Birdman ou (A Inesperada Virtude da Ignorância)

This is a strange and beautiful and unique film, one of the best movies of the year.

This thing flies, and even if its audience is reduced to looking up and pointing skyward, that's a pleasure in itself.

It is a work of magical realism, or perhaps moderate insanity. And it will take your breath away.

It's not perfect (it can be exhausting at times, actually), but it says a lot about people, narcissism and the co-dependent relationship between actor and celebrity.

A thunderbolt reminder of the kind of quick-thinking, quick-talking, quick-witted characters that Keaton used to specialize in, and Iñárritu finds the right style to showcase his gifts.

Even when Keaton is transforming his character's stock issues into ones that feel unique and genuine, he's undercut by his director's flashiness, right up to an on-the-nose finale.

Birdman, more than most, seems a film that deserves a second viewing, not only to admire the work of Keaton and his co-stars, but to delve into its many layers.

It's a quasi-religious fable about a man haunted by the past and facing a profound moral and existential crisis in the present, and it's a dazzling display of virtuoso cinematic technique and showboat performances.

What this extraordinary work does best is drop us into the mind of an actor beset by insecurities, vanity-project hubris, and that inner critic who simply won't shut up, whisking us up into a dazzling, dizzyingly subjective whirlwind.

Whether or not Riggan is in fact possessed of divine abilities-Iñárritu offers contradictory clues along the way-Birdman puts on clear display the indisputable superpowers of its cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki.

Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman is so good, so profoundly entertaining, so confident that it makes you wonder whether the other Iñárritu -- the director of such weighty magazine spreads as 21 Grams, Babel, and Biutiful -- was a fraud all along.

Explodes with visionary ideas, adopting the language of dreams to explore and upend the very idea of storytelling.

Does it dip? A time or two. Does it take vivid flight? Absolutely.

It's a white elephant of a movie that conceals a mouse of timid wisdom, a mighty and churning machine of virtuosity that delivers a work of utterly familiar and unoriginal drama.

To make a movie that risks such obnoxiousness and have it turn out this great is close to a miracle, and also one definition of true artistry.

The brazenly off-kilter comedy offers a blistering look at how an industry rat race can decimate a man's self-worth.

Challenges, surprises and dazzles while still working at the edges of a frazzled mind.

A jaw-dropping stylistic wow that spins, pirouettes, turns inside out, and miraculously stays aloft for two hours.

I want to like Birdman more, but I don't have to; it's already so pleased with itself.

Iñárritu is a magician of transference; he strong-arms the audience into sharing Riggan's racing heart rate and roiling gut-feel.