Le Havre proceeds from the usual Kaurismäkian premise: Things are only going to get worse, so why not just go with it?

In Time has so much style and energy that it comes across as an act of boldness rather than just a liberal-minded tract, though of course, it's that too. If there were ever a movie made for the 99 percent, this is it.

Into the Abyss, which bears the subtitle "A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life," reveals itself to be an outlandish, compassionate and, at times, improbably buoyant film about life's capacity for grief and horror and about how it bubbles on miraculously in the face of such things. It's the best thing Herzog's done in years.

Hugo states, in its adamant, straightforward poetry, that old things do matter.

Young Adult is the first of Reitman's films from which I haven't felt him choking out a message; ironically, its rawness yields the humanity that he thought he was wringing from "Up in the Air."

What's remarkable about Pina is how democratic it is, how casual it is about opening up the world of modern dance to people who know, or perhaps care, little about it.

The picture is celebratory, in its own quiet way, as well as clear-eyed.

This is the kind of sophisticated storytelling you rarely get even in live-action movies any more, full of unexpected turns and unruly human complications.

Cabin in the Woods does what "Scream" only halfway managed, which was to find something new by looking back at the familiar - and at least in Whedon's world, the geeky ones are never first on the chopping block.

The picture sparkles, but in the nighttime way - its charms have a noirish gleam.

Physically it is a kick in the teeth, a depiction of poverty, sex and violence which crosses most known codes of acceptability.

What makes The Master such a singular experience, as dense as a mille-feuille, is that it is not Lancaster's story but Freddie's, and told as such, in layers that are sensorially rich but that do not always lead easily from one to another.

Looper may not have the bell-ringing resonance of Chris Marker's "La Jetée," one of its touchstones, but it's a jaunty match-up of genre and character drama that's far smarter and more finely wrought than almost anything else in the multiplexes.

This is Day-Lewis' movie, and he does with the meditative inner stillness of his character a wonderful thing - he finds a type of heroism that runs counter to all of the usual showy movie signifiers of such a quality.

Zero Dark Thirty makes you feel every step of Maya's journey, but it's her impressive achievement and that of the film itself that we're left contemplating, not her humanity - a stunningly well-realized whole with few soft spots to latch onto.

Heady, creaturely, and looking for trouble, Splice is also a sovereign creation: Conceived and midwived by Vincenzo Natali (Cube), it suggests the pure-bred Canadian love child of James Cameron and Margaret Atwood (I see David Cronenberg presiding over the baptism).

Redgrave puts all she’s got into something other actors might just toss off or throw away. She’s present every moment; this is an actress who doesn’t have a second to waste.

The low-key quality of the filmmaking in Restrepo only intensifies the reality of how much these kids are risking.

Like its star, Salt is a spare and lean piece of work; it's everything a modern action movie should be, a picture made with confidence but not arrogance, one that believes so wholeheartedly in its outlandish plot twists that they come to make perfect alt-universe sense.

Slick without feeling over-determined, Racing Dreams evokes -- just as, oddly enough, "Toy Story 3" does -- the more general feeling of childhood on the precipice.

The Extra Man is something of a love letter to the marvelous weirdos of New York.

This is a picture whose dance steps are determined by any number of mishaps and misfortunes; like the dance floor of a great club on a good night, it's gorgeous, unruly and exhilarating all at once.

The Tillman Story isn't designed to be a shockeroo exposé; it's more a slow, steady rumble of anger and dismay at what the U.S. military, and the government, can get away with in the name of public relations, as if PR - and not human lives - were the most important consideration during wartime.

Judged on a curve, set by the testosterone-fueled raunch-a-thons that have dominated teen comedies from "American Pie" to "Superbad" and beyond, Easy A deserves an A+, with extra credit for lack of misogyny, c--- talk, or flatulence.

Let Me In is a chilly little story set in a very cold place. But Reeves still knows when to go for the burn.

Even more than it wants to inform Inside Job seeks to enrage.

The complementary tone of droll but freighted psychodrama she strikes in Tiny Furniture feels like a significant but precarious achievement. I feel a pinch of worry for her - as I did for Aura - looking into a future of Rudins and Apatows.

The thrill of Tony Scott's Unstoppable, in which a runaway freight train hurtles through rural - and toward not-so-rural - Pennsylvania, is that its setup asks us to believe only in human ineptitude.