Joe Neumaier

Director Marc Webb's action-adventure is grounded in a recognizable reality, but is also full of thrills. It's dark and mysterious, but doesn't skimp on fun.

By far the most rousing, expertly cast movie this year, David O. Russell's movie takes a roundabout way of telling its true story.

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.

The wonkiness is at a minimum and Reich delivers it with tales from his own life, since he’s the son of a dress store owner and a mom who helped in the shop. Essential viewing, no matter how you cut it.

Gritty, funny, rich adaptation of a Pete Dexter novel.

Not all of the twists work, but most are self-knowing enough to keep you guessing until its (literally) groundbreaking conclusion.

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

Director Joe Berlinger mixes archival footage, concert scenes, interviews and present-day reunions to meld a harmonious, fair-minded, energetic and enlightening portrait of one masterpiece's moment in time.

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.

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.

At its best, this beautiful, off-the-cuff comedy-drama recalls John Cassavetes' shaggiest, most honest work.

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.

Oduye, especially, is utterly absorbing. Even in those few moments when the movie follows a slightly more straightforward line than it needs, she is always engagingly, beautifully real.

This wildly entertaining Bollywood action-comedy, with Indian superstar Shahrukh Khan in two roles, pays homage to such '90s flicks as "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and "The Matrix," adding whimsy and loads of heart.

Entertaining, smart and snappy, this terrific doc, a Sundance favorite, digs into the country's use of steroids and how it affects sports, pop culture and the self-image of young men.

Given the evidence compiled here by director Frank Pavich, there’s reason to believe Jodorowsky’s “Dune” was more influential for never actually existing. It wound up being inhaled, like some ethereal alien spice, by a generation of moviemakers.

There are great clips and good insight, and it’s all as loose and cool as an Austin night out.

Terrific and gripping.

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.

Like “The Deer Hunter” — from which it swipes its Keystone State milieu, its haunted veterans, and its self-endangerment metaphor — Out of the Furnace gets under your skin.

It is how the film never loses sight of the closeness of the combatants, turning national intimacy into a tragic casualty.

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.

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.

Just when we thought Quentin Tarantino had shown us all the cojones he has, in rides Django Unchained.

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

Perfect for families and exquisitely shot, this entry from the Disneynature division is even better and fresher than last year's "Earth."

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

History has made his midair stroll meaningful, but the film shows how even then, everyone - from Petit to his accomplices to the cops who were waiting for him atop the North Tower - recognized the stunt's crazy poetry.