Betsy Sharkey

Authenticity gives the movie its witty, heartwarming, hopeful, sentimental, searing and relatable edge. It is merciless in probing the tender spots of times like these, and tough-guy sweet in patching up the wounds.

Peli works at mining the unknown, the unknowable, like a minimalist, using small moments and virtually no special effects exceedingly well.

It is the interplay between Wasikowska and Eisenberg that gives "The Double" both its tension and its charm... Their struggle captivates, the resolution shocks, and you can't help but wonder what windmills Ayoade will tilt next.

Though it might not sound it, watching Kumiko brood is mesmerizing. Kikuchi uses her mournful eyes to take us to dark places, though she's equally adept at surprise and confusion, even joy when it comes along.

This raunchy unrooting of a settled suburban idyll exposes the considerable angst of emerging adulthood with a kind of scatological fervor designed to elicit oodles of inappropriate laughs. It succeeds.

Martin Scorsese has created a divinely dark and devious brain tease of a movie in the best noir tradition with its smarter than you'd think cops, their tougher than you'd imagine cases to crack and enough nods to the classic genre for an all-night parlor game.

The big action pieces, particularly the final face-off, are masterful both for their cleverness in bringing down the house and the detail jammed into every frame. Even composers Hans Zimmer, who's scored a zillion movies, and John Powell seem to be having more fun than usual.

When the writer-director is on his game, as he is in Ned Rifle, the effect is bizarre black comedy that is designed to set you thinking about what his satire is really saying.

From the clockwork comic timing to the movie's salty mix of the ridiculous and the reflective, This Is the End is stupidly hysterical and smartly heretical. Cross my heart and hope to die, it's funny as hell.

One of those documentaries that is sad and hopeful in equal measure and exceptional in its storytelling.

Haywire doesn't measure up to the best of the director's work - like, say, his Oscar-winning drug drama, "Traffic." But watching Carano kick, spin, flip, choke, crack and crush the fiercest of foes - mostly men about twice her size - is thoroughly entertaining, highly amusing and frankly somewhat awe-inspiring.

Zilberman's minimalistic approach fits the idea of the film better than it fits the actual film. It leaves this melancholy mood piece with some beautiful moments, but unlike Beethoven's work, A Late Quartet ultimately feels unfinished.

Smart isn't all it's cracked up to be and soon the movie is unraveling faster than all of Eddie's grand schemes.

Whether the San Pedro does its magic is of course the big question. Regardless, Silva works his, delivering not exactly the Holy Grail of road movies, but a very mellow summer high.

Furious 7 is the fuel-injected fusion of all that is and ever has been good in "The Fast and the Furious" saga.

There are so many ways in which Nowhere Boy, an emotionally raw and yet raucous, rockin' riff on John Lennon's turbulent teenage years, is such an entertaining piece of nostalgia.

Whatever the film's flaws, and like its protagonist, there are times when things get a bit out of control, watching Giamatti use Barney to wrestle with success, failure, friendship, love and increasingly with time is exhilarating.

In Continental Drift, the filmmakers have gone a little crazy too, but in a good way. Smack dab in the middle of things there's a big Broadway-style number involving pirates.

This is a film done right by just about every measure. The extremes of the story seep deep into your bones -- the beauty, the allure, the desperation and especially the cold in this world where life literally hangs on rope and what Mother Nature chooses to throw at you.

As pure of heart as its heroine, Cinderella floats across the screen like a gossamer confection, full of elegant beauty and quiet grace.

There is a great deal of playfulness between the couple that will touch the romantic in most.

This is a far more brutal film than Wheatley's first, 2009's "Down Terrace." Though it had crime at its center as well, it was balanced by a dry irony and far less blood. There is no offset in Kill List, with one scene so relentless in its gore that it makes the notorious elevator scene in "Drive" pale in comparison.

The archival game footage -- Cantona on the field, the roaring crowds -- infuses the film with that high-spirited sense of hope and heart that only a brilliant play when a game is on the line can deliver. Loach, a brilliant player at his own game, delivers the rest.

While his breakthrough documentary, "Dogtown and Z-Boys," cracked open the window on a largely unknown world in vibrant and visceral ways, Bones feels like an epilogue.

Here the filmmakers are in fine fettle, which goes a long way to make much of the low-brow silliness and slapstick infectious.

It's massive, all the retaliation and the world saving stuff. And it's convoluted. Frankly no one should have to think that hard to keep up with the Joes.

In taking Partridge to the movies, the writers go broader and deeper than they typically do with the story.

The Angels' Share leaves a warm glow.