Joe Williams

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.