Joe Williams

The performance is both an eerie imitation and a touching revelation. Oscar voters who overlooked Williams for her camouflage roles in "Brokeback Mountain," "Wendy and Lucy" and "Blue Valentine" should now throw diamonds at her feet.

Salt goes down easy, but it's lacking both nourishment and flavor.

Ferrell's dryly understated performance is a shorthand for an alcoholic's denial and repressed rage, and as Nick grows increasingly desperate for a drink, he keeps his anger stashed like a last beer for emergencies.

Even with a large cast, groovy clothes and cool pop songs, Hawkins holds our attention with a combination of modesty and moral strength.

Chartered to provide both sides of every debate, CNN has positioned itself as the middle ground for discussions of current events. But without a knowledgeable teacher (or filmmaker) to lead such discussions into new territory, they devolve into noisy bull sessions.

X-Men: First Class is a mutant movie, half fun and half fearsome. For those who have developed an immunity to fanboy hype, the contradictory traits may seem to weaken rather than strengthen this beast, but readers of the "X-Men" comics will hail an origin story as satisfying as "Thor."

Despite its brainy title, Monsters University only earns a passing grade on its looks.

Although it alludes to romantic conventions, with overt references to Hollywood history and an overemphatic jazz soundtrack, Wild Grass is neither poignant nor zany. It's an exercise in artifice, not unlike David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" set in the City of Lights. I'm sure the French have a word for it, but je ne sais quoi it is.

It's not quite infectious, but some of the high notes manage to drown out some of the guttural lows.

With a title taken from an American Indian word for "life out of balance," Godfrey Reggio's wordless documentary lured dreamers into the sacred cave of cinema, where they ingested the serial music of Philip Glass and the time-lapse imagery of cinematographer Ron Fricke.

The thread connecting the ambitious girl to the acclaimed woman is enough to make us wish for a sequel titled "Chanel No. 2."

The movie is an eyeful, especially in 3-D, but even with humans at the helms of the machines, it’s a hollow exercise in homage.

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.

Ondine is dipped in whimsy and might have drifted out to sea, but it's bounded on four sides by love stories -- between a father and a daughter, a man and a mermaid, an actor and his co-star, and a director and his country.

Although it starts slowly, the accumulated tension and thematic resonance leaves us breathless.

Even by the standards of light entertainment, This Means War is meaningless.

Because VanDyke wasn’t embedded with the American media, Point and Shoot has some priceless front-line footage, including a chilling scene where he must decide if he’s willing to kill for someone else’s cause. But without a rigorous editor, it’s “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”

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

A true story of animal rescue, and it even stars the sea creature to whom it happened. But it's the humans who do the cutesy tricks that make it a mixed blessing.

Unfolds like a fable instead of a believable slice of life. Mexican TV and film star Bichir gives a poignant performance, but he's distinctly more European than the cholos and Chicano laborers on the sketchy edges of the hero's plight.

The real stars here are Scott's behind-the-curtain crew, who fill every frame with tech-savvy details and take the sets to another dimension with immersive 3-D imagery.

Afghanistan-born Atiq Rahimi has powerfully adapted his own acclaimed novel, but the film is unlikely to play in the Middle Eastern countries to which this plea for sexual equality seems directed.

Photography — and thus filmmaking — is painting with light. The connection is illuminated in the lovely Renoir, a twilight-years biography of the great French Impressionist.

With stately surroundings and hissable villains, director Amma Assante imbues the finale with such dramatic resonance that Belle becomes a ringing proclamation of human dignity.

Like the politicians it tries to pull into the big picture, Killing Them Softly promises more than it delivers.

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

The Road has the signposts of an important film, but it lacks the diversions of an inviting trip.

A serviceable behind-the-scenes tour documentary with about as much insight as a talk-show monologue.