Joe Williams

One part personal mystery and one part art-appreciation class.

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.

How could you not marvel at a movie that includes a revisionist explanation of the JFK assassination, a football stadium floating over the White House and the sight of Richard Nixon firing a .45 at a villain in a Christ-figure pose?

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

For all its professionalism, I found it as cold as the ice rink at Rockefeller Center.

In a poignant and potentially depressing film, it’s redeeming to see that when they are with their kindred spirits, even the saddest skeletons can dance.

This deadpan police story produces unexpected chills.

Like other so-called "mumblecore" movies, including Bronstein's own "Frownland," this is an unnervingly intimate glimpse of dysfunction, with a shaky-cam aesthetic and seemingly improvised dialogue.

There are three sides to most love stories: his, hers and the truth. But on London's Fleet Street, the three sides are his, hers and the tabloids'.

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.

In the context of confounded expectations, director Maxime Giroux may have intended the what’s-next ending to be ironic.

Like "Gone, Baby, Gone," the French film Polisse succeeds by shifting the focus from the victims to the vigilant protectors.

Christopher Nolan's "Memento" was a movie-lover's dream come true, a puzzle that was engaging both intellectually and emotionally. But his Inception is a wake-up call, a blaring reminder that cheap tricks can't compensate for personal investment.

Although Tomboy is as tightly constructed as a short story and as seemingly straightforward as a documentary, the parable about a small fib that grows out of control is so rooted in the rich soil of sexual identity that it entangles us.

When the smoke clears, heady Farewell stands tall among the movies that view the Cold War at close range.

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.

Bully is a good start to a necessary conversation, but its loving voice is likely to be drowned out by haters who hide their own wounded hearts behind Internet pseudonyms and broadcast microphones.

The first half of the film dusts off some kitschy picket-fence footage and alarmist news reports to invoke an era when homosexual acts were illegal in 49 states, and gays were subjected to arrest, electroshock and sterilization.

With his actors and crew hewing to the script, the director’s craft is impeccable. His low-light images are suitable for framing, and there’s scarcely a moment of modernity, let alone humor or loose ends, to disrupt the tragic trajectory.

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."

While it may not be a smorgasbord of red herrings and red meat, Flame and Citron is often chilling.

This is epic cinema that begs to be compared to "2001: A Space Odyssey." But unlike Stanley Kubrick's psychedelic joyride, this journey is powered by a human heart.

What makes it special is Eastwood's ability to artfully and concisely tell a story, and Morgan Freeman's wonderfully understated turn as South African President Nelson Mandela.

While Green is force-feeding us this hard-boiled hokum, he doesn’t distract us with many memorable images, as he did in his earliest films.

We are reminded: War is hell. But at their best, war movies can be cool and beautiful.

Arbitrage is never the nail-biting thriller that it could have been.

It's a worthy cause and an honorable film, the first full-length Disney cartoon with an African-American heroine. But without a strong story, it's a case of one step forward and two steps back.

Built on shaky and blood-soaked ground, but if towering technique is all you want from an action movie, then yippee-ki-yay.

Perilous incidents have riveted audiences since Pauline was tied to the railroad tracks, but in the hundred-year history of cinema, few thrillers have been as emotionally compelling as The Impossible.

The difference between McKay and Efron is like the difference between a Broadway spectacular and a high school musical.

Taking potshots at American Sniper is like shooting fish in a barrel. So why should war-weary Americans see it? Because Eastwood remains a masterful action director, and this may be his last hurrah. Because Cooper is one of our best young actors, and he poured a lifetime of craft into stilling his character’s heartbeat.

The secret in this case is the jokes, which are ferocious. Marrying a monster flick with an adolescent romance has produced a merry mutant.

The tonal shifts, the "Amelie"-style voiceover and the punk-retro soundtrack may jar some viewers who expect uninterrupted violins, but Declaration of War is alternative therapy that really works.

Cue the folky music and the two eccentric locals who are the only other characters, and Prince Avalanche is a molehill that dreams it’s a mountain when it’s really, really stoned.

Whereas many kung-fu movies are a feast that leaves us weary with sensations, the tastefully bittersweet “Grandmaster” puts us in the mood for more.

The documentary Live from New York is a separate thing. It doesn’t try to be wild and crazy, and it can’t be comprehensive. Like a land shark, it’s an uncomfortable hybrid that bites off more than it can chew.

The world-class mechanic is Brad Bird, who applies the pacing and spatial freedom of a 'toon to a live-action thriller.

Sticks to the syllabus of a decidedly minor movie, but its humanities faculty is first-rate.

Although the brazen lovers, bellicose ministers and backstabbing handmaidens are familiar elements, the film is so handsomely mounted that we happily endure the ride until the turning of the screws in the tragic last act.

Directed by and starring Mathieu Amalric, it’s a deceptively low-key riff on a Hitchcock whodunit. It’s both sexy and inscrutable, a cold-blooded puzzler to the very end.

It's guilty of some sleight-of-hand hokum, but in pulling the rug from under the norm, Magic Mike turns a trick.

Post-Dispatch classical music critic Sarah Bryan Miller told me that Gould's music is as divisive today as it was 50 years ago, when the pianist publicly clashed with conductor Leonard Bernstein over the tempo of a performance.

J. Edgar is the kind of prestige production that apologists will call polished, but even the technical attributes are tinny. In the gay-geezers scenes, Hammer wears terrible old-age makeup, and the entire film is bathed in sepia tones as weak as its convictions.

This thriller is both skillfully familiar and chillingly strange.

A tearjerking romance that belongs to another era, when female moviegoers wanted to be transported, not grounded in grim realities.

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.

Eccentric enough to get mistaken for an uplifting fantasy, but it's Plaza who belongs in the penthouse.

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.

Monkey Kingdom tugs our heartstrings to the top of the trees. With a lot of patience, and perhaps a little trickery, directors Mark Linfield and Alastair Fothergill have produced a simian “Cinderella.”

This affable comedy is a healthy alternative to tearjerkers.

Such a disarming homage to the cinema of the Reagan era that even grouchy gremlins might feel like it's morning in America. But be forewarned that if this movie is exposed to sunlight, you'll notice the puppet strings.

While the PG-13 approach to the most brutally sustained war the world has ever known makes it suitable for mature children, some cynical adults may resent the tug of the reins. Me, I cried like a grandmother.

This world is divided between the makers and the takers, and after just a few minutes of Red Dawn, you'll realize there's not much more you can take.

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

Rounded, redemptive and refreshingly free of cynicism.

As opposed to the "gentlemen's clubs" in sinful cities like Las Vegas, the Crazy Horse attracts couples.

In skewering the neuroses of New York bohemians, Durham has left us too little to care about.

Pine and the always-watchable Banks make the best of a bad screenplay, but People Like Us gives us nothing that we can relate to.

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

To its credit, Celeste and Jesse Forever wants to be more than a formulaic farce. It succeeds to the extent that the neighbors keep up with Jones.

Unlike the benchmark sports documentary "Hoop Dreams," Undefeated doesn't have a deep penetration of poverty and race in its playbook, but it does have enough heart to make substantial forward progress.

There will never be another Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor, but Hollywood may have found a new Lee Remick in Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

The most mesmerizing parts of the movie make up a tutorial about how the Muppets are made and moved.

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.

The plot is murky, the acting is melodramatic and the movie is way too long, but the target audience will salivate over the inventively choreographed set-pieces.

By design it’s monotonous, and with so much clunky hardware, Liman can’t generate the same pace he produced in the “Bourne” movies. Edge of Tomorrow has neither an edge nor a vision of tomorrow that matters today.

The sharp writing and tag-team antics lift 22 Jump Street to a high level.

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

It’s Belgian actor Schoenaerts who will leave the target audience atwitter. Seemingly incapable of cracking a smile, he fits securely in the stoic-farmer tradition that stretches from John Wayne in “The Quiet Man” to Russell Crowe in “The Water Diviner.”

Notwithstanding its storytelling stumbles, Sleepwalk With Me points in a positive direction for this likable comedian's career.

To their credit, the creative team has retained the handmade look and unruly spirit of Maurice Sendak's bedtime fable; to their discredit, they haven't added enough narrative or emotional dimension to make it an effective movie.

There's little that's new in the retelling, except mellowed musings on Environmentalism 2.0.

Here’s a toast to the cast and crew: Drinking Buddies is a three-dimensional movie that doesn’t require beer goggles.

A brainy bio that exerts a gravitational pull on the heartstrings.

It’s preposterous schlock masquerading as art.

The wrinkles between reality and illusion soon become irritating.

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.