Steve A. Vineberg

Like Crazy is a love story about an American boy (Anton Yelchin) and an English girl (Felicity Jones) who meet in their final year of college in Los Angeles, fall in love and opt to spend the summer together in the States before she returns to London.

War Horse is ideal material for Steven Spiel­berg. His adaptation of the children's novel by Michael Morpurgo comes to the screen by way of the celebrated National Theatre stage version, which has been entrancing audiences of all ages on Broadway since last season.

Craig Brewer, the extraordinary young director of Hustle & Flow and Black Snake Moan, brings his sharp ear for southern culture's tone and rhythms to this remake of a 1998 pop musical (itself a remake of a 1984 film) set in a small Georgia town. The problem is that the material is still Footloose.

50/50 is a balancing act: a comedy-drama about a man who learns he has a tumor and a 50 percent chance of surviving. Writer Will Reiser and director Jonathan Levine pull off twin feats: they sustain a tone midway between ironic and poignant, and they touch the audience without pushing pathos at us.

Moneyball has a slick, entertaining script by two pros, Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian, and it's briskly directed by Bennett Miller.

Sarah's Key is culled from a popular novel (by Tatiana de Rosnay) set during the Holocaust and the Nazi occupation of France. The main character, an Amer­i­can magazine writer (Kristin Scott Thomas) living in Paris, discovers that her husband's family acquired their home after the Jews who once lived there were sent to an abandoned stadium, where they endured three hellish days before the Nazis transported them to the camps.

In The Help, set during the civil rights era, an aspiring journalist decides to write a book about the African-American domestics in the small Missis­sippi town where she grew up. The movie, adapted by Tate Taylor from Kathryn Stockett's best seller, is a glossy Hollywood potboiler that uses a serious theme and historical context as cover.

Horse trainer Buck Brannaman is the sweet-souled star of Buck. Cindy Meehl's documentary begins as the portrait of a remarkable professional and turns unexpectedly into a Dickens­ian tale about the consequences of a turbulent childhood.

The latest of the Marvel comic book movies is smooth sailing from start to finish.

In The Trip, culled from a British TV miniseries, comedian Steve Coogan, ostensibly playing himself, is sent by a newspaper to tour England's finest restaurants, accompanied by his friend and fellow comic Rob Brydon.

There's never been anything quite like the Harry Potter movies. The finale, Deathly Hallows, Part 2, is all one might hope.

Woody Allen fans were in a rough spot for nearly a decade and a half. But now, with his sexy, sun-drenched Medi­ter­ranean comedy Vicky Cristina Barce­lona and the en­chanting new Midnight in Paris, Allen seems to have a new lease on life.

Werner Herzog's hypnotic documentary—which takes us into the Chau­vet Cave, where the oldest paintings known to humankind were discovered in 1994—is the first movie to suggest a convincing reason for the invention of 3D cinema.

This invigorating documentary offers a poignant portrait of a life devoted to the pursuit of beauty. Cunningham, a photographer who documents fashion in his long-running New York Times column, is both an artist and a social commentator, though far too modest to describe himself as either.

Dramatic adaptations of Char­lotte Brontë's Jane Eyre tend to go for romantic embroidery and Gothic grandilo­quence. But the new movie version feels pared down in all respects except the emotional. It has a piercing ferocity.

Mike Leigh's latest film is pared down but surpassingly elegant, like a superbly assembled piece of chamber music. But it has an unusual flaw.

This film about a couple struggling to cope with the death of their little boy has a limited imaginative reach. But the familiar can wield considerable power when the writing is honest and specific.

The third Narnia film features a new director, Michael Apted. The good news is that Dawn Treader is a worthy successor to Andrew Adamson's splendiferous earlier entries.