Joe Morgenstern

The most striking thing about X-Men: Days of Future Past is its generosity. Huge franchise installments are rarely as enjoyable as this one. They aren't as inventive, richly detailed, surprisingly varied, elegantly crafted or improbably stirring.

The immensity encompasses such variety, subtlety and intimacy that you may find yourself yearning for more.

A feature-length documentary, by Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller, of absolutely breathtaking sweep and joyous energy.

The best of Up in the Air--meaning most of it--is right up there with the fresh and sophisticated comedies of Hollywood's golden age.

There are remakes and there are remakes. I don't want to belabor the flaws and sexual excesses of the original; its great strength was its explosive energy. Still, this one investigates the unfulfilled potential of the first one so thoroughly, and develops it so audaciously, that it qualifies as a brilliant reinvention.

Peterloo starts slowly, takes its time and sometimes tries one’s patience. Don’t expect heartwarming domestic stories. The people are vivid and the acting is superb; as always, the director and his cast have collaborated on the screenplay through improvisations that coalesce into a working script. But the search for understanding — of the massacre and the events leading up to it — is more structural than individual.

Ultimately an original film that forces us, time and again, to reconsider what we think we've just seen, and what we're sure we feel - not only about mere appearance, or fateful gender, but about who, under our skin, we truly are.

This hugely entertaining thriller is what's needed to banish a winter-long case of movie blues.

Despite its cargo of meaning, 3-Iron feels marvelously weightless, like the lovers as they stand on a scale that the hero has fixed.

Both magical and consistently joyous. The director, Robert Altman, and the writer, Garrison Keillor, have, against all odds, transmuted the fatigued public radio institution into a lovely fable about mortality, fleeting fame, fondness for the past and the ineffable beauty of life in the present.

The near-miracle worked by Mr. Boyle, whose exuberant style brings several saints to scruffy life, is a movie that's joyously funny and hugely inventive -- occasionally to the point of preciousness -- yet true to the spirit of the saintly little kid at its center.

Charlotte Rampling is the best reason, though far from the only one, to see Swimming Pool, a mesmerizing mystery, plus a wonderfully sensuous fantasy.

Loneliness and longing are at the center of these two women’s lives, at least for a while, and they’re expressed by nuance and implication in a pair of superb performances, and by a lovely evocation of the period.

What makes this droll, darting story about a loose group of family and friends so moving? The answer lies partly in its tone. Mr. Mills seems to have thrown everything he could think of into the mix, dramatic unities be damned, but suffused it all with a poetic sense of life’s goofiness, solemnity and evanescence.

Shrewdly reconceived, powerfully acted and hugely entertaining.

Rousing, provocative film.

Catching Fire is exceptional entertainment, a spectacle with a good mind and a pounding heart.

This version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy turns on the presence of Mr. Oldman, and he is an actor of great experience and accomplishment who has finally found a film that fully deserves him.

A romantic comedy of grace notes and mini-epiphanies -- mini, that is, except for Ms. McDormand's Jane, who is memorable to the max.

What makes it such a singular experience is the convergence of fine acting, moral urgency and a willingness to linger on moments of great intensity.

A cockeyed comic triumph that flashes between bright and dark like a strobe light of the spirit. And Ms. Theron, as Mavis Gary, a self-styled author rather than a mere writer, succeeds sensationally at something much harder than playing ravaged.

The heart of the film, though, lies in what remains closest to Mr. Crosby’s heart—not the bum one with the eight stents but the musical one that has been churning out new songs and albums with improbable, unquenchable zest. True to its subject, who has been true to his muse, David Crosby: Remember My Name is about music in a revelatory way.

This beautifully strange and affecting comedy, which Agnès Jaoui directed from a screenplay she wrote with her husband, Mr. Bacri, is about men who are weak and insecure, and one woman, Agathe, played superbly by Ms. Jaoui, coming to terms with the price of being strong.

The film can be harrowing in its repetitive violence, but never less than fascinating as a piece of ethnology, with magic-realist dimensions, that amounts to an origin story of the Latin American drug trade.

This ingenious and beautiful film by Mia Hansen-Løve isn’t for chewing so much as savoring. The more you think back on its mysteries, the more pleasure it bestows.

While the film itself isn't perfect, who cares about perfection in the face of abundant life, authentic screwiness and lovely surprises by the busload?

A movie of minimalist moments (Molly's tiniest gestures speak volumes) and lovely, almost holy tableaux.

Indignation is very much the sort of venture Mr. Schamus has often championed as a producer — ambitious and provocative, a must-see for anyone who cares about independent film.