Witty, urbane and thoroughly entertaining.

Hypnotic and sprawling five-hour-plus piece of cinematic genius.

Verbinski's greatest triumph is that he allowed the animation to free rather that confine him. There is indeed a new sheriff in town, with Rango destined to become a classic.

Firmly rooted in the filmmaker's esoteric, frustrating, provoking, demanding narrative style, the movie is also amazingly romantic - lush, ripe, rich, delicious.

There are always moral crosscurrents in Lee's most provocative work, but so magical and mystical is this parable, it's as if the filmmaker has found the philosopher's stone.

In "Django," Tarantino is a man unchained, creating his most articulate, intriguing, provoking, appalling, hilarious, exhilarating, scathing and downright entertaining film yet.

Director Benh Zeitlin and his co-writer Lucy Alibar, a playwright whose "Juicy and Delicious" was the inspiration, have created characters that are wondrously indelible, distinctive of voice and set them inside a story that will unleash a devastating hurricane, and a flood of emotions, before it is done.

One of the most creatively rich and emotionally rewarding movies to come along this year.

Beyond the timelessness of the story itself, the film is beautifully shot and though early in Godard’s career already showcased his ability to capture emotional intensity in the very way he frames the shots.

Martin Scorsese has created a divinely dark and devious brain tease of a movie in the best noir tradition with its smarter than you'd think cops, their tougher than you'd imagine cases to crack and enough nods to the classic genre for an all-night parlor game.

We don't go to Michael Haneke films for comfort, but to gaze through a glass darkly. That vision -- tense, provocative and unnerving -- is on full display in The White Ribbon, which could be considered a culmination of this difficult director's brilliant career.

For the most part, Ford has done good by the film, infusing a sad story with warmth and humor to spare. While loss is what makes George's experience universal, heart is what gives him such life.

The 17-year-old so completely captures the innocence, cynicism and rage of a child of poverty and divorce on the edge of adulthood that it feels as if you are spying on Mia, so achingly real, so tangible does her world seem here.

Nothing quite prepares you for the rough-cut diamond that is Precious. A rare blend of pure entertainment and dark social commentary, this shockingly raw, surprisingly irreverent and absolutely unforgettable story.

It's tempting to forget that Cage is not Terence. That would be unfair though, and diminish the sheer ferocity of his performance.

Self-discovery always comes with a cost, and in Bliss the price is a great one. It is mesmerizing to watch it unfold in the lives of these two young people.

A mind-bending and mesmerizing thriller that takes its time unlocking one mystery only to uncover another, all to chilling and immensely satisfying effect.

About a billion laughs (though "Hot Tub" is not for the faint of heart or anyone even slightly concerned with what's happened to common decency these days).

This is a film done right by just about every measure. The extremes of the story seep deep into your bones -- the beauty, the allure, the desperation and especially the cold in this world where life literally hangs on rope and what Mother Nature chooses to throw at you.

A beautifully calibrated movie in the most traditional sense of the word -- the ideal marriage of topic, talent and tone.

What Restrepo does so dramatically, so convincingly, is make the abstract concrete, giving the soldiers on the front lines faces and voices.

Though the thriller is in the hands of a different filmmaking team this time led by Swedish director Daniel Alfredson and screenwriter Jonas Frykberg, they've kept the searing intelligence and ruthless bent.

What Solondz does so well is create unthinkable moments in a "Leave It to Beaver" world, where unmentionables are aired in the most innocuous ways to startling effect. In Life During Wartime, he's done just that, creating a relationship agitprop that pops and sizzles; just be careful not to get burned.

Bristling with dangers both corporeal and cerebral, The Debt is a superbly crafted espionage thriller packed with Israeli-Nazi score settling.

Much of the film is told compellingly and heartbreakingly through the wide-eyed innocence of five children.

In the end, 127 Hours is one man's incredible, unforgettable journey; it took the extraordinary alchemy of Boyle and Franco to also make it ours.

Rapace moves through the escalating exposure with a series of subtle shifts that are both painful and exquisite to watch. The actress can make eye contact seem like salt in an open wound.

Like an exquisite minimalist painting - its beauty will move you, its simplicity will fool you. For there are layers and complexities to be found in the film, like the many mysteries it slowly exposes.

From the first overheated moments of Bridesmaids...it's clear we're in for that rarest of treats: an R-rated romantic comedy from the Venus point of view.

This is writer-director Richard Linklater at his wry, whimsical best, and considering he was the filmmaker behind 1993's "Dazed and Confused," that makes the movie something of a milestone.

A lyrical poem for some, like watching paint dry for others. I'd argue for embracing the poetic, a rare commodity in American films these days.

Here the writer-director's tendency toward the allegorical casts a magical spell with Anderson finding a near perfect balance between the humanism and the surreal that imprints all of his work.

The movie's subversive sensibility and old-school/new-school feel are a total kick.

A film of rough edges and no easy answers, nearly perfect in its imperfection.

When it's done right, as it is in Young Adult, there is something absolutely mesmerizing about watching a train wreck unfold on screen. When the wreck in question is a narcissistic beauty played to scheming, sour, downward-spiraling perfection by Charlize Theron, cringing is definitely called for, but so is laughter.

What the film captures so effectively is the cultural reality of Mexico's ubiquitous underclass.

This is definitely animation for grown-ups - its look is voluptuous, sexy and sultry; its Latin-inflected Dizzy Gillespie sound is seductive; and its story of young lovers whose passions are tested is timeless.

The truth-is-stranger-than-fiction saga has been a hit on the festival circuit, winning top documentary prizes at Sundance for Sweden's Bendjelloul. What sets Searching for Sugar Man apart, though, is the way in which the filmmaker preserves a sense of mystery in the telling.

It is a rare thing to witness the creative process. But in the excellent new documentary Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters, filmmaker Ben Shapiro gives us fly-on-the-wall access over a 10-year period to an acclaimed artist as he envisions, designs and executes his surreal commentary on small-town American life in the form of an epic photo installation, "Beneath the Roses."

I found it to be some kind of wonderful, flaws and all. This is one to be taken in like meditation. Clear the mind and let what is in front of you wash over you. Save the contemplation for later.

The film, which came out in 1970 after a censorship battle with the Franco regime, catches — and releases — all the tension of shifting sexual mores. You can almost sense the director's pleasure in taking apart the duplicities of a patriarchal Spanish society. [21 Feb. 2013]

This is a beautifully rendered film.

Assayas has such a steady hand as a director, he knows precisely how to let all of Gilles' inner angst play out. His nostalgia for those past days can be felt in the affection and forgiving way the indiscretions of youth are portrayed.

The writer-director is up to his old tricks, creating an onion of an experience -- a movie within a movie within a movie, irony in each layer, poignancy that stings and whimsy that bites.

The dialogue is fresh-prince clever, the themes are ageless, the rhythms are riotous and the return to a primal animation style is beautifully executed.

This is a smartly told story, and as fresh as any contemporary romance.

The film belongs to Foster. The actor always makes the most of what is handed him, though he's usually required to find his footings around the margins, as he did as the crazed cowboy in "3:10 to Yuma" or the crazed druggie in "Alpha Dog."

Peli works at mining the unknown, the unknowable, like a minimalist, using small moments and virtually no special effects exceedingly well.

The result is a documentary that weaves as much comedy as fact into the narrative, making the experience a satisfying entertainment even for the lucky few who have no hair cares at all.

There are times the action lags, and when the dialogue falls back on pop cultural references it feels contrived and forced but, mostly, like the mythical creatures at the heart of this tale, the movie soars.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is back with all of the lethal and loving bite it was meant to have: The kiss of the vampire is cooler, the werewolf is hotter, the battles are bigger and the choices are, as everyone with a pulse (and a few without) knows by now, life-changing.

She is by turns blue, bitter, hilarious, unbroken; a Hollywood-style portrait in infinite ambition. In that role, Rivers is unforgettable.

Like the best war movies do, director Peter Ho-Sun Chan has woven together an intimate story of men against a backdrop of history writ large.

The narrative arc swings between light and darkness, from the sheer joy of the Persian rappers who practice on top of an unfinished skyscraper, to Nadar's arrest and interrogation for his black-market DVDs. In Ghobadi's hands, though, it always feels real.

Jandal emerges as someone who was truly in Bin Laden's inner circle, Hamdan seems the menial driver he claimed to be. What remains unanswered is where their allegiances now lie. Frightening or not, terrorists or not, both seem human, which at the end of the day is what Poitras set out to do.

The archival game footage -- Cantona on the field, the roaring crowds -- infuses the film with that high-spirited sense of hope and heart that only a brilliant play when a game is on the line can deliver. Loach, a brilliant player at his own game, delivers the rest.

Swinton is one of the finest actresses working in contemporary cinema, but Guadagnino, who developed the project with her in mind, has created a film that literally luxuriates in her talents.

Though the fun is not so much in who wins or loses the girl - it's the playing that matters, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World definitely has game.

Fast-moving, epic-on-a-shoestring tale of one Roman soldier's fight that is by turns heroic, fearsome, funny, fateful and, oh, so brutal, with swords hacking off heads at every turn.

It's Kind of a Funny Story is kind of a perfect coming-of-age comedy, with its bittersweet fun set loose in the adult psych ward of a Brooklyn hospital where this clever case of teenage depression, identity and self-esteem is examined.

There are so many ways in which Nowhere Boy, an emotionally raw and yet raucous, rockin' riff on John Lennon's turbulent teenage years, is such an entertaining piece of nostalgia.

That meandering dialogue can be difficult to control, and at times the film feels as if the director has stepped away from the vehicle, leaving it to veer off the path. Still, it's an experiment that works more than it fails by giving Gosling and Williams both the motive and the means to create something extraordinary, a valentine that actually says something true about being in love.

A love story that is actually worth falling for, with Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal excellent at steaming up the screen in Love & Other Drugs.

Whatever stumbles there may be, they are offset by moments when For Colored Girls soars.

Whatever the film's flaws, and like its protagonist, there are times when things get a bit out of control, watching Giamatti use Barney to wrestle with success, failure, friendship, love and increasingly with time is exhilarating.

You might want to tuck Damien Chazelle's name into your memory bank if his filmmaking debut, the terrific jazz improvisation that is Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, is any indication of what his future might hold.

By bringing in a diverse group of big thinkers to take part in a very animated, sometimes agitated, discussion, the filmmaker has succeeded in bringing what could have been a very dry mountain of data, theories and experimental research to vibrant life.

A wonderfully wild provocation - an imperfect, overlong, intemperate and utterly absorbing romp through the id that I wouldn't have missed for the world.

It is a singular performance and a deeply affecting if imperfect film.

The kills themselves are both bountiful and bloody, the movie references are brilliant and bloody, the funny is very frequent and very frequently bloody, but to say any more would ruin the boo.

The big action pieces, particularly the final face-off, are masterful both for their cleverness in bringing down the house and the detail jammed into every frame. Even composers Hans Zimmer, who's scored a zillion movies, and John Powell seem to be having more fun than usual.

If that all sounds like a lot of good, clean fun, a word of warning. In what seems to have become the genre's raison d'etre, the dialogue is so blue at times that you'll probably feel the heat of the blushing cheeks on either side of you, especially whenever Reilly's fast-talking savant of smut shows up.

Laughter, which is ladled on thick as gravy, proves to be the secret ingredient - turning what should be a feel-bad movie about those troubled times into a heart-warming surprise.

A buoyant and disarming drama about sons and fathers, death and dying, living and loving and all the ways we find ourselves starting over, hoping to finally get it right.

Between the writing, acting, directing and the rest, it works. Not crazy, not stupid, and filled with love. Period.

There are risky plot choices all along the way, but the risks are what keeps the pot boiling as the complexities of the relationship triangle heat up and cool down.

All of that combines to make Colombiana into a scandalous blend of action, sex and violence. My apologies in advance for having so much fun.

It makes The Descendants a tragedy infused with comedy and calls for a balancing act from filmmaker and star alike, a tightrope they navigate with nary a wobble.

If you give yourself over to that clash of style and sensibility, something magical happens as the power, the prescience and the precision of Shakespeare's words take hold of modern problems.

Somehow it is the waiting - for the fall that you expect is coming, for the marriage you figure will fall apart - that makes Take This Waltz one to make room for on your dance card.

The action is inventive, extensive and exciting, a bang-up job by cinematographer Mitchell Amundsen, one of the town's hot new shooters.

In Skyfall, Mendes has given us a thrilling new chapter in a franchise that by all rights should have been gasping for air - which really makes him the hero of this saga.

Miller and Lord clearly understand the push-and-pull and hyper-competitiveness that make guy friendships both complex and stupid. That it comes to life so fully in 21 Jump Street is what gives the film an endearing, punch-you-in-the-arm-because-I-like-you-man charm.

Anchored by a lovely performance from Oliver Litondo as Maruge and an exuberant Naomie Harris as Jane Obinchu, the school principal who champions his cause, the result is a tearful, joyful, imperfect, yet nearly irresistible ode to the human spirit.

Coogan and Brydon are either quite brilliant at this or just serving up slight variations of their very witty selves. Either way, their travels and squabbles are great fun to watch, the countryside is bucolic, the food mouthwatering. You just wouldn't want to go on a real road trip with them.

The film is deeply moving yet never maudlin in telling this hard-knocks-but-hope-infused story.

The film, like the tour, will satisfy the Conan cravings of hardcore fans the most, and prove an enjoyable enough diversion for the rest.

Quietly and movingly out of this world. Director Mike Cahill has woven sci-fi imaginings and quantum physics theories of parallel universes into a provocative meditation on the prospect of rewriting your life history.

It's potent stuff, laced with smart, sensitive humor, and extremely well handled by Wysocki and the excellent ensemble of young actors that become Terri's intimates.

It may be the most fun you'll have with ghosts and zombies all year.

McLaughlin, who has a good eye for the minimal, manages to bring out the haunting beauty of empty places littered with the discards of forgotten lives.

So many things are done right that even with the bombast, "Into Darkness" is the best of this summer's biggies thus far. It's a great deal of brash fun.

At its soulful heart, Pariah is a stinging street-smart story of an African American teen's struggle to come of age and come out - to the father who still calls her "daddy's little girl" and the mother who quotes the Bible and buys her pink frills.

An unusually intelligent cut at the relationship game.

In doing a little genre bending of romantic schmaltz and horror cheese - some fundamental zombie mythology is turned on its head - the film breathes amusing new life into both.

Remarkably, much of that sizzling sensibility was caught on film and has been stylishly stitched together with her personal history in the scrumptious new documentary, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel.

The ambiguity is refreshing. And despite the complicated emotional story at the center of this film, the Dardennes, who wrote and directed, have opted to handle it all with a minimalist narrative style.

This is a far more brutal film than Wheatley's first, 2009's "Down Terrace." Though it had crime at its center as well, it was balanced by a dry irony and far less blood. There is no offset in Kill List, with one scene so relentless in its gore that it makes the notorious elevator scene in "Drive" pale in comparison.