Had I seen A Separation just a month before, in its year of original release, it would have been amongst my top films of 2011. And it's good enough that I might have to bend the rules when it comes time to pick my favorites of 2012. The Online Film Critics Society, of which I am a member, voted it the best non-English film of last year. If I could, I'd definitely throw my weight behind it now, too. It's really that good.

A Separation is a narrative drama by Iranian writer/director Asghar Farhadi. It begins in a courtroom where an unseen judge officiates divorce proceedings between Nader (Peyman Maadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami). Simin has secured a visa to leave the country, but...Read the entire review

In an early scene of Ti West's The Innkeepers, Luke (Pat Healy) shows his co-worker Claire (Sara Paxton), an honest-to-goodness, real video clip of a ghost. He loads up the Quicktime movie on his laptop--a grainy, night-vision shot of a rocking chair in what looks like an attic. "Watch close," he tells her. "I missed it the first time." West's camera goes in for a close-up on the screen, which holds still, and still, and still. Nothing happens. Our eyes dart around the screen; the bracing anticipation at the beginning of the clip has unraveled. And then a giant, terrifying face fills the screen, accompanied by a pounding music hit. We jump, and then we laugh. It's fun to be scared.

That little moment is an encapsulation of West's modus operandi--less the scare,...Read the entire review

The Woman in Black is going to get a lot of attention for two things. (1) It is the first post-Harry Potter role for Daniel Radcliffe, and (2) it resurrects the long dormant, legendary British horror studio Hammer. These are both important facts and well worth noting, but let's not forget at the same time that The Woman in Black is also a damn fine movie. In fact, its quality means good news for anyone concerned about either of those factors. It means we can hopefully expect more from Radcliffe and Hammer, either together or apart.

The young actor stars as Arthur Kipps, a widower ...Read the entire review

David McKenzie's Perfect Sense tells a cold, frightening story with a sense of logic that is utterly arresting, and a refusal to soft-pedal its trajectory. It is not--contrary to the romantic-embrace print ad campaign, emphasizing sexy stars Ewan McGregor and Eva Green--an upbeat picture. "Without love there is nothing" reads the tagline, and whether or not that's true, the film itself presents a pretty persuasive dramatization of the inverse: a world where there's not much left but love, and who knows how much that's worth.

Michael (McGregor) is a chef; his restaurant is near the apartment of Susan (Green), a scientist. As the story begins, she's been made aware of a strange and sudden outbreak across Europe: out of nowhere, people have lost their sense of smell. SOS...Read the entire review

The new movie Chronicle is the latest in the "found footage" genre, joining the likes of The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, and the Paranormal Activity series, all movies that purport to be "documentaries" captured on people's home video cameras and, in this case, also their phones. Chronicle's wrinkle on the idea is that this is a superhero movie, but one that occurs in a world where superpowers are fiction. In other words, our own.

The plot is simple enough. Andrew (Dane DeHaan, or as I like to call him, L'il Topher Grace) is an a...Read the entire review

As the number of recognizable superheroes left to adapt into feature films shrinks (hello, Spider-Man and Superman reboots), and even semi-famous properties falter at the box office (Green Lantern), it only makes sense that studios desperate to hang onto a profitable trend would turn toward original stories, which deliver the same kind of action without any pre-existing awareness. To that end, we have Chronicle, the story of three high schoolers who find their lives completely changed when they discover a strange rock buried in a hole that gives them telekinetic abilities.

The three kids are wildly different: timid loner Andrew (Dane DeHaan, the spitting image of a young Leonardo DiCaprio); his cousin Matt (Alex Russell), who seems like an average, decent person; and Steve Montgomery (Michael B. Jordan), both class president and one of the most popular and well-known kids ...Read the entire review

It sounds like a prompt in a writing exercise: a man steps through the window and out onto the ledge outside the twenty-second floor of a New York City hotel and looks down. Who is this man and how did he get here? It's more than possible to extract some excitement from this scenario, but Man on a Ledge is a film that poses all of these questions without having any particularly compelling answers.

The man is Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington). He's a former cop, recently escaped from prison, and he's on the ledge because from there, somehow, he hopes he'll be able to prove his innocence in the crime he was jailed for. A negotiator named Dougherty (Ed Burns) is sent to talk to him, but Nick requests a different negotiator named Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks), who's still beating herself up over a recent, unsuccessful attempt to talk someone down. Meanwhile, the city's eyes turn toward the standoff,...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

People get worked up about Stanley Kubrick. There may be no filmmaker whose work has been more intensely hyper-analyzed; reams of paper and acres of cyberspace have been used to ponder the ending of 2001, the violence of A Clockwork Orange, the morality of Lolita. Yet some of the strangest and most intricate close-readings of his work have been attached to his most seemingly straightforward project: the 1980 film adaptation of The Shining. To the casual observer, the film seems a genre piece, the intellectual aesthete trying his hand at horror. But a few decidedly non-casual observers, theorists and critics and the like, see all kind of precis...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

If a single critic reviews Leslye Headland's Bachelorette and doesn't mention Bridesmaids, I'll eat my hat. The filmmakers probably won't mind the comparisons--after all, that wedding party comedy's monster grosses got this one the greenlight, and quick. It doesn't have that film's warmth or sweetness; this is a sharper, spikier comedy, where the laughs have a darker, murkier undertow. It will certainly not have the kind of wide appeal that Bridesmaids did. It feels more like that picture's scrappier, foul-mouthed little sister. Some will like that idea very much. You know who you are.

The central ensemble is comprised of three high school frie...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

Shadow Dancer is a finely crafted, intelligently acted political thriller/drama with a complexity, subtlety, and depth that immediately recalls the recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy--to this film's detriment, as it is not as compelling a picture. The comparison seems unfair (the films were certainly in production at around the same time), but it's there nonetheless; it's the elephant in the screening room. Those reservations aside, Shadow Dancer is well worth investigating--it's a modest but absorbing picture, and features a captivating performance by Clive Ow...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

The friends have gathered because it's been a year since Tom's death. Al (Mike Birbiglia) gets up to say a few words about what a great guy Tom was, so kind, so thoughtful, so remarkable. From across the room, Tom's brother Jack (Mark Duplass) objects. You guys didn't know him when he was younger, Jack says. He was a bully, an asshole, and if we're going to talk about him, let's acknowledge "the full man." He raises his glass, and leaves.

This scene, which opens Lynn Shelton's Your Sister's Sister, is about as keenly-observed a dramatization of genuine social discomfort as you're likely to see in a film. It's one of several moments that have an almost documen...Read the entire review

There's a stillness at the center of Liam Neeson which goes a long way to explain his unexpected yet delightful cinematic second act as an action hero. He's not the first actor to mine the "reluctant man of action" groove, but he's one of the few that actually makes you believe him; he projects a sense of a life lived before the camera rolled, of experiences and knowledge accumulated that he'd rather not call upon, but fine, if he must, he must. He's present on the screen--"in the moment," as they say in all of those beginning acting classes, and he's not waiting for the opportunity to knock someone out or stage a daring escape. He does it if he has to, and he gets on with it.

Director Joe Carnahan captures that stillness early on in his new Neeson vehicle The Grey, fo...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

The End of Love is the second feature film directed by Mark Webber, whose primary vocation is as an actor (and a busy one; he appears in two other films at this year's Sundance Film Festival). His debut feature was Explicit Ills, a tedious attempt at the Altmanesque multiple-intersecting-characters film; it hinted that Webber was a real director with a good eye, but that his screenwriting was cripplingly schematic.

His new film is such an improvement over its predecessor that it almost seems a rebuke. It's an immensely personal picture, dwelling in an undefined ...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

Simply put, the danger in making a movie about a great novelist is that screenwriters are so seldom great novelists themselves. Take The Words, an entire film predicated on the idea that Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) is a fabulously successful and universally acclaimed author; his work is good enough to pay for a giant Manhattan apartment, to draw a huge crowd for a reading and book release party, and to make Olivia Wilde want to get in his pants. As the film begins, he walks up to the podium to do a reading from his latest novel, and that's where the trouble starts.

You see, he's a terrible writer. His book--which is read, at length, in voicver-over--is...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

It's been a full decade since director Don Coscarelli released Bubba Ho-Tep, one of the most enjoyably batshit-insane pictures in recent memory. (It concerns an old, fat Elvis and a black JFK battling an ancient Egyptian mummy. Look, just rent it.) One could safely assume that, in that decade, Mr. Coscarelli came up with an abundance of concepts and ideas that he wanted to try out. The trouble with his new film, John Dies at the End, is that he appears to have decided to just smash them all in--coherence and tempo be damned.

Not that it i...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

Several fine performers end up mostly spinning their wheels in Goats, a boilerplate coming-of-age story from director Christopher Neil. The cast is chock full of likable people: David Duchovny, Vera Farmiga, Ty Burrell, Justin Kirk, and Keri Russell all turn up, and all are appealing. Neil's direction is smooth and professional; screenwriter Mark Poirier (adapting his novel) pens some quotable lines. But it doesn't add up to much; it's a wisp of a movie, gone by the time you're out of your seat.

The Good Wife's Graham Phillips stars as Ellis, the product of a long-broken marriage. Mother Wendy (Farmiga) is a New Ager with a trust fund, constantly looki...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

Darius Britt, the heroine of the stripped-down time travel comedy Safety Not Guaranteed, can barely remember a time where she was hopeful or optimistic. Nowadays, she says, "I just expect the worst." Darius is played by Aubrey Plaza, and it is not exactly casting against type; Plaza co-stars on Parks and Recreation, where her delightfully bone-dry line readings and biting deadpan never fail to beguile. Safety is her first starring role (she played supporting roles in Funny Peo...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

When Mark O'Brien was six years old, he contracted polio; the disease confined him to an iron lung, though he could leave it for a few hours a day on a gurney. In spite of his numerous challenges, he graduated from UC-Berkely, and became a well-known poet and journalist. And when he was 38, he decided he wanted to lose his virginity. Ben Lewin's The Surrogate is the story of how that happened.

It certainly didn't happen easily. To work through the considerable difficulties, Mark (John Hawkes) engages the services of Cheryl (Helen Hunt), "a sex surrogate," he explains, "who would be sensitive to my particular needs." Though she accepts money for sexual conta...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

Peter (John Krasinski) and Julie (Rosemary DeWitt) have a comfortable, seemingly idyllic marriage. He's a sound designer for the movies; she's a therapist. But, as he notes in a key moment, "marriage is complicated," and sometimes a comfortable relationship means that those engaged in it are susceptible to an outside spark. In that situation, Martine (Olivia Thirlby), the hot 23-year-old artist from New York, is like a lit firecracker thrown into a slow gas leak.

Her arrival, and the trouble it causes, is the subject of Ry Russo-Young's Nobody Walks, a small-scale relationship drama about smart people making all sorts of bad decisions. Julie, for example, ha...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

Julie Delpy's 2 Days in Paris was one of the nicest cinematic surprises of 2007, a film that sounded like either a) a vanity piece, or b) a JV retread of her Before Sunset/Sunrise pictures, but turned out to be c) an astonishingly assured romantic comedy with a sharp edge and some real depth. That element of surprise is no longer in play with her sequel, 2 Days in New York; she now has the opposite problem, of meeting expectations, which the new picture does not, not quite. But in all fairness, she set a pretty high bar the last time around, and this giddy follow-up offers numerous pleasures of its own.

A few years have passed since the last fi...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

A disclaimer: I am the target audience for Sleepwalk With Me. I heard Mike Birbiglia's original sleepwalking story when it aired on This American Life, which I listen to faithfully every week. I saw him perform Sleepwalk With Me (and its follow-up, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend) in New York. I read the Sleepwalk With Me book. Frankly, I've become so familiar with this material that I was a bit hesitant about this new film adaptation of it; how far was he gonna stretch this stuff? But from the opening frames of the movie (which marks Birbiglia's filmmaking debut), in which the comedian addresses the camera, instructing us to turn off our cel...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

Spike Lee shot his first feature film, She's Gotta Have It, over 12 days in 1986. He shot his latest, Red Hook Summer, in just a week more, self-financing the low-budget picture and using a crew comprised partially of his NYU film school students. It is filled with whispers of his other works--not just in Lee's brief reprisal of his "Mookie" role from Do the Right Thing, or She's Gotta Have It's Tracy Camilla Johns popping up as "Mother Darling" (apparently, Nola b...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

The takeaway lesson of last summer's Bridesmaids--that female-driven comedies can be dirty too, and profitable to boot--is one that was heard loud and clear in Hollywood board rooms and executive offices, and as sure as the day is long, we're in for a steady stream of poorly-made scatological lady comedies. It's the inevitable law of diminishing returns; don't forget that There's Something About Mary and American Pie begat Tomcats. Thankfully, the girl-heavy indie phone sex comedy For a Good Time Call is not the female Tomcats. It's not Bridesmaids, either. But it's a cute and likable picture with its own rambunctious char...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

Alison Brie co-stars on Community, the funniest show on network television. Lizzy Caplan and Martin Starr were on Party Down, no slouch in the laughs department itself; she also appeared in Hot Tub Time Machine, while he's a member of the Apatow stock company. These are crackerjack comic actors, is the point, which leaves one wondering why director Michael Mohan would hi...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

Liberal Arts is a really nice movie. This is the kind of statement that's often thrown around pejoratively, or at the very least condescendingly--a pat on the movie's head, if you will. But I'm merely trying to share the reserved but genuine warmth I felt towards the picture at its end; it's not without its flaws, but it's so very likable that you can't get too worked up over them. It's the second feature for How I Met Your Mother star Josh Radnor, whose Happythankyo...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

Ice-T is credited as director and executive producer of Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap, but he's also (in effect) the tour guide, serving as on-camera interviewer and off-camera narrator (his thoughts are laid over shots of the rapper/actor strolling cityscapes, framed like an action hero). When he talks to his subjects, the grandfathers and modern masters of hip-hop, he's the cool guy having an interesting conversation; the casual dialogues recall the Fab 5 Freddy-hosted interview segments on Yo! MTV Raps. The trouble is, the film never accumulates into a cohesive documentary whole--it's like watching 106 minutes of those Yo! segments, back t...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

Stephen Frears is a filmmaker who seldom gets the kind of accolades he should, and that may very well be because he's a journeyman director in the classic mold. Like Howard Hawks or John Ford, he's adept at moving between genres and styles, from neo-noir (The Grifters) to romantic comedy (High Fidelty) to costume drama (Dangerous Liaisons) to Hitchcockian thriller (Dirty Pretty Things); because he's never been locked in to a specific type of film, he doesn't get the attention of, say, a one-trick pony like Tim Burton. Since he can move so easily between styles, one would think him particularly adept at combining them within one picture. ...Read the entire review