - and never lets you wish you were doing anything else.

Once it's done, you feel terrible for these people, for their lives, for their daughter, especially. Is that entertainment? To each his own, but it is compelling and, yes, rewarding.

A delightful film - gentle, playful, creative and ultimately happy - though it's a tricky journey.

Whatever you like or hate, or like and hate, about Quentin Tarantino's movies, is in full display here. It's long (too long) and bloody, profane and gleeful, with movie-genre references stuffed so tightly into each scene they practically spill out onto the theater floor. Restraint is not his strong suit...Entertainment is, and Django has plenty of that.

The great success for Mendes and Craig, however, is that while Skyfall obviously has a great fondness for the past, it's not trapped there. It also anticipates Bond's future. In this immensely satisfying movie, so do we.

A delicious trifle for anyone who has ever dreamt of bantering about the cinema with Luis Buñuel or lounging at the piano to hear Cole Porter sing "Let's Do It."

The metaphor is plain yet elegant: Ai is the clever cat busily devising ways to push through the barriers physical, cultural, mental -- that make humans less than free. And in China, of course, the biggest of those barriers is the one-party state.

For a movie that seems at times to have no idea what it's trying to do, 'Silver Linings Playbook' is compulsively watchable. ... Throwing together so many movie tropes and blending them is both a brilliant idea and a scary one, but one that Russell proves well capable of handling.

It’s all a neat trick. Or exercise. Or brain-teaser. Whatever you want to call it, Upstream Color is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. But once you have seen it, once isn’t going to be enough

Melancholia is an intense, exhausting experience. That may not sound appealing, and for some, it won't be. But nor should it be off-putting. Proceed with caution, perhaps. But proceed nevertheless.

The Queen of Versailles is funny, sad, infuriating, instructive. It's the American Dream inflated to ridiculous extremes, until it bursts.

A gorgeously shot, well-acted Western that resonates more the more you let it settle.

Along the way, Koichi and Ryunosuke grow up a little bit; Kore-eda isn't opposed to letting reality intrude on their lives. It's not sad, but more wistful -- the young actors make it so. They are delightful. So, too, is I Wish.

It is undeniably fun to see such a great movie sliced and diced and put back together in so many ways. Too often when we see a movie we like, we just say it’s good, recommend it to someone and leave it at that.

The acting is uniformly terrific, just a marvel to watch.

Where Assayas’ film really shines is in capturing that feeling, when adolescence is stumbling awkwardly toward adulthood, that the most important thing in the history of the world is the thing that is occupying your thoughts and emotions at this particular moment.

As with "The Central Park Five," you come away from the film impressed by the storytelling but enraged by the facts. It's outrageous that this kind of thing happens, but Berg does an outstanding job of showing us how it does.

Kapadia does an outstanding job of getting at what Senna meant to Brazilians and to his sport. The man himself was a tougher nut to crack, but maybe that's best. A little mystery suits a good story, and Senna is definitely that.

This is not an anti-religious polemic, though it easily could have gone that way. Instead it is a much more thoughtful film and in some ways more troubling. No one is trying to do the wrong thing here, but, as with most things in life, it becomes increasingly hard to know what the right thing might be.

There is a sad sweetness to the whole affair, for lack of a better term. Or maybe it's a sweet sadness. But O'Brien's outlook on life (he thinks his use-by date may be approaching), and Hawkes' portrayal of it, elevates the film beyond what's on the page, making what's on the screen a lot more satisfying.

Especially rewarding about Oduye's performance is how she's able to portray that frustration while retaining hope and optimism.

A compulsively watchable look at Rivers.

As a portrait of modern warfare, politics and propaganda, Coriolanus is intriguing, even if the gritty action sequences don't quite measure up to the realism of "The Hurt Locker."

David O. Russell's film makes use of some terrific performances - Christian Bale is brilliant, as is Melissa Leo, even by their lofty standards.

It may be slow by Hollywood standards, but it's accessible at every moment, and we come away feeling that human character is more complex, and perhaps darker, than any studio is willing to test an audience with.

Think of Drive as the cinematic equivalent of riding in a car that projects a fashionably stylish image. Sure, the gas mileage may be terrible and the engine unreliable, but it's such a smooth, good-looking ride that you'll put up with the annoyances.

The look of the film is jaw-dropping at times, beautiful to behold. If the story... can't quite keep pace with the look of the film (and, alas, it can't) it will take you awhile to notice.

Succeeds in portraying a life so solitary that, even when he knows what's going on, that's a deal Owen is willing to make.

You can read Emma's affair and its eventual effect on Edoardo as an inverted oedipal thing, or perhaps as a metaphor for decadence, the embodiment of a family that subconsciously realizes it's in decline and must fight to warm its blood.

Malik Bendjelloul really knows how to spin a yarn.

It's all or nothing with Black Swan. Either you embrace its headlong descent into madness brought on by the pressures of artistic perfection, compounded by smothering anxiety, or you reject it. It's that simple.

Please Give is an almost perfectly rendered slice of life, buoyant with wonderful performances.

The Dark Knight Rises brings the Batman story to a close in enormous, satisfying fashion, not just on the huge scale it builds for itself, but on a human level as well.

A fantastically entertaining movie.

Jiro Ono is a magician.

He's often called the Yiddish Mark Twain; supposedly Twain, upon hearing this, said to tell Aleichem that Twain was the American Sholem Aleichem.

Polanski builds suspense slowly, exquisitely. It's not a matter of shocking the audience, although there are surprises, but of creating an ever-growing sense of dread.

It's all a seedy, sordid mess, and it only gets worse -- and more and more intriguing. Layton engages in re-enactments of some parts of the story, a tactic that is either helpful or annoying, depending on your appetite for such things.

It relies on a singularly brilliant performance by Colin Firth to make it one of the year's more satisfying films.

Like its stars, the film's not particularly flashy, it's just good, and it's hard to find fault in that.

As much as his admirers praise him, they also say they don't know much about him or his private life. Press opens a small window into that world.

Thanks to a particularly even-handed job by director Michael Rapaport, the story emerges as compelling, even for non-fans in the audience.

What he (Fukunaga) doesn't deliver, however, is a fresh take on an often-told love story.

[Washington's is] a tremendous performance. It's when he is on-screen (most of the time) that Zemeckis' film really, if you'll excuse the expression, takes flight.

Olsen makes us understand, as best we can, Martha's plight. She has a tenuous grip on reality, and, thanks to Olsen's performance and Durkin's sure hand, by the film's end, so do we.

Never miss a chance to see Helen Mirren. You certainly could do worse as far as movie advice goes. Mirren may not be the only reason to see The Last Station, about the final year of Leo Tolstoy's long, eventful life, but she's the best reason.

A terrific piece of entertainment. The financial lingo will please money wonks. But the film as a whole focuses more on the people and personalities who went into such a catastrophic failure.

Like Someone in Love is not a complicated story, but in Kiarostami’s telling, it is a rich one, and a rewarding one, too.