Kenneth Turan

Effie Gray is fortunate to have enough strong performances by Fanning, Thompson and top-flight costars (including cameos by James Fox, Robbie Coltrane, Derek Jacobi and even Claudia Cardinale) to eventually overcome the doldrums of decorum and create the feeling we've been needing.

It's regrettable that Woman in Gold is no more than adequate, more old-fashioned Hollywoodization than incisive modern dramatization.

This delicious satire about aging hipsters and their discontents is everything we've come to expect from the best of Noah Baumbach, as well as several things more.

A Wolf at the Door is undoubtedly effective and well-crafted, but its tale of reckless obsession and its inevitably unhappy ending are finally too unsavory for its own good.

A more effective, adult-friendly film than its predecessor.

Don't mistake a lack of flash for an absence of substance. The story told here couldn't be more significant or more timely.

Rife with familiar elements given something of a different spin, Run All Night manages to leave you out of breath but hungry for more.

Once the singer-songwriter model became the norm for the rock business, the Wrecking Crew's star began to wane, but seeing this film makes it clear what its members accomplished in their prime.

Chappie is a movie about the evolution of artificial intelligence that's as dumb as a post. It also marks the continuing devolution of the work of director and co-writer Neill Blomkamp.

Much to its credit, the documentary Deli Man wisely chooses not to bemoan the decline but to celebrate the robust survivors that remain as well as the culture they preserve.

Fear of retaliation often keeps faculty and administration from speaking up for students or talking at all, and six university presidents declined to be interviewed here. If it does nothing else, The Hunting Ground should make that kind of evasion more difficult in the future.

Nothing is extraneous, no moment that doesn't enhance the tension of this nightmare scenario is allowed to survive, until the proceedings become, in the best possible sense, almost unbearable to watch.

A canny combination of elements unites with an unlikely true story to make this more effective than you might be expecting.

Intimate and unusual behind-the-scenes look at the creation of a ballet, it may sound rarefied but has enough moments of truth and beauty to engage general audiences.

Fifty Shades encourages us to buy into this credulity-straining scenario because the actors go well together (casting director Francine Maisler did the heavy lifting), Dornan's steely resolve facing off nicely against Johnson's engaging feistyness as each tries to make this cross-cultural relationship work on his or her own terms.

Beautifully observed, precisely directed and acted with wonderful conviction, it pulls us into the life of its protagonist in a deeply involving way.

Jupiter Ascending is best during its purely visual moments, of which there are many... All of which makes it a shame that the only sense the Wachowskis can count on is their visual one.

Polsky's treatment of this material is nothing if not entertaining, including lively visuals like placing a tiny bouncing hammer and sickle over song lyrics, and his ability to apply a lively style to serious subject matter is key to Red Army's success.

Satiric, surreal, unexpected and at times wildly funny, Zero Motivation is a savage black comedy that eviscerates an unexpected target: the Israeli army.

Technology may have changed, cyber-crime may be all the rage, but the narrative song remains the same in films like this, and it's a tune this director knows by heart.

Song of the Sea is a wonder to behold. This visually stunning animation masterwork, steeped in Irish myth, folklore and legend, so adroitly mixes the magical and the everyday that to watch it is to be wholly immersed in an enchanted world.

As lengthy and passionate as a drawn-out kiss, Beloved Sisters is a beautifully made romantic drama set in 18th century Germany that's smart, sensual and emotionally resonant.

A vibrant crime story filled to overflowing with crackling situations, taut dialogue and a heightened, even operatic sense of reality, A Most Violent Year captures us and doesn't let go.

American Sniper is at its best when it deals with the assembly-line-of-death relentlessness of combat for Kyle, how it simultaneously consumes him and wears him down, and how, to his wife's distress, it turns the civilian life he returns to between tours of duty into the aberration, not the norm.

With what we see on screen weighted too much toward pain and too little toward redemption, this is a film we respect more than love, and that is something of a wasted opportunity.

As well done as much of Selma is, it periodically falls from grace with moments that are either emotionally flat or excessively agitprop in nature. Consistently the most ineffective scenes are those that involve powerful but obstructionist white people, especially the unhelpful trio of Johnson, Alabama Gov. George Wallace (Tim Roth) and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Dylan Baker). The deftness with acting and character that can be this film’s strength simply deserts it here.

Just as Turner's expressive, enthralling work changed the nature of painting, Mr. Turner, anchored in the rock of Timothy Spall's astonishing, Cannes prize-winning performance, pushes hard against the strictures of conventional narrative and ends up pulling us into its world and capturing us completely.

Marvelously colorful, casually inventive and completely wacky, The King and the Mockingbird just might be the best animated film of the year.

One of Difret's strengths is the care it takes to present many of Ethiopia's traditions in a respectful way.

The Salt of the Earth deals with two kinds of journeys the photographer made. The outward one may have literally taken him to the furthest corners of the Earth and resulted in the stunning images the film features, but it is the inward journey that paralleled it that completely holds our attention.

As with the DeMille ventures, enjoyment here involves managing expectations and not taking things too seriously.

As far as conspiracy thrillers go, Pioneer is as paranoid as they come.

Elements of its plot have the standard quality of a Hallmark production, and the work of some of the film's costars is a bit too on the nose. But, with Moore and Stewart on the case, we feel the presence of something real here, something that can't be shrugged off or ignored.

"Antarctica" is successful because it operates on two complementary levels, the epic visuals whose grandeur can stagger you and the small-scale personal stories of the people who live and work down there.

Thoughtful as well as sensual, particular yet universal, it is the kind of expertly made examination of the human condition we can never have too many of.

The disturbing, involving, always-complex story of British mathematician Alan Turing is a tale crafted to resonate for our time, and the smartly entertaining The Imitation Game gives it the kind of crackerjack cinematic presentation that's pure pleasure to experience.

Happy Valley is especially good at revealing a mass desire to shift blame, showing how everyone the scandal touched wanted to focus on the aspect that made them the least responsible.

Though everyone tries her or his hardest to make it otherwise, this is by definition a place-holder film that exists not so much for itself but to smooth the transition from its hugely successful predecessors to a presumably glorious finale one year hence.

This enthralling film, based on the book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, is as fascinating as it is horrifying.

A despairing, intentionally disturbing film that draws us into a maelstrom of desperate emotions, it holds up a dark mirror to the American dream and does not like what it sees.

Stewart acquits himself solidly, though not thrillingly, as a beginning director, doing especially well in the film's involving central section dealing with Bahari's time in prison, where the filmmaking is as compelling as the feature's intentions are admirable.

The reason it never ceases to compel is not only the skill of the actors but also the kind of provocative and thoughtful dialogue that characterizes intellectual combat of a high order.

Marsh makes the most of McCarten's effective script. There's a real energy to his filmmaking, the ability to be intelligently dramatic without overdoing things that is ideally suited to material that would be so easy to get wrong.

Interstellar turns out to be the rarest beast in the Hollywood jungle. It's a mass audience picture that's intelligent as well as epic, with a sophisticated script that's as interested in emotional moments as immersive visuals. Which is saying a lot.

Low Down is one from the heart. It's a melancholy, evocative, beautifully made memory piece, unblinking and unromanticized, a lovely film that brings great emotion and a dead-on feeling for time, place and recaptured mood to a story that is as universal as it is personal.

This is a director's film, and Ostlund knows precisely the effects he is after. This filmmaker is in control at each and every moment, and does he ever know what he is doing.

Nightcrawler is pulp with a purpose. A smart, engaged film powered by an altogether remarkable performance by Jake Gyllenhaal, it is melodrama grounded in a disturbing reality, an extreme scenario that is troubling because it cuts close to the bone.

Citizenfour is a formidable viewing experience, but it's not necessarily a problem-free film.

Working from a screenplay by Edgerton, rising Australian director Matthew Saville has expertly constructed a low-key, realistic drama in which the malleability of morality in an increasingly murky situation takes center stage.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is a marvel of Japanese animation, a hand-drawn, painterly epic that submerges us in a world of beauty.

What makes this film distinctive is the adroit way it both subverts and enhances old-school expectations, grafting a completely modern sensibility onto thoroughly traditional material.

However unwieldy the final result, Dobkin and company deserve credit for helping Duvall and Downey create vibrant, dramatic characters that involve the performers in rousing, stem-winder ways.

This pulpy, energetic film is a fast-moving and entertaining tale.

A small-scale gem of a movie, both dramatically aware and psychologically astute.

Unlike documentaries that tie things up in a tidy bow, Supreme Price wants viewers to understand that the status of democracy in Nigeria remains very much in flux.

This examination of the whys and wherefores of indie rock star Nick Cave is an unusual and nonformulaic cinematic enterprise and an adventurous film by any standard.

Superbly cast from the two at the top to the smallest speaking parts, impeccably directed by Fincher and crafted by his regular team to within an inch of its life, Gone Girl shows the remarkable things that can happen when filmmaker and material are this well matched.

A tense thriller that also has more on its mind than the familiar genre constraints it operates under.

The key reason "Jimi" doesn't need the signature music is the extraordinary performance of actor-musician André Benjamin.

Pride is an unapologetic crowd-pleaser of a movie, but it has some potent points to make, and the reality of what happened has a power of its own.

These stranger-than-fiction tales, piled one on top of the other in the most gripping way, not only mesmerize us, they also point up another of Last Days in Vietnam's provocative points, that the chaos surrounding the evacuation was, in effect, the entire war in microcosm.

Life's a Breeze is a small film with a considerable amount of charm. Comic and idiosyncratic, it takes a warmhearted view toward its protagonists while still seeing them for exactly who they are.

A Walk Among the Tombstones is the creepiest film I've seen in quite some time, and that's not meant as a compliment.

This is not great filmmaking, but their story is so involving that it doesn't matter as much as it might.

Awkwardly balanced between comedy and significance, with plotting that gets increasingly schematic and unconvincing, My Old Lady is bound and determined to get more serious than it is capable of sustaining.

No one comes out and says that music is the language of the soul, but no one has to. We see it happening right before our eyes.

Well-directed with exceptional access by veteran documentarian Doug Pray, whose previous films include "Hype!," "Scratch" and "Art & Copy," Levitated Mass in essence intercuts three stories, each of which is more unexpected than one might imagine.

Life of Crime has the authentic Leonard snap, crackle and pop.

Physical beauty and fearless adventure, silly comedy and sensitive emotions, filmmaker Hiroyuki Okiura brings a facility for all of them to the table.

Odd, offbeat, somehow endearing, the bleakly comic Frank has its own kind of charm as well as some pointed, poignant things to say about the mysterious nature of creativity, where it comes from and where it might all go.

If I Stay takes time to find its footing amid miscalculations and awkward moments.

Expendables 3 is a kind of ho-hum experience, wherein a lot of bullets are expended and a lot of structures exploded to minimal dramatic effect.

Its story line and performances are no more than serviceable, but those terrible twisters are state of the art.

Blessed with a loose, anarchic B-picture soul that encourages you to enjoy yourself even when you're not quite sure what's going on, the scruffy "Guardians" is irreverent in a way that can bring the first "Star Wars" to mind.

As much a plea to change the system as it is an examination of how music helps individuals, Alive Inside is not the most sophisticated documentary, but its power is indisputable, and it does end on a hopeful note.

Despite the linked advantages of generous helpings of the man's high octane music and a star performance by Chadwick Boseman that's little short of heroic, Get on Up is more frustrating than fulfilling, a disjointed film that suffers from having a more ambitious plan than it's got the ability to execute.

[A] crackerjack thriller, at once brooding, claustrophobic and unbearably tense.

With its indefinable, almost indescribable combination of whimsy, sentiment and strangeness, "Mood Indigo" (co-written by Gondry and Luc Bossi) will not be to all tastes at all times. But frame for frame, the amount of invention going on here can't be believed unless it's seen.

If you ignore the slicker aspects of the dialogue (and with a little effort you mostly can), it's satisfying to find a film that is as innocent and as much visual fun as this one is.

It may seem like nothing much is happening on-screen, but by the time A Summer's Tale is all over, it feels like everything important has been said and done. Welcome to the magic of Rohmer, one final time.

"Dawn's" vision of masses of intelligent apes swarming the screen as masters of all they survey is even more impressive than it was the last time around and reason enough to see the film all by itself.

Life Itself may sound like it's a film that would only be of interest to those who knew Ebert personally or to fellow film critics, but the opposite is true.

Even if Dan and Gretta charm each other more than they charm us, the music they make is harder to resist than they are.

Observational with a vengeance, more an art piece than a conventional motion picture, Manakamana is simple in conception, but the reactions it evokes in viewers will be complex and multifaceted.

Whether Aaron Swartz is a personal hero or someone you've never heard of until now, his story cannot help but touch you.

Measured and beautifully modulated, the 82-year-old director has the kind of sureness and fluidity that is easy to underestimate. But it's difficult not to be impressed by the results.

Eastwood, as always, has simply done things his own way, and the result is a leisurely old-school entertainment with a bit more edge than you may be expecting.

Lapid's filmmaking skill helps keep us involved, as does Policeman's philosophical underpinnings.

This film throws an enormous amount of information at us both in terms of original interviews and archival footage from more than 100 sources, but it's too sophisticated to suggest that any one-size-fits-all solution is lurking just over the horizon.

There is nothing noble about Eric's mission or about the considerable violence he resorts to to get the job done, but Pearce's willingness to give him an integrity of purpose mixes well with Michôd's intense, controlled direction and his ability to blend unexpected, empathetic character moments with all the killing.

Emotional and analytical by turn, The Case Against 8 is a thoroughly engaging documentary.

It's a star-driven mass-market entertainment that's smart, exciting and unexpected while not stinting on genre satisfactions.

You can see the stuff Million Dollar Arm throws at you from miles away, but that doesn't stop this baseball movie from being genially enjoyable.

It's that rare film that captures and conveys the romance of the theatrical experience.

"Molière" is a polished, character-driven entertainment enlivened by flashes of droll humor.

Spare, haunting, uncompromising, Ida is a film of exceptional artistry whose emotions are as potent and persuasive as its images are indelibly beautiful.

Alphaville is more than quintessential Godard. Despite its age it's that rare science fiction film that doesn't seem to have dated at all.

Locke stands out both for the way filmmaker Knight conceived and executed it and for the kind of hypnotic acting Hardy can be counted on to bring to the table.

If Watermark does nothing else, it will make you question society's contradictory view of water use.

Directors Goldfine and Geller tell their story with such engaged confidence that we are swept along to its wild end.

An ambitious and provocative piece of work that is intriguingly balanced between being a warning and a celebration.

Afternoon of a Faun offers privileged glimpses of Le Clercq's life.

Ilo Ilo is writer-director Anthony Chen's first film, but breathtaking intimacy in storytelling is already second nature to him.

This is an earnest and way-contrived endeavor that manages, due largely to Costner's efforts, to be genially diverting in a gee-whiz kind of way.

The exquisitely calibrated Breathe In explores such a fraught mutual passion with honesty, intimacy and complete emotional involvement.

It's a product of the highest quality, but at the end of the day that's what it is: a machine-made, assembly-line product whose strengths tend to feel like items checked off a master list rather than being the result of any kind of individual creative touch.

It's hard to believe a story this serious can be told in such an involving way, but that is one of this expert documentarian's greatest gifts.

What we find out about Maier, revealed in self-portraits as a striking woman with a singular sense of self, is fascinating.

Noah manages to blend the expected with the unexpected and does it with so much gusto and cinematic energy you won't want to divert your eyes from the screen.

If you can't place the name, or want to know more, Anita is a splendid place to start.

It's an acceptable, play-it-safe version of the first volume in the hugely popular Veronica Roth-written trilogy.

Le Week-End is a sour and misanthropic film masquerading as an honest and sensitive romance. A painful and unremittingly bleak look at a difficult marriage, it wants us to sit through a range of domestic horrors without offering much of anything as a reward.

There's a palpable excitement around the search for knowledge, and this film captures that beautifully.

Whatever this woman is saying or doing, you want to be there to hear it and see it, and there's no better formula for an entertaining documentary than that.

The writer-director's familiar style blends with a group of unexpected factors to create a magnificently cockeyed entertainment.

With performers this engaging, we never want to stop watching, even as events go from grim to grimmer over four long and bitter years.

One thing that makes Lunchbox so strong is that a touch of melancholy hangs over its sweetness. Finally this is a film about the wheel of life, about what helps us cope with its turns and find our way in its unforgiving labyrinth.

Non-Stop is a crisp, efficient thriller that benefits greatly from the intangibles Neeson can be counted on to supply.

A ferocious psychological drama with the pace of a thriller, Child's Pose combines, as have the best of the Romanian new-wave films, a compelling personal story about mothers and sons with an examination of socio-political dynamics in a way that is both intense and piercingly real.

In practice this mélange of imagery is aimed more at the inside of Reggio's head than anywhere else. Unless you are able to get on his quasi-experimental wavelength, a dicey proposition at best, Visitors will miss your solar plexus entirely and instead put you right to sleep. With one exception.

Because it is fearlessly sincere and not totally successful, Winter's Tale is easy to mock. But it is also hard not to admire its willingness to go all out in its quest for the grandest of romantic gestures.

The Last of the Unjust, like Lanzmann himself at his advanced age, is ungainly but powerful.

It can't decide what kind of a film it wants to be and so ends up failing across a fairly wide spectrum.

Powered by Kore-eda's innate restraint and natural empathy, Like Father, Like Son takes these characters to places they never expected to be. It's unnerving for them, of course, but watching so many hearts hanging in the balance is a rare privilege for us.

There is no shaking the feeling that Branagh and his cast are a kind of an espionage film B team, capable of mild diversion but nothing more.

Despite the story's melodramatic contrivances the creation of characters we actually care about is beyond this film's capabilities.

The Invisible Woman is an exceptional film about love, longing and regret. It's further proof, if proof were needed, that classic filmmaking done with passion, sensitivity and intelligence results in cinema fully capable of blowing you away.

Stiller's sensibility creates a movie that's smarter than you think it will be.

As the secrets that almost everyone is hiding slowly but inexorably come to light, Farhadi's gifts as a very specific director, someone who knows exactly how he wants every scene to be played, come to the fore, adding honesty and involvement to a plot that might seem artificial in other hands.

Acerbic, emotional, provocative, it's a risky high dive off the big board with a plot that sounds like a gimmick but ends up haunting, odd and a bit wonderful.

[Russell's] dizzying, outlandishly entertaining American Hustle is a 21-first century screwball farce about 20th-century con men, scam artists and those who dream of living large, a film that is big hearted and off the wall in equal measure.

Saving Mr. Banks does not strictly hew to the historical record where the eventual resolution of this conflict is concerned, but it is easy to accept this fictionalizing as part of the price to be paid for Thompson's engaging performance.

What this film does is reveal two very different societies — both exhibiting, each in its own way, unmistakable signs of collapse.

Lean, muscular and on the money, The Last Days on Mars takes a familiar story and tells it so tautly that we are pleased to be on board.

While the bleak, funny, exquisitely made Inside Llewyn Davis echoes familiar themes and narrative journeys, it also goes its own way and becomes a singular experience, one of their best films.

The most memorable thing about Sweet Dreams is that it allows us to experience the resilience, the capacity for happiness these women retain in spite of all they've been through. There's a lesson there for all of us.

It is the incendiary work of British actors Idris Elba and Naomie Harris as the couple in question that elevates our involvement in this authorized film version of Nelson Mandela's autobiography.

As its name promises, The Great Beauty is drop-dead gorgeous, a film that is luxuriously, seductively, stunningly cinematic. But more than intoxicating imagery is on director Paolo Sorrentino's mind, a lot more.

Dench is not the only reason to see this unapologetic crowd-pleaser, but she is the best one.

An effective piece of melodramatic popular entertainment that savvily builds on the foundation established by the first Hunger Games movie.

Nebraska offers something deeper and more mature, the ability to make us care about its characters and their story on a different level than Payne has given us before.

An involving portrait of what's called "one of the world's most powerful knowledge-producing institutions" and an examination on how that institution is coping with a significant financial crisis.

Aftermath is a bombshell disguised as a thriller.

The whole truth about the complicated, charismatic man may never come out, but The Armstrong Lie is closer than we ever thought we'd get.

"Breakdown" gets the music right and has the benefit of strong acting, but its unapologetically melodramatic plot has a tendency to throw everything at you but the kitchen sink.

To see The Wind Rises is to simultaneously marvel at the work of a master and regret that this film is likely his last.

Its strong special effects make its simulated battles effective and, echoing the book, its story line touches on a number of intriguing issues.

The Square bears witness to history in an articulate, thoughtful and intensely dramatic way.

Because the stories are so specific, and because they play out over such a long period of time, it is hard not to be fascinated by this intimate look at how particular families deal with the great parental challenge of shepherding their children through the all-important educational experience.

What raises this film to a more interesting level is that in addition to the food, each segment presents a personal drama that extends beyond the table.

McCarthy has not done himself or his reputation any favors with this original.

It earns its considerable impact by telling an unnerving story and leaving it, in ways both daring and effective, fundamentally unresolved.

This is impressive filmmaking, but it is not easy to take in.

Whenever The Fifth Estate leaves the involving one-on-one drama between Assange and Domscheit-Berg, you wish it wouldn't.

The piercingly realistic Captain Phillips will exceed your expectations.

Expertly put together by editor Amy Linton, AKA Doc Pomus uses its wealth of material to create the sense of a man with a genius for putting undistilled emotion into his songs.

A Touch of Sin, the powerful if uneven new film by highly regarded Chinese director Jia Zhangke, is a corrosive depiction of the New China.

The Missing Picture is personal and unexpected, a documentary that mixes media in an unusual way to very potent effect.

The Summit tells a multifaceted story that deals with more than the expected peril and exhilaration of adventure tales. Here you'll find love, fear and forgiveness, personality conflicts and cultural differences, even mysteries that have stubbornly resisted solving.

Gravity is out of this world. Words can do little to convey the visual astonishment this space opera creates. It is a film whose impact must be experienced in 3-D on a theatrical screen to be fully understood.

Wolf Children is rather an odd story, told in a one-of-a-kind style that feels equal parts sentimental, somber and strange.

Reich and documentary director Jacob Kornbluth turn out to be the ideal collaborators to tell the story of what that gap is, why it happened and why it's important, all in a totally engaging way.

The Trials of Muhammad Ali is a complex and involving documentary.

Heartbreaking, haunting and unexpectedly heartening, First Cousin Once Removed is an uncommonly moving documentary portrait of a mind in disarray.

Though one enjoys and appreciates Rush for what it is, it does not thrill the blood the way we have the right to expect a film like this to do.

One of the pleasures of Enough Said is watching Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini, two well-known performers only Holofcener would think of putting together, come alive both as individuals and the two halves of a relationship.

Documentaries by their nature are prisoners of their moment in time. If they are fortunate, as the makers of Red Obsession are, that moment, even if it's brief, will be able to hold our interest.

While the uniqueness of the film's Riyadh setting and the disturbing nature of Wadjda's depictions of life for women behind the Saudi curtain are thoroughly involving, the actual plotline of a 10-year-old girl's determination to own a bicycle can be as standard as it sounds.

A strongly acted, character-driven melodrama, concerned with the dynamics of family in general and father-son issues in particular, it presents situations so emotionally supercharged that the whole story could have come straight out of Balzac.

The less seriously the genial French comedy Populaire takes itself, the more amusing it is. Fortunately, with small exceptions, this film doesn't take itself very seriously at all.

Salerno, as if he's unsure of what he's got, goes to great lengths to heighten the drama with crisp editing, a strong score, frequent sound effects and snappy visuals.

Trim and effective though Closed Circuit mostly is, it does fall prey to excessive contrivance from time to time, as most thrillers do. But the fact that its fictional premise dovetails nicely with what we've come to know is true is enough to hold us in our seats.

An exercise in pure cinematic style filled with the most ravishing images, The Grandmaster finds director Wong Kar-wai applying his impeccable visual style to the mass-market martial arts genre with potent results.

Short Term 12 is a small wonder, a film of exceptional naturalness and empathy that takes material about troubled teenagers and young adults that could have been generic and turns it into something moving and intimate.

For a disorganized film that has trouble deciding what it's about, When Comedy Went to School can be a lot of fun.

It's a film whose pleasures are much more visual than dramatic, but that doesn't mean there aren't serious things on its mind.

Daniels' pulp instincts do lead to vivid sequences...but this is one significant film where less would have been a whole lot more.

The Canyons is a bad accident everyone saw coming, and now it is here.

Although the pulp energy that Blomkamp brings to this material makes it consistently watchable, the film doesn't feel as singular as we would have hoped.

This is a taut psychological study, based on a true story, of the complexities of personal power relationships that begins with the kind of shattering revelation that would be the conclusion of most films.

While Europa Report does quite well dramatically without breaking any new ground, its great strength is how striking it is visually and the stratagems it employs to make itself memorable.

As a filmmaker, [Johnston] doesn't always trust his audience as much as he should, opting for overly insistent music and voice-over and withholding information in key areas. But he knew a good story when he saw one, and we can all be grateful for that.

Though individual set pieces are well done, the film inevitably leaves an empty taste behind it once it's done.

It's a mind-bending film, devastating and disorienting, that disturbs us in ways we're not used to being disturbed, raising questions about the nature of documentary, the persistence of evil, and the intertwined ways movies function in our culture and in our minds.

The Wolverine is an erratic affair, more lumbering than compelling, an ambitious film with its share of effective moments that stubbornly refuses to catch fire.

Made with assurance and deep emotion, Fruitvale Station is more than a remarkable directing debut for 26-year-old Ryan Coogler. It's an outstanding film by any standard.

Guillermo del Toro is more than a filmmaker, he's a fantasy visionary with an outsized imagination and a fanatical specificity, a creator of out-of-this world universes carefully conceived down to the smallest detail. His particular gifts and passions are on display in the long-awaited Pacific Rim and the results are spectacular.

Sweetgrass is an unexpectedly intoxicating documentary, unexpected because it blends high artistic standards with the grueling reality of one of the toughest, most exhausting of work environments.

The Lone Ranger exists without a convincing sense of jeopardy or, more critically, any place for audiences to emotionally connect.

Though not among Melville's classics, Un Flic is a pleasure to experience.

The Attack rewards your patience. Though it's never less than involving, it grows in stature as it unfolds and ends as a more subtle and disturbing film about love, loss and tragedy than we might initially expect.

White House Down is a hoot and a half, a shameless popcorn entertainment that is preposterous and diverting in just about equal measure.

The film's formula of following these four from three weeks before the start of things right through the competition is a tried and true one that can't help but have success.

It's fun to see this kind of familiar material done with intelligence and skill.

A Hijacking is as lean, focused and to the point as its title.

A moving and joyous behind-the-scenes documentary about a world filled with big, bold personalities and the music they make.

When on-the-ground reality is conveyed with the complexity and fascination it is here, unforgettable documentaries are always the result.

While its ambition and scope pull one way, its pinched and unconvincing sense of drama pull the other.

It feels like a blessing to have this production at all and we are fortunate it turned out as well as it did.

It's not only this idealism that makes the subjects of Fame High so compelling, it's also their honesty, their willingness to open a window into their lives at that pivotal moment when they're taking their first tentative steps toward becoming their own person personally and professionally.

A transfixing, emotionally complex Israeli drama.

Effortless and effervescent, Frances Ha is a small miracle of a movie, honest and funny with an aim that's true.

This documentary provides an elegant, enthralling peek behind the curtain and into the you-won't-trust-your-eyes world of this celebrated contemporary conjurer.

An invigorating powerhouse of a personal documentary, adventurous and absolutely fascinating.

This is a story as involving as you'd imagine it would be.

Black and company throw all kinds of stuff at the audience, and though it doesn't all work, a lot of it does and the attempt to be different and create unguessable twists is always appreciated.

A lively, clever, fast-moving film that isn't overly reverential about its subject.

Kon-Tiki features a protagonist who was determination itself, a filmmaking style that is square as opposed to cutting edge, and a story that is strong enough to involve us despite its earnest underpinnings.

The result inevitably pushes too hard at times and can't help but stray into melodrama, yet the film does an admirable job of transplanting the novel's thoughtful concerns into a fast-moving suspense context.

Though the photographs are memorable, the photographer is not.

Oblivion has the ability to haunt you visually and, with an unanticipated love story, even emotionally.

It's a cautionary tale of sorts, but the story is so strange it is often not clear exactly what it's cautioning us against.

Robinson's combination of fortitude, restraint and passion for the game was stunning. You can't help getting caught up in this story, even as you are wishing the telling was sharper than it is.

Part science fiction scare movie, part offbeat romance, part completely unclassifiable, "Color" is also one-man filmmaking of a remarkable sort.

It starts out like a house afire, but by the time it's over we're the ones feeling burned. A slick heist tale with more twists than sense, this is one movie that ends up outsmarting itself.

Filmmaker Leon has deftly structured Gimme the Loot as a picaresque tale, an anecdotal, observational film that introduces us to all manner of eccentric and original characters. Will Malcolm and Sophia get what they want, what they need, or something in between? The only sure thing is that being along for the ride is pleasure of the most unexpected sort.

Renoir is a lush, involving film.

In an attempt to be both modern and traditional, this gorgeously made film ends up betwixt and between.

From Up on Poppy Hill is frankly stunning, as beautiful a hand-drawn animated feature as you are likely to see. It's a time-machine dream of a not-so-distant past, a sweet and honestly sentimental story that also represents a collaboration between the greatest of Japanese animators and his up-and-coming son.

It's an adult look at the teenage years, an examination of how personal emotions inform political action, a noteworthy change of pace for writer-director Sally Potter and, most of all, the showcase for a performance by Elle Fanning as Ginger that is little short of phenomenal.

Part manic comedy, part would-be heart-warmer of the "follow your bliss" variety, its odd combination of tones and situations leads to as many awkward, uncertain moments as funny ones.

The Silence is an exemplary German-language thriller, a complex and disturbing examination of guilt, violence and psychological torment that chills us to the core not once but two times over.

Sometimes sweet, sometimes scary, sometimes sour, Oz the Great and Powerful is a film that doesn't know its own mind. A partially effective jumble whose elements clash rather than cohere, this solid but not spectacular effort stubbornly refuses to catch fire until it's almost too late.

The powerful things we expect from War Witch are as advertised, but what we don't expect is even better.

Don't look for The Sweeney to win any awards. It's not going to, not even close. But that doesn't stop it from being a briskly involving British crime entertainment of the old school. You've seen the type, and more than once, but the genre still has enough juice to take us for a ride.

With some momentary exceptions, Jack the Giant Slayer simply isn't any fun.

Caesar Must Die shows us in the starkest possible terms the electric power of drama to move and touch not only audiences but the actors who bring so much of themselves to their performances.

A deeply satisfying feat of storytelling, Bless Me, Ultima makes a difficult task look easy. It combines innocence and experience, the darkness and wonder of life, in a way that is not easy to categorize but a rich pleasure to watch.

Even if No is not the whole truth — and no film is — its pungent dialogue and involving characters tell a delicious and very pertinent tale. And the messages it delivers, its thoughts on the workings of democracy and the intricacies of personality, are just as valuable and entertaining — maybe even more so.

A Good Day to Die Hard plays like an extended victory lap for star Bruce Willis and the entire "Die Hard" franchise. Not surprising, but not overwhelmingly entertaining either.

Room 237 becomes not a film about "The Shining" or even a film about film. Rather, it is an examination of the nature of obsession, about how we are capable of convincing ourselves — and possibly others — that just about anything might be true.

At its heart Lore qualifies as a coming-of-age story, but it is far from the ones we usually see.

This clever bag of tricks is made with so much cinematic skill it makes implausibility irrelevant. What happens on screen is unapologetically far-fetched, but it unfolds with enough panache to make turning away out of the question.

High-spirited, emotional and funny, Sound City is, of all things, a mash note to a machine. Not just any machine, however, but one that helped change the face of rock 'n' roll.

It's got a strong cast and an intriguing premise that has the added bonus of real-world relevance. But, good intentions and good work aside, the film flounders before it reaches its conclusion.

Despite its pitfalls, this movie musical is a clutch player that delivers an emotional wallop when it counts. You can walk into the theater as an agnostic, but you may just leave singing with the choir.

It's one terrific film, as smart, thoughtful and emotionally involving as just about anything that's out there.

Salles has lovingly crafted a poetic, sensitive, achingly romantic version of the Kerouac book that captures the evanescence of its characters' existence and the purity of their rebellious hunger for the essence of life.

One reason Boal makes such a potent combination with Bigelow is that her directing style moves us right along. She is so good with both action and creating a convincing look and feel for the film that the time it takes to get up to speed with the complicated plot does not feel like a problem.

A perfect storm of a motion picture, with an icy, immaculate director unexpectedly taking on deeply emotional subject matter.

Directed by Ra'anan Alexandrowicz and winner of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, this is the second superb Israeli documentary (after "The Gatekeepers") to come to town in less than a month and deal fearlessly with an aspect of that country's legal and political system.

The result is a film that is solid and acceptable instead of soaring and exceptional, one unnecessarily hampered in its quest to reach the magical heights of the trilogy.

Though he has competition, especially from the folks playing the visiting royals, Murray is very much the reason to see "Hyde Park."

Romantic but pitiless, fearlessly emotional as well as edgy, Rust and Bone is a powerhouse.

It projects equal parts fury and despair as it reveals how a particular group of individuals was caught in the unforgiving gears of the criminal justice system.

A documentary potent enough to alter how you see the world.

Hitchcock puts major league star power at the service of its peek-behind-closed-doors premise. But whatever that relationship was like in real life, this is one cinematic portrait of a marriage we could have lived without.

Silver Linings Playbook is rich in life's complications. It will make you laugh, but don't expect it to fit in any snug genre pigeonhole. Dramatic, emotional, even heartbreaking, as well as wickedly funny, it has the gift of going its own way, a complete success from a singular talent.

This highly polished costume drama is exceptionally well-made and a model of intelligent restraint, but it is also unapologetically earnest and a bit on the bloodless side.

There is nothing bravura or overly emotional about Spielberg's direction here, but the impeccable filmmaking is no less impressive for being quiet and to the point.

In its ability to let us hear firsthand what life-and-death combat does to the human body and spirit, this film has few peers.

A solid, often engrossing film that doesn't engage us overall the way Denzel Washington's work does.

It's a wonderful documentary look at an astonishingly successful public-school chess program that manages to be more moving and heartening than you expect. Which is saying a lot.

No definitive answers are possible to the questions The Flat raises, which makes them all the more provocative.

Unfortunately, attempts to be original are not enough, they have to succeed, and this film's solutions tend to present themselves as alternately gimmicky and banal.

A two-hour theatrical feature that has the kind of emotional and storytelling reach regularly found these days only in cable TV miniseries. It's a warmly done family and personal drama that seems to cover familiar territory, but only up to a point and very much in its own way.

A small but exquisite film, beautifully observed and impeccably executed. Written and directed by So Yong Kim, it shows a different side of an actor we thought we knew and reveals unexpected aspects of a character who turns out to be not as familiar as he seems.

Unlike "In Bruges," the outlandish parts of Seven Psychopaths, though often bleakly entertaining in their own right, remain a collection of weird riffs that not even engaging acting by Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Christopher Walken and Tom Waits can bring together.

So though it echoes the films of Charles Burnett, the plays of August Wilson and "A Raisin in the Sun," at its heart Middle of Nowhere is old-school, character-driven narrative at its most quietly effective.

Affleck easily orchestrates this complex film with 120 speaking parts as it moves from inside-the-Beltway espionage thriller to inside Hollywood dark comedy to gripping international hostage drama, all without missing a step.

Cogent, convincing, determinedly non-ideological, Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare tells us that everything we think we know about that incendiary topic might be wrong. And it offers us a way out of the morass.

At a beefy 6-foot-4, Neeson certainly looks physically imposing, but it was the notion of casting someone who can actually act in an action hero role that was the counter-intuitive concept that made both films - Taken 2 is more a remake than a sequel - so successful.

A sports film to remember.

This poor film is so shamelessly manipulative and hopelessly bogus it will make you bite your tongue in regret and despair.

This is a highflying, super-stylish science-fiction thriller that brings a fresh approach to mind-bending genre material. We're not always sure where this time-travel film is going, but we wouldn't dream of abandoning the ride.

It's a complex, determined look at one of the most pernicious problems facing organized sports on all levels.

Tears of Gaza is both horrifying and frustrating. This documentary's goals are noble ones, but its execution is something else again.