Ron Howard’s Rush presents an authentic-feeling re-creation of the 1970s rivalry between Formula 1 drivers Niki Lauda and James Hunt
Blue Jasmine is the best film Woody Allen has made since 2005’s Match Point – or even 1989’s Crimes and Misdemeanors
Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight returns us to the ever-evolving relationship between Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy)
Only God Forgives, the second teaming of the director and star behind Drive, is a gorgeously photographed, cold-as-ice experience
Silver Linings Playbook is genuinely funny and genuinely touching, and moves throughout familiar territory with incredible skill
Zero Dark Thirty was conceived as an account of the CIA’s attempts to track down the al Qaeda founder behind the 9/11 attacks
Django Unchained represents Tarantino Unchained: it’s the director’s longest, most indulgent, and gratuitously violent film yet
The Master is another magnificent piece of filmmaking from the director of Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will Be Blood
Seven Psychopaths is a film about writing, or more specifically writer’s block, perhaps born from the writer-director’s own difficulties
Argo is an incredible story, told with lean efficiency and expert craftsmanship, which is mighty good enough
Cloud Atlas is a bold and ambitious piece of filmmaking that demands to be seen and analyzed, and reseen and reanalyzed
A wordless blend of incredible imagery and emotive music, Samsara was a long time in the making
Is Juraj Herz’s The Cremator the best Czech horror film ever made?
Looper manages to capture both our eyes and minds despite a (relatively) small budget and an absence of overdone CGI effects
Karel Fiala stars as a soft-drinkin’ cowboy in director Oldřich Lipský’s classic 1964 musical western
Beasts of the Southern Wild is a spellbinding piece of work that brings something new and exciting to the screen
Moonrise Kingdom might be Wes Anderson’s most accessible film to date, and he paints this story with love and care
Prometheus, director Ridley Scott’s prequel to Alien, is a masterful mixture of brainy sci-fi ideology and splatter movie schlock
We Need to Talk About Kevin is a bold and challenging film that deals with a topic that many try to understand, but few actually do
Don’t Think couldn’t be a more appropriate title for The Chemical Brothers’ debut concert film, a mind-bending trip
The Artist – a (mostly) silent film set during the dawn of the sound era in Hollywood – took the 2011 awards season by storm
Bleak and draining, without much in the way of hope, Steve McQueen’s Shame is a powerful film but not an easy one to watch
Hugo, which is set in 1930s Paris, has been endlessly referred to as director Martin Scorsese’s “love letter to the movies”
In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, David Fincher has taken familiar material and managed to churn out something fresh and exciting