Joe Neumaier

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

A thrill ride with a brain.

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

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

Halfway into Blue Valentine, a work so beautifully acted and emotionally honest it is my choice for best movie of the year, there's an amazing flashback scene you hope never ends.

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

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.

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 summer's best popcorn flick.

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.

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.

As important and eye-opening a documentary as you’ll see this year, A Place at the Table makes it impossible to think of hunger as merely another symptom of a shredded social safety net.

It shows that life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. And how, in case we forget, every age can predict the next.

The new Star Trek is more than a coat of paint on a space-age wagon train. It's an exciting, stellar-yet-earthy blast that successfully blends the hip and the classic.

Chimpanzee lets everyone feel like a mini-Jane Goodall.

This amazingly beautiful, and amazingly frightening, documentary captures the immediacy of what climate change is doing to the Arctic landscape.

Gyllenhaal is charming and makes unexpected choices in her performance, but this is Bridges' show, and he's as Best Actor-worthy as he's ever been.

If a documentary can be both alarming and oddly reassuring, it's the gripping splash of cold cinematic water Racing Extinction.

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

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

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.

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

One of the best movies of the year.

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

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.

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

Among an excellent cast, Douglas truly is the nexus; he and Stone make this sequel pay off big-time.

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

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.

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.

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

Crucial viewing for realists and alarmists both.

These three films (adapted from David Peace's novels by different directors), each a singularly gripping work, together form a towering and emotionally complex achievement.

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.

There’s never a false moment.

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.

This heartbreaking and essential look into the lives of those who put so much into educating other people's children ought to be seen by anyone concerned about the fate of the public school system, and the nation as a whole.

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

As tough-spirited as fans would hope for - and exciting and thought-provoking in a way few adventure dramas ever are.

Twisted, tortured, terrifying - and terrific.

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

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

One of the best indie films of the year, Humpday is a lighter descendant of "sex lies and videotape," yet burrows just as deep into the male psyche and the human capacity for self-deceit.

This is crucial work, evidenced by a line on a wall of R.I.P. graffiti that reads simply, "I am next." This film of common folks fighting the seemingly inevitable is just as moving.

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.

The gristle inside this movie is one of the things that save it from being simply a series of challenges.

A memorable, monstrous fable that's consistently gripping.

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.

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

The finished "Ring" cycle, a combination of "myth, science and legend" made to order as Wagner imagined it, was unique to every viewer's eye. The making of it will be spellbinding to everyone.

There's a wonderfully steely spine inside of Tom McCarthy'sWin Win," but it's hard to see at first because it's inside the doughy, everyman person of Paul Giamatti.

There's no bells and whistles here, no 3-D or useless grey fluff, just Pooh as he's always been, silly and true.

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

This terrific film certainly contains the spark of discovery.

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

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.

The comedy of discomfort that runs through Cyrus is often about several things at once. But the most prevalent emotion in this quirky yet genuine movie is the awkwardness that comes with trying to fit into someone else's life.

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

Entertaining, inventive and old-fashioned in the best way.

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.

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.

Belafonte still finds ways to address injustice - and now we have over 50 years of his example to follow and his music to enjoy.

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.

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

By the time Barney gets one final, heartbreaking chance to screw things up, this rich, satisfying film has you hooked.

For the uninitiated, this fun French documentary detailing the camaraderie and division between filmmakers François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard reveals a time when "the cinema" was something to get excited about and literally fight over.

This incredibly moving, touchingly honest and transcendent chronicle of how a handful of people coped after Sept. 11 is not only one of the best distillations of that day, but a monument to humanity lost and gained.

The first film in a while to have a decent heart while quickening your pulse.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

The American, a movie as coiled as a snake and as still as a sleepy villa, is the rare grownup thriller that knows the link between peace and danger and the tension that comes from both.

A wonderfully entertaining, beautiful Western drama that lets the quirks of the genre gallop freely as it keeps a tight rein throughout.

World is grounded, offering up a rare case of well-earned hopefulness.

This macabre-yet-moving Argentinian drama from director Juan Jose Campanella is nuanced and full of intelligence and emotion; just when you think you have a bead on it, it gently swerves into richer places.

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.

Krasinki's soft-sell script, lets the movie's ideas get absorbed without grandstanding or pretension. Its issues go down with a smile and common sense, which turns out to be exactly the right formula.

Cooper, Torre and Dane DeHaan, as a soldier smitten with a local girl, stand out among a strong cast. With its big ideas on an intimate scale, this is Sayles' best in a decade.

Intense and, yes, depressing - and earns every minute that it rattles inside your head.

Downey has a winning take on Holmes: He's always on.

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

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.

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.

Beginners is filled with crises of identity, but underneath it all is a beautifully humane, sweet and intelligent movie that knows exactly what it is at every moment.

This quietly poetic little gem contains many beautiful things, not least of which is leading lady Zoe Kazan, who lets every scene billow and swirl around her effortlessly.

A charming indie that combines dreamy aspiration with mucky, hilarious reality.