It's not just our emotions that are being played on here, it's not just our intelligence being insulted because of Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman's presumption that we won't have any interest in a character whom it's not always possible to like. It's John Nash's life, being turned into an Oscar machine and an easy way to jerk tears.

Gandhi’s direction brings out superior performances in the film’s cast, particularly in Terrell, whose imitation of Obama’s singular ways of speaking and mannerisms is nearly flawless.

It's first and foremost a visual and sonic symphony, and a Dante-esque journey through a New York nightworld where words are mostly useless or worse.

Brick doesn't work 100 percent of the time, but it's a striking achievement, beautifully shot, often hilarious and occasionally moving.

It's an exceptionally intelligent and controlled piece of direction, and for once Polanski didn't hide his emotions in a death's-head grin. The movie is raw and passionate and unresolved in a way that's unique among his work.

Ghost Town is a rarity, a contemporary romantic comedy that honors the traditions of the genre without checking them off some plasticized list. The picture is breathing, and alive, every minute.

This is a quirky little comedy, not a film that will change your view of reality or anything, but it's funny, wrenching and sharply observed, with a dispassion that suggests a real artist is at work.

Curiously and disappointingly lethargic.

I don't know whether to call it interpretive dance for dudes or performance art or just a highly developed form of wanking. Who cares? It seriously rocks.

I suspect many Cash fans will think it's too conventional. But I think its conventionality is part of its power.

Pusher III is also, far more clearly than the earlier films, a chronicle of life in the rapidly changing ethnic mix of western Europe.

I'm not going to tell you this is the best European film of the year, but it's definitely the hottest -- it's the one you want to run out and see as soon as you possibly can.

Match Point is a fatally neat exercise in detached craftsmanship, and maybe that's the best we can expect from Allen at this point.

Aided by witty and understated work from Baldwin and Stewart and the capable direction of Glatzer and Westmoreland, Moore does her utmost to pull Still Alice toward the realm of meaningful social drama. Let’s put it this way: It’s a way better movie than it ought to be, but not good enough to escape its pulpy, mendacious roots.

Despite the hit-and-miss nature of this highfalutin concept-art, Manifesto comes across as successfully, outrageously funny. As authentically enthusiastic as Rosefeldt seems to be about manifestos, he seems equally aware of the pretentious ridiculousness lurking within them.

The incredible special effects, which make lush cherry blossoms as vivid as the intense battle scenes, are balanced by Disney's tradition of care and painstaking detail in developing and animating its characters.

Abduction sheds light onto one of the strangest episodes in recent Asian history, but the murk that hangs over North Korea is still too deep for much light to penetrate.

Offers an intriguing, and profoundly frustrating, view of the New York underground hero whose 1962 erotic fantasy "Flaming Creatures" paved the way for Andy Warhol, John Waters, the "queer cinema" explosion and pretty much anybody who's ever made a movie starring his friends in weird Salvation Army outfits.

Coffin and Renaud's execution is fresh, sincere, often lovely and a great deal of fun -- and in this kind of movie, and this kind of movie summer, execution is everything.

In the end The Silence is more like an intriguing work of misdirection than a great crime film, but it has a dreamlike and disturbing undertow you won’t soon forget, and Odar is unquestionably a director to watch.

Morally ambiguous, subtly crafted, resolutely free of cliché and made with almost no money, The Great World of Sound is under-the-radar independent filmmaking in the Jarmusch-Cassavetes mode, both noble and ruthless in spirit.

Soberly executed and highly principled documentary filmmaking, tightly focused on the Winfield family’s efforts to navigate the byzantine Army bureaucracy and the ass-covering military justice system. But it’s also a kind of Rorschach test of any viewer’s attitudes about war, the military and the United States’ amorphous 13-year mission in Afghanistan.

What filmgoers get is a satisfactory mainstream entertainment, with a handful of major actors in juicy minor roles tossed in for good measure.

Ricci's Wendy captures the volatile combination of aggressiveness and uncertainty in a young woman trying to come to terms with her sexuality like no performance since Emily Lloyd's in "Wish You Were Here." It's a very different performance, quieter, harder and yet more vulnerable.

A compact near-masterpiece that combines a slow-motion romantic comedy with a docudrama-style portrait of a remote, nomadic culture as it is gradually eroded by the tides of the 21st century.

Undefeated is a genuine crowd-pleaser, a rousing and inspirational flowers-in-the-junkyard fable of hope and possibility in grim circumstances.

This is a gangly, confusing sprawl, and yet there are enough patches of beauty scattered throughout that it's impossible to reject it wholesale.

Paradise Now isn't a comfortable viewing experience, but it isn't meant to be. Inevitably, people's reactions to this subject matter -- and this filmmaker's handling of it -- are all over the map. All I can say is that I found it a tremendously compelling existential thriller that kept me up late the night I saw it, and it has resonated in my brain ever since.