Joe Neumaier

In a pleasing contrast to Fey's sharpness, Poehler keeps her performance unpredictable and fuzzy. In this just-add-water comedy, a very funny movie star is born.

The modern, gritty Western Frontera takes a lot of the clichés and delicately upends them to tell a tale about undocumented immigrants.

Nachmanoff fills the movie with a sense of gripping, '70s-style grittiness that helps undercut the web-of-evil tone.

One of the many beautiful things about this affecting, informative doc is the opportunity it gives to see the American college sports world through different eyes.

There is also inspiration in watching her find herself by helping others.

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is better known for horror films; this is a movie where the horror is internalized, and hideously truthful.

Abe's day-to-day trials may eventually seem like cheap daytime TV, but Gelber and Solondz know how to nail the uncomfortably funny optimism shadowing American desperation.

Stone, last seen in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” is served best. Gliding through the film in sailor-girl outfits that evoke film stars of the 1920s, Stone’s big kewpie eyes and long-limbed gamine appeal fit in this era of silent films.

Michael Douglas in Solitary Man, has all the tools of the man who plays him at his disposal. At times in this often engaging, occasionally meandering movie, that's enough to score.

When the grade-school kids are Israelis and Palestinians, the initially reluctant, moving duets they finally perform make you feel like, yes, dancing.

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

Sports biodramas generally take one of two tacks: gauzily sentimental or scrappy tale of struggle. The Express runs the thin line between the two and, to its benefit, more often than not hits the first mark.

The action-comedy Zombieland works because it's played with an emphasis on the living, not the undead.

Sean Penn’s bad side makes for good action-drama in The Gunman. There’s a grubby, redemptive quality that makes this tough-minded flick feel like the son of “Serpico” and “Salvador.”

The poetry in The Place Beyond the Pines can be elusive, but also easy to get lost in.

The movie winds up being a real standup flick, if you know what I mean.

Friends of Shep discuss his often unorthodox business sense, especially in the music biz, as well as his general decency. The guy’s tale is full of funny anecdotes and celeb privilege, but short on pretension.

There’s a lot left unsaid in director Anja Marquardt’s chilly yet intimate and thought-provoking indie drama. But what should be said loud and clear is that actress Brooke Bloom is riveting. Emanating everyday grace and real depth, she plays a sex surrogate handling several needy and emotionally wounded clients.

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

Carla Gugino has yet to find the right movie that clicks with her spunky outsider appeal, but The Mighty Macs, a gauzy, inspiring true-life drama about a girls' basketball team, at least gets her close and provides a lot of assists.

This time the movie really is — as the old theme song promises — sensational, celebrational and Muppetational.

Clayman, who co-directed with filmmaker friends, is fascinating company.

Marie is middle-aged and at a crossroads in All the Light in the Sky, a movie that feels the same way — listless and searching and on its way toward something good.

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.

There’s politics involved, along with personal stories, extraordinary tense standoffs and down-and-dirty drug business.

This sweet, offhanded but lovingly observed remembrance is a real kick. It takes us back to the way things used to be, especially for 13-year-old guys, and specifically in the arcade rooms of 1985, filled with upright video games with glowing screens and big-haired girls in neon.

Director Mateo Gill's autumnal movie has elements of other late-era Westerns in its blood, but it isn't easily pigeonholed. There are shootouts and standoffs, as well as great scenes like one between the grizzled, perfectly cast Shepard and Rea discussing the cost of criminality and the changing morals of old men.

Something of a traffic jam--even with his usual restraint, Lee couldn't recount a key moment of the '60s without a blurry parade of personalities--and also lullingly dull.