Joe Neumaier

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.

A work deeper than its nickname, "The Facebook Movie," hints at - coils around your brain. Weeks after seeing it, moments from it will haunt you.

Small victories that turn into defeats, long walks to gain little ground, little wounds that get deeper every day - growing old is a war, and movies rarely go there. Michael Haneke's amazing, dignified Amour is the exception.

What finally sticks in the mind about "ZDT" is its precision. What the film says about getting information from terrorism suspects in an era of high-tech surveillance depends on your point of view. What is unquestionable is how powerful its full scope is.

Together and apart, Hatami and Maadi are magnetic. Hatami, a star in Iranian cinema, lets us see Simin's intelligence and defiant sense of self-worth often with nothing more than a gesture.

Rotates around a rusty little robotic hero who's built, as the movie is, with such emotion, brains and humor that whole universes exist in his whirring tones and binocular eyes.

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

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

While the vocal performances of Hanks, Allen and company make up a perfect ensemble, and its visual leaps astound, TS3's real power sneaks up on you.

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

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.

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

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

History has made his midair stroll meaningful, but the film shows how even then, everyone - from Petit to his accomplices to the cops who were waiting for him atop the North Tower - recognized the stunt's crazy poetry.

One of the best movies of the year.

A kind of historical detective story made up of haunting montages, including a theater performance featuring a heartbroken musician that's absolutely chilling.

Ferguson doesn't aim to entertain; he wants answers, and talks to many of the enabling weasels.

Despite being about a royal family at a critical moment in history, The King's Speech doesn't shout about its many strengths. Rather, it urges you to lean in close, where its intelligence and heart come through loud and clear.

The history lesson in Steven Spielberg's austere, engrossing Lincoln is less about the revered President himself but his method for justice.

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.

This extraordinary hybrid of a movie lives and breathes the game, yet its achievement is bigger than that. There's a touch of old-fashioned romanticism here, but more crucially there's strategy going on inside Bennett Miller's movie that turns it into something cool and special.

Mary's search drives The Tillman Story, and throughout this taut, true epic, we see a smart, sometimes angry, always loving family find their destiny: to speak truth to power, to call wartime myths what they are and to show how the American character is not about blind obedience.

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.

Director Werner Herzog's latest cinematic mind trip blows you away with its beauty.

Quiet, soulful and wrenching.

Argo is movie magic. Ben Affleck's third directorial outing, is an entertaining, real-life, race-the-clock thriller that nabs you at the start and never makes a wrong move.

This superb, cerebral film about unchecked belief is a fictionalized and cutting drama hinging on the origins of Scientology. Scratch around a bit, though, and its wider indictments become clear.