Joe Neumaier

Pieced together, these behind-the-scenes moments are a thrill for history buffs. From the moon landing to the resignations, this is raw Nixon.

You’ll never buy an inexpensive T-shirt without feeling guilty again. At least not after seeing Nathaniel Thomas McGill and Vincent Vittorio’s thorough documentary, which explains something you already know — American manufacturing is dying.

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

The big twist to Closed Circuit is stated in the film’s TV ads, so even the element of surprise is lost. There may have been the making of a juicy, episodes-long BBC series here, but as it is, there’s barely any juice at all.

What’s more depressing: that John Cusack chose the junky, un-exciting serial killer drama The Frozen Ground as his latest step away from John Cusack-y roles, or that Nicolas Cage chose to, at long last, be as un-Cage-like as possible?

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.

Wong’s visual grandeur is, as ever, all-encompassing.

Combining the dysfunctional family reunion and the home invasion thriller, You’re Next tries, somewhat valiantly, to add new twists to the usual bloody horror-flick shenanigans. But aside from a few fresh chords, it’s same-old, same-old.

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.

The missed opportunities in Austenland are more numerous than dowry-less sourpusses at a ball in a Jane Austen novel.

A colorful account of the life and art of the recently retired Drew Struzan, whose amazing poster work from the 1970s onward still delights cineastes and casual observers.

Watching Ushio Shinohara and his wife Noriko make their art, we’re reminded of how much life is inside even the most abstract of pieces.

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

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

The shadow of Terrence Malick falls hard across this Texas crime drama, a beautiful-looking prose poem that starts strong but winds up with nowhere to go.

A singularly full-hearted and moving film.

The meta-satire hits you over the head until not just your Spidey sense is tingling.

Paranoia’s twitchiness is like an actual twitch: it’s contrived and clunky, and you forget it in an instant.

Farahani — seen in “Body of Lies” and “Chicken With Plums” — is equally vibrant in a performance, and a film, that dares us to listen.

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.

The film winds up as a chronicle of uneasy forgiveness.

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

Unfortunately, Elysium devolves. It doesn’t address the ramifications of making everyone healthy for eternity, or what it is on Earth they’re making or digging up that fuels whatever economy is left on the space station. For such a well thought-out premise, there’s not a mention of how capitalism works in this futureworld.

The “Millers” script — it took four writers to cobble together something that seems so slight — hits too many obvious notes between the moments when Aniston can strut her stuff.

The Canyons has more in common with Schrader’s opulent immoral tableaux “The Comfort of Strangers,” “Auto Focus” and “The Walker” than with his other work (including the script for “Taxi Driver”). It’s weaker than those, though, and less biting.

Filmed over six years, “Ashes” is joyous and uplifting, full of spirit, memorable athletes (including Olympian Adrien Niyonshuti) and remarkable achievements, both big and small.

Much like “La Belle Noiseuse,” the 1991 Jacques Rivette film it resembles, this contemplative drama washes over you.

The oldsters are feisty — a gun-totin’ granny is played by Pussy Galore herself, “Goldfinger’s” Honor Blackman — but the shtick’s as flat as old ale. It is bookended, though, by two seriously great songs.

Finally, a found-footage thriller that merits, and expands on, this irrationally popular format.

Think you know all about comedy? This thorough, funny and thoroughly funny chronicle of the Catskills Mountains resorts — that is, the Borscht belt — will still teach you a thing or two.

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.

Everyone thinks sex is easy to do, but that doesn’t mean they’re good at it. The To Do List is exactly that type of movie, one that thinks a sex-obsessed version of a John Hughes comedy by its very nature is hilarious. It’s not, but there are still some things to like here.

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

Good thing the Aussie star has the role down to a science, since the rest of The Wolverine is a howler.

It's nothing special. Which sort of makes it a loser all the way 'round. Expect a sad afterlife for it on cable.

Bening and Dillon are equally misused, and the rest of the cast is frankly just annoying. Like Imogene’s early promise, Girl Most Likely is likely to be forgotten quickly. The sooner the better.

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

Can’t-look-away stuff, though it’s tough to believe your eyes and ears.

The always beguiling Radha Mitchell can’t save this stunted procedural-horror combo.

Whether one thinks Only God Forgives is laughably awful — like, for instance, “Showgirls,” “The Color of Night” or “Battlefield: Earth” — or just plain terrible awful depends, appropriately, on how much you’re willing to forgive it.

If The Conjuring were less of a con job, horror fans would not feel equally as trapped.

It’s never laugh-out-loud funny or inside-track smart, but in a summer full of bombastic failures, a lack of pretense is enough.

Families who have already raced to “Monsters University” and “Despicable Me 2” will find Turbo an acceptable third-place finisher. A sort-of escargot-meets-“Cars” adventure, it has some sharp vocal turns and remains fun even when its inventiveness runs out of gas.

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

Travolta, who was more believable as a middle-aged housewife in “Hairspray” than he is as a former Serbian commando, has the accent down pat. But his Boris-and-Natasha-style syntax seems to represent Killing Season best. Just imagine that voice saying: Dees ees very seelly movie. Catch on cable TV, please.

This sequel to last year’s surprise buzz-maker takes the same appreciative approach to scare-flick tradition: Take hipsters, mix into classic genre riff, goose until ludicrous; repeat. Not every try is successful, but as with any anthology, if you don’t like one, sit back and wait for the next.

Laudable as its world-building is, the film drags not just in its interminable middle hour, but also during the redundant monster-on-mechawarrior smackdowns.

Director Cathryne Czubek’s well-researched, incredibly lively chronicle of the way guns are marketed to, coveted by, and portrayed with women is a vital glimpse into a cultural phenomenon.

What starts as a creepy, original conceit — mysterious Caesarean-section abductions during hospital stays — devolves quickly into standard talk-to-the-camera, jump-at-the-sounds, found-footage banality.

All those cliched literary trappings come together in Stuck in Love, but the final product feels more like a footnote than a finished work.

This smart-looking but empty adventure — with a hero that looks more Tom Ford than John Ford — suffers from a shambling script, shifting tones and a surplus of villains. Clunky and drawn out, “Ranger” shoots blanks, even with the star power of Johnny Depp behind it.

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.

Some may still be surprised at this fun, well-informed chronicle of what was happening in the U.S. as lighted floors, boogie shoes and Saturday night fevers were the rage.

Even in shabbily put together dramedies, such as this one, there can be a glimmer of light. Here it’s Christine Lahti’s anguished, nuanced turn as a wife and mother excited to begin a new phase with her husband.

Perhaps afraid that watching a symbol of liberty repeatedly go boom isn’t enough, Emmerich and screenwriter James Vanderbilt add family drama, an attack on Congress, a plane crash and the possible nuking of the Middle East. What isn’t tonally jarring ends up shatteringly inept.

This poor man’s Norman Bates, though, doesn’t make us wonder what makes him tick; he makes us want to shut our eyes.

A gripping, personal examination of a seemingly unresolvable conflict.

A fascinating, alternate-universe look at the dawn of the music-sharing phenom — once a cause of concern in the industry, yet now a footnote to our all-digital music marketplace.

It is no summer thriller. It’s an anemic actioner that fosters excitement like dead limbs as it lumbers toward a conclusion.

Fans of Dario Argento and Mario Bava will appreciate the references. Even for newcomers, there are minor chords to enjoy. If only there were less screaming.

The crowd that likes these things will certainly be psyched. Everyone else, not so much.

Narratively static and morally banal. That may be par for the course, however, when half the movie is spent watching shallow kids try on other people’s clothes.

The serious-minded result has many super-cool moments. But when it gets clunky, it’s super-meh.

Who let an unfunny, irritatingly acted two-hour commercial for Google onto multiplex screens?

Weixler is a delight, and director Tom Gammill captures the right level of deadpan to pull this off.

This dark lark is like walking around Times Square looking at the flashy logos and lights and thinking you see the message behind the medium.

Though much of the film is overcooked and overwrought, it’s well-played, and writer-director Kieran Darcy-Smith keeps us guessing, and watching.

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

Gandolfini scoops up another chance to show off the gentleness he left at home during six seasons of “The Sopranos.”

The movie even makes night-vision-goggle scares more irksome, a rare feat.

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.

Summer 2013 has its first bomb, and sadly, it’s landed right on Will Smith.

Even young would-be botanists will find this charmless animated adventure as exciting as watching grass grow.

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.

Aiming for lightness but landing with a thud, Frances Ha is a well-meaning blunder. Director Noah Baumbach’s ode to Brooklyn twentysomething life is a flibbertigibbet fable that, like a self-absorbed flirt you meet at a party, grates on the nerves despite being easy on the eyes.

Black Rock is as dingy and dirty as the genre thrillers it appears to want to one-up. All it does, though, is bring everyone down.

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

Luke Evans, whose higher-profile work includes “Clash of the Titans,” this summer’s “Fast & Furious 6” and the next installments of “The Hobbit,” smolders embarrassingly. But he shouldn’t be embarrassed. In the shadows, that could be anyone.

A lot of Aftershock predictably involves screaming or shock cuts, and the movie features a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo from Selena Gomez.

Feiffer sometimes gets snagged on the look-at-me nature of her meta-performance, veering from pathological to pathetic, and not always in the best way.

This would-be satire earns an E for Effort for wanting to be to the advertising world what “Being There” was to television.

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

Cathy Moriarty and other Scorsese alums pop up, but these mean streets feel too derivative to thrill.

“Um” winds up as empty as its mean streets are phony.

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.

Wahlberg and Johnson are the saving graces of an in-your-face movie.

Stripped of his former pretty-boy image, the Texas-born actor is snarly and gnarled, and understands what Nichols is aiming for. That’s crucial, as Mud needs something to stick to.

As a wry, knowing narrator guides us in and out of their symphonic affair, there’s no doubt the trip is worth it.

This terrific film certainly contains the spark of discovery.

The Big Wedding lets them all down with bottom-rung sitcom shtick and an undercurrent of squareness masquerading as absurdity.

Atmosphere is three-fourths of the game in a horror film, and The Lords of Salem has it in spades. It’s not too much to say that until this culty-witchy throwback chiller turns too bloody, it shows how far a little style can go.

Kosinski’s ultimately underwhelming film leads nowhere. As its palpable sense of dread — well-sustained in a gently cascading first hour — gives way to dead ends, this Omega Movie shoots itself in the foot.

Luckily, folks like Snoop and good sports like Sheen and, yes, Lohan, break up the monotony. Until, like an undead beastie, the boredom and dumb jokes come roaring back.