Amy Biancolli

It is pure, retro-cinematic joy.

Any movie that features a character calling herself Fat Amy has a pretty firm grip on irony. It helps that Fat Amy is played by Rebel Wilson ("Bachelorette," "Bridesmaids"), my favorite eccentric Aussie practitioner of lip-curled comic timing.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower hurts. It hurts because it depicts the loneliness, anxiety and all-out quivering mess of adolescence in a manner not often seen since John Hughes' heyday.

The cutest darn thing in Hotel Transylvania is the way Count Dracula spazzes into a brilliant red devil-face when provoked. The second-cutest thing is his annoyed response to being misquoted by idiot humans.

When the screenplay sticks to the tricky business of living - trying, then screwing up, then stumbling forward anyway - it hits its mark with confidence, and the big ensemble cast responds with tight little performances of affecting vulnerability.

When it's over, this documentary lingers as a testament to extraordinary human bravery. It stands as one of the most heartbreaking and suspenseful sagas of the year.

The best scenes are filmed inside the cruiser, dashboard shots that face inward instead of out, catching Gyllenhaal and Peña in moments so playful and true they make all other buddy cops look bogus by comparison.

It all adds up to a fine, funny exercise in disheveled self-deprecation: a self-portrait of a guy who can't control a major portion of his life. Which, when you get right down to it, could describe almost any of us.

Some films are harder to watch than others - not because they're bad, which makes for a different sort of painful viewing, but because they touch on areas of such profound moral discomfort that the mere act of watching makes us feel complicit. We feel like gutless witnesses to a crime. And that's what makes Compliance such a hard thing to stomach.

What makes this whole thing work is, first of all, Wilee's ride, an elegant machine that lacks any gears or brakes.

As for Butler's screenplay, it's less beguiling than preachy.

The kid is a charmer, the message is heartfelt - love your kids while you can - and, OK, the ending might jerk a few tears, even from a crank like me. OK, it did.

The resultant spoofery is nonpartisan, or at least vague - we never learn which of these flesh-pressing idiots is the Republican and which is the Democrat - and raucous in its send-ups of the moral, financial and sexual peccadilloes of the common political animal.

The film is its own beast, and it's a rare one.

Make no mistake, this is advocacy cinema; interviews with Defense Department and military officials notwithstanding, there's not much effort, on Dick's part or anyone else's, to consider any point of view besides the victims' and those who love or speak for them. That's what makes it difficult to watch. And that's what makes it necessary.

Sweet and serious as it is, the second chunk of Seeking a Friend is the lesser of the two - and hard to reconcile with the more acidic comic outlook in the film's first half. The obvious movie referent is Lars von Trier's "Melancholia," a much nastier film in a much lovelier wrapping: This one lacks an eight-minute Wagner montage.

Doesn't require anyone to love metal, or even like it. It only requires us to laugh at it - and other exemplars of bloated '80s pop, from Starship to Journey - and it does so with a campy and attitudinous spirit that's hard to resist.

The formality of Moonrise Kingdom - the orderly structure and dreamlike perfection of it all - is as poetic as any film I've seen this year.

If you're looking for cinema verite, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a fun, fizzy sequel in a franchise left for dead 10 years ago, have at it.

The Dictator's over-the-top rant against the rank lunacy of authoritarianism deploys comedy like an act of violence; it's outrageous, quick and leaves us breathless, whether from laughter or shock.

One can argue the movie's finer points, but in the end, there's no escaping its creeping pile-up of evidence that Mother Earth is critically dehydrated - and we need to do something, fast.

There are moments of genuine pathos, genuine humor, genuine surprise. As much as the film adheres to the strictures of the standard comic-book movie, it also pops with a knowing, loving, Whedon-world jokiness that keeps everything barreling along.

The results are often comical, but Pickering who made the film in tribute to his mother, the real Linda White - imbues them with faith in something, maybe dignity, maybe love, maybe just the simple human urge to keep on moving.

That the film happens to be in 3-D, with digitized settings and backgrounds, doesn't detract from the timeworn charm of watching blob-like characters lurch erratically through harebrained comic pratfalls.

Israeli writer-director Joseph Cedar imbues his tale of academic maneuvering, misunderstanding and mystery with the zest of passion and the zing of intrigue, It's a vivacious film, having its little fun with suspense-flick conventions (including Amit Poznansky's bouncing score) that build to a climactic finish.

This is better than any of the "Twilights." It features a functioning creative imagination and lots of honest-to-goodness acting by its star, Jennifer Lawrence.

The film's emotional complexities don't allow for much of the canned sentiment that normally gets dished out in romantic dramas; what emerges instead, over several reels, is endearingly tender and complicated.

What's missing is any real menace - the signature Miyazaki freak factor that turns spirits into monsters and parents into pigs.

If the characters weren't so well drawn, if the effects weren't so convincing, and if the upshot weren't so ghastly, the moral component wouldn't carry any weight. But Trank tells his tale with an emotional and visual crispness that gives the superhero genre its best crack at naturalism so far.

What a treat to find a movie so bright-eyed and true - without a trace of bathos - in its depiction of such a harrowing subject.

Moaadi is the standout here, subtly evoking filial worry and fatherly pride in one scene, popping off with rage in another: He's believably decent, believably flawed. A Separation touches on religious strictures and the role of women in Iran, but it does so with a light hand and not a twitch of condemnation.

The film benefits most of all from Rees' careful screenplay, which dances that shifting line between fear and emergent hope. One of Alike's poems says it best: "Even breaking is opening. And I am broken. I am open."

The film is sweet. Its observations of life in the aftermath of death ring true, especially for anyone who's traveled the contours of mourning. And although it doesn't rank among Crowe's greatest films, it's a better, tighter, more disarming piece of grief work than his baggy and zigzaggy "Elizabethtown."

Such are the timeless joys of the books (and now the movie), this sparkling absurdity and knack for buckling swash under the worst of circumstances.

If you widen your eyes and turn off your brain, it all adds up to cracking good fun.

Screenwriters Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan have clarified a few things that needed clarifying, camouflaged a few things that needed camouflaging - and gently tugged some passive flashbacks into the active present. It's a cagey adaptation.

Shame has a lolling pace and stunning visual clarity. Structurally, it's close to perfect - its precision echoed in the Glenn Gould piano recordings of Bach keyboard works that Brandon listens to obsessively.

There's nothing dark about Arthur: It's as bright and twinkling as a Christmas tree, decked with warmth and humor.

A triumph of simplicity, innocence and goofy jokes.

Lindberg, who wrote a book on the subject called "Punk Rock Dad," is at the center of this sweet, revealing and proudly foulmouthed ethnography on rock and the modern dad.

Herzog, as ever, is obsessed most of all with human nature: Into the Abyss explores our deepest urges to love, and live, and kill.

Chandor's writing goes to some darkly interesting places, and there's fun to be found in individual performances.

If the movie ends too abruptly, it still gives plenty of screen time to its nicely screwed-up central character. And it's still a solid, assured feature debut from the latest brothers to watch.

Because Benavides is a south Texas town, the screenplay touches inevitably on the flow of immigrants at the border - and resentment at their presence. But All She Can puts a new face on this resentment, highlighting the frustration of legal Mexican Americans.

This is brutish, visceral stuff - a type of raw-meat violence that's undeniably cinematic but seems, to this worried parent, ill-fitted for PG-13.

The protagonists and their idle dreams of a fiery wasteland may well be nihilistic. But the movie - with its stunning cinematography and lingering aftertaste of old-school heartbreak - most assuredly is not.

Good story, great characters, a setting plucked from history - and a multiracial, multigenerational ensemble cast stacked with fabulous actresses. But the thing that makes The Help such a rousing crowd-pleaser is its generous helping of baked goods.

Crisp, acid-tongued and sharply acted, it's the sort of exercise in tangy Celtic cynicism that's become one of the Emerald Isle's most reliable exports.

What matters most in this sad, sobering movie is not what anyone says; it's what goes unsaid for most of the running time.

What distinguishes Cap is his humble backstory, which involves neither hairy gods nor hot-dogging test pilots but a kid from Brooklyn who just wants to fight for freedom.

After watching Project Nim, a distressing portrait of a misguided 1970s language experiment, you'll be glad you're not a chimp in a cage. But you might want to revoke your membership in the human race, which comes across as a narcissistic, hedonistic, self-absorbed, neglectful, anthropomorphizing and arrogant bunch of hippie-dippy know-it-alls.

The epic and impassioned close that the saga deserves, a sweeping Wagnerian finish that's taut with suspense and wet with emotion.

A Better Life isn't an instant classic, but it tells its story with a simplicity and compassion that other urban dramas would be wise to emulate.

The movie turns lighter and less morose as it rolls along, which is good for viewers who prefer a bit of honey to offset the bitter taste of hormones.

Ayoade is well known to British viewers for his role as a coddled nerd in the sitcom "The IT Crowd," so it's fair to expect laughs from his directorial debut feature. But much depends on your mind-set; U.S. audiences could have trouble with the movie's less-than-sunny worldview.

For all of its brutal flashbacks and heavy-handed devices, The First Grader works best when it works quietly.

Nostalgia for the Light is a strange and stunning work of art: a poem disguised as a movie about astronomers in the Atacama desert of Chile.

A film of great hilarity, humanity, idiosyncrasy and grade-A, eyebrow-singeing raunch.

In style and structure, it mimics an old-style studio effort, a culture-clashing comedy of manners that's tinged with melodrama and filmed in a smart progression of medium shots.

As a runner, the robber is dogged; as a robber, the runner is efficient, explosive and fast.

The humor's a little strange, and the action's a little frenetic, but all of it whooshes past in a swirl of tropical color and pseudo-South American bonhomie. Gorgeous scenery meets oddball characters and mild ethnic stereotyping.

The film about violence and retribution is a tough piece of work, subtle in some ways, obvious in others, viscerally affecting throughout.

The effect is an endearing and plainspoken clarity that stops just short of naturalism; the people in his movies don't seem real, exactly, but we end up caring about them as though they were.

A smart, juicy entertainment, but it's the kind of straight-up legal drama that hinges entirely on crafty storytelling and across-the-board solid performances.

It is, all in all, off its rocker. But it's gorgeous.

For all the hellfire histrionics and well-timed jump scares, there is actual, admirable intellect behind The Rite.

Solid performances, and a sincere faith in the dignity of the average working stiff, save it from getting too preachy.

This is a remarkable movie: lovely, slow-paced and almost silent, rich with pathos and deft comic gestures.

Baughman and O'Hara's documentary spews out so much information in just 111 minutes that the movie would have benefited from a longer run time and tighter focus.

Megamind, it turns out, is a villain to root for.

Once it gets rolling, Unstoppable doesn't pause for breath.

The King's Speech is a warm, wise film - the best period movie of the year and one of the year's best movies.

It's still a spirited look - well written, beautifully acted, full of uplift - at lovably cheeky heroines on the march for a little respect.

Spitzer was undone by his zipper, but as Client 9 makes clear, he was also undone by his refusal - or inability - to make nice with some of the state's most powerful characters.

"Hornet's Nest" isn't the best of the three (that would be the first film, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"), but it's the most challenging.

A first-class genre entry stacked with dandy performances and some crackerjack action to boot.

Gluck also directed "Fired Up!," another teen charade with lots of quick-witted verbal raunch. Easy A does a few things better.

This is one helluva drama, with one helluva star turn by Jennifer Lawrence as Ree.

A fine, fun remake of a movie that updates, transplants and reimagines the original without sacrificing its heart or goofy charm.

Vast, beautiful and meticulously detailed.

At its simplest, "Fire" tells of Mikael's efforts to exonerate Lisbeth. At its most baroque, it explores a vast web of sex trafficking and deep-rooted conspiracy that goes back decades and touches on Lisbeth's inflammatory background.

A compact British drama that does more with only three people and a few modest settings than most movies do with computerized bloat and a cast of hundreds.

A movie about an obese Harlem teenager who's raped by her father and abused by her mother. It's depressing, devastating, harrowing and repulsive. But there are lyric flights of hope interspersed among that raw naturalism, and that's what makes this movie amazing.

Handily beats back the evils of boredom.

For Kline's performance alone, The Extra Man is well worth seeing.

The acting is immaculate; the editing is seamless; the imagery is blunt.

This is a handsome, conventional biopic, as fluent and polished as its subject matter.

It's a remarkable film: A gritty, gut-churning, crime thriller based on a true story. Its greatness lies in its unwavering fidelity to human nature and the unstoppable laws of the wild.

What joy it is to watch the man (Douglas) slime himself on camera.

It does for hit men what "Up in the Air" did for frequent-flying corporate terminators, minus the comic tang.

This breezy action comedy is a noisy affirmation that life goes on after 50, that retirement doesn't mean redundancy, and that nobody - young or old - can wear a long cream evening gown like Mirren.

In this case, it's considerably better, adapting the 007 template in a story of a crazed bald cat named Kitty Galore (voiced by a hissing, chichi Bette Midler) and her malevolent plot to conquer the world. It's brilliant in its simplicity

This is spellbinding, transporting, damn near indescribable and the latest indication that Christopher Nolan might be the slyest narrative tactician making movies today.

This is a sobering piece of advocacy cinema.

It isn't a long journey. Kisses clocks at 72 minutes, which feels something less than feature length. It's long enough to include a few cliches and nagging questions, yet it's short enough to leave you wanting more.

Although this one indulges in unnecessary CGI enhancements, it's still a striking piece of character-driven horror, and it ranks among the more understated fright fests to hit the mainstream in recent memory.

Never Let Me Go is gorgeous. And depressing. It's exquisitely acted. And depressing. It's romantic, profound and superbly crafted, shot with the self-contained radiance of a snow globe. And it's depressing.