50/50 pulls no punches in its depiction of living day-to-day with illness. There's pain and fear, no question. But this dramatic comedy is also warm, honest and, most especially, funny.

When Marilyn Monroe appears, things stop. She is, as portrayed by Michelle Williams, a strange and beautiful alien: Unpredictable, odd, magnetic.

It sharply fuses the humor and heart of the earlier films with a satisfyingly heavy-metal strength — and a darkness that’s more than earned.

Though the film's setup trudges and its closing is too pat, that hour or so on the raft is something special, and few would dive into the story's soul as Lee does.

A twisty Italian thriller that takes some liberties with its now-you-see-'em/now-you-don't plot points, but no matter; the way director Giuseppe Capotondi keeps us guessing is deliciously, maliciously deft.

Filled with striking images and the ghosts of lives lived in hardship and war, Incendies is tough but impactful.

A young Aussie actress who seems as all-American as a Magic 8 ball, successfully walks the tightrope from precocious to exuberant, never once falling into obnoxiousness. That could describe this crackerjack of a kids' movie as well.

The actors click into high gear, and Premium Rush delivers.

Though a notch below "Royale," Skyfall follows that reboot's lead, making a now 50-year-old icon as cool as when he began.

We are left, after all the propulsive action, with great turns by Theron and Rapace, and a tightly wound turn by Fassbender, whose eerie, poetically impish mechanical man might have burst from Bradbury's conscience.

While director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale's epic of criminality and all-consuming conviction ultimately falls a bit short - missing, for instance, a villainous face a la Heath Ledger's Joker - their Batman trilogy ends with a suitably thrilling mix of guts and glory.

Warm memories of one school under a groove and a moving ending that no screenwriter could improve upon.

If only this were a media-fueled tall tale and not one poor creature's lifelong nightmare.

Even those who never joined the cult of A Tribe Called Quest will find this clear-eyed chronicle of their career irresistible.

Emphasizing the importance of new media, Stelter is ready to bring the paper back to the future, though this terrific tale of an establishment in transition ultimately plays like "All the President's Men," with the intrigue coming from inside the building.

Murphy also reveals one more gem when she interviews the New York couple who gave their friend Nell Harper Lee a financial gift in the '50s that allowed her to quit her job and finish the book, an act of generosity that is also one more kindness surrounding this most humane of artworks.

It is how the film never loses sight of the closeness of the combatants, turning national intimacy into a tragic casualty.

Just when we thought Quentin Tarantino had shown us all the cojones he has, in rides Django Unchained.

Gordon-Levitt is flinty, and Willis, on his A-game, is fiery. Together, they take us on a helluva trip.

A gripping documentary about how unnecesary real estate development can change the soul of New York, brings us inside the lives it touches.

Stone relies on his leads to guide us into this hyper-charged inferno, and they fit his juiced-up approach like James Woods and Woody Harrelson did in Stone's equally hopped-up "Salvador" and "Natural Born Killers." He gets us high on what they're selling before it goes south.

This is crucial work, evidenced by a line on a wall of R.I.P. graffiti that reads simply, "I am next." This film of common folks fighting the seemingly inevitable is just as moving.

Young Adult may at times be stuck between emotional gears, but that's by design. Like its heroine, the movie refuses to pick up after itself.

The gristle inside this movie is one of the things that save it from being simply a series of challenges.

Together and apart, Hatami and Maadi are magnetic. Hatami, a star in Iranian cinema, lets us see Simin's intelligence and defiant sense of self-worth often with nothing more than a gesture.

This incredibly moving, touchingly honest and transcendent chronicle of how a handful of people coped after Sept. 11 is not only one of the best distillations of that day, but a monument to humanity lost and gained.

Oduye, especially, is utterly absorbing. Even in those few moments when the movie follows a slightly more straightforward line than it needs, she is always engagingly, beautifully real.

If you're not in that demographic, don't dismiss it. You'll miss out on a genuinely sweet, perfectly acted, remarkably brave little movie that should make audiences swoon for something they thought was gone - a smart dramedy for grown-ups.