Kyle Smith

This is a true story, and at times a gut-wrenching one, even if it necessarily sugarcoats some aspects of the plight of lost children.

German guilt gets a vigorous workout in the penetrating and symbolically important documentary Two or Three Things I Know About Him.

It's an underdog story with teeth.

Wajda, who lost his father in the purge, gives the film an awful silence and mystery at its core.

Black was already the world's biggest little kid, and he might be the only actor who could have made this movie such nimble fun.

Delivers plenty of smart dialogue and devises a number of excellent reasons to photograph his cast in situations that suggest the working title for the film might have been "Women in Underwear."

Better than decent. But if Stallone (who wrote and directed the flick) had pulled a few punches to the heart, it could have been truly worthy of that first, glorious movie.

The gimmicky title is doubly misleading: The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby is neither a mystery nor Beatles-themed, but it is an elegantly wrought tale of anguish.

Who gets to say what art is? Does honest emotion count for more than cold abstraction? If Andy Warhol likes it, does that make it OK? Big Eyes toys with some amusing ideas, and that’s enough.

Killing Bono begs to be remade with A-list stars but, given Neil's history of near-misses, probably won't be.

Dialogue, we seem to have forgotten, matters, and the words — by the brutally funny screenwriter of “The Departed,” William Monahan — are electric eels, slithering and sinister and nasty. They sneak up and sting you, or sometimes tickle your toes. Lowlifes don’t actually talk this way? Yeah. But if only they did.

As for Grant, who hasn't been this sharp since "Love Actually" six years ago, he is once again the prime minister of cute comedy.

A real actioner, generous with the bullets and blood and chase scenes, that simultaneously mocks shoot-'em-ups.

If it’s possible to make a morally old-fashioned film about teen orgies, writer-director Eva Husson has done so with Bang Gang, a quietly chilling look at the sex lives of a group of bored high-school students.

A roaring old-school action adventure for kids, with as many mythical beasts as a year at Hogwarts and a healthy dose of smiting without the crazed bloodlust of “300.”

There are enough sharp one-liners and funny situations to keep things entertaining even as Braff delves (lightly) into genuine dilemmas confronting many a married couple.

Nutty as The Lego Batman Movie is in conception, it’s nifty in execution.

Based on a lesser-known Dostoyevsky work, Brit director Richard Ayoade’s breathtakingly realized oddity will appeal to fans of David Lynch and the comic surrealism of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil.”

It isn’t quite as clever as it thinks. This is one of those man-written feminist parables that looks an awful lot like a Penthouse art director’s idea of a feminist parable.

In Born To Be Blue, Ethan Hawke plays the heroin-addicted jazz trumpeter Chet Baker as a kind of guy version of Marilyn Monroe — breathy, fragile, a country naif struggling to stay anchored in this world instead of drifting off into the next.

The attraction between the resolutely empirical scientist and his “spiritual,” hippy-dippy girlfriend gives the film an unpredictable quality.

Much closer to Scorsese than "Scarface," Notorious gives a heartfelt yet clear-eyed sendoff to the late Brooklyn rapper Christopher Wallace.

High praise for the movie Mother and Child: It's as good as a TV show. Although it's not as fine as HBO's "In Treatment," a show run by this movie's writer-director, Rodrigo Garcia.

Statham is an essential tough guy, what the Brits call "well'ard," as self-assured as Lee Marvin.

This charming kid's-eye movie, full of comical and vivid detail about the lives of these cheerful children, has the loose, lanky feel of a memoir and of French New Wave films.

It isn't much of a contest: The clear winner is John Wayne, because the Coens are playing his game. The Duke couldn't do the Coens' sly in-jokes, but they've never been able to reach out and move the audience to heights of emotion. Before now, they've never tried.

The movie is much like a really long beer commercial - but a really dark one.

RoboCop is topically up-to-the-moment but stylistically it’s retro. Far from using the story as an excuse to string together cheap thrills and blowout spectacle, its hero has all the heart of the Tin Man.

Apart from its thin characters and occasional trite moments, as well as a silly attempt to set up a sequel, Don’t Breathe is just about perfect. It’s as lean and relentless as the best John Carpenter films.

Shifting the self-deprecating japery of "High Fidelity" from a record store to a quiz show makes Starter for 10 a sweetly endearing date movie.

Take a stroll down London Boulevard if you enjoy surly, smart, hard-edged British crime movies like "Sexy Beast" and "Croupier."

Hunger is almost silent, most of its sounds being unintelligible moans and screams.

Yet the film is marred by Hawke’s blundering intrusions as he keeps changing the subject to Hawke: He tells us he often wonders “why it is I do what I do,” as if anyone but he is interested in the answer.

This Morgan Freeman-narrated documentary doesn’t stray much from the nature-doc formula of making its stars look frisky and winsome while sprinkling in a few info-nuggets about the critters (they’re older than dinosaurs!). And that’s just fine.

An invigorating and surprising journey.

Sex Drive has shaky moments, and its smutty gags aren't edited so much as slammed together.

Raunchy frat comedies are as hard to pull off as any other kind because they have to keep surprising the audience, and The Hangover does with a bizarre series of uproarious situations with explanations that just about stay within the bounds of plausibility.

Free State of Jones is enticingly difficult to chart. It’s anti-war, anti-plutocracy and anti-racist, but it’s also pro-Bible, pro-gun, anti-tax and sympathetic to the poor whites who usually get tagged as racist. Its hero is an avowed Republican named Newt.

A great abortion documentary might leave you guessing which side of the debate the director was on. Lake of Fire is not that film, but it comes somewhat close.

Douchebag belies its abrasive title with a soft touch for two wobbly souls.

Superb Noo Yawk attitude, dialogue and performances (including one from the essential Kevin Corrigan, now well into his second decade of being indie movies' dirtbag on demand) keep the movie lively and tart.

Written and directed with compassion by Noah Buschel, the film is a low-key chamber piece better suited to television. But don’t let its restraint fool you: As unshowy as it is, The Phenom has an impressive collection of tools.

A pleasingly low-key effort pitched at fans of the first couple.

Though somewhat marred by cheesy docudrama re-enactments, the film (produced by Steven Spielberg’s sister Nancy) is nutty, dramatic, surprising and above all inspiring.

Deeply personal screenwriting and a superlative performance by Molly Shannon as a dying mom lift Other People above the level of many similar tragedy-inflected indie comedies.

Footloose won me over early, with a sequence in which the hero gets all heavy metal while restoring his badass ... VW Bug.

As with "Capturing the Friedmans," the documentary is grueling to sit through. Yet the greasy, guilty thrill of being privy to your neighbors' most intimate dramas makes it impossible to stop watching.

Has buckets of gentle sincerity. Since there aren't any dumb jokes or hip visuals, it's easy to get caught up in the simple messages: Be good to your sister, don't be a bully, use your imagination in a pinch.

When Hopkins' Hitch directs the audience by waving his hands like a symphony conductor - it's a nice callback to a Hannibal Lecter highlight - it's one of the best scenes of the year: a delightfully personal way to show how the story of "Psycho" concluded.

Despite Gibney’s best efforts to put a halo on Manning, the enormity of what the soldier did towers over what has been done to him.

The film is still a gripping experience, though, with its circling sharks, its sun-dappled beauty and its agonies of shattered hope. At one point I was convinced that Sandra Bullock would splash down next to our man in her space capsule and Hanks’ Maersk ship from “Captain Phillips” would steam by to pick up both of them.

The magical mystery that is Paul McCartney may never be solved, but for fans (the line forms behind me), the new documentary The Love We Make includes some memorable displays of his world-conquering charm.

Soundly structured, smart and fast, with a plausible central scenario, several gripping moments and well-wrought dialogue.

How this thing got made in Hollywood is a mystery, but I laughed at most of it, especially the mean stereotypes about the French and the even meaner stereotype about England's soccer team.

Po speaks loudly and carries big shtick. Let the rest of the world cringe at our hyperconfidence, our charisma, our pure awesomeness.

Credit Westfeldt, who is also the writer and director, with a classic setup for farce, brightly executed.

This documentary, which begins at a low key, gradually becomes intense and psychologically complicated.

Director Susanne Bier's chilly morality play is slow to get started, but once established, its three parallel stories comment provocatively on one another.

Though Despicable Me is a little ragged on story, it's got a lot of imagination and a heart as warm as a fluffy kitty.

Dispenses with much of the caramel gooeyness of the first two episodes in favor of decent action, some heartfelt tender moments and even a splash of wit. This time they’re actually Twi-ing.

May serve as a useful way to introduce teens to what World War II in Europe was like.

This material cries out for big-budget treatment by a real master like Paul Thomas Anderson or Martin Scorsese.

As subtle and careful and slyly disturbing as Child’s Pose is though, it and many others of its genus suffer from an airlessness, pacing like the growth of algae, a dishwater color palate and a dirge-like monotone.

A warning: One scene in the middle is almost outrageously cruel and graphic. If you're the type of person who has to be reminded, "It's only a movie," stay away. This is the most depraved and dreadful piece of screen horror since last year's "Funny Games."

Once it calms down and stops trying to be funny, it turns into a thoughtful and intriguing drama.

The hopelessly dated 1968 play "The Boys in the Band" yields a surprisingly sprightly and multifaceted documentary, Making the Boys.

A captivating Tom Hardy is in the driver’s seat for the one-man show Locke, but like many experimental films, this one suffers from its self-imposed constraints.

A desperado drama wrapped around a Bernie Sanders campaign speech, Hell or High Water overcomes its vapid political leanings with loads of West Texas atmosphere, smart dialogue and acutely observed relationships.

Gentle, tender and very French, The Hedgehog is cinematic poetry -- too bad about that prosaic plotting.

At the end the film turns into an infomercial for President Obama’s Iran deal, but Gibney delivers plenty to think about — and fear.

Role Models isn't a classic like "Superbad" or as hilarious as this summer's "Step Brothers," but it's excellent fun for males in the mental age bracket of 14 to 22, which is most males.

Typically, To the Wonder seems mostly locked in the thoughts of its characters, whispered so only we can hear, with no more actual back-and-forth dialogue than would cover the back of your ticket stub.

A clever, elliptical, slightly bizarre and altogether transfixing psychological thriller.

A film I admired, but didn’t especially like, The Revenant is a master class in craftsmanship, marrying the ethos of 1970s Hollywood, with its beaten-dog heroes forever roughed up by a brutal system, to the technological prowess of today’s digitally obsessed blockbusters.

Director Matthew Vaughn, who did last year's delightful "Kick-Ass," doesn't do witty this time around, but he does keep up a spiffing pace while making the action blaze.

The film never flags. To find a smarter bug-man saga, you’d have to go back to “The Metamorphosis.” I was far from sold on insect superheroes, but now I say: Bring on Cockroach Chick.

October Country doesn't really have a point, or a story, but it's an almost unbearably vivid portrait of four generations in a single working-class family.

Beaded with amusing moments.

A sometimes insightful, sometimes absurdly devotional but steadily engaging film.

Earth, you had me at baby polar bears.

There is stuff in This Is the End that had me laughing so hard, I sensed new body parts joining in to help out — my pancreas was heaving, my bile ducts ripped.

Its young director, however, has a considerable flair for surprise and visual gusto, and he even, on a shoestring, delivers sharp-looking special effects.

A pleasingly weird, dryly funny little indie.

Picture Monty Python writing an unusually odd "Twilight Zone" episode directed by surrealist Luis Buñuel. Or just empty your mind of all sense: This is Rubber.

What keeps the movie nervy and kinetic is that, for a good hour, it never seems that Jack and family are anything but average people who somehow manage to survive one hellacious trial after another, even when it comes to having to kill another human being.

Fighting arrives fully charged by the charisma of its star, Channing Tatum, who has landed the lead in the upcoming "G.I. Joe."

So this bourgeois-bohemian movie is, in a way, as serene in its obliviousness to the exterior world as its man-child subject. It's not essential, but it is endearing.

Some bits are too stagy, but for the most part this long night feels like an interview that could have actually happened. Miller is so good - dumb, smart, wounded, wounding, a lollipop of sweet poison that you'd buy every day until it killed you - that you feel you not only understand her but all actresses.

As sensuous as its title, Silk is an exquisitely felt love story that unfolds as delicately as a blooming flower. And as slowly.

Wanted is like a 12-armed heavy-metal drummer after a case of Red Bull, flailing and thundering through two hours of impossible action.

The anti-Ben Stiller comedy: There's humiliation aplenty but no mugging, no abuse to the crotch region, no straining to be outrageous.

Your enjoyment will hinge entirely on whether you think the album is a masterpiece or a bore.

I haven't seen a timelier or more important film this year, and the film's passion for school choice could hardly be more warranted. Along with documentaries such as "The Lottery" and "Waiting for 'Superman,' " the film comes with a background sound of the ice of inertia cracking.

The line between honey and syrup is a fine one, I'll grant you, but "Best Exotic Marigold" was on the wrong side of it. Quartet carries a noble glow, as serene and beautiful as sunset.

The funniest movie of Smith's I've seen. It's "When Harry Did Sally."

Nearly as good as the average episode of TV’s “Friday Nights Lights,” which makes it better than most movies and one of the better sports films of recent years.

Not as aca-mazing as “Pitch Perfect” (which made my 10-best list for 2012), the follow-up should have been cut by 10 or 15 minutes. First-time director Elizabeth Banks (who returns as a snarky announcer) doesn’t have the zippy comic timing of the first film’s helmer, Jason Moore.

Among cheesy sci-fi movies meant to make you think, I'll take Surrogates over "District 9." Both are highly derivative, but in the course of recombining the basic chromosomes of "Blade Runner," "The Matrix" and especially "I, Robot," Surrogates nudges the robo-thriller in an interesting direction.