Joe Williams

Anyone suggesting that an Italian film could rival the style and grandeur of "The Godfather" might end up sleeping with the fishes. But Il Divo delivers.

An evolutionary leap forward, a visually exquisite film that doesn't ignore the truths of pollution and predatory survival.

The film is so masterfully controlled, we feel like we’ve eavesdropped on something like life.

A marvelous piece of work.

Do yourself and your kids a favor. On the way to multiplex to see "The Avengers," tell them The Fairy is about an all-powerful superheroine. Someday, they'll find the words to thank you.

A blast, the best action movie of the summer.

For a nation at war with its own values, Fair Game is a compelling, pertinent and scrupulously true political thriller in the honorable tradition of "All the President's Men."

This is analog filmmaking at its most daring.

Co-directors Andrew Droz Palermo and Tracy Droz Tragos let the painful stories emerge naturally, without prodding questions or talking-head experts who place the boys’ grim lives in the larger context of the post-industrial economy.

Shannon's powerfully imploded performance ignites one of the best films of the year.

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.