Joe Neumaier

Urgent as a heart attack and as timely as the headlines, 99 Homes is one of those films that make other "topical" dramas look tinny. This astute, intense drama boasts sharp performances and belongs in the same company as films like "Margin Call" and "Michael Clayton" -- contemporary stories whose of-the-moment nature only makes their great parts better.

She's inexhaustible, seemingly everywhere at once and, throughout director Sara Hirsh Bordo's unblinking, well-directed film, she is absolutely and fearlessly herself. Which is exactly as it should be -- the world needs Lizzie Velasquez.

Maguire’s portrayal of Fischer’s volatility, disconnect and inner demons is gripping. It’s his best performance since “Wonder Boys” (2000). Schreiber hardly says anything, yet he’s gloweringly good. He acts with his jowls and brow and swept-back hair, making the sort-of rock-’n’-roll Spassky a polar opposite, but strategic equal, to Fischer. Saarsgaard is also terrific, lending a quiet air of solemnity and thoughtfulness.

This dramatic thriller finds a spot somewhere between your brain and your stomach, and drills in.

The fear, desperation and hope of Time Out of Mind is painfully, hauntingly human.

What this rich film does go into — in a lengthy tangent that’s less punchy but important — is the impropriety Jobs trafficked in when he allowed himself and high-ranking Apple-ers to be granted backdated stock options. They got wealthy as their product was being made, amid some scandal, for a pittance in China.

Terrific and gripping.

Full of smarts, sly insight and New York personality. As a feather in its jaunty hat, the movie also reinvigorates the art of screwball comedy.

One of the best movies of the year.

There are laughs in Magic Mike XXL.... But the real eye-openers are the moments of sex-positive, woman-positive and emotion-positive contemplation.

Rory Culkin’s turn in the deeply felt and haunting Gabriel is so powerful you can’t look away.

Inside Out is the year’s best film so far. After you see it, you’ll say that’s a no-brainer.

The charming, soulful Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a movie that loves movies — which is great, because you’ll love this one.

To capture the artistic process in this way is extraordinary, and in many ways unprecedented. The scenes are not shot in documentary style, but flow with bits of inspiration, conflict and nuance. We see and listen to some of the era’s greatest songs being made.

There’s never a false moment.

Slow West isn’t a grand epic of that genre. It’s more like “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” “Dead Man” or the recent “The Homesman,” using familiar signposts to tell a simple, compelling, terrific story.

Strap in, load up and hang on because Mad Max: Fury Road is a freaky, ballsy, phenomenal ride.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is a kinetic, wicked mix of muscle and magic. Look no further if you want a world of superpowered freaks and geeks. But be aware: It comes at a cost. Vaporized in the parade of action and characters is the wonder and simplicity of its first, superior entry.

Explaining humor is usually like boiling water — it evaporates. But the funny folks in actor Kevin Pollak’s well-structured doc can actually break down what they do.

If you don’t love monkeys already — and really, we all should — then Monkey Kingdom will swing you in the right direction.

This is the film that fulfills whatever promise Kristen Stewart has shown for more than a decade.

The atmosphere surrounding them both is enveloping. While the story falls a bit into melodrama, that can’t chop away at the solid drama the stars and director build beautifully.

Noah Baumbach’s sensational satirical drama While We’re Young is, finally, a movie for grownups to run out and see.

What the film doesn’t show enough of is how these people got their positions of power. We get much more of the other side, the legitimate scientists, and too much of a magician who pops up to describe cons and double-talk. But he shows how a bunko artist is a bunko artist, whether on a corner or on CNN.

The stories are horrifying, but essential to hear. Kirby Dick’s important documentary puts a personal face to the staggering numbers.

This great-looking, often spellbinding film also shows Lee’s sometimes pervasive theatricality threatening to chomp into the story. But the swirling strangeness of “Sweet Blood” makes it his most mesmerizing work since the underrated “Bamboozled” (2000) and “25th Hour” (2002).

Chandor (“All is Lost”) has made a movie that quietly but ferociously immerses us in a time and place, with atmosphere done in minimal yet evocative strokes.

The battle it documents is both a cornerstone of the past and a reflection of ongoing struggles. DuVernay infuses Selma with that dichotomy, never forgetting how Selma, the place, was a pledge to march ahead.

When you get through it, though, you can’t help but feel uplifted by this tough-skinned movie that can stand with the best muscular wartime dramas in the American movie canon.

Most tales come from the inimitable mouth of the man himself, who could make ordering dinner sound like Shakespeare. He had a life to match. Workman covers all of his subject’s years, even if very few of them truly belonged to Welles.

It’s one of the most vibrant, sly romantic comedies this year.

Rare is the drama that plumbs the quirky, unsettling depths of human nature like Foxcatcher. Simultaneously understated and grippingly edgy, this is an arresting examination of naivete, mismatched worlds and old-fashioned American oddness.

Rosewater is not about what isolates us, and part of the film’s terrific achievement is its recognition that staying connected is a daily show of strength.

There are great clips and good insight, and it’s all as loose and cool as an Austin night out.

Watching politics and the people in it can be disheartening and depressing. Here’s an antidote: This energizing, uplifting, sharp documentary from director Kevin Gordon.

Fury excels in showing the ground-level, guttural intensity and claustrophobia of battle.

Speaking of committed: Duvall, at age 83, nearly steals the show. Always the most inscrutable of the great ’70s actors, Duvall uses his great, unassuming American face to convey pride, confusion, pain and compassion — sometimes all at once.

Murray is always a delight, but his films with kids (“Meatballs,” “Rushmore,” “The Royal Tenenbaums”) give his unencumbered playfulness even more room to roam.

Fincher is a fearless filmmaker who understands his audience’s intelligence (not to mention their cinematic blood lust). By the end of Gone Girl, we feel like we’ve lived through about four movies, not just one. Good luck letting go of any of them.

Like Gandolfini, the deep Brooklyn of The Drop is formidable, bona fide and memorable.

After a summer of robots, mutants and explosions, the beautifully honest, grownup Love is Strange is a treat.

To sing the praises of the movie but not give away the revelations is difficult. Let’s just say this: The less you know about what happens in this funny, tasty twisteroo, the better.

Inside these average American lives are futures far too often passed over or, worse, written off. This terrific film gives the teenagers their due.

Like Brown, the movie is dynamic and entertaining as hell.

This bold movie may sound like a stunt, but it’s so much more than that. Linklater is an effortless, genial auteur, and his passions are woven through “Dazed and Confused,” “School of Rock” and the “Before Sunrise” trilogy. Here, his mellow groove becomes an everyday rhythm.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is awe-inspiring.

The irony is that Ebert famously lost his actual voice. Yet as the extraordinary documentary Life Itself shows, that couldn’t quiet one of America’s most beloved critics and cultural commentators.

The layered, tuned-in adaptation by Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter avoids calculated sentiment.

Angelina Jolie is so wickedly enchanting in the magical, magnificent Maleficent, you may not notice how transporting this female-driven blockbuster really is.

The strength of Gray’s movie lies in showing the connection between people in a place without rules.

Gritty, funny, rich adaptation of a Pete Dexter novel.

Ida is photographed in gorgeous black-and-white cinematography. A deep focus allows every corner of the simple, serene compositions to be seen clearly. The economy of story and dialogue extends to the running time — at barely 90 minutes, the movie feels full, yet free of excess.

This engrossing documentary winds up being about nothing less than making one of Shakespeare’s greatest works come alive through hard work — and the spark that happens within an acting company.

There are two types of superhero movies: the ones that brood and the ones that swing. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is proudly the latter, filled with high-energy action.

Intoxicating, and at times maddening, to watch.

Parents, take note: For all its heart, this is a tougher, more morally complex movie than its predecessors. Young kids carrying their miniversions of Cap’s famous shield may be in for a jolt.

Given the evidence compiled here by director Frank Pavich, there’s reason to believe Jodorowsky’s “Dune” was more influential for never actually existing. It wound up being inhaled, like some ethereal alien spice, by a generation of moviemakers.

A smart, ardent, profound movie.

The story Stiller tells manages to float in a most peculiar, satisfying way.

A delirious, manic, push-the-limits comedy of gaudy amorality that tests the audience’s taste. But it’s a gamble that works, since you leave this adrenaline trip wasted, but invigorated.

There’s a great fever-dream quality to David O. Russell’s American Hustle that instantly reels you in.

The slick but moving Saving Mr. Banks transcends its corporate pedigree to become a great Disney movie about making a Disney movie.

Like “The Deer Hunter” — from which it swipes its Keystone State milieu, its haunted veterans, and its self-endangerment metaphor — Out of the Furnace gets under your skin.

The good news is it comes very close, and does it without sacrificing its soul. Despite its sense of been-here-slayed-that, director Francis Lawrence expertly delivers thrills, ideas and spectacle.

Capturing family on film — the real rhythms of family, with all the annoyances, awkwardness and affection — is tough. Tougher still is wrestling a story around the murky emotional waters of Midwestern relatives. Yet one needn’t be cut from that cloth to see the hilarious beauty, and the beautiful honesty, in Nebraska.

If Woodroof is the movie’s guts, Rayon is its heart, and Leto (TV’s “My So-Called Life,” “Alexander”) is stunningly perfect, even when the story veers ever so slightly into expected territory.

More than just a one-name star of pop culture’s alternative history, Divine’s story — terrorized by bullies, embraced by the outré, where he finds a home — stands for “all the outsiders,” as Waters says (between hilarious anecdotes).

McQueen has made a film comparable to “Schindler’s List” — art that may be hard to watch, but which is an essential look at man’s inhumanity to man. It is wrenching, but 12 Years a Slave earns its tears in a way few films ever do.

A thrill ride with a brain.

The most gripping based-on-fact film so far this year.

The wonkiness is at a minimum and Reich delivers it with tales from his own life, since he’s the son of a dress store owner and a mom who helped in the shop. Essential viewing, no matter how you cut it.

Dano, Bello, Howard, Davis and Leo — the last nearly unrecognizable — are equally strong. Villeneuve, whose last film was the Oscar-nominated “Incendies,” uses them all perfectly, and Prisoners works best when it’s not what you thought it was going to be. But even on familiar ground, it’s hard to let go of.

There’s social commentary in all of this, but it takes a back seat to a surprisingly compelling narrative of the two combating teams.

Short Term 12 wraps up with one of the most touchingly memorable last moments of any film this year. Despite a title that’s hard to recall, this brief but resonant movie sticks with you.

Drinking Buddies is full of relatable dilemmas, guileless moments of kindness and character-based humor.

This full, footage-rich documentary shows respect for the social, legal, political, religious and pugilistic battles of the former Cassius Clay.

Entertaining and smart, with a great, career 2.0 performance from Ashton Kutcher.

A singularly full-hearted and moving film.

It’s hard to imagine the lives behind the voices that are part of the movies. But In a World ..., the debut feature from actress-turned-writer-director Lake Bell, not only gives the people who do movie voice-overs a closeup, it savvily and wittily uses what we hear as a metaphor for what we are.

Zipper captures the erasing of one of New York’s most unique stamps by cartoon businesspeople with dollar signs for eyeballs.

While “Lovelace” falters a bit, it remains a memorable, unflinching indictment.

The focus in James Ponsoldt’s affecting, intelligent drama is a pair of teenagers, and in them is so much complexity and heart that this casually paced gem feels rich in scope. They’re two of the most carefully created figures on screen this year, and yet their normalness takes us by surprise.

Pure charisma is sometimes the best special effect. That’s what Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg bring to 2 Guns, and after a season full of superhero duds, they deliver a crucial dose of cool.

The way she (Blanchette) anchors this superb dramedy is a thing of beauty.

An extraordinary, must-see examination of what humans do to killer whales so that these amazing creatures can become one more entertainment.

One of the most extraordinary films you’ll see this year.

With his rapid-fire delivery and big heart, Rockwell makes Owen his version of “M*A*S*H”’s Hawkeye Pierce, but the film’s layers of well-observed truths go deeper than that.

As the cracklingly cool The East shows, they’re the real deal. It’s not easy to make a thriller where brains and guts are so clearly in cahoots.

Delpy and Hawke, who’ve invested this trilogy with the fine shadings of life lived, do extraordinary things with small moments.

Galifianakis, though, is the key here. Able to smash a scene to smithereens with the simplest of lines, the hirsute comic is as unpredictable as ever, yet takes director Todd Phillips’ bait to up the stakes.

The result is a stunningly nervy sequel that vaporizes any worries that Abrams’ terrific 2009 reboot was a fluke.

The film is a mystery uncovered like a detective story, wrapped in a love letter.

As Richard Kuklinski, the Garden State guy who sleepwalks into an infamously deadly life he was born for, Shannon hits a whole other level.

It sharply fuses the humor and heart of the earlier films with a satisfyingly heavy-metal strength — and a darkness that’s more than earned.

This terrific film certainly contains the spark of discovery.

Boseman is watchful, winning and confident, but never saintly. Yet he keeps Robinson’s moral spine aligned with his skill and self-respect, showing how he needed all of those to succeed.

A frisky, feisty heist flick with brains and charisma, the movie may make a few errors, but they’re forgotten in the blink of an eye thanks to all the twists, turns and close shaves.

The deliberate pace Mungiu employs in this incredible work is so engrossing and quietly heartbreaking that its philosophical ending may come as a shock.