Andrew O'Hehir

It honestly makes no difference if you don't even know the rules of chess and have never visited New York; this is a story about human potential and the lingering possibilities of the American dream.

Despite an overly abrupt and oblique conclusion, this is a major American film, announcing the arrival of an independent director who deserves all the hype.

All in all, an exciting and terrifying new perspective on an era you probably thought you understood.

Michael Bay sends a clear message to those of us who've been making fun of him: He's been in on the joke the whole time.

The story sounds great, on paper: It''s got interracial romance and betrayal, political and ethnic violence, and a faint feminist undercurrent. But the resulting movie is so pretty and so utterly lifeless you can almost smell the embalming fluid coming off the screen.

Portman and Judd aren't responsible for the mendacious and finally repulsive sentimentality of Where the Heart Is, but by the end their wholesome glow seemed contaminated by it, and that's a shame.

A stark and beautiful film traces a Afghan woman's journey across a landscape we may never understand.

Given that "Chorus Line" is almost the paradigmatic backstage story, I guess Every Little Step is a meta-backstage story, capturing the "American Idol"-scale audition process.

A dazzling and delightful work of modernist animation, a classic movie romance and a hip-swinging, finger-popping tale of musical revolution, Chico & Rita is the first big serendipitous surprise of 2012.

It’s a high-spirited, swashbuckling lark driven by cartoonish special effects and an ingenious double-layered nostalgia that allows it to become a virtual mixtape of ‘70s hits that predate its intended audience: “Hooked on a Feeling,” “The Piña Colada Song,” “Fooled Around and Fell in Love,” etc.

A lean, disturbing and beautifully photographed thriller from writer, director and actor Rafi Pitts, who was born in Tehran, educated in Britain and did his filmmaking apprenticeship in France, working for Jean-Luc Godard and Leos Carax.

With this sober, mournful, gorgeously mounted and marvelously acted drama, Miike connects himself to the greatest traditions of Japanese film and to the period of historical self-examination that followed the debacle of World War II. And he also crafts one hell of a fable of heroism.

This is a solid, spellbinding drama based closely on real history, which along the way offers a not-so-subtle commentary on the diverse, immigrant-rich society of contemporary France.

Wood's film works, first and foremost, as a powerful character drama; it's not trying to teach historical or ideological lessons.

If the resulting film doesn't work equally well at all levels, Wood (who starred in "Thirteen") gives an astonishing performance that pushes it most of the way there.

Jane Eyre is a passionate, impossible love story, one of the most romantic ever told. But it's also a cold, wild story about destruction, madness and loss, and this movie captures its divided spirit like none before.

A haunting, beautifully told tale about a genuine American original.

This is no art film, but Edel and Eichinger supply an action-packed, reasonably coherent account of youthful rock 'n' roll idealism run amok, and how it produced the craziest phenomenon of the crazy European far left.

This is a charming, low-key entry in the burgeoning tradition of travelog indies -- by which I mean feature films that take you to some godforsaken outback you're unlikely to visit personally.

Slowly but surely, Flight degenerates from a tale of moral paradox and wounded romance into a mid-1990s after-school special about addiction and recovery.

If the ambiguity of these stories may frustrate some viewers – we long to be clearly told which of these people are good, if any, and which bad – that is the ambiguity of the world, the ambiguity addressed by Heineman’s Michoacán friend with the bandana and the AK-47.

Varda's photography is a pure joy, but rereleasing this film four decades later, absent any commentary on the ironic distance between then and now, is a typically challenging gesture.

I suspect this movie will sharply divide Nichols' existing fan base for reasons I can only allude to vaguely in a review; I loved it, or almost all of it, but I can understand the uncertainty.

One of the most extraordinary accomplishments in recent American nonfiction filmmaking. It hits hard as to facts, and opens its eyes to inexpressible mysteries. It strikes a clear moral and philosophical stance, and then -- as part of that philosophical stance, actually -- reveals its villain as a tragic and sympathetic figure.

It seems like it’s more about what happens after the tickling stops, which is also when Tickled stops being hilarious.

I enjoyed it from beginning to end, and if you've been lamenting the dearth of violent genre movies that don't assume the audience to be morons, you will too.

Sam Rogers (Spacey) is not an especially enigmatic character, but he is a profoundly wounded one who has given his life to a business and an institution that has relied for years on his unscrupulous conduct and is about to kick him to the curb...It's one of the great performances found in American movies this year.

Once you adjust to Listen Up Philip, it’s also invigorating, disturbing and frequently hilarious, but that adjustment’s not entirely painless.

A magical and supernally beautiful meditative drug-trip head-space picture (a full-fledged ZZM, q.v. above) for which all Euro-film masochists should rearrange their schedules. It'll be out on DVD soon, and that's great. But Garrel's films are almost never seen on the big screen, and this one's worth it.

It's a sensitive, slow-moving 19th century samurai drama that will appeal to that tiny cadre of filmgoers who savor the classic Japanese films of Mizoguchi and Inagaki.

For a while, at least, this one feels like Iñárritu’s masterpiece, until that familiar too-muchness begins to take over.

Horses of God is one of the most forceful entries in a growing body of cinema that interrogates the causes and effects of terrorism, nationalism and fundamentalism in the Arab world.

Often scabrously funny in a post-Lena Dunham, post-Woody Allen New York comedy vein, and finds a star performance in the thoroughly unlikely personage of Jenny Slate.

While Reality is a mixed bag of satire, allegory and melodrama, it’s a rich mixture that an American remake would likely never pull off. This is a movie that will reward multiple viewings, from a filmmaker of tremendous technical ability, humor and heart.

This film is a portrait, and it's a mesmerizing, unforgettable one. The story of how a boy like Gary Oldman comes out of this world and becomes something different -- that's a drama, but perhaps its end has yet to be written.

Nanking both calls attention to a horrifying set of war crimes that remains little known in the West and crafts an impossible-but-true hymn to the power of the individual conscience.

For a loose-limbed spoof with no real plot, “What We Do in the Shadows” is startlingly effective at creating characters we care about, which testifies to the fact that Clement and Waititi have created a world with clear governing laws (albeit ridiculous ones) and never violate those parameters.

It's a handsome and stimulating film, noteworthy more for its terrific acting and provocative ideas than for any kind of dark Cronenbergundian genius.

Nightcrawler executes its ideas with tremendous craft and cool, and the courageous and counterintuitive pairing of its leads — Russo is 60, and Gyllenhaal 33 – produces two electrical, interlocking performances and undeniable erotic chemistry.

It’s a middle chapter, for sure, but a vigorous and fast-paced one that leaves you hungry for more.

Range has a marvelous feel for the clichés and conventions of TV-news documentary, and the tone of mournful elegy he strikes here is both convincing and -- believe me, I'm shocked to be writing this -- moving.

At its best when it feels specific to its setting; Erik Wilson's often lovely cinematography captures the distinctive, watery light and raw weather of the Welsh seacoast in winter, and Hawkins, as always, captures a character who is completely specific in terms of class, place and period.

Wild is a Hollywood holiday movie "based on a true story," meaning that its view of reality is conditioned by the three-act structure and the pop-Christian teleology of sin and repentance.

It's a crisply made, absorbing human drama that frames its moral confrontation between good and evil in universal terms.

However you respond to it, the fraught sexual and investigative chemistry between Mikael and Lisbeth is the most powerful ingredient of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The movie's second half is a capably executed but mostly by-the-numbers procedural.

It's a terrific little movie, gritty, real, ironic, ruthless and deeply humane.

Operation Homecoming at first seems like a modest enterprise, a document of a few guys' paths to personal catharsis. But the sense of damaged intensity found in all these men's writing -- and found in war lit since the classical age -- builds to a powerful crescendo, and the haunting poem that ends the film, in which the ghosts of American and Iraqi dead confront each other on the banks of the Tigris, is a showstopper.

It's hyperactive, often hilarious and ultimately exhausting.

Easy Money may well be the crime film of the year, or the decade.

It honestly shouldn't work at all, yet somehow on the strength of good humor and sex appeal ends up being one of the most enjoyable mainstream films of the season.

A compelling, compact melodrama that packs an emotional wallop. It's my nominee for sleeper surprise of the summer, at least so far.

As Hanna’s fans already know, she’s back onstage with a new band called the Julie Ruin, who sound terrific. Today she can be a singer, a musician, a poet or an artist, but we can’t ask her to be a revolutionary.

Durkin seems to be aiming for a Hitchcock-style thriller that has the unsettling psychological and narrative ambiguity of, say, Michael Haneke's films, with an ending you can read in many different ways. If he doesn't quite get there, it's still a remarkable feature-directing debut.

Haneke's new Funny Games has a current of bleak humor that comes through more clearly when you're not reading subtitles. It remains a horrifying, implacable mind-fuck, liable to be widely misunderstood and widely despised.

I am not the first to make this joke, but The Trip to Italy may live up to the “Godfather: Part II” analogy, at least insofar as it’s better and tighter than its predecessor.

Attack the Block hovers in that uneasy zone between eager-beaver likability and trying way too hard to be cool, but it captures its gritty setting with unusual affection. Science-fiction buffs seeking a change of pace and fans of British pop culture shouldn't miss it.

This telling of the tale possesses enormous cinematic energy and a killer supporting cast full of hilarious delights.

While "Ballplayer" is certainly unsettling, must-see viewing for baseball fans - a nonfiction follow-up to Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck's outstanding 2009 feature "Sugar" - it's a vibrant tale, alive with color and texture, that's far more than a sports movie.

It's winsome, sentimental and lovely in a minor-key way.

It’s a highly capable sequel that drinks long and deep from the established Marvel legendarium and brings back all the key players from Kenneth Branagh’s 2011 hit “Thor.”

There’s an honesty and ferocity to Heaven Knows What, a refusal to flinch from depicting the marginalized and despised underbelly of a caste-divided city.

I enjoyed this movie more thoroughly, and more liberated from frustration and ambivalence, than anything Godard has made in at least 20 years. It provided me with an interpretive frame that may even lead me back to another crack at “Notre Musique” (2004) and “For Ever Mozart” (1996) and most of all the extraordinary 1988-1998 video documentary series “Histoire(s) du cinéma.”

I'm being completely sincere - and entirely complimentary! - when I say that The Muppets represents a career high point for Segel, the comedian who reveals himself to be a whimsical writer, capable singer and dancer and appealing straight man.

It certainly is possible that Gere’s memorable performance as George – one that is far more physical than verbal, and that pushes the star’s legendary charm in unexpected directions – will put him in line for his first Oscar nod. George is never a cliché of homelessness, and neither the actor nor the film ever makes the expected or automatic choices.

Dense with pathos, poetry and humor, this is Park's finest work to date. His stomach-churning climax -- which depicts gruesome bloodshed without directly showing it -- simultaneously gratifies and indicts our most primitive instincts.

So stylized and slow-moving (even at a spare 75 minutes) that you may have trouble adapting to its hypnotic rhythms -- but if you can, there are sumptuous visual rewards to be found, plus the faintest emotional uptick right at the end.

McCarthy has much more to discover about herself as an actor and an avatar and a cultural signifier, and I hope she doesn’t get trapped by one role, one genre or one franchise. But her campaign of conquest is going well.

May indeed induce dizziness, sweating and hot-and-cold flashes among politically minded leftists.

The influence of early Alfred Hitchcock is all over this movie, translated in unusual and original fashion.

It’s masterfully shot and edited, with a brooding soundtrack and a mysterious, dreamlike undertow – and, when all is revealed, it’s not even half as interesting as it seems to be.

There is a balancing act at work here that sometimes makes the film seem too careful, but I found it a lovely and supremely moving experience, a haunting symphony in a minor key if not a knock-your-socks-off masterpiece.

It's an unholy mess, simultaneously too Gothic and too sarcastic, that preaches liberation and delivers only puritanism. It's a craftsmanlike but robotic imitation of "interesting" filmmaking, only in patches, and by accident, the real thing.

It's a fascinating human story and a film as pure as ice water

As irritating as Lake Placid sometimes is, it also has an easygoing sense of fun, along with one of the more memorable movie monsters of recent years. The mismatched ingredients blend into a blissfully, stupidly surreal summer cocktail.

I personally find the Russo brothers’ lightning-fast action scenes difficult to process — it’s as if cinema editing now exceeds the speed of human brain functions — but they’re undoubtedly exciting and skillfully constructed.

A dark and mesmerizing immersion into a distinctive world.

This is an elegant, powerfully emotional and courageous film, worth seeing entirely on its own artistic terms, and also for what it conveys about the complexity of African-American life and the resurgence of African-American cultural expression.

Bourdieu's cast is terrific throughout. Any fellow academic brats out there will especially appreciate Jacques Bonnaffé, one of the greatest French comic actors, in an imperious turn as the severe, guru-like professor.

I basically really enjoyed this movie, even while lamenting that I was enjoying it under mendacious premises and that there was something fundamentally cynical about its elegiac, retrospective tone.

This warm, graceful and fundamentally optimistic movie snuck up on me, in the best possible way.

I would simultaneously argue that Sheil and Greene go off the rails several times during Kate Plays Christine, most notably in their overly artful and self-conscious attempt to re-enact the shooting but also that they get viewers closer to the real Christine Chubbuck than I would have thought possible.

If it plays in any theaters beyond New York and Los Angeles, that'll probably come as a surprise to its distributor (the estimable Lorber Films). None of that diminishes the power and intensity of this claustrophobic mini-masterpiece of the Japanese antiwar tradition, which blends a B-movie aesthetic, brilliant use of montage and documentary elements and a scathing critique of nationalism and militarism.

Trainwreck is not very good, but Schumer is frequently amazing in it. Officially, her fans will not be disappointed; not far below the surface, it’s a bummer.

Intriguing and often hilarious.

Comic, disturbing and affecting by turns, and often all at the same time. Its funniest scenes are also its most unsettling.

The younger Levinson has considerable storytelling talent, an admirable honesty and a streak of ruthlessness.

If Alfred Hitchcock had grown up as a Palestinian, he might have made something like Hany Abu-Assad’s Oscar-nominated Omar, which is a tender love story, a haunting tragedy and an expertly crafted thriller with flawed, damaged and not entirely likable characters.

It’s a diverting ride, played out against spectacular locations, that repackages a whole bunch of familiar elements and attitudes: A little latter-day Bond, a little Jason Bourne, a little John le Carré, a little 1950s Hitchcock.

A prickly, twisted, mean-spirited, borderline crazy and highly seductive picture.

Majid Majidi's exquisite film The Willow Tree"is likely to make a very brief stop in theaters en route to home video, so catch it when and if you can.

This story about Joyce McKinney, a one-time beauty queen who found herself not once but twice at the center of outrageous, tabloid-friendly news stories, is another of Morris' alternately hilarious and disturbing inquiries into the slippery nature of truth.

It’s probably best to approach Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s intimate, unnerving and entirely addictive drama What Maisie Knew by not leaning too hard on its Henry James source material.

An endless battle scene in search of a movie. It's every bit as harrowing -- and also every bit as pointless and misguided -- as the botched military mission it depicts.

You either like this kind of ambitious, brave, borderless experiment or you don't, and I think it's absolutely magical and tragic.

What a handful of patient moviegoers may find in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, however, is a subtle, gorgeous and mysterious allegory that may be Ceylan's masterwork to date.

An elegantly crafted entertainment, balanced between the psychological and the supernatural, that gets extra credit for not relying on computer effects.

Much of Devil's Rejects is absolutely hilarious, especially the brief appearance by a Gene Shalit-like film critic who explicates all the Groucho Marx references. Zombie's eye for the faux-'70s detail is perfect.

Duck Season is something quite different, capable of gratifying film snobs and regular viewers alike.