Joe Neumaier

Melancholy, often muddled documentary.

Rarely has any film, fictional or documentary, captured the hypnotic effect of voices on the airwaves like this chronicle of Bob Fass.

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

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

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

Like its antiheroes, this slacker tragedy has moments of calm and originality that are sadly obliterated by a tendency toward the extreme. Still, in a kind of reverse apocalypse, the movie's toughest stretch is its first two-thirds, a navel-gazing, semi-romantic nothing-a-thon that falls away in time for the movie to emerge from the ashes.

Mostly, though, there’s hopefulness here, and determination to win a fight worth fighting.

50/50 pulls no punches in its depiction of living day-to-day with illness. There's pain and fear, no question. But this dramatic comedy is also warm, honest and, most especially, funny.

This uneven but often charming movie produced by Spielberg gets so many things right, including its practiced naivete. What's missing, however, is a crucial sense of connection to itself.

What the movie captures overall looks like a scene from a sci-fi, postapocalyptic nightmare.

Their devotion to their art is admirable, and the film gets under the skin, if never really in our blood.

The genuinely sweet nature of this sometimes clunky movie is mixed with a little sass, and wins you over.

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.

Comes upon a few quirky solutions and movie-ripoff scares before settling into a kind of coma.

Every parent in New York should see this movie and then ask why, when solutions exist, our woefully broken school system has yet to be fixed.

Director Hiromasa Yonebayashi did a wonderful job adapting “The Borrowers” into “The Secret World of Arriety.” But this slow-moving film, also from a book, tends to plod rather than float.

If one performance could tilt a movie the direction it needs to go, John C. Reilly's expertly left-of-center turn in Terri is it.

Its hard sell wears you down and draws you in, even as you know you're being manipulated.

A twisty Italian thriller that takes some liberties with its now-you-see-'em/now-you-don't plot points, but no matter; the way director Giuseppe Capotondi keeps us guessing is deliciously, maliciously deft.

Winstead and director James Ponsoldt add something gripping and modern to the cinema of recovery, a well-mined genre that can still, it seems, yield thoughtful surprises.

For better or worse, the blood and bone-crunching remains most prominent.

Freeman is so in-tune with the former South African president's persona you can't take your eyes off him.

Crucial viewing for realists and alarmists both.

The film, unfortunately, hasn't the depth Malkovich brings to his performance.

The politician who almost pathologically asked the question "How'm I doin'?" clearly never needed a view outside his own. Which is as New York as it gets.

This contemplative drama draws strength from day-to-day ordinariness and a terrific lead performance from Paul Eenhoorn, yet sadly falls short.

A gripping documentary about how unnecesary real estate development can change the soul of New York, brings us inside the lives it touches.

Donald Sutherland's passionate rendition of a speech from Trumbo's 1971 film "Johnny Got His Gun" (based on his novel) is worth the price of admission.

There could have been more side trips on the road to self-discovery, but the plentiful lessons and derring-'do make Tangled a lock for playground pastimes. And maybe even some knotty parent-kid chats about finding your part in life.

So now we have a full-length Machete movie, and it turns out that, as usual, less is more.

Even with no wood sprites, witches or spells, there’s plenty of magic in this coming-of-age charmer.

The laughs are what keep the film together, even when the conceit feels been-there-done-that.

Young Adult may at times be stuck between emotional gears, but that's by design. Like its heroine, the movie refuses to pick up after itself.

What the movie needs more than anything else is a fast-forward button.

He (Fincher) gives in to its mimicry of an Agatha Christie parlor game. Only instead of Miss Marple, the old-gal crime-solver with piercing blue eyes, we get Lisbeth Salander, pierced goth-girl investigator with raccoon eyes.

Has moments of power that push through a fake-out script.

The film treats kids' inner lives as more than a fantasy, which is a rare and beautiful thing.

Even with all the inconvenient truths exposed, Stone's film is still, sadly, inescapably crucial.

The story's Hitchcockian plot loses steam quickly, though Pinon's salty presence keeps things from getting totally bloodless.

Moving, intelligent documentary.

Just another loud, boy-centric comedy aimed at ’tweens. The movie turns a slight children’s book — in this case, Judith Viorst’s 1972 fave, from which it takes mainly the title — into a charmless mishmash.

Filled with horrific but colorful anecdotes, director Joe Berlinger’s incisive look at the mobster life of Boston career criminal and FBI informant “Whitey” Bulger is essential viewing for fans of lurid, true underworld tales.

To use carnival lingo: Thrilling? Not quite; since Levi's film has no clear goal for Stan to reach. Spectacular? Truth be told, those skeptical of Stan's abilities may still walk out as nonbelievers. Fascinating? Absolutely, because if you take time to listen, everyone's life is a three-ring circus.

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

Rather than go for big ideas, the movie cozies up to small wonders. Instead of an ah-ha moment, we get a sigh of familiarity. Still, in this biopic about Hawking, there’s one explosion that blows your mind: Eddie Redmayne’s performance. Redmayne as Hawking, if the stars align, should be an Oscar lock.

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

This absorbing film isn't an apology or an explanation, but it nonetheless holds plenty of answers - including an amusing dissection of that infamously wiry hair-bear 'fro from the man who wore 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.

Before going off in conventional directions, "Circus" is terrifically weird, funny and garish. Bozo and Clarabelle it ain't.

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.

Morris mixes piercing sit-downs with disturbing evidence. Though soldiers, including the notorious Lynndie England, express remorse, it's haunting to hear how several prisoners were "nice guys" or known to be innocent, yet no connection is made between those remarks and the images of torture.

It can sometimes be hard to sit through, but another song is coming soon, and anyway, close your eyes and imagine you're on vacation, sipping vino in a piazza, soaking in the street life.

There are two stormy performances from Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz that elevate Allen's melancholy thoughts on love and relationships.

You see the spark of 'this is cool!,' but you don't sense a purpose. The underconceived Public Enemies suffers from that lack of drive, though Johnny Depp is so urgent and charismatic as John Dillinger, he provides enough firepower to make the film legit.

There are suggestions to help us sleep more easily, but the point is to wake us up.

Benjamin never questions his fate and ­never actually gets to enjoy being a kid. At least there's a thoughtful middle part, where the enigmatic Blanchett comes alive and Benjamin seems haunted by life -- someone we recognize, and not just a vessel tossed about by time.

Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s film underserves its cast of up-and-comers (Thomas Mann, Ezra Miller, Tye Sheridan), allows the usually solid actor Michael Angarano to go astray with a scenery-chewing role and buries Crudup in fretting and sanctity. Worse, the experiment’s inherent drama is exacted with a tin ear and a cheesy style.

A look into one of the most invisible, and crucial, of cinematic disciplines. Using the seminal casting director Marion Dougherty as a subject, the film walks us through the intricacies of casting, with insight from Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Robert Redford and others.

The movie gets repetitive, and when it calls an audible and goes somewhere unexpected, it pulls back quickly. Too bad.

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.

If only this Eddie Murphy flick had taken its own advice and spent a little more time being reflective instead of hyperactive, it might have overcome a trite script and awful, obvious excuses for comedy.

While Montias' actors do their best, even good intentions have limits. Still, it never feels false. And remember, even Martin Scorsese (born in Queens) had to start somewhere.

The emotions veer from bawdy to sweet and then to obvious, though the film is stylish, and Dolan's artfulness helps when the movie loses focus.

Almodovar makes some missteps in his icky mélange of melodrama and mischief, but the end result is playfully devious.

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.

Directing the film of Doubt, Shanley is able to put an even finer point on his Tony-and Pulitzer-winning play about suspicion and guilt at a Bronx Catholic grade school in 1964.

The movie is filled with fun '50s Americana.

There are parts of “Escape From New York,” “Air Force One,” “Cliffhanger” and countless Luc Besson movies strewn about. Big Game doesn’t stomp on their memory, but like an overenthusiastic fan, it does smother them with amateurish zeal.

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).

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.

Kline, who has done a lot of chewy character roles after several stage ­triumphs, is as sly and leonine as ever. His performance here obliterates that phony accent he used in "French Kiss."

Harrelson though, is in every scene, and seeing him burn up Rampart is positively arresting.

Despite a pleasantly laid-back demeanor, you wish it would just get focused.

Becomes too melodramatic and bleakly obvious. Weaving, though, as always, is never less than magnetic.

With a bit less grisliness, it could have been a mystery dinner-theater performance.

There's a sense of dread in Contagion, but it never spreads to us. When Day 1 is finally shown, it makes you want to eat better, which isn't the same as saying this is a great movie.

Watch for a cameo by young animator Tim Burton.

The scope of director Peter Chan's military drama is impressive, though this sometimes-rousing depiction of strategy and loyalty in mid-1800s China pales next to recent, similar historical epics like "Red Cliff" and "Mongol."

A documentary with too much dead time between the arduous tasks at hand, never grabs a viewer because -- sad to say -- it's too dull.

As a look at how we got from there to here, “Evocateur” is one for the time capsule.

The film is an exasperating bore.

Gorgeously animated and featuring a tapestry of real-looking wonders, Brave is certainly a thing of beauty. But its emotional layers don't yield the same depth.

Only in its final scenes do the usual WKW themes emerge in full bloom, but purists shouldn't miss it.

As a whole, Sam Mendes' film of Revolutionary Road comes close but falls short of capturing Richard Yates' terrific novel.

It's a shame neither actress can truly "go for the jugular," as Alan says at one point. This is a work that would allow for it.

Riveting, especially since these animals' population has horrifyingly dropped from 450,000 to 20,000 in a half-century.

This is a role that the Julia Roberts of 1999 couldn't have played, and that's fine. The one we have here is much better.

Peepli Live may not consistently hit the mark, but it's savvy and humane, which goes a long way.

The cool cast includes casual drop-ins from Sam Rockwell, Melanie Lynskey and Sam Elliott. The actors give off the feeling that we’ve wandered into the middle of a conversation among friends. This being a Swanberg movie, that’s kind of what is happening, complete with tiny epiphanies and people you want to hear keep talking.

Giamatti is one of the few guys who could take a joke about a chickpea-sized soul and make a meal of it.

Intoxicating, and at times maddening, to watch.

Throughout, Hollyman rings true . She’s heartfelt, freaked-out and never too way out.

Director Megumi Sasaki's film feels like a cozy visit with neighbors whose insights are priceless.

Most impressive of all, The Avengers makes superhero movies new again - a colossal task indeed.

Polanski views things so mischievously that the naughtiness is neutered long before sniveling Thomas is tied to a pole. He’s a captive not only to Vanda, but also to all the dull, reductive mind games.

Chronicle is an energetic hodgepodge that tweaks familiar conventions just enough to seem fresh. Forget the X-Men - these are iHeroes.

If Hitchcock had done a coming-of-age drama, it might have resembled this haunting, nervous, sad movie about an early twentysomething.

All of the actors' vocal performances are spot-on, including McAvoy's gentle Arthur, Nighy's salty GrandSanta and Ashley Jensen's cute stowaway elf Bryony, a chipper little pixie that would make Rudolph's pal Hermey proud.