Frot's performance is so towering, so convincing, that it smooths out all the film's rough edges. It's a triumph.

While Diane is perhaps 96 of the most depressing minutes on film this year, its quiet honesty is compelling. treating aging and death with a respect to the inevitability of both.

If it’s not great — think of a sort of JV “Commitments” and you’ll have the idea — it is surely winning.

It's bold, nasty and gleefully disturbing, and will stay with you once the lights go up. For horror fans, those are all good things.

Yelchin and Poots are especially good.

The feminist subtext should come as no surprise given Larsson's lifelong advocacy on social-justice issues, but it also is a refreshing slant on the familiar character dynamics of crime fiction.

It's also perfectly content to be an insanely violent, funny take on an established genre. And in that respect, Kick-Ass lives up to its name.

More than anything, The Sisters Brothers is an exploration of how far you can take an anti-Western before it snaps out of the genre’s orbit entirely.

The movie plays to Fincher's strengths, with its dark elements and cool feel, combining for a bracing pop-culture experience.

This film is a wonderful act of imagination on its own.

Author Olaf Olafsson helped write the screenplay and you can feel his intentions throughout. There is a literary beauty woven throughout the film. He asks you to examine what it means to reach out and touch someone — or have someone touch you. Both the physical and the metaphysical are orchestrated wonderfully.

Negga is fantastic. Her eyes alone convey passion, the feeling that she has had enough. Words aren’t needed. Good thing, because neither she nor Richard use them too much. They’re living their lives, harming no one, and being harmed for it. It makes the story one of the best examples of making a universal situation personal.

Catching Fire is a great leap forward for the franchise. Seeing as it’s all about hope and what it represents, here’s hoping the next two are just as good, if not better.

Coppola's audacity in not only portraying the unmoored nature of Marco's life but immersing the audience in it proves satisfying over time.

This is the rare movie with no one to root against, a film filled with good guys and weird guys (and gals), all of whom you hope find what they're looking for, even if you know that's not possible.

On some level Moneyball is about loyalty: loyalty to an idea, loyalty to a partnership forged by desperation, loyalty to the values you believe in. Whether that was Lewis' intention in the book, or Beane's intention in taking the risk, doesn't matter. It's the formula Miller came up with for the film, and with the team of Pitt and Hill, it's a winning one.

Perhaps the greatest compliment you can pay Victoria is that while you go in knowing about the gimmick, it doesn’t take long for Schipper to make you forget it almost entirely.

A well-acted, nicely directed, quiet little movie.

It is a tremendous performance by Jones, who co-wrote the script with her own ex-boyfriend Will McCormick, who appears as a drug-dealing friend with surprisingly grounded advice for just about anything.

Brutal, sadistic yet well-made statement about how violence is portrayed in media and our reaction to it.

This is director Jake Schreier's first feature, and, working from a script by Christopher D. Ford, he creates an inviting world.

Bell lets the action onscreen tell a story that’s every bit as rousing as a Disney adventure.

The real draw of Arthur Christmas is simpler: It's really funny.

The directors include interviews with descendants of the original settlers and with later arrivals — too much so, actually, as the lengthy scenes interrupt the flow of the mystery. But they don't derail it. The story is too lurid, too rich, too compelling.

More than anything else, Freaky is a lot of fun. Just enjoy it.

Lawless is one of those movies that feels like it's trying to say something more important than it really is. It could have been better, but with Hardy and Pearce on board, it's plenty good enough.

As Kumaré plays out, both Gandhi and the film become something else, something much more thoughtful and moving. It is, as he puts it, the biggest lie he has ever told and the greatest truth he has ever known.

The perfect movie for fans of "The Daily Show" who actually stick around for the second-half interview. A cinematic memoir based on the one-man show by Mike Birbiglia, it is the aesthetic intersection of Comedy Central and public radio.