The film has been clobbered with complaints: John Cassavetes, Rowlands and their frequent co-star Peter Falk would have played these roles better; the script is old hat; the improvisatorial style smacks of self-indulgence masked as raw truth. Blah, blah, blah. The detractors should shut up and drink their beer or at least accept She’s So Lovely for what it is: a gift.

Go with the whimsical flow that includes a hilariously morose robot named Marvin, voiced by the great Alan Rickman with the weight of the galaxy resonating in every bored, cynical syllable. Adams would be pleased.

A fresh and unexpected documentary that plays like a nail-biting mystery and a ticket to ride the whirlwind where art and commerce do battle.

Jolly good show.

The Homesman lacks the scope and depth of Jones' dynamite 2005 directorial debut, "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada." But Jones and Swank, walking the tightrope between comic and tragic, ignite combustibly.

Hornet's Nest is talky but indisputably terrific, and it ends in a dazzling display of courtroom fireworks. Rapace is hot stuff in any language. Oscar, take heed.

Expertly directed by Richard Eyre (Iris) from Jeffrey Hatcher's play, the film is bawdy fun.

If "Sideways" made you curious about vino, this fierce, funny and challenging doc opens up a world worth debating.

What really lifts Celeste and Jesse Forever above the rom-com herd, besides breakout star performances from Jones and Samberg, is the movie's willingness to replace clichés with painful truths. It's irresistible.

In updating Shakespeare’s "The Tempest," writer-director Mike Cahill focuses on the magic worth finding between a father and daughter. That’s why the film sticks with you. It’s a gift.

Troy lacks the focus of Gladiator, not to mention that Oscar winner's scrappy wit. But why kick a gift horse when you're in summer-movie heaven?

Comedian Patton Oswalt triumphantly nails every comic and dramatic nuance as Paul Aufiero, a New York Giants obsessive who has long ago moved from fan to fanatic.

Despite a shaky framework, the magic works. It's a chance to see Ledger one last time in the act of doing what he loved. Take it.

What could have been a sentimental train wreck emerges as a funny and touching portrait of three bruised people.

Campbell keeps the action cooking and the suspense on a high burner in this compulsively watchable conspiracy thriller, while The Foreigner proves again is that Chan is the Man – now and forever.

This gut punch of a documentary will knock you for a loop. File it under "no good deed goes unpunished."

It's the whooshing terror that fries your nerves to a frazzle. Antal's control never falters.

Odd as it is to say, Kingdom of Heaven loses its momentum the more Balian gets religion.

It's hellish good fun. Stevens is mesmerizing as the avenger, helping director Adam Wingard turn The Guest into a blast of wicked mirth and malice.

Relentless suspense allows The Girl Who Played With Fire to hold you in a viselike grip. But it's the performances of Nyqvist and especially Rapace that keep you coming back for more.

In Mother and Child, he (Rodrigo Garcia) creates an emotional powerhouse.

Free Fire may suggest Wheatley is deservedly moving up the industry food chain – it's executive-produced by Martin Scorsese – but it also merely a formal exercise, albeit one buoyed by the sense that the director is having the time of his life behind the camera.

Barbershop: The Next Cut is stagey, often simplistic and it talks too damn much. But, hell, the talk has flavor and snap and a real-world sense of a community in crisis. Not bad for an escapist romp.

Badgley, best known for playing "lonely boy" Dan Humphrey on Gossip Girl, is a revelation. He wears his role like a second skin.

A pitch-black comedy that dances around its central theme without ever facing it head on. But oh, the demented, delicious mischief it kicks up.

Tracks is an exhilarating adventure that opens up an unknown world to most of us and does it so well that we feel we're living it too.

It would be no country for movie lovers without the Coens. They still manage to run unmuzzled while the rest of Hollywood runs scared.

Don't let anyone spoil the surprises of this thrashing, thrilling chunk of cinematic gold. It's one for the time capsule.

The callous inequity of what you see and hear will floor you. It can't happen here. But it did. It does.

Vinterberg may rush the final act, but he gets pitch-perfect performances from Schoenaerts, Sheen and Sturridge and brings out the wild side in Mulligan, who can hold a close-up like nobody's business. She's a live wire in a movie that knows how to stir up a classic for the here and now.

No knock on McGregor and Harris — fine actors both — but they never hold us rapt the way the plot demands.

Though the rest of All the Money in the World expertly skims the surface of this true-life drama, Scott makes it a hell of a ride.

The film is talky and often stilted. But Eastwood’s compassion for the character, warts and all, feels genuine. His performance, like the movie, is a high-wire act that remains fascinating even when it falters.

Inherent Vice is packed with shitfaced hilarity, soulful reveries, stylistic ingenuity and smashing performances that keep playing back in your head. It may not demand repeat viewings, but it sure as hell rewards them. It's the work of a major talent.

Marston builds incredible tension. But it's the human drama etched on Moreno's young, weary face that gives Maria its potent punch.

Cartwright, find something sadly timeless in a child torn apart in a custody battle that no one wins, least of all the child.

Of course, such Sixties films as Goodbye, Columbus and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice have trampled over similar terrain. But few can boast Roemer’s light touch, brisk pacing and anarchic comic spirit. The passing of time has given The Plot Against Harry a lost-and-found quality that is both innocent and seductive.

As an actor, Burns has worked the Hollywood game from "Saving Private Ryan" to "Alex Cross." But his core passion is for making indie movies without studio interference, guerilla style. Because he takes his films personally, so do we. The Fitzgerald Family Christmas is one of his best.

The film itself occasionally plods, but Pacino, tackling a tough trap of a role, raises the bar in a mesmerizing acting triumph.

Carell's genius for loading a comic line with mirth and malice is on joyous display.

It's those dark visions of destruction that stick, even when Spielberg pushes the script to an unlikely happy ending. Great foreplay, failed orgasm.

Perks deserves points for going beyond the typical coming-of-age drivel aimed at teens.

This movie, a true beauty, will put a spell on you.

Director Gus Van Sant finds the human side of a knotty issue. No polemics. Just the face of a new America in crisis.

Whether you regard Stella's getting her groove back as a feminist battle cry or as a silly wish-fulfillment fantasy, the movie delivers guilt-free escapism about pretty people having wicked-hot fun in pretty places.

You keep rooting for the team, mostly because director Gavin O’Connor (the terrific Tumbleweeds) cast real athletes instead of actors, a canny decision that pays major dividends when the big game is re-created.

It's hysterically, gut-bustingly funny.

The actors nail the comic sting in every line, punctuated by eleven prime Elvis Costello songs.

This wet dream for action junkies leaves out logic and motivation --you know, all the boring stuff.

Hold off on burning Aronofsky at the stake till you see Noah, a film of grit, grace and visual wonders that for all its tech-head modernity is built on a spiritual core.

Hold on for a hell of a ride.

Alice may be a minor work in the Allen canon, but when its grace notes manage to be heard above the whimsy, they ring true.

You don't want to miss Depp in this movie -- he knocks it out of the park.

The Human Stain is heavy going. It's the flashes of dramatic lightning that make it a trip worth taking.

John Krasinski, as actor and director, tackles the most clichéd genre in the movie business — the dysfunctional family dramedy. The big difference is he pulls it off with uncommon humor and compassion.

Hanks works like a sketch artist feeling his way before attempting a large canvas. His material is slight, but his writing and directing have an unforced humor and an unhurried grace that suggest he may be a natural.

Like District 9, an allegory of apartheid that took four Oscar nods and put Blomkamp on the map, Elysium delivers sci-fi without dumbing it down. It's a hell-raiser with a social conscience.

21 drags itself to a climax that puts credulity in splints. So what? In a multiplex of dumb-luck hits, it's a kick to watch Spacey and a gifted young cast use smarts to deal audiences a winning hand.

The result is a potent and provocative movie that will keep you up nights.

What makes this so memorably nerve-frying is the way Alvarez and cinematographer Pedro Luque use night-vision and every trick in the book and ones not invented yet to trap us in their vise. Claustrophobics, you've been warned.

Best of all is Mark Wahlberg as Tommy, an angry post-9/11 firefighter so against Big Oil that he rides to fire scenes on his bike.

With the cast getting looser and the mind games kinkier, it's hard to resist.

The Dreamers may go slack when you most want it to soar, but it also seduces with eroticism and resonates with ideas.

Despite a gimmicky premise, Chronicle fuels its action with characters you can laugh with, understand and even take to heart.

Delivers the dazzle without sacrificing the smarts. The suspense is killer. Ditto the thrill of the hunt. The film uses the extra time to, of all things, develop characters and give this dystopian fable a human scale.

There is something uniquely unforgettable in the way Linklater, Hawke and Delpy (equal collaborators on the script) find nuance, art and eroticism in words, spoken and unspoken. The actors shine.

Pucci is an actor to watch: He rides this spellbinder without softening the truths that plague the thumbsucker in all of us.

Under the keen-eyed direction of Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club), Wild emerges as an exciting, elemental adventure that takes you places you don't see coming.

As in "Lost in Translation," Coppola keeps an eye out for the broken places. That's when Somewhere is really something.

Hemsworth, an Aussie actor with a vocal command to match his heaving brawn, doesn't just play the role, he owns it. I'm expecting both sexes will feel his impact.

Lily Tomlin works miracles. She's comedy royalty whose best films (Nashville, The Late Show, All of Me, I Heart Huckabees) always cut deeper than a smile. But no Oscar. Maybe Grandma will do the trick. It's a Tomlin tour de force.

Miss Firecracker is a spirited lark that happily survives most missteps; it’s shot through with enchantment.

Wells is a wonder with actors - Cooper and Jones earn top honors - and a filmmaker with an instinct for the emotions that bleed between the lines. This haunting movie hits you hard and right where you live.

The Beaver, directed by Jodie Foster from a script by fearless first-timer Kyle Killen, is operating on a plane far above multiplex formula. This flawed but heartfelt movie has the power to sneak up and floor you.

No use trying to describe Bernie. It's a one-of-a-kind inspiration. You will never feel closer to a convicted killer.

Cedar Rapids had me smiling at hello.

The movie steps lively with buoyant humor and palpable sexual tension, but keep an eye out for the dark places.

The suspense crackles, the acting sizzles and the script, by promising first-timer Russell Gewirtz, keeps tossing surprises like grenades.

That's Emily Blunt, and she is perfection, playing the hell out of this blackout drunk and adding a touch of welcome empathy.

Lively is an odd word for something called Dead Man's Chest, but lively it is. You won't find hotter action, wilder thrills or loopier laughs this summer.

Farrell is a dynamo. And Kiefer Sutherland, whose sniper role is essentially a voice on the phone, matches Farrell subtle shift for subtle shift.

Moralists, beware. Hobo looks like a garish cartoon puked up by a filmmaker overstuffed with cheap thrills and celluloid scuzz. What's not to like?

It's less an expose of junk-food culture than a human drama, sprinkled with sly, provoking wit, about how that culture defines how we live.

Blood splatters, heads explode, and McDonagh takes sassy, self-mocking shots at the very notion of being literary in Hollywood. It's crazy-killer fun.

News Flash: Tom Holland is the best movie Spider-Man ever. He finds the kid inside the famous red onesie and brings out the kid in even the most hardened filmgoer.

An animated fluffball that does everything to drive you crazy and ends up by being totally irresistible.

This one's a winner. And Baymax, baby, call your agent. You're about to be a household name.

Its value is unquestionable as drama and moral provocation.

Were detective Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) and his partner, Ken Hutchinson (David Soul), hot for each other when they started working undercover in Bay City?... you can watch Starsky and Hutch on the big screen and see subtext stiffen into hard and hilarious evidence.

Don't forget Winstead when making a list of the year's Best Actress contenders. Yes, she's that good.

A terrifically exciting, deeply unsettling survivalist epic.

You leave The East with a hunger to know more and a good idea of where to look. For Marling and Batmanglij that counts as mission accomplished. For audiences, it’s that rare thing these days – a movie that matters.

Hope Springs knows happy endings are provisional. What this exuberant gift of a movie offers Kay and Arnold is a renewed appetite for life. And that never gets old.

This state-of-the-art dino epic is also more than a blast of rumbling, roaring, "did you effing see that!" fun. It's got a wicked streak of subversive attitude that goes by the name of Colin Trevorrow.

George has been criticized for simplifying a complex story into an African "Schindler's List." But despite flaws in execution, this is a film of rare courage and imperishable heart.

Towne defines Pre not by the freak car accident that killed him but by his willful need to keep on pushing. It’s Pre’s defiant spirit that makes Without Limits something worth cheering.

Woodshock is both gorgeous and pretentious in equal measures, and it's hard to reconcile the fact that you don't get one without the other – or that, coming in the shadow of another free-form swing for the fences, any rush to ding the movie for being an exercise in style over substance isn't even slightly tinged by gender.

Sometimes a shamelessly stoopid, proudly profane R-rated comedy is all you want out of life. Role Models more than fills the bill. It's killer funny.