Full of fine performances, led by Josef Bierbichler as Brecht and Monica Bleibtreu as Helene Weigel, his wife. Taken on its own terms, The Farewell makes for rewarding viewing.

Luckily for us, Grace Lee recorded everything in the fun documentary The Grace Lee Project.

The feature directorial debut of Jake Schreier, has a smart script by C.D. Ford and an impressive supporting cast.

A sophisticated, stylish, fast-moving piece of work.

A tough, well-acted little indie.

Man's inhumanity to man is gruesomely detailed in S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine.

Like its star, the movie is too short and a little thin but just about perfect.

Chilling documentary.

American Animal is a wildly experimental debut for D'Elia, who uses hand-held digital cameras and lots of jump cuts. It is well-acted and features witty repartee.

Watching Schenck and McBath campaign to fellow Christians for a dissociation between God and guns, you suspect their words are falling on deaf ears.

Viewers in Gotham will be perplexed, frightened, disgusted - and, mostly, entertained.

Mesmerizing, eerie and unpredictably weird.

Frequently charming, beautifully drawn and far more faithful in spirit to the source material than those dreadful Ron Howard-Brian Grazer productions.

A riotous dark comedy in which a cute suburban get-together becomes a lethal nightmare.

While a tad too light, as these films often are, nobody is making animated characters as funny or likable (or marketable) as the Minions.

A well-acted, well-directed (by TV veteran Anthony Hemingway) popcorn movie with great aerial battles and solid dramatic scenes that hold your attention for two good hours.

The scrappy striver narrative may be an overly familiar one at this point, but director Tom Harper (the BBC’s “War & Peace”) gets a terrific performance from Buckley as Rose chases her dreams while living the kind of turbulent life that has always inspired the best of country songs.

The least we can do is watch what they’ve risked their lives to show us — and help break the silence. Their story should be required viewing for anyone engaging in discussion of the refugee “problem.”

The film casts Spector in a sympathetic light. You can't help feeling sorry for the tormented genius.

Goes down as smoothly as a pint of Irish ale.

Enlightening.

This movie is a proudly esoteric piece of comedy jazz: Freewheeling and low-key at the same time, it'll thrill audiences that know the meaning of the word esoteric but bore others. For a small cult, it seems likely to get funnier the more times you see it.

Overly long and complicated, it's packed with crowd-pleasing moments and satisfactorily wraps up the trilogy - without quite capturing the magic of the first two installments.

Delivery Man trades the abrasive comedian’s trademark snark for schmaltz — an experiment that actually works better than you’d guess.

Tom Hardy gives an amazing performance as Peterson, who took on the nickname Charlie Bronson, after the "Death Wish" actor.

Jacobs keeps the action moving rapidly and gets solid performances from an ensemble cast, especially the rumpled Reilly.

Toggling between the tonalities of "Donnie Darko," "Ghost World" and the collected works of David Lynch, the blackly witty Daydream Nation takes its title from a Sonic Youth album.

Goodman doesn't preach or point fingers. She lets the three recruits have their say, and allows viewers to make up their own minds on the issues her film raises.

If action's your thing, then the Chinese-Hong Kong martial-arts epic True Legend is your movie.

Gore is always with us, but when it comes to horror, there's nothing like a haunted house. And Lovely Molly has a humdinger.

Based on the book by Patrick Ness, the film belongs alongside “Pan’s Labyrinth” in the realm of darkly creative kid-centric films that are, at their core, not really kids’ fare at all.

Tatiana Maslany (“Orphan Black”) is nearly unrecognizable as Petra, Silas’ longtime girlfriend caught in Bell’s roundup, and Bradley Whitford shows up in the latest of his silver-haired villain roles as a sketchy lawyer.

To his credit, Blitz throws in an unexpected twist that delivers a more ambivalent ending than your typical sports movie.

Ambitious and messy, Annhilation will likely leave you with more questions than answers. Mine is: “When can I see it again?”

Maher's sense of humor deserts him in the end, though, when in an apocalyptic montage of fire and hate (bin Laden, Pat Robertson), he suggests all religions are equally bent on destruction of the Earth. It's fatuous to suggest that the Iraq war was launched because of religion or that belief in the Book of Revelation is the same as organizing terrorist attacks.

You'll have to look long and hard to find a performance as emotionally raw as that of Moon So-ri in the startling South Korean love story Oasis.

C’s wordless vigil will send you away with a shivery melancholy that defies easy explanation. And that, after all, is the essence of every good ghost story.

While never exploitative, Polisse can be extremely disturbing. Is it possible for a parent to mistreat a child in the ways shown here? Sad to say, the answer is yes.

Easily the summer's scariest movie.

One of our best actors, Turturro surpasses his past fine work as Alexander Luzhin.

Basically canned musical theater, but this is one Tony-winning Broadway show that's well worth preserving and seeing.

Director Lou Ye, who gave us the lilting "Suzhou River," doesn't care much for dialogue. He lets Wang Yu's pulsating camerawork do the talking.

Legendary is an overworked adjective, but surely it applies to Jack Cardiff, the British cinematographer whose awe-inspiring resume includes some of the most beautiful Technicolor films ever shot, among them "The Red Shoes," "Black Narcissus" and "Stairway to Heaven."

English-language remakes of foreign films are usually suspect, but Tortilla Soup is the exception that proves the rule - a flavorful comedy about a food-centric Latino family in Los Angeles.

Disturbing but very watchable noir.

Once in a Lifetime, which is being released at the peak of World Cup fever, is the sort of sports documentary that will appeal even to nonfans. It's a quintessential only-in-New York story.

It’s the sweet sincerity of Brooklyn that stamps it as both refreshing and nostalgic. The film is as welcome as a photo you just discovered of your mother before you were born, in which she looks prettier than you ever imagined.

Takes a bit of "Swingers" and a bit of "Manhattan" to create a slacktacular vision of uncertain youth in today's L.A.

A creative mix of horror, noir and psychological thriller. At times the story defies logic, but viewers who can accept that will find themselves caught up in the film's intensity.

Being obvious nostalgia bait for children of the ’90s, director Rob Letterman’s film has no right to be as good or well-crafted as it is. The plot takes major twists that come as legitimate surprises, and seeing those old cartoon characters plopped into our world rendered in CGI is enormously satisfying.

The performances by neophite actresses Olympe Borval and Lizzie Brochere make the film special.

Briski, a New York photographer, spent several years with the pre-teens. But she did more than just film them -- she tried to help them.

If there is a poetry to losing, then this film has as much as the collected works of John Milton.

The story, which also involves an asthmatic dog and a scarecrow, is more accessible than "Spirited Away" but less transporting than that Oscar-winning masterpiece.

If McKay crafted the most enjoyable parts of his satire with a scalpel, somebody should’ve handed him a machete to chop the script down some. The film clocks in at nearly two hours and 10 minutes, and we grow exhausted by it as the surprises stop and the ending becomes inevitable.

Though the cast is a decade older, Zombieland: Double Tap is no less funny. Thanks to some new additions, it’s even more riotous.

That his dialogue is often deliberately anachronistic is part of the joke -- and Wilson's sly delivery is often funnier than the lines themselves.

Roman de Gare translates as "station novel," a book you might pick up to read on a train journey and then discard when you arrive at your destination. Lelouch's film is the cinematic equivalent, enjoyable fluff that your mind will discard after the closing credits - but worth seeing nevertheless.

There's no shortage of "wow" moments, but the strong liberal political subtext of the trilogy has largely disappeared.

Those with a high tolerance for the ultimate four-letter word, and a love for eccentrics, will be entertained by both White and his art.

I haven't laughed harder at anything this year, but I would have a hard time recommending this gender-bending gut-buster to anyone who doesn't have a high threshold for crude sexual humor and stereotypes.

Against all odds, director Steven Shainberg has managed to craft an oddly compassionate -- and often very funny -- tale of an emotionally symbiotic affair.

Don't expect guffaw-inducing comedy, but rather deadpan humor in the style of Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati.

A devilish updating of Verdi's "Rigoletto."

Isn't great, but it's an enjoyable if overly discreet and romanticized look at a long-vanished show-business world.

Far from earthshaking, but it's fun while it lasts.

Turns out to be formulaic and broad but also skillfully paced and big-hearted, with a sharp cast of comics that makes the most of a sunny script.

It's truly inspiring to watch Fred Knittle, 81 and tethered to an oxygen tank, perform a riveting solo of Coldplay's "Fix You" after his singing partner dies shortly before the show.

The most entertaining 3-D movie I've ever seen.

Unlike many working in this genre, Mitchell doesn’t punish young women for having sex: This is a gender-blind demonic delivery vehicle.

A wicked little horror film in which nearly all of the violence takes place in your head, In Fear expertly builds terror out of not much more than two people driving around in a car.

Should make Polley, memorable in "The Sweet Hereafter" and "Go," into a bona-fide star.

Auteuil gives a superior performance. While Rush played him as a buffoon, Auteuil gives the character the charm of an aristocratic savant.

The director, American-born Paula Fouce, has a passion for the holy ways of the East, and it shines through in Naked in Ashes.

Debut director Marielle Heller’s spent a lot of time with this material — she wrote and starred in an off-Broadway adaptation — and her confident direction of Powley, Skarsgård and Wiig, fused with a Polaroid-evocative palette and a glam ’70s soundtrack, makes this an indelible coming-of-age story.

Lively, well-acted and directed with assurance.

Classy old-school horror, James Wan’s The Conjuring depends more on its excellent cast and atmospheric direction than cheap gimmicks to raise hairs on the back of your neck. Which it does, quite frequently.

A gorgeously photographed, sun-baked fable.

Not always totally credible and it cheats a bit on the fixed point of view. But a terrific and brave performance by Talancon makes this far superior to the generic thrillers churned out by the big studios.

Basically, the whole thing can be summed up as an epic midlife crisis.

It's skillfully rendered fun, but don't expect to remember much the next day.

An extremely well-acted and well-directed remake of a 1957 oater.

Clarkson, the reigning queen of the indies, is simultaneously funny and heartbreaking, following up killer performances in "The Station Agent" and "All the Real Girls."

As this Woodstock-on-wheels careens through the countryside, stopping only to play for thousands of hirsute revelers -- and, once, to stock up on booze in Saskatoon -- its famous passengers celebrate with delirious joy the pure, unadulterated magic of music.

An open- and-shut case, but that doesn't mean it can't also be an entertaining one.

As a snarky, stylish Santa Fe couple, Paul Rudd and Steve Coogan deploy a wit drier than the sprawling landscape surrounding their desert mansion. If you enjoy your comedies devoid of easy sentimentality (as this reviewer does), this one’s for you.

Breezy and informative. It offers a view of the talented, opinionated man that only his son could pull off.

Don't get the wrong idea -- to Rowe's credit, this isn't just a movie about sex. It's a compassionate study of human loneliness. Whatever you do, don't confuse this with the Hollywood rom-com of the same name.

The pace slackens a little after the first hour, but the photography by Remi Adefarasin and music by Magnus Fiennes keep the emotion stoked.

Offers well-chosen selections from Aleichem's darkly humorous work.

It's "Saturday Night Fever," Johannesburg-style.

As someone who has never completed a crossword puzzle, I was surprised how engaged I was by Wordplay.

Chiara Mastroianni, whose mom, Catherine Deneuve, starred in Demy's "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964), appears here as Julie's sister. Vive la New Wave.

The drivel they call "reality TV" pales in comparison with the gripping big-screen documentary Bus 174.

A laugh-filled comedy that might be described as "The Full Monty" meets the Three Stooges.

An impressive experimental movie, is practically a one-man show by Yasuaki Nakajima.

Qualifies as perfect family entertainment.

There’s a lot going on here, but Washington’s complex, emotionally turbulent performance makes it all work.