Set in East Germany in 1980, Christian Petzold’s superb Barbara is a transfixing Cold War thriller made even more vivid by its subtle overlay of the golden-era “woman’s picture,” the woman in question being Dr. Barbara Wolff, brilliantly played by Nina Hoss in her fifth film with the writer-director. Yet…

Gay-male weepies have left a long trail of tears, stretching back to the sobbing, self-loathing queens of The Boys in the Band and including high-prestige pictures like Philadelphia (1993) and Brokeback Mountain (2005). The genre, most prominent during the first decade of the AIDS pandemic, has used melodrama to bid…

Unclassifiable, expansive and breathtaking, Holy Motors, the first feature-length film from Leos Carax since Pola X (1999) — and only his fifth in 28 years — received a log line of sorts from its writer-director at the press conference following the movie’s world premiere at Cannes. “This is a film…

In his filmmaking debut, journalist David France assembles a thoroughly reported chronicle of ACT UP’s most vital era, from the direct-action group’s founding in 1987 (six years into the AIDS epidemic) through 1995. Expertly compiled from hundreds of hours of archival footage — depicting fractious meetings, infamous demonstrations like 1989’s…

An amiable, seriocomic high-school-reunion movie, 10 Years succeeds in pulling off a fine varsity talent show. Although some performers (notably Channing Tatum, who also produced, and Ari Graynor) are more appealing than others, the film is admirably consistent in its nostalgia-averse exploration of the uncertainties that define one’s late 20s…

In anticipation of the remake of the 1976 girl-group melodrama Sparkle (which didn’t screen in time for our deadline), Whitney Houston’s posthumous film appearance and her return to movies after a 15-year absence, we look back at the handful of celluloid performances by the woman once known as “the Voice.”…

Take This Waltz, director Sarah Polley’s second feature, is much like her first, 2006’s superb Away From Her, in that it thoughtfully probes the pitfalls of coupledom and third-party threats. Five years into their marriage, Torontonians Margot (Michelle Williams) and Lou (Seth Rogen) have regressed fully into sexlessness, heat and…

A zealous gumbo of regionalism, magical realism, post-Katrina allegory, myth and ecological parable, Beasts of the Southern Wild, the southern Louisiana-set debut feature of 29-year-old Benh Zeitlin, rests, often cloyingly, on the tiny shoulders of Quvenzhané Wallis. Her character, Hushpuppy, the film’s 6-year-old (also Wallis’ age during filming) protagonist and…

Fans of Seth MacFarlane’s Fox mainstay Family Guy who wish he would run afoul of FCC regulations every week might be pleased with Ted, the story of a 35-year-old man and his foul-talking teddy bear. Plushies, too, might be turned on by the pot-smoking, whore-banging CGI toy ursus of the…

Beginning with a bilious toast and ending with a group hug, Lynn Shelton’s Your Sister’s Sister, her fourth film, expertly makes us squirm for about half its running time only to soothe us with empty pop-psych declarations. In Shelton’s previous feature, the bolder Humpday, two straight guys, in a moment…

Three generations of fine actresses are squandered in Bruce Beresford’s Peace, Love & Misunderstanding, an incompetently structured film that pits hippies against squares with the usual wearying results. This head-hammering, clash-of-values family-healing dramedy makes sure to literalize all of its uplifting messages; gentle admonitions about “letting go” are immediately followed…

There is exactly one unexpected moment in the otherwise drearily predictable The Five-Year Engagement that, though little more than a throwaway line, at least adds a bit of charged political reality to puncture Nicholas Stoller’s limp, hermetic comedy of deferred nuptials. Tom (Jason Segel, who co-scripted with Stoller), a talented…

I spotted a bottle of something called Marley’s Mellow Mood, “a new line of 100 percent natural relaxation beverages,” in my neighborhood deli just a few hours after seeing Kevin Macdonald’s documentary on the reggae and Rasta emissary — a reminder of just how crassly the Jamaican star, who died…

“If no one watches, then they don’t have a game,” a teenager says in this faithful if cautious adaptation of the first volume of Suzanne Collins’ astronomically successful dystopic YA trilogy. A withering indictment of omnipresent screens, endless spectacle and debased celebrity culture, The Hunger Games was inspired, the author…

The television show 21 Jump Street, about cops who go undercover as high schoolers, debuted on Fox in 1987 and ran until 1991, launching the career of Johnny Depp (who cameos here). As a sign of the irrefutable progress made since the fear-mongering, anti-hedonist Reagan-Bush era, the mixed-bag, big-screen 21…

In the opening scene of Friends With Kids, a conspicuously placed copy of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion on the bedside table of Jason (Adam Scott) marks him as a nonbeliever. His doubt also extends to conjugal matters, for he is unconvinced that married parents could ever be happy. Sharing…

Recording “Les Filles du Crazy,” an anthem that they’ll later lip-synch onstage, half a dozen women — performers at the Crazy Horse, Paris’ classy nudie cabaret — sing of themselves, “They are the soldiers of the erotic army.” The military metaphor proves apt, as Frederick Wiseman’s spellbinding documentary on the…

A holy hot mess of the sacred and the inane, Joyful Noise, about a small-town Southern gospel choir, lifts from Usher’s “Yeah!” to give us this inspirational lyric: “Now God and I are the best of homies.” The film is Jesus for Gleeks — no surprise, since writer-director Todd Graff’s…

The first 10 minutes of Dee Rees’ funny, moving, nuanced and impeccably acted first feature, in which coming of age and coming out are inseparable, sharply reveal the conflicts that 17-year-old Alike (Adepero Oduye) faces. At a lesbian club — maybe for the first time — she gapes in awe…

Big, soft, squishy: These words describe Jonah Hill’s heart as well as his body in The Sitter, the mixed-bag last record of its star’s physique before a radical slim-down. As the film opens, Hill’s layabout Noah, kicked out of college and living at home in the suburbs of New York…

Inspired by a 2008 New York Times Magazine article by Alex Kotlowitz, Steve James’ commanding documentary The Interrupters, about “violence interrupters” in Chicago who intervene in conflicts before they escalate into gunshots, unfolds as deeply reported journalism. Much like Hoop Dreams (1994), James’ in-depth examination of the athletic aspirations of…

Frustratingly opaque, Australian novelist-turned-filmmaker Julia Leigh’s debut feature opens with an unforgettable image: A young woman, earning some extra cash as a medical-research subject, patiently sits as a long tube is threaded down her esophagus. Sharp and precise as its tableau might be, though, Sleeping Beauty never burrows into the…