Joshua Rothkopf

Starring a tough-minded band of scrappy teens who actually do some solving, it's the movie "Super 8" wanted to be - or should have been.

Destroyed yet defiant, Robbie walks the emotional tightrope of the most fabulously, tragically American film of the year.

Jackie pummels you with grandeur, with its epic visions of the funeral and that terrible moment in the convertible (all of it rendered in pitch-perfect detail and a subtle 16-millimeter shudder). Yet the film's lasting impact is dazzlingly intellectual: Just as JFK himself turned politics into image-making, his wife continued his work when no one else could.

Gilroy, vastly supported by cinematographer and Los Angeles specialist Robert Elswit (Boogie Nights, Magnolia), directs with the verve of a seasoned pro, even though Nightcrawler is his debut.

The pleasures are right in your face, beginning with the million-dollar idea of turning NYC into a walled-off prison where criminals run free. Even born-and-raised New Yorkers (of which Carpenter was decidedly not) could smile at that histrionic setup; it’s an outsider’s joke made funny by our willingness to be entertained.

A savage yet evolved slice of Swedish folk-horror, Ari Aster's hallucinatory follow-up to Hereditary proves him a horror director with no peer.

Frank Pavich’s fun documentary captures an unbowed, exuberant Jodorowsky, who recalls his team of “spiritual warriors” with the camaraderie of a battle-scarred veteran.

Either via clay dolls or fragile flesh, the truth is unmissable—as is Panh’s film itself.

That’s the subtle level this movie operates on, and by the time it arrives at its powerhouse climax, a ruinous argument in a hotel room where all lingering doubts are finally and furiously outed, there’s nowhere left for them to ramble. They’re pinned down and have to improvise, but this glorious movie has infinite space to roam.

Quietly, though, this amuse-bouche of a setup (culled from six episodes of BBC television) blooms into a meal of majestic agony. Coogan and Brydon's competitive bursts of celebrity impressions - Michael Caine comes in for special attention - take on a tone of clingy desperation, as does their jockeying for status in taunts of love, marriage and career.

An aggressively unpleasant man somehow lands a perfect series of gigs in this rudely funny documentary: first as a pounding rock drummer who revolutionized the field; then as a fearless, rage-filled polo player; and finally as an impatient interviewee.

That rarest of art documentaries, one that actually leaves viewers with a better sense of the gifted versus the phony.

The rollicking, space-opera spirit of George Lucas’s original trilogy (you can safely forget the second trio of cynical, tricked-up prequels) emanates from every frame of J.J. Abrams' euphoric sequel. It’s also got an infusion of modern-day humor that sometimes steers the movie this close to self-parody—but never sarcastically, nor at the expense of a terrific time.

But mainly, it’s the film’s folk music that roots in the heart like a faraway lure.

The acting, especially from Menash Noy as an ineffectual attorney, is phenomenal, resulting in a feminist knockout told in inverse.

Little Women sometimes plays like a comedy, one that includes a crumpled cry over a bad haircut and several kitchen interludes that feel like Christmas miracles. Yet it’s Alcott’s visionary attitude, well-struck by Gerwig, that stays with you the longest: the loneliness of female liberty.

Blue Valentine has a quiet, resigned wisdom to it.

Shockingly modern and the most politically enlightened (and enlightening) comedy of the 1930s, Leo McCarey's winning quasi-Western is a model of Hollywood broad strokes coalescing into a sophisticated whole.

As gritty as Heaven Knows What often feels, it’s leavened by empathy and poetic moments: desperate kisses, a passed-out couch nap lit by slanting sunbeams, the beautifully eerie synth music of Tomita. This isn’t an easy watch, but it validates every risk we want our most emboldened filmmakers to take.

A masterclass in tension, visual panache and B-movie excess.

Why do we care? Because never before have the steps to thugdom, as depressing as that destination may be, been so rigorously detailed, neither romanticized nor negated. Don’t miss.

If you can stomach the fear, go. Confident hands created this film. Its nightmare lingers for weeks.

The movie is a coming-of-age story, but whose age is coming? That's the profound question we're left with, in a stellar adaptation that balances gore with black humor, ethical quandary, hope and—yes—plenty of brains.

The film plays like a better episode of "Mad Men," pitch-perfect in its details yet fully lived-in: a universe of rolled-up shirt sleeves, sweat-laden brows and screams that don’t sound canned.

The Third Man is best seen as his romantic fantasy; we’d have to wait decades before another awkward scribbler, also a fish out of water, plunged helplessly into a misadventure. His name was Barton Fink.

It plays like one of Linklater’s most intimate gifts, an adult rumination on the tricky subject of patriotism.

This one’s a crucible of sweaty pre-natal panic, weird knocks at the door, mind games and ultimately, a roaring, miniature apocalypse set inside a single claustrophobic living room. If that already sounds like your home, it's time to go and give it a try.

The most gratifying thing about the film is feeling Moodysson’s warmth return to him.