The Young Victoria achieves a fine balance. I guess that's what you get when a film is produced by both Martin Scorsese and Sarah Ferguson.

Fish Tank is grim, to be sure, but it leaves us with a feeling of hopefulness.

The dialogue, while filthy, is wickedly funny, and sounds perfect coming out of the mouths of these beaten-down characters in their low-rent surroundings.

Maggie’s Plan isn’t perfect — the threads of its plot are sometimes a little too loosely knit — but Miller’s clearly got her finger on the pulse of the New York intellectual comedy.

Marchand capably builds suspense, thanks to a twisty script and nervy performances by Lucas and Quinton.

Solid entertainment value for the money, but those who think it's saying anything new or profound are kidding themselves.

It's fun, but the script, credited to Hossein Amini ("The Wings of the Dove"), is short on characterization and long on plot twists and wisecracks.

This is the British way to mingle ideas and entertainment.

Here’s what’s smart about director Gavin O’Connor’s film: Although a lot of movies about addiction fixate on the agonizing and physically punishing withdrawal process, this one doesn’t.

The movie is stolen by 11-year-old Daniela Piepszyk as tomboy Hanna, one of Mauro's new friends. She has a face in a million.

There's enough material here for a miniseries, but the directors keep the proceedings to 78 brisk minutes without making the viewer feel cheated.

Beautiful to look at, with its burnished interiors and magnificent Turkish steppes, this long film builds to a powerful conclusion. Ceylan’s characters grind each other to a powder while hardly raising their voices.

The stylish flick harkens back to the work of old masters like Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu.

Rob the Mob, which is more fun and more tightly constructed than “American Hustle,’’ romanticizes the clueless couple, whom the columnist dubs “Bonnie and Clyde,” and moves their inevitable Christmas Eve date with fate from Ozone Park to a far more attractive location.

Davies’ quiet, painterly film largely eschews musical cues that would heighten its emotional impact, but as it is, Sunset Song is captivating in its sincerity.

A slick, sweet, fast-paced, feel-good romantic fantasy that's fairly irresistible if you can keep your cynicism in check for a couple of hours.

It's ragged, and at times it scrapes your comedy ganglia like a cheese grater. But 15 minutes or half an hour is an ideal chunk of time to set aside for truly inspired absurdism.

Director and co-writer Matteo Garrone infuses The Embalmer with a spooky eroticism. The film is dark, both in theme and visual composition.

What's best about the film are its quick jumps from one depravity to the next as jazz rambles on the soundtrack: Youth is a candle to be burned at both ends, with (as it was once said about Bob Dylan) a blowtorch in the middle.

You may well emerge from The Search for General Tso with a hankering for the titular spicy dish.

The smart indie comedy Diminished Capacity deals with three kinds of dementia: those relating to aging, concussions and being a Chicago Cubs fan. Tying those three things together is a task that the witty script does with surprising adroitness.

Who says you need a big crew and tons of money to make an enjoyable movie?

An intelligent work that avoids exploitation and cheap laughs.

There are zero surprises, but it looks good, moves well through a trim running time and wields its clichés with defiant aplomb.

This one's a thoroughly campy exercise in teen melodrama and Grand Guignol gore (how gory? it's one of Quentin Tarantino's favorite movies), the other (The Hunger Games) a straight-faced action picture.

An unforgettable portrait of a testosterone-driven era.

This brisk, British-American co-production is one of the better political/historical documentaries to come out in some time.

Mafioso starts out as a comedy of manners before turning into a mob thriller that brings Nino to Bergen County, N.J. When he gets there, look for a man reading The Post on a street corner.