Mary Pols

Inside Out is nearly hallucinogenic, entirely beautiful and easily the animation studio’s best release since 2010’s "Toy Story 3." Stylistically Inside Out is nothing like Richard Linklater’s "Boyhood," but for its scope in examining the maturation process, it might well be called "Childhood."

Ramsey's film has its own strengths. We Need To Talk About Kevin doesn't just bring you to the outskirts of a parent's worst nightmare; this fever dream of guilt and loss takes you straight inside.

It's a deceptively small piece of onscreen art that resonates afterward with such insistence that I felt positively nagged by it.

Glorious vision of youth and truth, love and loss, your name is Mud.

Weitz knows his muse. But he’s smartly made room for Tomlin to explore her own wisdom, to look into a mirror (literal and figurative) of an older woman’s past and present with remorse, tears and, best of all, delighted laughter at discovering something new in herself. At 75, Tomlin remains the coolest.

Director Ursula Meier's Sister is a penetrating study of familial bonds, quietly devastating in parts, beautiful on whole and destined to make you fall in love with a practiced and entirely amoral preteen thief.

The Impossible is technologically a marvel - the tsunami experience is harrowingly believable - but also emotionally rich. I hesitate to use this term, since it is so often equated with hokey, but The Impossible is life-affirming.

Beyond its craftiness and impeccable craft, the film sparks a warm connection with the viewer. Like a smiling cavalier swinging into view to rescue an imperiled maiden, The Artist brings salvation to melancholy movie lovers. For here is that rare film indeed that offers pleasure beyond words.

The looming presence of that planet and its possibilities turns Another Earth into a metaphysical treat, with influences that range from Krzysztof Kieslowski's "The Double Life of Veronique and Blue" to Andrei Tarkovsky's "Solaris." It's the most soulful art movie of the summer.

The movie is ridiculously over the top, inelegant and so defiantly ?crazy?that it works, reminding you how fun gore and creatures that go bump ?(and? grind) in the night can be. It's a sci-fi horror film, but no actual ?comedy?has made me laugh as much this year as Splice.?

Bravely and with penetrating intelligence, Before Midnight elevates instead the practical, a partnership: frayed by disappointment, worn by time, but for the very luckiest—which we sincerely and selfishly hope includes Jesse and Celine—durable for the long day’s journey into night.

The scenes cut so close to the emotional bone that you can understand why they might cause a panic amongst MPAA boardmembers, although of course, it's nothing to be afraid of: just the realism of love in its varied forms.

The scariest romantic comedy of the year.

Like Crazy is a cinematic love potion and you leave it feeling bewitched.

Maybe they’re all right. Or wrong. It can’t be settled. What matters is that people are still crazy about the beauty of a beautiful movie about going crazy.

A wry and moving look at a time in life that tends to get short shrift in U.S. cinema.

Some moviegoers may opt for an easier cinematic pleasure than this carefully crafted, discomforting look at familial misery in hyper drive, but it is the most provocative movie about parenting I’ve seen since "The Kids Are All Right."

The chemistry this trio has is special; the premise of the sequel seems worn, but the way they work against and with each other is what provides the pleasure.

Beyond the Hills may be the best movie no one will want to see in 2013.

It is intensely raunchy and silly and joyous and tapped right into my inner teenager in a glorious way.

A slam dunk in the genre, satisfying every period piece craving: torrid affair, mad king, bastard child, throngs at the palace gates and a history lesson that will be fresh to many.

This is no-holds-barred humor of the finest, grossest kind, centered around the theme of arrested development.

This isn't a passionate, showy part, but it's a finely drawn performance, worthy of a veteran actress (Lane) who started her career as Secretariat did in the 1970s (in A Little Romance) and has since earned a champion status of her own.

The movie made me laugh as much as anything since "The Hangover" or the love scenes in "Avatar."

A spirited, irreverent and hugely fun comedy.

This Pooh, which takes its gossamer plotlines directly from A.A. Milne, will be a boon to parents of very small children everywhere.

Buck has the air of a beautiful little mystery; even knowing the uplifting outcome, you wonder at the strength that brought him to this place.

The director and his splendid cast assure that this tale about a strong little girl fighting to keep her family alive and together has both high art and a big heart, audience appeal and gut impact.

Let Me In is not as fantastic as "Let the Right One In," which you should rent immediately. But it is undeniably powerful and made with obvious admiration and respect for the source material.

At the very least, it's awfully entertaining and for "Buffy" fans, reason to put down the boxed sets and run off to the cinema.

Warm Bodies is the first movie worth paying to see in theaters this year. It’s an inventive charmer that visits all the typical movie scenarios of young love amid chaos and disaster, but with a new dimension: one of the romantic leads is a zombie.

It's a real family film, relatively light on the violence and funny without being overly crude; it even has some touching moments.

The raunchy but charming Going the Distance is credible, intimate and more appealing than 90% of the romantic pairings in American movies these days.

There is a looseness to the dialogue that suits the mood of the story-each character gets his or her own bombshell (or two) to digest and has to figure out how to cope with it.

The overall metaphor Weir was aiming for - this idea of enemies so powerful and a war so menacing and confusingly big that no place seems safe except a place absurdly far away - comes through clearly and stays with you.

The movie's biggest surprise is the revelation of Gosling as cunning comedian.

I finished Larsson's novel with the uncomfortable sense it used a good mystery as an excuse to dwell on sadism and perversity -- an aspect only exacerbated on screen.

Gere is being talked about as an Oscar contender - he's never been nominated. January is a long time off yet, but his name is certainly worth putting on the long list.

First-time director Kargman triumphs by picking characters who largely defy expectations.

The story wraps up with a tenderness that feels true but completely without mush. The irony of the title fades as Win Win wins you over.

None of this is new to us, but Garfield and Webb make it feel convincingly fresh and exciting.

Weisz is a dazzling woman, but her beauty is barely noticeable in this role; her character's integrity and her mounting anger grab all the attention. In one scene Kathy finally confronts what she's up against and starts to cry. They are tears of rage, and the most powerful I've seen this year.

It's rare to see an ensemble movie like this, so loaded with talented actors, in which virtually all of them get an opportunity to make an impression. Affleck is the boss and the star, but he knows how to share.

This might be a turning point in feminism and comedy, provided that both sexes can embrace it.

Remarkably, thanks to this documentary, we hope for the sake of this smart, vibrant, apparently good-hearted woman, that the invitations keep coming.

You have no idea what's coming next, except that it will be wildly creative and beautiful. These two know how to mix up a very unusual and successful cinematic recipe.

When a mild-mannered peasant unsheathes the powers he has long kept hidden, the results can be spectacular. The same can be said for Peter Chan Ho-sun's Dragon, a martial-arts morality play as lithe as it is forceful.

Southpaw is a foreshadowing machine, but it works, movingly, because Fuqua (Training Day) tempers the melodrama inherent in screenwriter Kurt Sutter’s (Sons of Anarchy) script with a muted tone and clear confidence in his cast.

The movie is called A Place at the Table and it specifically addresses our country’s hunger crisis. But it also speaks to larger hungers. Hungers for independence, a dignified life, a better chance for ones children — in short, the American dream. See it and weep.

With its unpredictable sexual politics and quirky little hero/heroine Albert Nobbs has the edge of quinine, a peculiar taste that won't entice everyone but worked for me.

A Late Quartet serves as an acting showcase, particularly for Walken and Hoffman, and makes for an interesting study in artistic ego.

The results, while occasionally forced, are consistently amusing.

It's a feel-good frolic, which is fine for anyone who prefers their Hitchcock history tidied up, absent the megalomania, the condescending cruelty and tendency to sexual harassment that caused his post-Psycho blonde discovery Tippi Hedren to declare him "a mean, mean man."

Hardly unforgettable, but it is an amiable diversion, kept afloat by some comic moments of the raunchy, silly variety, and by something that does feel rather retro: a kindness to its youthful characters.

Rare among the recent fairy tale adaptions (from "Mirror Mirror" to the dreadful "Red Riding Hood") the invigorating Snow White and the Huntsman actually breathes new life into an old story.

It ends up being surprisingly touching, despite the fact that you start rooting for the cloyingly cute Celeste and Jesse to break up almost from the first frame.

Our Idiot Brother is both daffier and more amiable than a Woody Allen film, but the sibling filmmakers (Jesse Peretz directed and his sister Evgenia Peretz co-wrote the screenplay) have concocted sort of a "Ned and His Sisters."

The movie unfolds with novelistic pacing for a leisurely but engaging two hours.

Quick, capable, thoroughly bloody action film.

Beautiful Creatures is good fun and I want to know what happens next for Lena the teenaged witch.

Almost every actor in it outplays the material they're working with, particularly Jason Bateman. Horrible Bosses would be worth seeing if only for the pleasure of watching him delicately bat indelicate comedy around.

As for the yellow handkerchief of the title, I'd have dismissed it as a cheesy device if it weren't for the fact that I'm still cherishing the eloquence of Hurt's silent marvel when he finally sees it, fluttering across the gray Southern sky.

Certainly it's the lightest and brightest -- everyone is still chaste, but the movie is actually sexy in parts. It appears to have embraced its own sense of camp and is consistently funny in an intentional way. For the first time, I found myself curious to see what comes next.

Farrell's work as Syracuse is understated to the point that some may find it unremarkable -- but it's a beautifully confident performance, an irony given that he constructs his portrayal of Syracuse around the concept of humility.

When Seeking took hold of me, completely and without warning, I was digging for tissues. It's a lovely surprise for the official start of summer.

The Place Beyond the Pines can’t be said to be anyone’s movie but Cianfrance’s. Structured as a triptych, the movie is novelistic, earnest and somewhat exhausting — an ambitious effort that tries to be many things. And it is definitely something: a sprawling, engaging study in fathers, sons and sins.

The hardest movies to review are the ones you respect and admire but don't love and also - and this is the crucial part - aren't angered by. Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Biutiful is just that sort of film.

It's worth considering precisely whom the movie is meant for. It's not labeled as such, but It's Kind of a Funny Story is squarely aimed at young adults.

What takes Conviction out of the "Erin Brockovich" inspirational orbit - and gives it fresh interest - is the fact that Betty Anne is never portrayed as a fish suddenly taking brilliantly to judicial waters. Instead of being a legal savant, she's a persistent lunatic tilting at windmills for the sake of a familial love no one else can quite understand.

Without Duvall's rich, supremely skilled performance, this slim period piece wouldn't amount to much.

It's pointed, a piece of domestic comedy that starts with the unappealing sight of an overgrown slacker hunched on a faux leather couch in a dingy basement and subtly winds its way into a tender, wise and completely delightful film about family.

Lonergan didn't bite off more than he could chew with Margaret - this is his personal moral gymnasium - but he did bite off more than others might want to chew.

What makes White House Down not just tolerable but frivolously entertaining is its slapstick soul; a scene where the presidential limousine does doughnuts on the South Lawn plays like an homage to the Keystone Kops.

There is no denying that Schwimmer knows something about getting a performance out of an actor. Liberato, who is 15 now, is flat-out terrific. Shifting fluidly from demure to sullen and damaged, she is tremendously compelling.

Could women stop war through the sedation of sex and drugs and a plot to bury every weapon in their community? Labaki has said she knows Where Do We Go Now? is a fantasy. But it's a good one, and this lovely film seems pertinent far beyond the landscape of the Middle East.

Engrossing and inspiring, despite being the kind of movie in which one of the first words you hear is cheeky.

Touching, generous, sweet, this little slip of a movie puts you under some kind of spell.

The mind may clamor for more, but the eye, traveling over this visual history of Diana Vreeland, is pleased.

Williams locates a central truth, the contradictory allure of this utterly impossible woman - mercurial, vain, foolish, but also intelligent in some very primal way and achingly vulnerable.

During the movie's best moments, I recalled exactly what my long-gone father's roars of laughter sounded like. Was it the joyous lunacy of "Mahnamahna" that used to set him off?

Pariah should be a special, important film for gay teens and their parents.

The Beaver is serious about portraying mental illness. And whatever your opinion about Gibson the man, so is Gibson the actor.

All the components are there. No wonder In the Land of Blood and Honey is the most compelling, heartfelt movie Jolie has made in years. She isn't in it, but she's all over it.

A gentle, charming movie and really a parent's dream: a kid's movie that doesn't involve action sequences or explosions. Yet you wish the filmmakers had adhered to Mr. Quimby's no-nonsense point of view and found a way to make this family slightly less squeaky-clean.

Declaration of War is about being under siege from illness, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. This modern-day Juliette and Romeo find their own tragedy, but are not poisoned by it.

It all sounds absurd and simplistic, but I dare you to watch the joyful delirium of the big dance number, set to an old Fred Astaire tune called "Things Are Looking Up," and not to feel an unexpected sense of rosiness. This movie may contain endorphins.

The slight but captivating indie-comedy The Kings of Summer has the ragtag look and feel of a movie made in some teenager’s basement

A slim but likeable little romantic comedy that feels like a sweeter cousin of HBO's Girls.

So a tip of the hat to A Good Old Fashioned Orgy, a frequently very funny movie about planning and executing exactly what the title describes.

I'd take any woman in my life, ages 10 to 100, to Letters to Juliet and my guess is we'd both leave with a little Italian glow.

The screenplay, with credits shared by Gluck, Keith Merryman and David A. Newman, is predictable, plotwise. But it is elevated by energetic dialogue, the sexual chemistry between the leads and the fact that the miscommunication that keeps bliss at bay - there's always one in a rom-com, and usually it is annoyingly unbelievable - is plausible.

This is a big, often quite scary action movie, with tons of creepy computer-generated imagery that's right up there with Voldemort in terms of physical nastiness, although less powerful emotionally.

It has plenty of charm and is filled with astonishingly intimate footage worth seeing on the big screen but is sketchy on details and dumbed down by cutsy, anthropomorphizing narration.

Cotton is that rarity in the horror genre: a genuinely intriguing character.

Chasing Mavericks may treat its characters with a little too much reverence, but it gives its titular subject its awe-inspiring due.

Margin Call is smart, but too cool and solemn to raise anyone's temperature. Nonetheless, writer/director J. C. Chandor should count himself the luckiest man in show business this weekend. How many first-time feature filmmakers can truthfully claim that their movie collided right up against the zeitgeist?

It may be minimalist, but it isn't minor.

It's beautifully photographed and explained at every stage from market to table, a foodie's dream night at the movies. The gentle shaping of the fish and sushi could lull you into a trance. A hungry trance.