Ray Greene

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.

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

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.

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.

It’s a marvelous document of a still vital musician whose unbending indifference to pop fashion has proven him more creatively durable than any other figure from the golden ’60s moment that gave birth to his career.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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."

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

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

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.