Kyle Smith

For boldness of execution as well as vision, The Red Chapel stands out as a singular, important comedy.

The slacker comedy-drama-romance-whatever Gigantic will fulfill all your alterna-movie weirdness requirements.

Sincerely directed by one woman (Phyllida Lloyd, who did "Mamma Mia!") and smartly written by another (Abi Morgan), the film stars an unsurpassable Meryl Streep, whose ability to empathize with her characters has never been more gloriously impassioned than it is in this titanic performance.

A brutally funny deconstruction, a hybrid of “Watchmen” and “Superbad” filtered through John Woo. It’s a boisterously original piece of entertainment . . . that isn’t for everyone. Note the rating, which should be triple-R, as in Really, Remarkably R.

Dizzy with celebrity, New York society and gay life (if all that isn't the same thing), Infamous is more fun. But "Capote" is a better movie.

Director Marc Silver expertly interweaves the courtroom drama and its larger social and human connotations.

The twists are executed superbly, right up to a climax that fits the David Mamet definition of what makes for a perfect ending: It is both surprising and inevitable.

A yellow dog of a movie that delights in offending the offendable. It's also a whitesploitation classic, from its menacing sideburns to its demented laughter.

After seeing Everybody's Fine, Paul McCartney offered to write a song that plays over the closing credits. That may be because the whole movie is like a celluloid McCartney tune: warm and playful and sweetly earnest, but lightly funny, too, and crafted with consummate skill.

Like the paintings of the master, Renoir is beautiful to look at, but it would be a mistake to call the film (or its subject) shallow.

As for Hoffman, the shambling Everyman naturalism he shows here gives God’s Pocket an added elegiac layer that makes its bitter ironies that much more painful.

There’s an exhilarating sadness to it all that amounts to cinematic poetry.

Thanks to his (Oldman) mastery, and Alfredson's, no film this year left me hungrier for a sequel.

Like a dedicated teacher, this is a film that stays with you.

A fantastically entertaining biography.

This exhilarating brain-twister is a nonstop visual, aural and intellectual delight, steeped in movie conventions and yet fizzing with freshness. It’s what happens when film noir goes out to a rave.

I still can't believe I Melt With You went there. Over the top, off the hook and just plain bonkers, it makes its mark.

There’s something strange and dreamlike and delicate and beautiful about Anomalisa, an animated film for grown-ups that takes a long while to make its point, but does so with a dark brilliance.

If Martin Scorsese were 30 and a Los Angeleno, he'd be making movies much like this one.

The highest praise I can give a superhero movie is that it makes me forget about its 10-cent-comic-book soul.

The White Ribbon is one of the finest films that ever repelled me, a holiday in the abyss.

A good documentary uses judicious editing to make an important addition to your knowledge of a subject, and Mitt does so in a big way.

It's a pulp story pinned to the screen with an ice pick of conscience in a manner that would have pleased Allen's idol, Ingmar Bergman.

Proving it’s still possible to stick to the broad contours of “The Graduate” story and come up with something brightly endearing, 5 to 7 is a memorable directorial debut for “Mad Men” writer Victor Levin.

Mr. Luhrmann successfully makes Presley’s concerts fresh again.

Through a single family, Mr. Rasoulof has created a vivid portrait of the dilemmas of today’s Iran, where the power of iman, or faith, suggests one kind of observation but the power of the iPhone suggests another.

The tone is dry farce that never strays into camp, with a mildly sardonic appreciation of oddballs recalling such Robert Altman films as “The Long Goodbye.” A creepily discordant musical score by Fatima Al Qadiri adds immensely to the feeling that everyone is hiding something and no good will come of it.

This all-you-can-eat thrill buffet easily bests most of the recent big-budget movies and reminds us that Mr. Cruise remains a showman par excellence.