Carla Meyer

Superb.

Bests most other teen comedies right off the bat. If you got a kick out of "Crumb," this film will crack you up.

A British costume film that's funny but not at all fusty.

The visual and emotional hues are darker [than previous Pixar films], and the focus rests more on middle age than coming of age. The adventures of a family of superheroes are likely to thrill and amuse children, but the film's more grown-up themes might go over their heads.

Beautiful but hollow.

Frank, funny and true as "Ghost World."

A famous French actor using his art to work through the loss of his wife and daughter in a car accident. The strategy works, at least for a while.

Hawkins, Bonneville and voice actor Ben Whishaw — who makes Paddington sound like the Geico gecko minus the attitude — give the film a strong base of kindness.

Hard Truths lacks subplots, or, come to think of it, a plot. Good thing, then, that it features one of the best lead performances of the movie awards season. Pansy might remain a bit of a mystery, but Jean-Baptiste is clearly a revelation.

Foxtrot troubles and fascinates as it shifts from a portrait of grief to one of pathology, and captivates after it shifts again, into a visually driven, borderline absurd look at military life.

Unlike the sometimes cornpone depictions of backwoods life in “Winter’s Bone,” the folksier moments here seem organic.

The film, winsome and tragic at once and finely attuned to the rhythms of childhood, always seems quite close to real life.

Jane is lopsided, thoroughly exploring her early career but encapsulating later decades too neatly.

The Color Purple now has been a movie, a Broadway show, a revived Broadway show and movie musical when it always should have been a TV miniseries.

A masterful portrait of the seasons of a life.

Not as profound as it is pretty, Hero nevertheless gives us something to ponder beyond Zhang's feat in mounting such a magnificent production.

The story’s eventual move into brutality is all the more devastating because of well-observed intimacy that preceded it.

Moving.

Beautifully acted and suffused with warmth and humor, Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret is a film worthy of the long wait in bringing Judy Blume’s classic 1970 children’s book to the screen.

Chilling, superbly acted.

A heartbreaking, powerful drama.

Real acting replaces re-enacting, and amazing cinematography pits the limits of human will against the unruliness of nature.

A tense, expertly acted Russian film clouded by its intentional ambiguity.

Timeless.

Intoxicating and flawed.

You also cannot help but think about what Baumbach has that Allen lacks: Empathy for his characters. Not insight into them, but empathy for them.

Buscemi is characteristically likable here, when Del, mercenary in his treatment of human and beast, should not be so likable. Such is the curse of Buscemi, the delightful killer from “Fargo.”

Buckley’s naturalism, combined with her abundant charisma and wonderfully warm-toned, slightly gritty singing voice, make her irresistible here.