David Edelstein

The film is about an English private who is cut off from his unit in the middle of a riot in Belfast in 1971. It's a conventional and smashingly good chase melodrama, but it's also a tragedy.

In the film about a toxic Hollywood, John Cusack plays a self-help guru whose clients include Julianne Moore. It's full of anxious shoptalk and name dropping, druggy kids and druggier grown-ups.

The Argentinean film co-produced by Pedro Almodovar is up for an Oscar for best foreign language film. It features a drunk teenager who runs over a woman and an angry bride at a glitzy Jewish wedding.

The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water is visually an eyesore — a kaleidoscope of bright, mismatched colors, and in 3-D to make your headache stronger. The movie makers hit the bull's-eye.

The film about Martin Luther King's marches for voting rights is being accused of alleged historical inaccuracies. Critic David Edelstein says that's "not entirely" fair, and it's still a great movie.

Film critic David Edelstein says in 2014 none of the great material came from Hollywood studios. But, he says, it was a "wonderful year" for indie films. He names Boyhood as the best of the year.

The biopic of landscape painter J. M. W. Turner depicts a man whose mind is barely engaged by anything other than his work. He's a mystery, and his art is magically indefinite — just like the movie.

The film, based on Thomas Pynchon's novel, is set in 1970 in a beach town south of Los Angeles. With wonderful actors, it's like a gorgeous stoner art object: groovy, campy, dreamlike and funny.

In the Australian chiller, a bogeyman announces himself in a rhyming, pop-up book on a 7-year-old's shelf. But the real horror is that the boy's mom, a grieving widow, is battling psychic demons.

Cumberbatch stars as British mathematician and World War II code breaker Alan Turing in a film directed by Morten Tyldum and co-staring Keira Knightley as Turing's comrade in arms.

The film is based on du Pont's fraught relationship with two Olympic wrestlers. Wealth isn't enough — his identity hinges on winning. It's a fascinating case study, but as drama, it's one sick joke.

Christopher Nolan's film stars Matthew McConaughey as an astronaut who takes his ship through a wormhole to another galaxy to find a home for earth's inhabitants. It's cool, awe-inspiring and goofy.

Laura Poitras' new film isn't artfully shaped like her other documentaries. But she captures scenes as history is being made — and it will make you look both ways when you're on the street.

The choreography by Alejandro Iñárritu, who directed 21 Grams and Babel, will wow you. But the story about a washed-up actor about to bring off his Broadway debut is an "empty masterwork."

Director Damien Chazelle's second film centers on the agony of a drummer in a high-powered music school. The movie ties you into knots: The fear of failure is omnipresent. So is the jazz vibe.

Based on a screenplay by author Gillian Flynn, the movie is sensationally effective. It's made like a classic noir — evenly paced, with an elegance that in context is deeply perverse.

The film is based on a true story about the '80s strike Margaret Thatcher vowed to break. It's full of the Britain's best actors, and nearly every line makes you cackle or puts a lump in your throat.

In the '70s, novelist Lawrence Block created New York private investigator Matthew Scudder who chases extreme bad guys. Liam Neeson now plays the character the new grisly film directed by Scott Frank.

The film based on Dennis Lehane's short story Animal Rescue is supposed be a thriller, but the narrative doesn't have much urgency. The reason it's worth seeing? James Gandolfini is at his peak.

The British drama depicts remarkable characters, including an angry teenager who meets two father figures behind bars. It's a prison film that's shattering beyond physical violence.