Rene Rodriguez

Like his con artists are prone to saying, American Hustle works from the feet up, and the fun is intoxicating.

Inside Llewyn Davis is one of the Coens’ smallest movies — this one doesn't have the broad appeal of "True Grit" or "No Country For Old Men" — but like Llewyn’s music, it comes from the heart and it is deeply felt. It is also one of their best.

Go for Sisters is minor Sayles, and the movie occasionally meanders. But the characters stay with you, particularly Bernice and Fontayne, whose relationship is beautifully transformed over the course of the film.

Jackson has become too distracted by his digital toys to give his characters the same weight and importance he used in the Rings trilogy.

The Broken Circle Breakdown manages to pull off a small miracle, using joyous music and tenderness to tell a tragic story that moves you but doesn’t depress you.

Scott Cooper, who directed and co-wrote Out of the Furnace, empathizes with people who feel their lives have hit a dead end (his previous film, "Crazy Heart," earned Jeff Bridges an Oscar as a washed-up country singer who had given up on himself). These are difficult characters to dramatize.

The movie has a longing melancholy that leavens the humor — it’s a surprisingly sad, gentle comedy.

One of the surprises of Spike Lee’s Oldboy is just how dark the film dares to get.

Has the ring of classic Disney seamlessly combined with a modern-day sensibility.

Homefront is done in by uninspired action scenes in which Statham’s athletic prowess is rendered unwatchable by hyper-editing, a shameful reliance on child-in-peril cliches to move the story forward, and so many loose ends that you wonder if 20 minutes were accidentally cut out from the movie.

Gibney even convinced Armstrong to sit down for one final interview in May. In it, he comes off as somewhat contrite but also victimized, as if he were being single out for something everyone does.

Narco Cultura isn’t a documentary about runaway crime: Its actual subject is far stranger.

Catching Fire is a work of thoughtful, emotionally engaging sci-fi — everything that its predecessor The Hunger Games was not.

Sunlight Jr. is what is often described as a slice-of-life drama, but this one is more of a tiny sliver, and it doesn’t leave you with much to chew on.

This is a straight-up portrait of a man who figured out a way to cling to life longer than anyone expected and, in the process, learned to let the world in.

Unlike most pictures about people living on the fringe, The Motel Life is never drab or depressing.

All is Lost is more fun to think about than it is to actually watch: It’s a testament to a great actor, an experimental piece of cinema and a bit of a bore.

The sexual content may be excessive (the movie could have gotten by with just one scene instead of three) and the running time a bit indulgent, but Blue is the Warmest Color grows in power and intensity.

There’s a fleet and funny comic-book movie nestled inside Thor: The Dark World. You catch glimpses of it here and there.

Paradise: Hope plays better if you’ve seen the previous two movies, so you can savor the reach and scope of Seidl’s trilogy. But the film stands alone as a tender portrait of adolescence at its most vulnerable and how we manage to survive it, even when surrounded by predators and wolves.

One of the best things about 12 Years a Slave is that McQueen renders all the characters with the same depth and complexity as his protagonist.

Bad Milo! directly envokes a number of earlier pictures Vaughan clearly adores, including "Basket Case," "It’s Alive" and even the workplace satire "Office Space." But the movie fails to ground its promising (if preposterous) scenario in any kind of recognizable reality.

This Carrie becomes less involving as it goes along, ceding its emotional power to special effects and unconvincing gore, and culminating with a closing shot so lame and uninspired, it’s as if the filmmakers just gave up and called it a day.

Escape from Tomorrow is more of an experimental film than a traditional narrative, but intrepid viewers — or anyone who has ever visited a Disney park — will enjoy getting lost in this dark house of happy horrors.

In Captain Phillips, director Paul Greengrass pulls off the same remarkable feat he accomplished with "United 93": He takes a true story in which the outcome is already known and transforms it into a gripping, wrenching, devastating thriller.

The combination of youthful irreverence and military indoctrination is jarring.

Parkland is wildly uneven, although compulsively watchable.

In its early moments, the movie evokes everything from "The Social Network" to "Casino." By the end, the film has become as exciting as a game of Old Maid. R-rated thrillers are hardly ever this dull and listless, but this movie manages to eradicate all of Timberlake’s charisma and makes you flash back to Affleck’s "Paycheck"/"Gigli" era. How does this even happen?