Joe Williams

When a place and its people are this stylish, we can't help but be drawn to them.

Clear-eyed, fearless and ferociously funny, Young Adult is mature filmmaking.

Richly photographed and featuring an attractive cast, Farewell, My Queen is a layer cake of royal pleasures, rote protocols and revolutionary politics. For skeptics who thought this story had grown stale, let them eat their words.

For the many mavens who aren't familiar with Varda, this autobiographical documentary will be puzzling, in the best and most literal sense.

One of the best films of the year, Gett: the Trial of Viviane Amsalem is bound to be compared to the Oscar-winning Iranian drama “A Separation”; but if anything, Gett is an even more artful evocation of a bureaucratic nightmare.

We can quibble about the punitive punchline of John Gatins' script, but keeping complexity aloft for so long makes Flight a miraculous feat.

The action is contained within a coherent dramatic structure and the puzzle-box paranoia of spy-agency protocol.

An Oscar-ready collaboration between a great director and a star at the peak of his powers, but at its heart is a message in a bottle reading: "Trapped in paradise. Please send help."

I’m pretty sure it would still be one of the best films of the year if the explicit lesbian sex scenes were censored, but it wouldn’t earn a penny in Peoria.

For cinematic sojourners, Hugo is a trip to the moon.

Maybe I enjoyed the similarly themed Kick-Ass because it took me back to that innocent time. Or maybe it's because this is the most brazenly funny bloodbath unleashed on the public since "Pulp Fiction."

An eye-opening primer in cross-species similarity. We learn that apes are violent and territorial but also that they are capable of creativity and tenderness.

Amy Schumer is so scary-good in Trainwreck that it almost seems risky to speak her name.

Best of all is Favreau. Instead of mass-producing another superhero epic, he has given the overfed public a dish of right-sized comfort food.

It's not warm and fuzzy, but for kids who comprehended "Coraline" and babysitters who savored "The Corpse Bride," this stop-motion marvel from some of the same animators is like an early Halloween treat.

A co-star deserving special mention is Nebraska itself, which Payne films in black-and-white to mirror the austerity of life on the de-populated prairie. These corners of the Cornhusker State are as empty as the promise of a sweepstakes prize. In this land of ghosts, one old pioneer tries to grab his stake before he becomes another windblown husk.

Although it's a guilty pleasure, The Queen of Versailles is artful enough that both the prosecution and the defense could invoke it when the peasants cry "Off with their heads!"

Despite the obvious mismatches involved, this isn’t a simplistic smackdown. Freighted with weighty issues, Captain Phillips is a film worth debating.

May be too sterile and stylized to elicit real tears, but it's got brains and heart to spare.

If you can take it, Unbroken will lift you like the classics of adventure cinema.

By turning a whistle-blower into a tragicomic figure, Soderbergh sustains our interest in a complicated financial scheme and rewards it with a kickback of ghastly laughs.

Many of the people reading this review are doing it on a computer. And all of them are reading it in English. It’s not much of stretch to say that you could credit both of those things to a man named Alan Turing.

Imagine an opulent movie palace that was 30,000 years old, with posters preserved on the curving walls and the bones of the Stone Age patrons peacefully sleeping in the fairy dust. That's essentially what archeologists found in a French canyon in 1994 and what Werner Herzog brings back to life in the extraordinary documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

A one-joke movie, but it’s a joke whose recurring rimshots grow as loud as our laughter.

Notwithstanding the characters’ spiritual camaraderie, Salles’ emphasizes the hard physical labor and loneliness in Sal’s story, including the jittery rigors of the writing process. When he reaches a crossroads choice between down-and-out Dean and his own rising career, Sal senses that except for the words on a typewritten scroll, his life on the road is gone, real gone.

Both arduous and artful, City of Life and Death is the best imaginable movie about the genocidal siege that's now called the Rape of Nanking. Anything more explicit would be unwatchable; anything more contemplative would be a betrayal of the sustained suffering.

For a public that's been bullied by the tastemakers, the mystery is a gift. Once we exit this fun house, the only giant left to obey is ourselves.

The Rover is a sterling example of the new Australian noir.

Directed by Steve James, whose “Hoop Dreams” Ebert hailed as the best film of the 1990s, it’s the kind of documentary the dying man wanted — honest, humane and inclusive.

He’s like a globe-trotting Richard Linklater. And with Winterbottom’s first-ever sequel, his “Trip” films now rival Linklater’s “Before” series in charting how a twosome evolves over time. Plus, they’re bloody hilarious.

Love & Mercy is artfully but unobtrusively directed by Bill Pohlad.

It’s not only a fresh and funny spoof of the movie business, it represents a real-life triumph within it.

The most exhilarating film of the year is also the most exhausting.

Star Trek Into Darkness offers much of what the fans expect and not much of what they don't. This character-driven vehicle is a supercharged example of cinematic craftsmanship.

Although you don't have to be a sports fan to enjoy it, Moneyball is one of the best baseball movies imaginable.

Beautifully but simply wrought by director Cindy Meehl, this deft documentary is a poignant reappraisal of what it means to be human.

This is a kaleidoscopic valentine to a great city from a director who knows and loves his subject.

The reason District 9 reverberates so loudly is because its moral indignation is cranked to 11.

Among recent documentaries, First Position soars to the head of the class.

May be too cute to qualify as high art, but it's highly entertaining.

Although it's slow to unfold, this courtroom drama is so timelessly humane and even-handed it feels like it came from the dockets of Solomon - by way of Sidney Lumet.

Gilroy vividly evokes both the LA exteriors and newsroom interiors, and the action sequences are fraught with tension.

Nowhere Boy is too astutely written and directed to go to predictably melodramatic extremes.

As they build up steam, two powerful actors keep us wondering whether this train is bound for war or peace.

It's a well-earned curtain call for some of the most beloved characters in one of the best-sustained feats of recent cinema.

Like the recent "Greenberg," Cyrus is not the jokey, polished production you would expect from its Hollywood cast and LA setting, but audiences who are comfortable with discomfort should find it "funny."

Ultimately, William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe is a defense, not a prosecution, and the principal witness remains a shining star.

This thriller about the game-changing website Wikileaks is as smart about cyberspace as “The Social Network,” but there’s a glitch when it shifts the focus from felonious leaders to the misdemeanors of the man who exposed them.

With Labor Day, director Jason Reitman turns a Nicholas Sparks scenario into an Alfred Hitchcock creep-show.

The kids in the movie, from musicians to marital artists, are unusually skillful, and Smith seems assured of more starring roles. By the end of The Karate Kid, we can't help cheering, even when we know we've been sucker-punched.

It bodes well for the future of the franchise that Renner and Weisz share not only a gripping predicament but something more important: chemistry.

It's often obscenely funny, but it tickles more than it stings.

Footnote is faintly comic, and director Joseph Cedar mines dark humor from the humiliations of identity checks and pecking orders.

Because Short Term 12 is a small movie about a challenging subject, you may have to accept my word that actress Brie Larson and director Destin Cretton are bright discoveries, but it shouldn’t be long before the wider world can see these talents with the naked eye.

Although Steadman’s artwork seems like sloppy pen-and-ink caricature, there’s a method to the madness.

An entertaining tour of Tinseltown served with poisoned popcorn.

Titanic technical achievement.

The movie is more of a character study than a biography, as Bernstein dispenses his gentle wit and wisdom for the camera and for an elite class of student.

Summer Wars has engineered a truce between the familiar and the fantastical.

If you root for documentaries with heart, The Other Dream Team is a slam dunk.

After we hear the hit parade that poured from rural Alabama and meet the men who led it to the top of the charts, we realize that Muscle Shoals could call itself Hitsville, USA.

The sharpest parts of the movie hack through the Hollywood jungle with an insider's certitude. But Apatow is so grounded in the comedy circuit that he can't quite capture the emotional wavelength of the life-and-death drama.

In the infidelity drama Leaving, British reserve gets overtaken by French passion, and the subsequent events have the horrific momentum of a slow-motion car crash.

This true story does a great service by honoring the memory of 22 brave men and women and by dramatizing the internal debates within the French population. But in staying true to life, it sacrifices some of the pacing and clarity of a conventional thriller.

The story is sustained by the stubborn love between the siblings and by the conviction of the two fine actors who portray them.

After watching the trailers, I was expecting torture, but this smart, subversive movie made me laugh. So shoot me.

If you require a plot, look elsewhere.

Mainstream moviemaking at its most proficient, with a zippy script, comfort-food casting and a breakout performance by a deserving star.

This stylish film reminds us that great images endure after bodies and buildings crumble.

The documentary ends on a hopeful note, as Indians themselves have taken control of their image.

It's a tart trifle, but in the madding crowd of year-end movies, Tamara Drewe rocks.

Mainstream audiences will note that Hudson has never been better and that the tearjerking taps into something universal. For audiences seeking shelter from superhero carnage, Wish I Was Here is a lovely place to be.

While Walt and El Grupo is less than a penetrating analysis, it's more than a Mickey Mouse advertisement.

Because the movie captures the period so well and argues so convincingly that the Runaways' very existence was revolutionary, it doesn't have to exaggerate the highs and lows to create a more salable story.

While the big-headed, spindly puppets don't evoke enough emotion to make the movie a must-see, Burton's 3-D design team pours its heart into the monochrome surroundings, from the suburban décor to Victor's laboratory to the carnival midway.

Turturro, who previously directed a musical called "Romance and Cigarettes," lingers on the sensual movements of the performers and the character faces of the onlookers.

It's a comedic dramatization with a looming shadow of the surreal.

This documentary reconstructing the life of the ultimate cult author is like a three-act thriller, and the character at the center of the story is a mute man of mystery. Salinger would have recognized the irony, even as he hated the film for invading his privacy.

Sorry, partisans, but there’s nothing obvious about Obvious Child.

A film that aims for the stars and may have found one here on earth.

Despite playing with a stacked deck, The Judge is guilty of exceeding expectations.

Stays too low to the ground to become an animated classic, but if there's a fairer midwinter's tale, wherefore art thou?

Even if they don't provide much lift, these boots were made for amusement.

Some of the themes and the hallucinatory special effects are reminiscent of Cronenberg’s “Naked Lunch,” and there are cheeky allusions to “Dawn of the Dead” and even “Eyes Wide Shut,” but a viewer with an open mind might say that this midnight-style movie is more enjoyable than any of them.

One one level, Pride is as fake as a lip-sync revue, yet the emotions it arouses are real.

While the chronological details and social significance of the story Webb reported get shortchanged, Kill the Messenger is a vital reminder that a free press must be free to press the powerful for answers.

Margin Call has a spectacular cast, and the 24-hour cycle of events gives the movie the compressed dramatic effect of a fine play.

The several allusions to Thomas Mann’s forbidden-love novel “Death in Venice” are apt, but Yossi is also a standalone film and an extraordinary sequel.

Because of some sentimental backspin, Affleck doesn't quite hit it out of the park, but he may provoke the green monster of envy in lesser directors.

May be too light for vampire purists or fans of the original show, but fresh blood is just what the doctor ordered.

It's not exactly aiming for the moon, but in a marketplace where surpassed expectations are as rare as unicorns, Despicable Me is delightful.

In such a bleak story, the redemptive ending seems rushed and unconvincing, but director Oliver Schmitz has sent us a timely dispatch from a forgotten corner of the world that is honest above all.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 is slower and stranger than any of the previous films, simultaneously raising hopes for a haunting finale while dimming hopes for a magical one.

He's not in Mark Wahlberg's league, and 21 Jump Street isn't quite as funny as "The Other Guys," but by lampooning himself here, Tatum has bought himself a grace period to grow in.

On a moral-justice level, we’d like to see this worm squirm a little more over his treatment of ex-colleagues before we let him off the hook to say that everyone else was cheating too.

96 Minutes is a mere introduction to Sociology 101, but it's brisk enough to rustle the reading list and keep the conversation alive.

Of all the films to come out the conflict, Afghan Star is the most provocative, because its message that people are essentially the same is a dubious, double-edge sword.

The macabre comedic undertones are reminiscent of a Coen brothers film like "Blood Simple." But a more apt comparison is to an obscure Canadian bank-heist flick called "The Silent Partner," in which teller Elliot Gould pockets some loot from thief Christopher Plummer. Both movies imitate an American idiom with a provincial accent.