Lou Lumenick

One of the best films released so far this year, At Any Price signals the arrival of Iranian-American Ramin Bahrani in the ranks of major US directors.

Utterly delightful.

Mud runs over two hours, climaxing with a shootout that belongs in a different movie. It’s a rare misstep in an art-house movie that will pull mainstream audiences along as inexorably as the Mississippi River. Go see it.

Like Roald Dahl's book, Tim Burton's splendidly imaginative and visually stunning - and often very dark and creepy - new version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is squarely aimed more at children than their parents.

Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel do some of the best work of their careers playing longtime friends navigating their twilight years in Paolo Sorrentino’s witty, wise and swooningly beautiful dramatic comedy Youth.

Between D-Day, the sheer ambition of Paul Thomas Anderson's historical epic and Robert Elswit's dazzling cinematography, this is a must-see movie - even though its emotional temperature rarely rises above freezing and the climax goes way, way, way over the top.

A grim, challenging movie that will amply reward audiences willing to go along with its ride into the dark depths of its characters' souls.

Sweet without being sticky and funny without getting silly, Whip It introduces Barrymore as a director with a keen eye, a good ear for tone and an inspired touch with actors.

The most devastating spoof of reality TV since Albert Brooks' 1978 "Real Life."

Walken was largely typecast in quirky roles as a result of playing the title character's brother in "Annie Hall," so it's something of a delightful irony that 35 years later, Walken finds his most rewarding role leading a terrific ensemble in what amounts to one of the best Woody Allen movies that Allen wasn't involved in making.

Duvall and Spacek are so in tune with each other's rhythms -- despite their 20-year age difference -- that it's hard to believe they've never acted together before.

Emotionally honest, feel-good saga with a universality that stands out in a season of singularly depressing and cynical Hollywood product.

A remarkable accomplishment, an absorbing documentary about the joy of reading that's also a positively gripping literary mystery.

An enthralling 3-D IMAX documentary.

It's a sharply written, unforgettably directed character study with brilliant performances by Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams - far more intimate but no less intense than director Paul Thomas Anderson's Oscar-winning last film, "There Will Be Blood.''

A crowd-pleasing baseball movie for people - like me - who don't like baseball movies...Probably the finest baseball movie since "Bull Durham".

Thomas Vinterberg (“The Celebration”) directs with restraint that makes the story all the more affecting.

There is no shortage of indie movies about economically challenged women. This one is different, in that the women actually do something besides just talk about it.

The Martian is a straightforward and thrilling survival-and-rescue adventure, without the metaphysical and emotional trappings of, say, “Interstellar.’’ It’s pure fun.

The quirky High Fidelity really deserves being called the first must-see movie of the century.

After years of diminishing returns, Woody Allen spectacularly returns to form with Vicky Cristina Barcelona, his funniest movie in years and arguably his sexiest.

I was laughing so hard, tears were streaming down my cheeks.

It's a positive hat trick by John Cameron Mitchell.

Astonishingly sharp and stunningly beautiful images of galaxies as far as 100 billion light-years away.

A documentary that exerts a car-wreck fascination as it follows the icon through her 75th year (she's now 77) while looking back over her tumult-filled life and career.

Jack Black gives the performance of his career in the title role of Bernie, under the pitch-perfect direction of his "School of Rock'' director, Richard Linklater, who expertly crafts a black comedy with a deceptively sunny surface. It's the best movie I've seen all spring.

Norton, returning to cracking form, doesn't try to make the selfish and smug Monty sympathetic -- but he lights up the screen, especially in two fantasy sequences.

As hip, funny and truthful a sleeper as has ever flown under Tinseltown's radar.