Eric Kohn

Unfortunately, the unbridled shock value isn't matched by a similar investment in other ingredients that might have made this low rent B-movie worthwhile.

A totally wacky head-trip with midnight movie sensibilities and a daring avant garde spirit, Glazer's movie is ultimately too aimlessly weird to make its trippy narrative fully satisfying, but owes much to Johansson's intense commitment to a strangely erotic and unnerving performance unlike anything she has done before.

It's a showcase of proficient storytelling that's eager to entertain.

Though it lacks a cohesive means of fusing together its interlocking vignettes, Palo Alto effectively showcases the despair and sophomoric rebellion of teen life with a mature eye that clearly establishes a new filmmaker to watch.

No stranger to crafting excessive anticipation, Reichardt has funneled that skill into thriller clothing. However, like all of her output, nothing is as simple as it looks.

It's impossible to look away -- not only because the sense of anticipation is so vivid, but because there's no other way to follow the bizarre plot than keep with it.

If Joe marks a new beginning for some of its characters, the same description applies to its director and star.

Though suffering from dry patches and a fairly mannered approach, The Invisible Woman eventually makes its way to a powerful final third documenting an ultimately tragic romance in deeply felt terms.

An uneven, intermittently thoughtful but largely preachy overview of WikiLeaks' rising influence that has less of an issue determining Assange's character than it does with telling a compelling story.

It tries to have some bite to its will-they-or-won't-they scenario but ultimately winds up toothless.

The story arrives at a satisfying emotional conclusion with wonderfully thoughtful ramifications.

While both pieces of the entire package generally work independently of each other, they have just enough ingredients to necessitate a viewing of the whole thing.

The narrative only really stumbles because its tone never manages to convince on the level that McConaughey's performance eventually does. With its subdued approach, Dallas Buyers Club stops just short of an emotional payoff.

As a whole, Begin Again is a fairly mannered treatment of an expressive medium.

It's less of a showcase for Bateman's ability to direct comedic storytelling than simply to make people laugh, which makes Bad Words a sufficiently vulgar playground.

A distinctly uneven but imminently watchable theatrical showcase in which cinematic and stagy devices go head to head with no clear winner.

The grim subtext of The Wind Rises goes largely unacknowledged, leading to a gaping hole in this otherwise beautifully realized narrative that celebrates the power of curiosity as a motivating force.

It's hard to imagine Captain Phillips in the hands of any other filmmaker -- and Captain Phillips in the hands of Greengrass looks exactly like anyone familiar with his work would expect. It does justice to the material even while playing too conscientiously by the book.

There's a certain elegant simplicity to the movie's execution that maintains a spirit of familiarity but also keeps the material afloat.

Gravity lets you visit space without sugarcoating its dangers. It's a brilliant portrait of technology gone wrong that uses it just right.

More than a powerful elegy, 12 Years a Slave is a mesmerizing triumph of art and polemics: McQueen turns a topic rendered distant by history into an experience that, short of living through the terrible era it depicts, makes you feel as if you've been there.

In its revelations of Salinger's flaws, the documentary capably strips away the fanaticism associated with his books to create the impression of a human being.

Before all else, Villneuve's grim chronicle of the fallout when two young girls vanish in a small town succeeds at crafting one powerfully suspenseful moment after another.

Make no mistake: Mickle wants to make you jump and scream, but death only arrives in this movie once its world comes to life, which makes each sudden turn all the more intense.

A labyrinthine descent into the grotesque extremes of a Disneyfied society, Escape From Tomorrow is surreal for many reasons and wholly original because of them. It's also a daring attempt to literally assail Disney World from the inside out.

The Butler carries an authenticity that sustains it through its cloying stretches.

If Elysium is the brainiest Hollywood movie of the summer, it's also the most conflicted one.

This tame exercise never quite jives and sometimes just bombs with one-note melodrama, but always maintains Thornton's conviction about the material.

Anchored by a funny and especially credible performance by newcomer Miles Teller, Ponsoldt's follow up to his alcoholism portrait "Smashed" has all the hallmarks of a bittersweet teen drama with flashes of realistic comedy on par with "Say Anything" and "The Breakfast Club."

Instead of commenting on the vapidity of the film industry, Paul Schrader's miscast, poorly executed and utterly soulless drama is an example of the failing art form it seeks to indict. Though it has real ideas, Schrader and his team never manage to put them into action.

In "Adventureland" and this summer's "The Way Way Back," disillusioned teens have worked through their issues in the weeks leading up to college by taking on quirky summer jobs. However, Carey's wacky sensibilities retain a notably fresh quality by using the same framing device as an excuse to bat around one funny idea after another. The story transcends the derivative scenario through a noticeable lack of verbal censorship.

In constructing its gripping overview, After Tiller maintains a generally straightforward roundup of talking heads, but its unassuming construction gradually generates an authoritative voice. Only once the arguments have been plainly established does the emotion truly take hold.

More traditional in terms of atmosphere and plot, Drug War nevertheless features a tense, unstoppable momentum, a morally ambiguous protagonist and hugely involving action scenes.

Despite its shortcomings, The World's End glistens with a comedic energy not present in equivalent mainstream blockbusters.

Dealin' With Idiots is powered by a cast of terrific character actors.

Whether Girl Most Likely intentionally satirizes its upending of conventions or suffers from a half-assed screenplay, the resulting hodgepodge at least livens up a clichéd premise.

Blue Jasmine belongs to Blanchett, who appears in almost every scene and frees it from the limitations of Allen's style, pushing it to far sharper results than any of the more traditional movies, good and bad, that he's churned out in the past dozen or so years.

Combing a memorably gritty Ryan Gosling performance with the breakneck tempo of the getaway cars his character handles for hire, Refn churns out a hyperactive love letter to road rage with unapologetic glee. It's a total blast.

Wan seems to critique the third act failings of The Conjuring during the alarmingly superior first half.

Big Words at times seems like it's heading towards a microbudget version of "Hustle and Flow," but Drumming aims for a much smarter and subdued look at the various regrets and hang-ups haunting men of a certain age. Their blackness is only one piece of the puzzle.

Given the saturation of the found footage horror genre, Cordero's approach delivers a much shrewder alternative that goes beyond the power of suggestion by rooting its otherworldly fears in authenticity.

Killing Season is like the Saturday morning cartoon version of a terrible movie: still bad, but at least colorful enough to go down easy.

Too in love with itself to ever totally go off the rails, Pacific Rim doesn't qualify as the first full-on dud of del Toro's career, but it's hard not to get the sense that something's missing.

A Band Called Death lacks the thrill of mystery but makes up for it with pathos.

With a keen eye for the capacity of fine art to address a complex range of attitudes and experiences, Museum Hours effectively applies Cohen's existing strengths to a familiar scenario and rejuvenates it by delivering a powerfully contemplative look at the transformative ability of all art.

The conflict in The Attack is less about the reasoning behind immoral behavior than the problems involved in any cursory understanding of it.

As a statement about the fixed nature of cinematic tropes, Redemption provides a compelling supplement to Statham's current stardom.

World War Z may wear its intellect proudly, but also consciously translates the zombie premise into a safer context for wider audiences. It's not the smartest zombie movie ever made, but might be the most commercial one.

A gleefully over-the-top celebration of silliness too in love with its outrageous characters and premise to make them gel. Scene after scene features a self-satisfied kookiness akin to spending time with a terrible comic unwilling to give up the mic.

While certainly the most dazzling Superman movie to hit the big screen, the 143-minute Man of Steel is also the longest, and it only justifies that heft because it leaves room to keep the effects coming.

Monsters University, the latest Pixar offering, charms in an excessively familiar way that illustrates a troublesome eventuality: Pixar has lost its edge.

Taking its time to let the world take shape, Short Term 12 builds to an involving series of mini-climaxes without tidying up every loose end.

Directed by Blume's son Lawrence, this gentle drama based on Blume's 1981 novel works surprisingly well considering the numerous trappings of the material, while demonstrating exactly why it's so difficult to bring Blume's work to the screen.

V/H/S 2 smartly contextualizes its nightmarish cavalcade of violence by acknowledging the luxury of enjoying it from a distance.

Smart in spite of its irreverence, "Future Folk" is the weirdest, most enjoyable fusion of genres you'll see this year.

The movie makes a strong case against the captivity of killer whales under sub-circus conditions, but the stance is made even more horrifying because so little has changed in the history of the organization. Blackfish is less balanced investigation than full-on takedown of a broken system.

The cumulative effect is occasionally dizzying but transparent, a frantic attempt to cram themes into cinematic conceit.

While not designed to entertain on the level of style and spectacle that one expects from a Bond film, this tense period drama from the director of "Man on Wire" presents a far more credible take on the daring exploits of British agents.

Kechiche excels at capturing his protagonist's emergence in the world.

At times a rich, intimate observation of emerging sexuality, the movie also maintains a quiet, observational rhythm that peaks around wintertime when things grow dark for the character and then more or less watches her grow up.

Though slow-going for much of its running time, Arbor's delicate tale culminates with a frighteningly choreographed tragedy, but tacks on a beautifully evocative and mostly wordless epilogue that carries the semblance of progress.

Farhadi's new movie confirms his unique ability to explore how constant chatter and anguished outbursts obscure the capacity for honest communication.

If you can groove with Jarmusch's patient, philosophical indulgences and the wooden exteriors of his characters' lives, the movie rewards with a savvy emotional payoff about moving forward even when the motivation to do so has gone.

Gray's fifth directorial effort is a conflicting experience admirable and powerfully executed in parts, cold and meandering in others.

A straightforward tale of overcoming personal and professional challenges with no fancy dressing, Grigris goes down easy but offers nothing remotely fresh.

With its palatial setting, Borgman shows how money can buy luxury, but it can't salvage the corruption that comes from within.

Bogged down by flashbacks and flash forwards, The Bastards pointlessly mixes up its ingredients, creating a distancing effect from the tangible sadness at its core. The result is the rare case of a movie that confirms its maker's skill while wasting it on useless ambition.

The movie is an impressively realized work of minimalist storytelling that foregrounds Redford's physicality more than any other role in his celebrated career. His performance defines the movie to an almost shockingly experimental degree.

Paul's increasingly hectic attempts to retrieve the book dominate the movie so heavily that it leaves little room for considering how this effort fits into the rest of his world.

It's a sad, thoughtful depiction of midwestern eccentrics regretting the past and growing bored of the present, ideas that Payne regards with gentle humor and pathos but also something of a shrug.

The story works wonderfully as an idea, but Kore-eda never quite manages to infuse it with the same depth of feeling his main character goes through.

A wholly original and thoroughly surprising fusion of sensory overload and liberal philosophy bound to confuse and provoke in equal measures.

The movie is like one thin satiric lark inexplicably slowed down to the point of lethargy.

In the Fog develops an unearthly spell that largely makes up for its cerebral pace.

An ode to art for art's sake, Inside Llewyn Davis is the most innocent movie of the Coens' career, which in their case is a downright radical achievement.

Coppola presents a smart cross-examination of the impact of media exposure on fickle young minds. While the ambitions of its young thieves often blur together and lack precise definition, The Bling Ring is the director's breeziest work, allowing the story to glide along with the ease of a heist movie.

By the standards of Jordan's earlier films, "Byzantium" is unquestionably a minor achievement, but its technical specs help flesh out a thick environment that elevates the proceedings to a lyrical plane.

Berberian Sound Studio constructs a perpetually strange, unseemly series of events overshadowed (and sometimes consumed by) the spooky movie-within-a-movie that hangs over every scene.

As a conversation starter, The World Before Her gets the job done. By virtue of the topic and interviews, Pahuja showcases plenty of tensions between old world values and idealistic goals. That's hardly enough to make its narrative persistently alluring or emotionally sound.

Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby has the hallmarks of a contemporary Hollywood spectacle. It's missing the explosions, but make no mistake: Gatsby is one glitzy misfire.

Nothing about Dead Man's Burden reeks of homage to oaters of yore -- instead, Moshé has made a legitimate entry in a genre he clearly adores.

Though ultimately unsuccessful, it valiant reaches for a funky, wild critique of hedonistic sluggards wandering through society with no clear direction. But more than anything else, it delivers Keanu in his element.

As slickly paced as a big-studio espionage movie, it nearly succeeds as a pure adrenaline-rush thriller. In the end, the problem isn't that there's too much plot, but rather a certain dramatic illogic.

Just as the frequent cutaways from sexual activity tone down the titillation, Lovelace never garners the energy to construct a fully involving melodrama, rarely rising above Lifetime movie standards. Given the material, the irony here is that the filmmakers play it too safe.

Swanberg once again shows a capacity for capturing small moments that exist outside the direction of the plot. At the same time, the effective fragments of "Drinking Buddies" take his oeuvre in a new direction by accumulating into a reworking big picture.

Passion simultaneously parodies its plot while elevating it to a strangely involving exercise in cinematic drama. The filmmaker has either lost control of the material or maintains the same calculation of his protagonists. But the entertainment value associated with that uncertainty is the essence of his career.

Computer Chess excels at conveying the frustrations of feeling trapped by forces beyond one's control, the complexities of humanity irresolvable by any neat code.

Heinzerling's beautifully shot, painfully intimate look at the aging couple's struggle to survive amid personal and financial strain is both heartbreaking and intricately profound. This is a story about creative desire so strong it hurts.

The movie contains an epic scope that feels out of sync with the smallness of its plot; you get the idea by the first act and then Laurence's world simply hangs there for another two hours like a slo-mo shrug.

The opposing genre extremes never entirely come together.

Zombie's witches aren't as scary as the credible psychopaths he has portrayed before, but The Lords of Salem contains enough frenzied imagery in its climactic moments to make the spell linger.

The issue with Post Tenebras Lux is that the narrative, not the filmmaker, feels dispiritedly half-baked.

Kim's movies are generally grim, disturbing affairs, but "Pieta" leaves much to the imagination in favor of its unsettling implications.

The filmmakers have crafted seriously derivative fun that plays like "Scream" molded with "Cabin Fever" in the twisted universe of "Final Destination." It's a familiar ride, but a relentlessly wild one as well.

Black Rock never reinvents the rules, but it understands them just well enough to make its bloodless stabs at ingenuity stand out.

Crystal Fairy has little to say beyond Cera's capacity to transform into an amazingly uncomfortable screen presence, something we already knew.

He's still cultivating his storytelling abilities, but Wheatley has clearly found his sweet spot: a darkly funny place with serious potential.

Aftershock has no earth-shattering revelations to make its mayhem stand out in the wreckage.

Writer-director Todd Berger, improving his technique with his second feature-length credit following "The Scenesters," combines enough energetic performances with charged wit to make this one doomsday comedy that earns the right to its familiar backdrop.

At times Midnight's Children balances off its earnestness with a sweeping view of history and tangible human drama, but the allegorical qualities of Rushdie's novel fail to translate as anything but a shrill, on-the-nose instance of thematic overreaching.

If nothing else, Blancanieves offers an excellent case for revisiting the early days of cinema -- and for recognizing how much has been lost in its absence. While "The Artist" recalled the silent film industry, Blancanieves solely pays tribute to the art.

In its wonderfully irreverent way, Wrong makes it clear that this reality is never to be trusted as anything more than a succession of strange moments that coalesce into an abstract representation of the subjectivity that traps us all. This is the essence of new film noir, which challenges our perceptions through a series of compellingly ambiguous moments.

Atmospherically, Spring Breakers is an elegant evocation of noir storytelling, littered with misdeeds with girls and guns at every turn.

Boyle's filmmaking style has a marvelous rhythm that weaves pop sensibilities into fluid and persistently exciting narrative experiences; he shakes these ingredients like colored sand in a jar, leading a fascinating degree of discombobulation.

Eventually suffers from a lack of new ideas beyond its initial premise that finds the two brothers inadvertently swapping roles. Once that happens, the movie takes one bland twist after another.

Chapiron stubbornly avoids an uplifting message, portraying his dangerous setting as a demonstration of virility that leads to madness.

As Love Is All You Need goes through the motions of drawing its central couple together, Bier delivers nothing more than a well-made, strictly middlebrow entertainment with a bittersweet polish that's easy to enjoy and forget in equal measures.

The movie is constantly at war with attempts to provide an honest portrayal, almost as if its subject were reaching beyond the grave to steer any negativity back in the direction of a hagiography.

Playing make believe with murderers, Oppenheimer risks the possibility of empowering them. However, by humanizing psychopathic behavior, The Act of Killing is unparalleled in its unsettling perspective on the dementias associated with dictatorial extremes.

Moors isolates a well-known drama with the fleeting nonfiction prologue and explores it from the inside out: It's not an attempted reenactment, but it does aim to get at certain truths.

A stitched-together combo of outlaw energy and bittersweet romance that gives the impression of Little Rascals in the big city. Like the graffiti art it documents, it's a lovingly handmade affair.

Xavier Dolan's I Killed My Mother marks the emergence of an exciting new filmmaking talent. The Montreal actor, a mere 20 years old, displays a startlingly mature perspective on human behavior in his triple threat position as writer-director-star.

The reality-show aesthetic pervades the movie as well. Garrone's roaming camera style draws you into each moment with extreme close-ups and long takes that wander through each scene and get lost in it. Luciano's plight is crushing because Garrone renders it with such detail.

Fruitvale is largely sustained by Jordan's career-making performance and the way Coogler uses it to analyze his subject...It's a fascinating investigation into the contrast between media perception and intimate truths.

An ode to the strength of onscreen horror even in its less inspired state, the new Evil Dead primarily succeeds at illustrating how the originals have managed to stand the test of time.

Call it a Shakespearean catharsis or just call it a lark -- either way, the movie represents Whedon's least essential work, regardless of the material's inherent comedic inspiration.

Stories We Tell marks the finest of Polley's filmmaking skills by blending intimacy and intrigue to remarkable effect.

Too late, At Any Price displays the presence of a skilled filmmaker capable of using ambiguous pauses and representational imagery to convey the issues of greed and other covert desires. Until then, it's a slovenly affair only distinguished by its name cast.

That the movie succeeds both as a high-stakes crime thriller as well as a far quieter and empathetic study of angry, solitary men proves that Cianfrance has a penchant for bold storytelling and an eye for performances to carry it through.

Marred by excessive sentiment, it has a buoyancy and a hook that makes it stand out -- but they're elements that would help it kill on Broadway (as it already has on the Australian stage) a lot better than it does onscreen.

To the Wonder renders the familiar terrain of romantic dysfunction on a grand scale. Malick haters may not change their tune, but at least they can admit that To the Wonder maintains a consistent thematic focus.

Small touches point to a slightly better movie hiding beneath most of the routine, particularly the respectable finale that stops just short of the clichéd resolution expected of it. On the whole, however, The Way, Way Back dances to a tune we've heard too many times before.

There are powerful ingredients here, certainly enough to create a deeply felt work, but The End of Love lacks the additional layers of storytelling necessary for Webber to make the audience feel as close to the material as he does to his son.

A viscerally charged movie that foregrounds surface tensions and gripping performances, Ginger and Rosa is the filmmaker's most accessible and technically surefooted work to date.

Mungiu's method creates the feeling of being submerged in a maze of confrontations and chatter, but the build-up gets so tiring that the concluding scenes come as a relief instead of a payoff.

At times, Frances Ha strains from emphasizing the characters' snarkiness and disregarding plot. By routinely going nowhere, however, the movie eventually finds a distinctive voice that carries it through.

This could be a recipe for excessive self-indulgence, but the meta quality of Red Flag is entirely irrelevant to its low key charm and persistent irreverence -- anchored, as always, by Karpovsky's loopy screen presence.

Rubberneck has more in common with the growing Karpovsky oeuvre than it may appear -- and even inadvertently critiques it.

With a dense, often impermeable style and a mentally unstable protagonist, Simon Killer is like watching the disturbed anti-hero of "Afterschool" all grown up.

Intermittently action-packed and lethargic, the movie dances around formula. By delivering an expressionistic character study with bursts of intensity unlike anything else in his oeuvre and yet stylistically representative of its entirety, Wong practically has it both ways.

Before Midnight is the rare cinematic achievement that implicates alert viewers in its mission to understand the mysteries of intimate connections.

While not his best work, Like Someone in Love is a nimble expression of Kiarostami's appeal: He remains one of the few directors capable of pulling you into a narrative and making you question its motives at every turn.

The scenes pile up with frenetic intensity; as with Soderbergh's other recent exercises in the suspense genre, no single cutaway goes wasted.

Upstream Color is routinely confusing but not oppressively so; its final exquisite moments explain little yet still manage to invite you in.

More blatantly an exercise in style than anything on par with the director's crowning achievements, and suffers to some degree from the predictability of its premise.

Byington excels at turning the edict that time waits for no one into a sensory experience. No matter how sly it gets, Somebody Up There Likes Me still retains that fundamental truth.

The problem with Outside Satan is that the filmmaker has remained faithful to expectations without enlivening them. It's a curious exercise unworthy of his expertise, but then he may realize as much.

Hooper's approach comes across as the equivalent of sitting in the front row of a stage play while the entire cast leans forward and blares each song into your eardrums.

Overlong and unfocused in parts, Salles' adaptation nonetheless holds together about as well a movie can when the odds are so heavily stacked against it.

The movie's stakes are alternately personal and political, but Petzold's skill truly comes into focus in the tense climax, when those two aims come together with a powerful act of defiance.

It's incredibly uneventful and devastating all at once.

Although not exactly heartwarming, Amour has a more contained vision of human relationships than Haneke's previous films without sacrificing its bleak foundation. It's his most conventional movie about death -- and the most poignant.

This is still a pretty familiar journey that's easier to pity than hate -- much like Caplan's character.

By making the inanimate animate, they make nature come to life, and so does Convento.

At times more in line with "Blazing Saddles" than the grimly bawdy qualities that define many bonafide oaters, Django Unchained erupts with a conceptual brilliance from the outset that never fully meshes with its clumsy storyline. Nevertheless, it's a giddy ride.

Happy New Year provides a rare glimpse into the darker ramifications of war that rarely take center stage in the national dialogue. This struggle has nothing to do with political motives or tactical movements, but rather the battle to retain sanity against impossible odds.

Promised Land can't help but preach its cause in obvious ways that continually hold back an otherwise well-acted, swiftly paced drama.

Whereas "45365" took the form of a scattered collage, with disconnected events and a vast ensemble of characters stitched together to represent a year of activity, Tchoupitalas brings greater clarity to a similarly diffuse canvas by situating it around a trio of innocent observers.

The actor's pathos and deadpan skills are buried in the material, which also suffers from a continuous lack of inspiration. It's high-minded entertainment with low ambition.

It's a period piece composed of familiar pieces, none of which have much to say beyond surface elements that have been explored countless times before. Using a typical coming-of-age mold, Chase turns cultural ephemera into formula.

If you're willing to just go with it, An Unexpected Journey is a competent ride, but as a whole it lacks purpose, giving the impression of a television program in its later seasons still chugging along while full aware that it has peaked. Needless to say, "Hobbit" fans will find plenty to soak in; others may get the feeling of being bludgeoned by deja vu.

Welcome to the world of white people problems, ground zero for the strain of American comedies that Apatow does best. But does he really?

It's an unflinching update to media scholar Neil Postman's prophetic claim about the deadly impact of television on cultural identity: Smartphones in hand, we face the danger of filming ourselves to death.

The movie isn't political so much as philosophical, trashing the notion of the American dream as anything more than fodder for an endless rat race.

The whole thing is a fairly yawn-a-rific affair until the vengeful prologue establishes a wicked role reversal, hinting at the better movie that filmmakers more interested in storytelling would have made.

Even as California Solo plays like a track we've heard before, it's still worth a listen.

A bonafide family drama, proof that the noir has humanistic roots. It left me feeling thankful for persistent movie traditions.

Beware of Mister Baker won the Grand Jury Prize at the SXSW Film Festival earlier this year, perhaps because it was the best embodiment of a recent trend in the non-fiction realm.

Bigelow delivers an acute realization of the mission's execution that's eerily in sync with the way it played in the popular imagination. Visually, the events unfold as a mashup of shadowy movements with flashes of green night vision. It's simultaneously predictable and tense.

While its main characters are tough-minded, Rust and Bone is itself pure heart.

With an editing approach that seamlessly blends past and present, Central Park Five contains a fluid, engaging storytelling that does away with the dry voiceover commentary and theatrical music choices that typically account for the narrative flow of most Burns films.

Gibney's narrative drags to some extent when the focus widens to explore the Vatican's overall policy for covering up sex scandals, but he successfully demonstrates the systematic failure of a system designed work flawlessly on the basis of spirituality that never existed in the first place.

Dickinson's hauntingly naturalistic look at disgruntled young adults trapped in the country following an urban disaster plays like "Martha Marcy May Marlene" transported to a post-apocalyptic survival narrative -- with lots of yoga and sex.

Wright's extraordinary long takes draw you into the universe of Anna Karenina with a seamless approach that a straightforward literary adaptation could never accomplish.

Hitchcock largely succeeds at pulling back the veil on his off-camera personality. To a larger degree, it reveals the level of influence of his devoted wife and screenwriter Alma (Helen Mirren) on both his personal life and career.

At two and a half hours, Lincoln contains only a single battle scene in its opening seconds. The rest is pure talk, a keen dramatization of Doris Kearns Goodwin's tome "Team of Rivals," that delivers an overview of Lincoln's crowning achievement in chunks of strategy talk.

In Another Country is a paragon of any given Hong movie's intrinsic charms, and yet it also manages to break from the pattern by including an English-speaking character as one of its leads.

Cafe de Flore constantly hovers on the brink on some revelation it never quite arrives at.

The story retains an inscrutable tone that sometimes makes its emotional qualities feel remote, but it still delivers a powerful message about the challenge of self-diagnosis by rooting it in universal experience

A surprisingly enjoyable tongue-in-cheek New York comedy from "Clueless" director Amy Heckerling, Vamps teeters on the brink of not quite working and yet still routinely lands its laughs.

Guided by an over-the-top Nazi hunter played by Judd Hirsch (clearly enjoying himself), Cheyenne begins a road trip through Middle American that goes nowhere, and Penn's mopey has-been routine starts to feel like a bad joke that just keeps getting worse.

The mystical allure of this long-awaited "lesbian werewolf movie" turns out to have more value than the real thing.

The Bay manages to scare up a real fear of environmental neglect. It's quite possibly the first example of jump scares used in service of activism.

Leave it to Walken to upstage Beethoven.

It's a familiar mold: the perils of suburban discontent have been so thoroughly explored that The Details plays like a hodgepodge of familiar circumstances on an assembly line to disaster.

Beneath the pixelated gags, the stakes are relatively familiar. However, much of the humor in Wreck-It Ralph riffs on the nostalgia associated with real games.

Recording "Body and Soul" with Bennet only a short period before her death, Winehouse's simultaneously effusive presence not only illustrates her fragility but stands in sharp contrast to the stable work ethic that Bennett has cultivated over the course of his 60-year career.

Suspense is rarely delivered with such distinctive patience.

Think "Death of a Salesman" with demons.

Baring all and radiating an affability that defines the movie's tone, Hunt delivers her finest performance since "As Good As It Gets."

There's no doubting that Holy Motors is an ungodly mess of images and moments, some more alluring than others, but it sure leaves a mark.

Slickly paced and carried by mature performances, Flight embodies one of the finer strains of Hollywood filmmaking in recent years.

Winstead's performance provides a trenchant wakeup call even when the movie can't keep pace.

Most segments have a fair share of cheap scares, but they also delve into the art of the build-up, as if delivering a series of grim jokes with bloody punchlines. Consider it a 21st-century take on "Tales from the Crypt."

Sister may not arrive at a happy ending, but the lack of resolution -- capped off by the powerful last image --completes its journey to a place of rousing emotional clarity.

Lee Daniels' The Paperboy is a rare case of serious commitment to outright silliness.

A personal work not because the director chooses to make himself a part of the story, but rather because he implicates all of us in it.

In its finer moments, however, Lee translates the book's wondrous prose into grand visual conceits meant for the big screen. Posited as a story that "will make you believe in god," instead it has the power to confirm one's faith in the cinematic experience.

Hyams delivers a remarkably satisfying action-thriller hybrid that constantly pushes ahead. It's one of the best action movies of the year simply because it keeps hitting the right beats.

Burton's id explodes onto the screen with a plethora of demonic mutated critters.

The movie makes up for uneven dialogue and pacing issues through sheer horrific imagery.

Fitfully uneven, Dredd is nevertheless an intriguing consolidation of action-movie excess -- and even makes a solid case for its aesthetic appreciation.

Incredibly heartfelt to a large degree because of its cast.

By virtue of its style and high stakes scenario, End of Watch is impressively tense, but then so are most episodes of "COPS," which don't suffer from the forced melodrama found here.

It suffers from the greater problem of emphasizing a feel-good plot within the context of mass destruction.

While Francine distinguishes itself with atmospheric strangeness, Cassidy and Shatzky never create a satisfying whole.

Equally a slick political thriller, intelligent period piece and sly Hollywood satire, Ben Affleck's Argo maintains a careful balance between commentary and entertainment value.

Tom Hanks' appearances come across like scene changes between unfunny sketches on 'Saturday Night Live.'

A less controlled and slapdash character piece than "In Bruge," McDonagh's new movie benefits greatly from a plethora of one-liners that toy with crime movie clichés in the unlikely context of writerly obsessions.

There's a adrenaline rush even in the problematic finish, an eagerness that drives the filmmaking so that Looper is thrilling to watch even when it falls apart.

The whole experience is one long rant in radiant colors.

Sachs skillfully explores dangerous extremes -- not only drug addiction, but the slipperiness of attraction.

Nobody else could fit the role of a crestfallen rocker that Paul Dano embodies in director So Yong Kim's remarkable For Ellen.

Ornette isn't just a love letter to the liberty of jazz rhythms; it excels at expressing them.

The closest Brügger comes to explaining his style is an early statement on the duality of his mission to go "beyond all moral boundaries known to man while still being a respectable member of society." It's a goal enacted less with a coy wink than with a violent elbow jab to the ribs.

Unfortunately, Lawless lacks the same darkly energizing spirit that made "The Proposition" such a revelation: It has plenty of gunplay, scowling showdowns and dust-caked setpieces, but little in the way of dynamic filmmaking to imbue those elements with life.

A gigantic physique hides the fragile man beneath and Matthiesen ably follows the journey of that persona as it tunnels through mounds of muscle to reach the surface. In essence, the lion finds his courage.

Produced by Keanu Reeves, this talking heads survey of the transition from shooting on film to digital video is against all odds an imminently watchable overview, and not only because Reeves has decent interview skills.

Since 2005's "A History of Violence," Cronenberg has ventured beyond the grotesque allegorical interests of his earlier movies, a shift that has led some longtime fans to assume he has softened up. As an enjoyably peculiar anti-capitalist indictment, Cosmopolis proves otherwise.

It's a movie that must be seen, processed and discussed, perhaps the first of its kind to transform the audience into a focus group.

While visually scrumptious, the movie struggles to reach a greater profundity that it never quite obtains, but its childlike emulation of a grand tragedy is indelibly precious.

Beloved never really earns its sprawling timeline, eventually getting bogged down with too many developments and overstaying its welcome. For a movie where people intermittently burst into song, the plot is oddly one-note.

As ghost stories go, this one's done just well enough to provide reminders of how it has been done better.

Robot and Frank succeeds where "Ted" fails because, unlike McFarlane, Schreier and Ford render the relationship between the human character and the robot in largely credible terms.

Sleepwalk With Me calls to mind Judd Apatow's "Funny People" for its focus on the eccentric, obsessive nature of the wannabe comic's mind.

It's painful to watch Red Hook Summer stumble, because the man behind it has tried so hard to get his groove back. However, it's energizing in the fleeting moments when he does just that.

Even when it stumbles, however, 2 Days in New York retains an airy vibe, reflecting its dogged intention to charm its viewers. But seeing as "2 Days in Paris" never felt especially irksome, this affable sequel deserves the same insouciant shrug.

Unlike the polished universe of Pixar's "Brave" or countless other recent CGI efforts, ParaNorman maintains a delicate, handcrafted look that underscores its ideas.

Any bona fide sushi fan stands to benefit from the general wake up call that "The Global Catch" provides in ample doses.

Dreams of a Life unintentionally amounts to a mean-spirited snooze.

The whole thing is a step above studio romantic comedies, but that's not saying much.

For a quarter of a century -- unbeknownst to most Americans, including Rodriguez's original producers -- the singer landed a massive following in the country where his humanitarian outlook provided an escape for many disgruntled youth struggling under apartheid, elevating him to the stature of a "South African Elvis."

With an eye for gritty, shameless fun, Friedkin unleashes the play's guilty pleasure center. Friedkin holds nothing back, but it's Letts' rambunctious plotting that enables the director to chart a path to the wild climax.

Recently released from jail, Ai's full story remains to be told, but Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry competently summarizes his lasting relevance, regardless of what may happen next.

For American audiences, each gag has added appeal because it contains an uneasy humor that's often explored but never fully exploited in these parts.

Kazan has fun with a silly premise and smartly plays it straight when the occasion calls for it, while keeping the cutesy, fantastical extremes of the material at bay. It's less fairy tale than shrewd exaggeration on the pratfalls of desire.

Slickly made if not particularly stylish, the movie maintains its entertainment value for picking ideal models of American excess.

With its lethargic pace, Hara Kiri may disappoint more often than it delights, but the payoff is extreme in more ways than one.

If you've never heard of LCD Soundsystem or cared much for the group's work, Shut Up and Play the Hits still manages to explore the prospects of fame and contemporary rock music's lasting relevance.

A spectacular noir epic that's equal parts murky, bloated, flashy and triumphantly cinematic. Four years after Nolan's "Batman Begins" sequel "The Dark Knight" rattled audiences with a similar audiovisual overload, the new movie falls into the same rhythm and remains viscerally satisfying even when the story falters.

While overlong and occasionally too reliant on a formulaic set of motives to drive the action forward, Easy Money retains its suave composure right through the engrossing finale.

Stone's uneven direction veers from near-amateurish genre antics to an enjoyable awareness of those same standards.

Magic Mike casts a seriously entertaining spell.

If nothing else, this memorable effort eloquently displays Hushpuppy's fragile understanding of her world, where the only certainty is that nothing lasts forever. That makes "Beasts" into a gigantic triumph even when it falls apart.

It pitches a tone between comedy and tragedy that holds unique appeal.

Even Allen himself, appearing in front of the camera for his first role since 2005's "Scoop," looks a little lost in the mess.

The filmmaker's first-rate access feels like a kind of desecration.

Extraterrestrial can be forgiven the tangents into melodrama due to Vigalondo's seamless ability to navigate those soapy waters.

Duplass' feisty energy is matched by DeWitt's constant smarminess, while Blunt's shy, fragile behavior balances off the forceful personalities surrounding her.

Prometheus is an unquestionable good time, one of the best big-screen science fiction accomplishments since 'Avatar.'

Pattinson portrays the monotonous Georges Duroy in two equally dry modes: scowls and smirks.

Gerwig singlehanded carries this blithe, generally forgettable story.

A barrage of screwing with interludes does not yield a cohesive movie. Watching Sexual Chronicles of a French Family, the one-note idea grows increasingly evident, as does its absence of fresh ideas.

Even when that story drags, Moonrise Kingdom could be appreciated on mute.

Transitioning back into a scripted dynamic after his quasi-documentary performance excursions with "Bruno" and "Borat," Baron Cohen loses none of his edge, combining slapstick inspiration and social commentary into a hilariously provocative blend.

Despite the ongoing momentum, Sleepless Night never loses touch with its story.

I Wish embraces blissful ignorance, even celebrating its child characters' naivete.

Maintains a funny and sad focus on its single petulant subject.

Viewed as a single experience, Oki's Movie is a curious oddity worthy of multiple viewings and lengthy contemplation, but its tricky formalism makes it less overtly satisfying on an emotional level.

Lockout consists of disciplined action pastiche, but much of its thundering engine borrows from better movies.

Post Mortem portrays the specter of dictatorship through the lens of one man's private hell.

Keyhole never comes together, but that's part of Maddin's creed. He makes movies about movies to express his love for movies, which is to say he makes movies about himself.

One development gets short-shifted: the onslaught of studios drowning out what made the Con so attractive in the first place.

American action movies are almost entirely defined by cutaways, blaring music cues and grunts. The Raid: Redemption, a hyper-energetic Indonesian martial arts movie, delivers an effective rebuke to that meek norm. Bones break, blood flows and swift, excessively complicated fight choreography puts virtually everything released in North America since "The Bourne Ultimatum" to instant shame.

The long take pulls you into the realism of the moment, heightening any sense of unease already established by the story. In Silent House, directors Chris Kentis and Laura Lau ("Open Water") exploit the hell out of that uneasiness and keep pushing its limits.

With its persistent inventiveness and a lack of unearned sentimentality, the movie provides an antidote to a lot of lazily produced dramas about death, American or otherwise.

The Snowtown Murders manages to become a compelling exercise that excels at making horrible acts look shockingly listless.

The Forgiveness of Blood examines the barriers of ritual and the passage from youth to adulthood in Albanian society with the perceptive detail of a grand literary feat. At the same time, it retains the simplicity of a parable.

Alternately mortified and charmed by the unhinged lifestyle, the film goofily celebrates the idea of a societal escape before drowning its idealism in a puddle of half-formed jokes.

Possibly the best war movie of the year.

The beautiful desolation of Bombay Beach makes it difficult to describe as a documentary. Alma Har'el's directorial debut takes a nonfiction setting and displays its haunting qualities in poetic terms.

Over time, Holland's approach pushes beyond despair and turns into a pure exercise in grim atmosphere, shifting from a story of staying alive to a closeup of a private hell.

You've never seen anything like Chico & Rita, simply because that jubilant palette and likeminded jazz soundtrack embraces its predictability with such vitality.

West, who demonstrated a penchant for extensive build-ups in "The House of the Devil" and "Trigger Man," continually makes it unclear if the inn actually harbors a ghost or if his heroine (Sara Paxton) has simply imagines it. Both she and her hilariously frazzled co-worker (Pat Healy of "Great World of Sound") want to believe in supernatural affairs for the thrill factor alone.

In each tense moment, Miss Bala has a lot to say in a few words.

Pummeling forward from its first diner-set fight scene to a sweeping final showdown on the beach, Haywire is a literal blast.

The Divide manages to transcend its numerous flaws while indulging them: No matter where it falters, the underlying purpose stays put.

Imagine "Harold and Maude" directed by Eric Rohmer with shades of film noir and doused in philosophical chatter enhanced by ample white wine. But Domain isn't pure formula, because the subversion of expectations is its centerpiece.

Admittedly lovely and heartfelt, Norwegian Wood is also hollow.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's mesmerizing Once Upon a Time in Anatolia plays like "Zodiac" meets "Police, Adjective."

If "Extremely Loud" came out in the weeks or months following 9/11, more audiences (and critics) might find an excuse to appreciate the way its soul-searching protagonist works through his grief. Ten years later, his struggle actually feels outrageously old-fashioned.