Steven Rea

There's more tenderness in Big Eyes, and a playfully framed but nonetheless emphatic you-go-girl spirit to the proceedings, as we watch Margaret - a magnificent Adams - slowly emerge from her shell.

From the street corner to the boardroom to the White House, the same paradigms are in play, Brown argues.

Funny stuff.

It's the powerful emotional punch their films deliver - and this one is no exception - that elevate the game, that make them so satisfying, so worthwhile. The Kid With a Bike grabs at the heart.

Like the old and creaky Belafonte, the film itself seems forever on the brink of drifting away. But it's the kind of drifting that's nothing but enjoyable. In fact, it's beyond enjoyable - heading into waters full of whimsy, mystery and odd, psychedelic fish.

The great thing about Venus - apart from its sharp eye for the daily routines and drab details of senior citizenry in a buzzing metropolis - is that it isn't soppy, or sentimental.

The Catholic Church does not come off well in Philomena, but then, what else is new? And the film isn't so much an indictment of institutional unkindness as it is a story of resilience, resolution - and human kindness.

Biutiful is strong stuff, it will leave you shaken. There's poetry here, and catastrophe.

Kick-Ass has punk energy, ace action moves, and a winning sense of absurdist fun.

May strain credulity, but it still leaves a memorable mark.

David Gelb's thoughtful and wonderful documentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, explores the dedication of this humble, bespectacled man, and the Zen-like focus he has for his work - or, as many would claim, for his art.

Tully is at turns heartbreaking and heart-stirring. And it's from the heartland, so I guess that makes perfect sense.

Ann Savage, the femme fatale from a slew of old Hollywood noirs, is savagely funny as Maddin's beauty-parlor proprietress mom.

Flight is neither a simple story of heroism, nor one of a fallen hero. Things are more complex than that - and it is its complexities that make the film all the more rewarding an experience.

True Grit is probably the least ironic picture in the Coen Brothers' worthy canon, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of their signature oddities, that it doesn't take a few dark, strange turns.

Forceful, heart-wrenching stuff.

Like "Hope and Glory," Boorman's Queen and Country finds exhilarating comedy in places usually reserved for drama, violence, loss.

A heartbreaking film that speaks to the lifelong aftershocks of war, and to the powerful bonds of family and of love.

Kids for Cash is no-nonsense, no-stone-unturned filmmaking.

Melancholia is a remarkable mood piece with visuals to die for (excuse the pun), and a performance from Dunst that runs the color spectrum of emotions.

The polar opposite of the J.K. Simmons character in "Whiplash."

Brothers is about how people change, how they can rise to an occasion, or sink to one. It's a tale of love and allegiance, of truth and the cruelties that men can bring to bear on one another.

To say this bone-chilling, gut-turning feature is "The Crying Game"-meets-"In Cold Blood." But this is a film - writer/director Peirce's first - that matches those pictures in power, in surprise, and in unnerving drama.

An exquisite exploration into the realms of seduction, obsession, deception and disillusionment.

A dour-faced but sublime comedy about the kindness of strangers -- and about the strangeness of people who find themselves in oddball moments of grace.

It is a yarn. But it's so full of passion, poetry, and humor that it becomes, for the time, quite real.

The heart of the matter - and the viscera - is the action, and one man's determination to survive. Apocalypto is primal.

Gloria, spare and keenly observed, plays like a short story - there is no sweeping narrative arc, no momentous triumph or calamity. But there is a bit of justice meted out, and the act of its meting brings a slow, small smile to Gloria's face.