Marc Savlov

Weaver and Hirsch's flawless performances elevate the film above and beyond the ranks of "Ordinary People" pastiches, and in the end it stands on its own merits.

Dueñas and Lucas give knockout performances as two twisted souls seemingly locked in a match to the death to determine who is the madder one. I’ll call it a tie, and I’ll also say Alleluia is a grotesque masterpiece. L’amour fou, indeed.

Why remake Norman Jewison's staunchly cool 1968 heist film in such a lackadaisical, uninspired manner?

That Aimée & Jaguar manages so well in triple duty as a wartime melodrama with a lesbian twist is remarkable.

Greenwald's doc is pure partisan warfare of the liberal stripe, to be sure, but that doesn't make it any less disturbing.

It’s The Alamo, all right, but will anyone want to remember it?

Bone Tomahawk is not your typical Western retread, to be sure. If someone had told me that it was adapted from one of Joe R. Lansdale’s genre-hopping horror stories I would have believed it. Kudos then to director Zahler, who on his very first film, buries that g--damn tomahawk deep in the audience’s memory.

Like the inky void of space, there's really not much here, but what there is, is certainly entertaining.

Brilliant, surreal, and emotionally draining, this first feature from American Film Institute grad Aronofsky recalls such low-budget sci-fi epics as "Tetsuo: The Iron Man" and more traditional paranoiac suspense films (Adrian Lyne's "Jacob's Ladder" in particular, but also Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby") and yet manages to be a wholly original animal.

Absolutely mandatory viewing for aspiring animators and filmmakers. (In terms of pacing, scoring, editing, and narrative, it's a film school unto itself.) For the rest of us, however, it's simply magic.

Sweet enough but in the end a bit of a corny-syrupy wipeout, this is middling family-night fare, but it never even comes close to the emotional or technical wizardry of Pixar's finest moments.

Laika's stop-motion animation is every bit as inspired here as it was in their rightfully lauded "Coraline," and the storyline never wavers from its boneyard-deep message: Being different from others is a good – nay, great – thing, no matter how many villagers (or zombies) are after you.

Tomei looks far too fresh-scrubbed to be anywhere near a bloody, messy hell like this, but the rest of the cast is grimly realistic, particularly Harrelson, who manages to bring some goofball credibility to what is essentially a very small role.

Junge’s ridiculously entertaining documentary includes a wealth of archival clips that still, after all these years, make you wince.

It's 99 and 44/100% pure Mamet all the way.

While the film ably thrusts longtime fans of Mignola’s highly stylized artwork and newcomers alike into the world of that ol' debbil Hellboy, the film suffers from both scattershot character development and a serious case of H.P. Lovecraft overdose.

It’s both more and less than the sum of its parts, but its never less than thoroughly watchable.

So ingratiatingly good-humored that it's hard to take it seriously enough to complain. Sure, it's no great triumph of moviemaking, but it is entertaining, and a more or less plausible way to kill 95 minutes on a Saturday afternoon.

This is one fish tale that’s well nigh guaranteed to linger in the viewers’ midnight memories long after its cinematic nocturnal emissions have unspooled.

I found myself falling for it, hard. It's Trevorrow's feature debut and we'd like to see more, please.

Hey, hey, it’s the monkeys that rule this particular spot on the Earth, and watching them monkey around is a G-rated trip and a half. And with Tina Fey’s enthusiastic narration, you might even learn something, too.

Possessor is queasy-smart near-masterpiece of psychotronic slippage. Like its protagonist’s risky psychogenic recollections, it’ll stick with you whether you’d like it to or not.

The result is a film that looks like no other in recent memory.

Feels like an overlong "SCTV" skit. Many prime gags are recycled throughout the film, and, honestly, there's only so much Eugene Levy schtick one can take (though he does get the best Yiddish lines in the film).

Indeed, the biggest acting coup here comes by way of Courtney Love, whose cameo as an obliging waitress is the best thing the film has going for it.

Priceless is a supremely satisfying confection – a French romantic comedy of the sort that ends with you standing outside the theatre with a dopey grin on your face.

It's nasty, brutal stuff, but it's also unlike anything else out there.

By the end of this tight and timely documentary – once again, we’re a nation in chaos, breeding some ridiculously fine rock & roll while the world burns.

Thanks to the superior performances by all four leads (including incredibly expressive Karoline Eckertz, who appears as the teenage Regina midway through), Nowhere in Africa is a meditation on everything from race and class and cultural impermanence to the inexhaustible malleability of youth.

Sorrentino’s film tackles the most important of all life’s questions with wit, wisdom, and no small amount of often-surreal humor.

Brandon Lee's swan song is a kinetic, pounding, adrenalized feast for the senses, if not the psyche. Bursting with startling images, eclectic staging, and gorgeous neo-gothic set design.

Insidious: Chapter 2 is perhaps an even more scattershot mess than its predecessor. Whannell's script is so rife with portentous backstory, third-act goofiness, and a denouement that practically screams "Insidious 3: Same Old Shit," that the film as a whole is jarring, and not in a good way.

At 134 minutes, Crazy Horse could have used some judicious editing, but that relatively minor quibble aside, it provides a revealing and intimate look (as if there could be any other kind) at an institution both familiar and utterly alien.

A tight, compact, and visually sumptuous origin story that revels in the surrealistic vision of Doctor Strange’s legendary creator and artist Steve Ditko.

Death and the Maiden is a streamlined razor-ride of a movie: taut, riveting, and a psychological horror show that will leave nail-marks in your palms for days afterwards.

Not a single character or the jeopardy that they find themselves in – end of the entire human race and all – is likable, canine-in-peril excluded.

This is Martin Scorsese, and in the end, it's his town, and his show.

There's more at work in this gorgeous and affecting picture than simple culinary sex appeal.

The Dennis Miller Show… with nekkid vampire-vixens. That's it in a coffin-nail.

Mangold, Phoenix, and Witherspoon, all excellent in their roles.

This is, disappointingly, a long way from being a Studio Ghibli classic. The essential plot may be archetypal, but it’s no "Kiki’s Delivery Service."

For all its emotional and familial kerfuffles, People Like Us is an honorable misfire – good intentions and all.

This is a wonderful, disarming film, sort of like Ghost, but with all the Hollywood drained from it, leaving nothing on screen but the truth of the matter. Which is the way it should be, of course.

Absolutely unlike any documentary you’ve ever seen, Step Into Liquid nearly qualifies as a religious experience.

Schroeder's film is fun to watch, even when it's being predictable or brutal, but its memory is nearly gone the next day.

12 is every bit as much of a moral powerhouse as its predecessors but with the added bonus of being simultaneously intellectually riveting and, at times, almost indescribably poetic.

Timely metaphors abound in The Order of the Phoenix, but the story (of which there is much) stands on its own magical merits, dark and darker still though they may be.

Predicated on the slimmest of notions, this debut by Jones is so cuddly-cute in its desire to be pleasing that it's all but transparent.

Hopper, unsurprisingly, devours scenery like he's already dead and loving it, but for once his penchant for overacting is overshadowed by the real stars of Romero's world: They're dead, they're all messed up, but it's great to finally have them back in town.

Despite its short running time, Being Elmo is an engrossingly layered documentary.

Leary, Demme, and screenwriter Mike Armstrong have come up with a brilliant, harrowing portrait of misplaced loyalties and savage valor that may be one of the best character-driven ensemble pieces to come around in some time.

More emotionally complex than even I had thought possible, Chasing Amy is the sound of burgeoning genius on the fast track to maturity.

A family film in the best sense.

A slow-burn stunner, where nothing much of consequence happens, except life itself.

So bereft of hope... that it's a chore to withstand.

This romance isn't a sunshine-dappled meadow, it's a thicket of thorny rosebushes atop a rocky precipice. Both actors are alarmingly natural in their roles and Ade's direction is a model of subtly shifting tones and tempers.

From its marketing-impaired title on down, Event Horizon is a steadily churning debacle that promises much more than it can deliver and ends up drowning in a crimson sea of gore and maddeningly out-of-place steals from other, better genre shockers.

Surprisingly effective for what could easily be labeled a “gimmick film,” Chaganty’s debut feature suspenser unfolds entirely onscreen on screens.

For a film that's ostensibly about modern American society's love affair with addictive behavior – sex, drugs, rock & roll – its bark is much worse than its bite.

Ultimately, it's 79 minutes of footage of a pair of petty, pretty people freaking out over having to go to the bathroom in their wetsuits, and in the end you find yourself rooting for the sharks.

Spanning three decades, Map of the Human Heart is one of those rare films that illuminates a single human story, and does it so well that you're hardly aware you're watching a movie.

A pleasantly vicarious slice of summertime falderol, innocuous in its presentation and often genuinely fun.

Factotum, for all its grim grind, is funny-serious, and smart-stupid. Just like you after four beers, and me after eight.

Part character study, part redemptive drama, and all cheesy heart, it's Boston-baked melodrama, a little too gooey at times, but still pretty delicious.

October Sky falls flat (despite its rich tone and some startling cinematography by Fred Murphy) due to its all-too-obvious third act and the vague fact that, really, not that much happens.

Mad Dog and Glory, thankfully, finds the director in remarkable form, crafting an engrossing new film out of what might have been, in less competent hands, simply another Hollywood formula movie.

Red Eye's no classic, but with its smart, twisty little script and those two killer performances, it is a helluva lot of fun.

It’s the sublime and understated performance by Krisha Fairchild (Krisha, Waves) as the aging pot farmer Devi Adler that elevates Freeland past its potential as a tone poem cliche into a far more arresting portrait of the old versus the new and beyond.

A film within a film encapsulated by a clever and very accurate anti-materialistic Buddhist morality lesson, Travellers and Magicians feels a bit like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as retold by Siddhartha.

College, a film so persistently loud and annoying that it single-handedly makes the case for drugging yourself with a roofie.

It is, in fact, an instant classic, the sort of film that will make you check under your bed at night and then amplify into terror the midnight creaks and 3am breezes that unsettle every house at times, most especially yours. Highly recommended.

An American remake of Jorge Michel Grau's 2010 Mexican shocker, this Sundance and Fantastic Fest fan favorite is undeniably creepy stuff that’s been given a dusty, American Gothic anti-sheen courtesy of cinematographer Ryan Samul.

For fans, Oasis: Supersonic is a reminder of both the band’s musical strengths and of a simpler time for pop music in general, pre-internet and all that that implies.

A neon-drenched murder mystery – or is it? – for the selfie generation, set in the hipster hamlet of Silverlake. So it goes with this highly stylized slice of bad, black millennial noir, a post-mumblecore take on the shady underbelly of L.A. in which Los Angeles plays itself, very nearly upstaging the main characters’ plight.

The problematic issue of “keeping up with the Joneses” has rarely played as delicately or as honestly as it does here.

Considerably less of a thrillgasm than playing "Frogger" blindfolded.

As depressing as it may sound on paper, directors Argott and Fenton have crafted a deeply disturbing but equally moving documentary.

Onward is neither terrible nor great; it simply is.

It's a knockout, sucker punch of a performance, and although it doesn't completely erase the memory of Rapace (and why should it?), Mara's doomy gaze cuts through the hype and bores straight into your soul.

Thankfully, The Nomi Song should go a long way toward re-cementing this striking creature's legendary status.

An informative and nonpolemic look at the birth of the modern environmental movement and its various offshoots and key players.

It's contemporary French cinema without a dollop of Besson and Jeunet's beloved CGI theatrics, and all the better for it.

It has the resonant feel of myth, buoyed by simultaneously vicious and compassionate performances from the men on both sides of the bars.

For all its stentorian performances, though, Shadow of the Vampire is a bit much, from the detailed period sets to the final, bloody scene.

The war might be over, but fear and hope remain locked in a rapturous stranglehold amidst the rubble.

This is the first Spike Lee Joint that feels more like a mainstream Hollywood cops-in-the-'hood picture and less like one of Lee's recurrent soapboxes.

Beyond the Gates bears witness to the worst of the worst, but these days, and far more importantly, so does YouTube.

A razor-wire-taut (and extremely violent) exploration of what happens when good guys go bad, badder, baddest.

"Always be good to rock and roll and it will always be good to you," the film quotes Phil Spector as saying, and a more fitting explanation of the Bingenheimer mystique you'll likely never find.