Joe Neumaier

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.

Sadly, the film gets mired in traditionalism, something the man himself always railed against. But worth a look for seeing intellectual bravery (still) at work.

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

Quiet, soulful and wrenching.

Director John Scheinfeld's film, utilizing interviews with friends and collaborators, hits a high note on Nilsson's friendship with Ringo Starr and his fear of stage performance.

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.

Trippy in the right way, and wholly enchanting.

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.

Winds up feeling like a form of emotional tourism. The images recall Terrence Malick, but the film fills "atmosphere" into dry narrative holes where a story should reside.

Like a more personal, less pretentious version of Alejandro González Iñárritu's "Babel," this spiraling dissection of circumstance, choice and fate is more about thoroughness of vision than tricky storytelling.

Watch Mulligan's face as she goes from weary to awakened, and see it all come together.

Director Samuel Maoz's gripping you-are-there feel does for tanks what "Das Boot" did for submarines, and that chokehold only gets tighter as this taut drama about the 1982 Israeli-Lebanese war goes on.

There’s visual poetry here and haunted performances from Mezzogiorno and Timi -- who plays two roles, and is especially gripping as Dalser’s grown son.

Twisted, tortured, terrifying - and terrific.

A quiet, oddly serene movie with a curious soul.

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

Like so much in this astounding, consistently beautiful and challenging movie, the answer depends on what you bring to it. Think of it as the Ultimate Anti-Summer-Blockbuster.

Even after experiencing the film, what they've gone through - and how they deal with it - deliberately remains a mystery.

High art swings sort of low in this watchable but thematically repetitive drama.

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

Director Lee Chang-dong's soulful, affecting film is as quiet as a tomb and has a disturbing, critical underside that's hard to shake off.

Haneke's superb cast provide beautifully measured hints at the disconnect between the ribbon's symbolism and the entire town's unspoken atrocities.

Gordon-Levitt is flinty, and Willis, on his A-game, is fiery. Together, they take us on a helluva trip.

Payne's observational humor and attention to detail yield something emotionally epic. Everything from beachfront jogs to hospital confessions reveals layers of humanity and absurdity.

The film features plenty of elements that seem familiar from previous cinematic dystopian visions — class warfare, decrepit living, a feeling of terminal velocity — yet you can’t help but admire director Bong Joon-ho’s high-wire act.