Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

In Martha Marcy May Marlene, writer/director Sean Durkin adeptly doles out the narrative in two sets of sequences. A young woman, Martha (Elizabeth Olsen), is on the run from a group of other young people. She finally finds refuge at the lake house of her estranged older sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson), and brother-in-law, Ted (Hugh Dancy ) — her only remaining family. As Martha struggles to return to a more normal life, memories of her two years living as Marcy May in the cult led by charismatic Patrick (John Hawkes) surface and cause her to feel more alienated than ever. Read my review here.

Take Shelter (2011)

In Take Shelter, writer/director Jeff Nichols mines modern anxieties to create a moving portrait of a small-town everyman trying to safeguard his family while also possibly losing his grasp on reality. Not unlike the storms of its protagonist's nightmares, Take Shelter is moody and dark and takes its time to build suspense. Read my review here.

The Rum Diary (2011)

In The Rum Diary, writer/director Bruce Robinson and actor Johnny Depp offer a memorial to gonzo journalist Hunter S . Thompson. Based on Thompson's first novel, which was published decades after it was written, after the author was urged by Depp himself, The Rum Diary adds a forward look to the material; the film is tinged with an unwarranted nostalgia and lessens the impact of the actual story. Read my review here.

The Ides of March (2011)

Based on the play Farragut North by Beau Willimon, The Ides of March is not the suspenseful thriller imagined by studio marketing executives and portrayed in the trailers. Instead, the film, directed and co-written by George Clooney and starring Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti, simmers to a boil, allowing its stars to stew in their performances before revealing its final secrets. In The Ides of March, impossibly handsome Gosling plays a starry-eyed press secretary for even more impossibly handsome Clooney's Pennsylvania governor, who is in a neck-and-neck race for the Ohio Democratic presidential primary. This pair of unwitting pretty boys, however, are no match for the political chess game between the master strategists played by Giamatti and Hoffman. Step aside, leading men. In an interesting sleight of hand, director Clooney hands this film over to the character actors. Evan Rachel Wood and Marisa Tomei also star. Read my review.

The Way (2010)

While Charlie Sheen continues his "winning" streak in the headlines, brother Emilio Estevez offers a quiet and earnest look at fathers and sons in The Way. Writer/director Estevez cast his father, Martin Sheen, as Tom, an American on a reluctant pilgrimage to understand his own son who died on the first day of attempting to walk The Camino de Santiago, also known as The Way of Saint James. Estevez makes brief appearances as Tom's son. Estevez has his heart in the right place with The Way. The film is far from a vanity project for the writer/director's iconic father. However, Estevez's script is clogged with exposition and too many traveling companions loosely based on characters from the Wizard of Oz, transforming a lonely act of determination into a trite buddy movie. Yorick van Wageningen, James Nesbitt, and Deborah Kara Unger co-star. Read my review.

50/50 (2011)

Based on real events from screenwriter Will Reiser's life, 50/50 eventually overcomes the chief cliches of a cancer movie to provide a realistic view of a young man enduring treatment for a rare type of spinal cancer. Director Jonathan Levine (The Wackness) imbues the film with moments of playfulness and heartfelt sentiment, and star Joseph Gordon-Levitt gives a profound performance. With Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Anjelica Huston. Marketed as a comedy and buddy film, 50/50 is neither of these. The film offers a seriocomic exploration of loyalty, mortality, and loneliness. The film opens on Friday. Read my review.

The Debt (2010)

In John Madden's remake of the 2007 Israeli film Ha-hov, Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain alternate in the role of Mossad secret agent Rachel Singer. The Debt carefully moves between 1966's East Berlin and Israel. Chastain, as young Rachel, tracks down and kidnaps the "Surgeon of Birkenau” Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen) in East Berlin. And in Israel in 1997, Mirren, a now-retired spy held in high praise by her country and lauded in her daughter's book chronicling the undercover operation, learns of a few surprising — and one heartbreaking — revelations that could tarnish her reputation as Nazi killer. Read the rest of the review here.

The Guard (2011)

With The Guard, writer/director John Michael McDonagh delivers a droll and artful film that easily approaches his younger brother's critically acclaimed film In Bruges. Perhaps a sibling rivalry is the necessary motivation for the creation of brilliant, unconventional buddy flicks that sparkle with atmosphere, wit and heart. Read the rest of the review here.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010)

Co-written by Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark pays proper homage to the 1973 made-for-TV movie on which it's based. The film, directed by newcomer Troy Nixey, makes great use of the mood and tropes of classic 1970’s horror. However, the updates to the film fall short of capturing a contemporary zeitgeist, rendering the remake less psychologically invasive and, as a result, much less terrifying.

Read the rest of the review here.

Our Idiot Brother (2011)

A shaggy-dog story in the most pejorative sense of the term, Our Idiot Brother drones on with seemingly endless scenes of hipster preoccupation only to end with a facile joke. One of the founders of The Lemonheads and music video director Jesse Peretz directsfrom a script penned by his sister Evgenia Peretz and her husband David Schisgall. Despite its laudable cast, the film should have stayed in the family.

Read the rest of the review here.

Sarah's Key (2010)

While investigating the roundup and deportation of more than 13,000 Jews in occupied Paris in 1942, American-born journalist Julia Jarmond (Kristin Scott Thomas) uncovers the story of a girl who lived in the apartment in the Marais where Julia's husband grew up. To save her little brother, 10-year-old Sarah (Mélusine Mayance), locked him in a hidden closet in the apartment, but then was unceremoniously shuttled off to the Vélodrome d’Hiver, where in cramped and unsanitary conditions, she and her mother and father were forced to wait for days for transport to a prison camp outside of Paris, where they were then separated, and her mother and father shipped off to Nazi concentration camps outside of France.

Read the rest of the review here.

One Day (2011)

In 1988, ugly duckling Emma Morley (Anne Hathaway) and golden boy Dexter Mayhew (Jim Sturgess) officially meet on the night of their college graduation. Although Emma brings her long-time crush home to her sad, little student flat for sex, the two decide they're better off as just friends and spend the wee hours of the morning cuddling. The story then plays out in snapshots of their lives together and apart, set on subsequent anniversaries of their meeting. Based on David Nicholls' bestselling novel of the same name, One Day is actually numerous days on the same date — July 15 — over a period of 20 years.

Read the rest of the review here.