Ray Greene

For all its brittle hilarity, Potter has shot her film in black and white. In context, it plays as an avatar of artistic seriousness. Or a warning with implications worth heeding.

A lovingly crafted fantasy on an epic scale, Mary and the Witch’s Flower is a film about transformation made by filmmakers in transition.

In a strong field of excellent performances, the standout is easily Shalhoub, who is enthralling and almost entirely sympathetic in what could have been a monochromatic bad guy part.

Although Tommy’s Honour has clearly been made by a golf obsessive who loves the links, it’s the rare sports biography that keeps its eye on the ball of character and milieu.

Had this well-meaning movie been more willing to directly embrace its origins in Barnes’s luminous prose, it’s quite possible The Sense of an Ending might be something special rather than something worthy.

The emotional journey is articulated with so much nuance, and such a vigorous belief in human possibility, that everything The Surrogate touches becomes its own, and is made new.

It seems odd to call a detailed portrait of toxic romance lovely, but Keep the Lights On truly is.

A movie whose confusing narrative and at times intriguing parts are at war with each other, and never quite gel.

The Words is a movie for people who buy their novels at Starbucks, made by people who write their novels at Starbucks.

The film is light-fingered and charming.

This movie will not find an audience. It's got likable stars, a reliable commercial genre and a decent supporting cast, but nobody will turn out to see it, even if it was a labor of love.

Red Hook Summer begins as a gentle character comedy and then erupts into a sudden reversal that is possibly the most powerful and disturbing sequence Lee has ever created. It's a film that makes you laugh, weep, rage and gasp, and, love it or hate it, you will definitely talk about it afterward.

The audience for this movie will have to be an adventurous one, and even then a substantial portion will be outraged by what they see.

Greenfield's fly on the wall view of obscene wealth punctured like a toy balloon is as current as a blog or a headline.

Like "Anvil," this is a crowd-pleasing triumph of the spirit, framed around a story so bizarre it sounds like an urban legend.

Seek this one out though, because it's too unique and too defiantly strange to survive for long in today's Darwinian and consumerist exhibition environment.

The Invisible War is that rare, issues-driven documentary that is so powerful it's apt to change minds.

Visually sumptuous and with a real literary beauty in both its narrative structure and dialogue.

Director David Mackenzie's quietly accomplished film straddles the arthouse world and cult movies with a unique poetic vision.

A surprising follow-up to Doremus' low-fi but equally concept-driven 2010 Sundance feature "Douchebag," Like Crazy has appealing performances, a notable tone of realism in the acting and so many borrowed mannerisms from better or more interesting films it feels like a YouTube mash-up made by a Wes Anderson junkie who's studying Sophia Coppola movies while writing a term paper on "Garden State."

There is a passionate, combative and riveting documentary to be made about the plight of the American schoolteacher, but unfortunately the well-meaning, unfailingly decent and overly slack American Teacher isn't it.

Garbus' over-reliance on interviews that state rather than dramatize Fischer's excellence makes this a portrait that too often seems more overheard than inhabited.

Higher Ground is a weird film with some very nice moments, but its odd and offbeat combination of comic touches, serious spiritual subject matter and occasional surrealist interludes never quiet gels.

Programming the Nation is a lo-fi, issues-driven documentary carried along by the strength of its ideas rather than its artless desktop aesthetic.

July has mounted a surrealist fable about the delicate balance between relationships and the inner monologue inside each lover, with its incessant demands and individual needs. Unevenness is an aesthetic here - not so much a flaw as a conscious choice.

What I can say is if you're flesh and blood, and have ever suffered a substantial loss, you will be moved by Another Earth. And also renewed.

In this case, boredom is the deadliest sin.

Before The Ledge descends into third act melodrama, there are enough intriguing moments to make the viewer sense the better film this one wanted to be. A real shame that one didn't make it to the screen.

Pleasant is an underrated value in moviegoing, and pleasant is a word that describes director Sue Bourne's look at the world of amateur Irish dance competition in spades.

Whether Rossi's cautious optimism about the future of a legendary but troubled journalistic institution is justifiable is a story yet to be written, but Page One assures us that if the paper goes down, it will go down swinging.

What makes this movie truly special is that the source of Buck's uncanny gift is actually an acute childhood sorrow.

A formula picture made by someone who doesn't even believe in the formula - he knows it all has to work out, we know it all has to work out, and he can't even muster an ironic wink for our trouble.

Trachinger clearly has the wit and the talent to do thought-provoking and challenging work. All she needs is a producer with similar aspirations, and she'll be well on her way toward fully achieving the promise on display here.

An auspicious, controlled and altogether droll debut film that resembles Wes Anderson's "Rushmore" without being derived from it.

The Music Never Stopped isn't exactly good, but it's definitely better than you fear it is when you reach the halfway mark.

The script is intermittently literate and frequently funny, the young cast (headed by Radnor) is highly appealing.

The kind of grim, character-based movie that needs a strong performer to anchor it. Director Derek Cianfrance has been fortunate enough to land two: Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling.

It's impossible to watch this movie without feeling that you're in the presence of a good and decent man.

Bhutto's story is an epic one, and Hernandez and O'Hara prove up to the task.

With Sita, Paley brings the same, highly specific and very personal vision we associate with the best indie and alternative filmmaking to the animated form, and the result is riveting.

Far from a perfect movie, but there are moments when it comes about as close to catching the visceral kick of the pre-iPod rock experience as any film I've ever seen.

The soul of the movie is Mia Wasikowska, a radiant young actress who captures with quiet precision the quandary of a bookish "good girl" suddenly roused to wider personal and experiential possibilities, and to their potential cost.

Using clips from home movies, newsreels and public access TV, Davis does a heroic job of bringing the edgy and diffuse mixed-media New York art scene of the '80s back to life.

Holy Rollers is mostly a marker being put down by some talents to watch, especially Eisenberg, who is greater than fans of "Zombieland" could have imagined.

Enter the Void was never going to be another "Avatar." It won't be another "Irreversible" either.

The Tillman Story illustrates the amazing lengths the Pentagon went to in order to hide the details of that killing.

If it is possible to watch this work as a movie rather than using it as a referendum on its maker’s guilt or innocence, the audience that craves mature, sophisticated and grown-up entertainment will find much to admire here.

Benicio Del Toro looks even more like Lon Chaney Sr. than Chaney Jr. did, and he’s a far better actor than the previous Wolf Man.

First time documentarian Angela Ismailos has interviewed ten noteworthy international directors about their art, and then cut them together by skipping back and forth between their voices like an iPod in shuffle mode.

Green Zone is an exercise in commercial cowardice masquerading as a thriller about political bravery.

Winter's Bone so far past any notion of formula or precedent that comparison is a futile exercise. This film is a thing all its own.

A black comedy lacking somewhat in both blackness and comedy-isn't a bad film, exactly, but it is undistinguished, in the sense that its ideas and emotional payloads are both safe and small.