Her (2013)

With his new movie her... Jonze creates the splendid anachronism of a movie romance that is laugh-and-cry and warm all over, totally sweet and utterly serious.

This is a probing, inquisitive work of a very high order, although it goes a bit slack in the final third and concludes rather conventionally compared to much that has come before.

Spike Jonze's singular, wryly funny, subtly profound consideration of our relationship to technology - and to each other.

If, like me, you've admired Jonze's ambitions more than you've responded to his results, you may find that Her puts his means and his ends on more equal footing. He shoots for the moon and, this time, hits it.

A sensitive and genuinely curious look at programmed living and the follies of possessive love that unfolds like When Harry Met Skynet

I need a writing service to articulate the love that I have for "Her"... Spike Jonze has done something remarkable with Her. He's created a love story that feels brand new, yet abstractly familiar.

The not-too-distant future of Spike Jonze's her is both utopian and dystopian - a mesmerizing, provocative, and romantic world to soak up.

A screwball surrealist comedy that asks us to laugh at an unconventional romance while also disarming us with the realization that its fantasy scenario isn't too far from our present reality.

The Unknown Known (2013)

But Morris's movie is a cat-and-mouse game, and Rumsfeld is the cat, virtually licking his chops as he toys with, and then devours, another rival.

Ranging over familiar material, but made vivid by Morris' fecund associations and invigorating stylistic flourishes.

Morris tediously recycles points he already made in his 2008 look at the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Standard Operating Procedure.

Though watchable, the film pales in terms of enjoyment and insight in comparison to Morris's last film interview with a former Defence Secretary, Robert S. McNamara, in 2006's The Fog of War.

Rumsfeld takes this to another level, giving contradictory answers at different points throughout the interview.

The Unknown Known delivers the type of nuanced, fascinating portrait we've come to expect from Errol Morris, and avoids offering simplistic conclusions about Donald Rumsfeld.

Morris asks the occasional tough question, but he's never particularly aggressive. And with Rumsfeld...still the career politician, he ultimately proves too slippery for his interviewer, who fails to get...real reflection or revelation out of him.

That enigma -- whether Rumsfeld has ever doubted his public frontage, whether his most contentious war strategies were born of profound belief or tactical stopgapping -- is one Errol Morris doesn't really come close to penetrating.

If documentaries slotted into feature film genres, this one would be close to horror.

The Crash Reel (2013)

Lucy Walker has assembled one of the great sporting docs - partly because its scope extends beyond the slopes.

In its picture of the family constellation lies all of the film's strength, all testimony to its ambition, its capacity to fascinate with a revelation, an unexpected digression from the drama's main focus.

Walker captures a seesaw exhilaration between the thrill of pushing one's limits and the pain of dreams cut short.

Operating on several levels, this engaging documentary holds our attention with eye-opening information and pulse-quickening action, but what makes it unmissable is its emotional kick.

This compassionate account of the thrills and risks of extreme sports makes it required viewing for both aspirants and enthusiasts.

With no miraculous recovery to fall back on, the story simply has nowhere to go. And that's precisely the point.

Assembled from a plethora of visual sources, including the title footage, this impressively edited and dynamically scored film successfully combines visceral bursts of action with intimately observed sequences ...

Dangerous sports smacks up against towering ambition in this sensationally accomplished documentary to ask a universal question: How far do you go in order to be who you were born to be?

Here Comes the Devil (2013)

It exudes an effective creepiness and a free-wheeling attitude to both hot and horrible sexuality, but Adrian Garcia Bogliano's bad-seed opus Here Comes The Devil doesn't amount to much more than a stylish ode to 70's giallo-esque excess.

There are intense sexual situations, coming-of-age themes, insane supernatural jolts, and gory moments; it's got a little bit of everything for the hardcore horror nut.
It's not outright terrifying, but Here Comes the Devil is subtly scary and well worth a look.

Saving Mr. Banks (2013)

What could have merely been a studio's love letter to itself winds up being a meditation on the power that art has for artists as a way to exorcise the past.

Featuring a stellar cast led by Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks, Saving Mr. Banks is a heartfelt ode to the pain of creation.

When the big emotional breakthrough happens at freaking Disneyland I have to get off the ride.

The film brims with thoughtful and engaging performances and is punctuated with smart dashes of music guaranteed to make any audience want to track down the original film.

It's easy to imagine the real Helen Lyndon Goff balking at the sentimental touches, but you know what they say about a spoonful of sugar...

Lee Hancock has provided a worthy homage to Mary Poppins, in a picture that, though somewhat fluffy, is exactly what'd you hope such a film to be.

A Journey To Planet Sanity (2013)

It is a lot like a reality TV show, except it is a lot funnier. While all of it doesn't quite hang together and some of it isn't believable, plenty of it is hilarious.

Lenny Cooke (2013)

Basketball fans who already know Cooke failed to make the cut will learn little here; viewers hoping for broader insights will find even less.

A penetrating and ultimately heartbreaking inventory of hard lessons learned on and off the court.

The Safdies have stood out over the last few years for continually challenging audience expectations even while seeming to adhere to conventional storytelling traditions, and that's certainly true here: You've never seen a sports movie like this before.

The brothers Safdie did a rather remarkable job at showing what went wrong in Cooke's trajectory.

An effective bit of human drama, competently, and sometimes movingly, telling a story that deserves to be told.

Paradise: Hope (2013)

The film stands alone as a tender portrait of adolescence at its most vulnerable and how we manage to survive it, even when surrounded by predators and wolves.

The longtime provocateur continues to poke fun at the Austrian bourgeoisie's obsession with order, but his attitude here is generally affectionate.

Seidl gestures towards understanding rather than confrontation - turning in a slighter, softer-grained film than its predecessors, but no worse for it.

Seidl likes his tragicomedy black. He likes it malicious and a little miserablist. You do not go to these films hoping to see - well - love, faith or hope. Let alone "paradise".

After Love and Faith, Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl takes a gentler approach to explore hope, although the film is equally unsettling.

Originally conceived as one single portmanteau film, the Paradise trilogy doesn't have enough meat on its bones to justify four hours of anyone's life.

The third film in Austrian writer-director Ulrich Seidl's Paradise trilogy is an engaging, frequently darkly funny and disarmingly warm-hearted drama with a terrific central performance from Melanie Lenz.

Swerve (2012)

it may be a bumpy enough ride while it lasts, but it never feels important enough to escape its trivial status, or different enough from other genre flicks to grab the attention.

Clumsily mounted, implausibly plotted, often wincingly bad attempt at an Aussie genre piece...makes the same fundamental mistake as last year's Blame: small-scale thrillers need stories that are duck-bum tight.

Lahiff strings together an entertaining chain of actions 'n' consequences but yanks the strings of disbelief suspension too hard and aspires to do too much.

Once that body tumbles down the mine shaft, we're in a different -- and inferior -- movie.

Firmly sticking to its noir roots, this is a modest but well-crafted achievement which remains entertaining throughout.

Paul Grabowsky's edgy score is a highlight of this taut thriller that rips along like a fast train on a track to nowhere.

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

This isn't the cute, accessible period piece that some audiences might be expecting, but the Coens once again prove that their seemingly random and chaotic chord progressions lead somewhere wonderful.

It's the movie's profound undercurrent of sadness that gets to you.

Inside Llewyn Davis is a brilliant work of art.

A wry and beautifully understated study of loss, as frequently biting as it is moving, it slips directly into contention with the Coens' finest work.

The Coen Brothers' remarkable 'Inside Llewyn Davis' is a conjuring act of near-magical conviction, an ode to the artistic spirit that's as uncompromising as the troubled genius it chronicles.

As played by an eloquently beleaguered Oscar Isaac, Llewyn Davis is arguably the most vivid and complex character the Coens have dreamed up since Marge Gunderson.

A wise, wintry ode to artistry lost, found and placed in storage.

If O Brother, Where Art Thou was loosely based on The Odyssey, I think Inside Llewyn Davis is the Coen Brothers' Alice in Wonderland,

Inside Llewyn Davis is another burnished gem from filmmakers who can only be described as "treasures" at this point, and one of 2013's most unassuming pleasures.

Out of the Furnace (2013)

A solid, well-acted tale about how the bad steps in when jobs fall away in the Rust Belt.

Yes, the working class is bearing the brunt of an inequitable economic system, and yes, the treatment of our returning soldiers from the last decade of war has been disgraceful, but the film has nothing of substance say about any of this.

Bale and Affleck have an easy relationship and chemistry that makes them seem like real brothers, with Bale yet again proving he is the master at conveying a monologue's worth of emotion in a single brooding look.

What [Bale is] doing in Out of the Furnace is the essence of performance. It is bare. It is haunted. It is real

Loyalty and consequence collide in the "Crazy Heart" director's sophomore feature...but while those themes eventually result in payoffs that are noticeably muted and confused, the film is luckily powered by a powerful trio of performances at its core...

A starkly powerful drama that in some ways feels like an Iraq-era bookend to The Deer Hunter.

Although Out Of The Furnace is done utterly by the book, it also works by the book, delivering a tough, cathartic story straight, no chaser.

Out of the Furnace is one of the year's best-acted and gutsiest films, gutsy because it dares to stick to its figurative guns until the bitter end.

The Punk Singer (2013)

This is a woman who has been through hell and come out kicking, and the result is as much a celebration as it is a documentary

THE PUNK SINGER is unnegotiated truth, a frank and exhilarating portrayal of a legend.

Over two decades of Hanna's life in just 80 minutes has us wanting more, not to mention the opportunity to share her story as a way to show that feminism is not an ugly word, nor are the hearts of the proud women behind it.

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013)

For all its failings, there is one thing about "Long Walk to Freedom" that can't be denied: Idris Elba gives a towering performance, a Mandela for the ages.

It is through Idris Elba's finely etched performance that the real thesis of the film comes to the fore: it is Nelson Mandela's universally relatable core humanity that defines his heroism.

With the magnificent Elba to anchor it, the film gradually achieves a sort of grandeur, in the manner of the hero it depicts.

This nearly two-and-a-half-hour biopic is largely too tasteful and conventional to offer much insight into the remarkable man it wishes to celebrate.

The biggest compliment for "Mandela" (outside of accolades to Elba) is that certain moments within this biopic construct are done well enough that we can see that certain days, weeks of Mandela's life are worthy of a film.

There's never a scene that encapsulates who Mandela was and why he was the driving engine in apartheid's ultimate collapse.

Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom's story and plot are flawed, but are easily overshadowed by the lead performances by Naomie Harris and an Oscar-worthy Idris Elba.

Dear Mr. Watterson (2013)

It was one of the greats of the now-nearly-defunct Sunday funnies, no doubt. Unfortunately, there's not much cinematic magic in watching the director reading the strip, or hearing various other enthusiasts talk about how much they loved it.

If nothing else, it's a pleasant reminder that if you haven't taken those Calvin & Hobbes anthologies off the shelf in a while, maybe it's time to go exploring again.

Schroeder isn't as interesting as his subject - he isn't even very interesting on his subject - and he eats up a lot of screentime.

(D)epending on how much you adore Calvin and Hobbes as both a creation and a comic, Dear Mr. Watterson will either be a disappointment or a discovery.

At one point, someone marvels at Calvin's sheer "lust for life," and while Mr. Schroeder, no doubt, has a parallel fascination with his favorite comic strip, the film doesn't follow through.

Offers not only an in-depth look at the comic strip's unique influence but also a concise snapshot of the dwindling state of newspapers and their "funny pages."

...the 90-minute documentary doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is: a love letter to a great comic, providing a digestible version of its history with an eye to its legacy.

Whatever one might say about this documentary's excesses, it's the work of some talented filmmakers: The directing, editing, cinematography, music and visual effects all impress.

Too much of Dear Mr. Watterson is taken up by Schroeder and an array of non-professional C&H-lovers offering vague praise, with little to no real analysis-aesthetic, historical, or cultural.

Frozen (2013)

This smartly dressed package injects a traditional fairy tale, Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, with enough contemporary attitudes and female empowerment touches to please both little girls and their moms.

Given that it's a Disney cartoon, you probably already know how it ends, but what's interesting about Frozen is that you may not predict how they're going to get there. And for children's animation, that's a wilder ride than we usually get.

Looks terrific and has plenty of relatively innocent fun and adventure ...

Frozen is an exhilarating, joyous, human story that's as frequently laugh-out-loud funny as it is startling and daring and poignant.

Weekend Of A Champion (2013)

I wonder if there isn't something a little bit placid and self-satisfied about the film, which is paced remarkably slowly, given the subject matter.

Bettie Page Reveals All (2013)

"Bettie Page Reveals All!" contributes heartily to her rich tradition as a feminist rebel with a cause.

Contracted (2013)

England supplies a sly, very cool denouement that suggests his intention was to craft a smart take on the most popular horror sub-genre at present.

Ultimately disappointing due to an inane script which fashions a thoroughly unlikable, idiotic protagonist who invites derision more than sympathy.

Icky and violent and shocking, but Contracted is also smart, insightful, and sort of tragic.

Sets its heroine's personal dramas against the spiralling symptomatology of her infection, fusing psychological insights with full-on body horror, leading towards an ending that is also a new beginning in this young woman's metamorphosis.

Philomena (2013)

Even if the film eventually forces a singular perspective on the material, the actors' chemistry absolves any number of narrative sins.

Frears, in fine form at 72, has proved himself a modest master at juggling the serious and the silly in such actors' showcases as The Queen and Tamara Drewe; and the script by Coogan and Jeff Pope, brims with bright dialogue.

A howl of anti-clerical outrage wrapped in a tea cozy, "Philomena" applies amusing banter and a sheen of good taste to the real-life quest of Philomena Lee.

A human-interest story that claims spite for human-interest stories, the film has some pretty divisive issues at its core that leave it torn between contrasting approaches.

The film sometimes feels harshly edited, zipping through serious scenes with an emphasis on sentimentality. But it still wins us over.

Dench is as poignantly controlled here as she was in Notes on a Scandal.

Why does it work quite so well? In part, it's the Dench effect.

Judi Dench deals in levels of sadness that could draw tears from a boulder. Yet the film also manages to be one of the funniest odd-couple comedies in recent decades.

Superbly directed, powerfully emotional British drama with a witty, warm-hearted script and a pair of pitch-perfect performances from Judi Dench and Steve Coogan.

What makes Philomena so winning is the sophisticated way in which it condemns the behaviour of the Catholic Church without denigrating people of faith - a delicate tightrope act that has given plenty of more high-minded films vertigo.

Dench is simply marvellous in the title role of this moving film, wringing it dry of every ounce of poignancy, and of comedy, too.

Judi Dench plays Philomena with great heart, perfectly capturing the indomitable spirit of a loveable Irish mama. So despite winning great acclaim playing Queen Elizabeth,Queen Victoria and M, Philomena feels like the part she was born to play.

Odd-couple chemistry from Dench and Coogan, a smart script and honed direction make this real-life story highly compelling. Blending comedy and tragedy, it secretes a potent sting.

Delivery Man (2013)

"Delivery Man" is virtually nothing like a Vince Vaughn movie, but rather a heartfelt celebration of the act of parenthood presented under radically exaggerated circumstances.

Writer-director Ken Scott does the same thing twice in repurposing his 2011 French-language film "Starbuck" into a Hollywood movie that predictably loses something in translation.

Offers comedy and sentimentality in equal doses and, unfortunately, equal efficacy -- the jokes, the characters and the situations aren't very funny, and the would-be heart-tuggery is mostly embarrassing.

Scott lets the remake follow the original almost scene-for-scene and line-for-line but gives the US version a lighter feel and a brighter look.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)

Jennifer Lawrence, of course, is the real draw. Female role models come and go, and Lawrence's Katniss is one of the better ones.

A safe, serviceable, carefully crafted action drama in which the subversive seeds planted in the first story take welcome root.

Dismiss it as a popcorn movie if you must, but at least they've bothered to serve it with real butter and truffle salt.

The success of this sequel will demonstrate, beyond doubt, that flesh-and-blood females can dominate the boysy, blockbuster landscape. How apt.

A devastating indictment of pop culture as propaganda - about its power and the limits of its powers - and an upending of the typical teen-girl romance movie.

Catching Fire may be missing the surprises and shocks of the first chapter, but it moves the characters and the world forward in a way that hints at greatness for the two-film finale.

... Francis Lawrence... adds some important new pieces to that group and expands the world in a way that doesn't throw out Ross's film, but that uses it as a way to get to something even better.

Boldly builds on the world first seen in Gary Ross' 2012 film.

As an action movie, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is an improvement on the original. But as a social, political and pop culture satire, [it] is by definition a mixed bag.

Catching Fire expands Suzanne Collins' novel beyond the confines of the arena to tackle some seriously brutal truths - plugging gaps and sowing seeds for a two-part finale that will have to work hard to match its grit.

Like Katniss ducking a poison-tip arrow, the keepers of Suzanne Collins's trilogy of fantasy novels have dodged the perils of the sloppy second franchise film.