Critics’ Choices
Amour A perfect storm of a motion picture, “Amour” finds the icy, immaculate director Michael Haneke unexpectedly taking on deeply emotional subject matter: what happens to a lifelong, harmonious marriage when the wife suffers a series of debilitating strokes that changes the couple’s life beyond recognition. Starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva. (K.Tu., Dec. 19) In French with English subtitles. (2:05) PG-13.
Argo A breakneck tale, directed by and starring Ben Affleck, detailing how a crack CIA agent rescued six Americans from the jaws of the Iranian Revolution with a little help from the good folks of Hollywood. It’s all based on a true story persuasively conveyed in the best classic movie tradition. (K.Tu., Oct. 12) (2:11) R.
Beasts of the Southern Wild The Bathtub is a place of myths and wonders, a broken-down teardrop of Louisiana marsh and mud, and the setting for an extraordinary new drama whose fierceness, like its 6-year-old heroine Hushpuppy, grabs on and won’t let go. Director Benh Zeitlin and co-writer Lucy Alibar have created characters that are wondrously indelible, distinctive of voice and set them inside a story that will unleash a devastating hurricane, and a flood of emotions, before it is done. (B.S., June 27). (1:31) PG-13.
Django Unchained Here is the brilliance of Quentin Tarantino: He can rip a horrific page out of history — slavery in the Antebellum South — put it through his favorite grindhouse mill, kick in biting comedy whose sheer audacity and searing irony demands laughter … and yet, and yet … never for a moment diminish or let us forget the brutal reality. (B.S., Dec.
24) (2:45) R. Story on Page D8
The Gatekeepers Chilling, disturbing, riveting from beginning to end, these extended interviews with six former heads of Shin Bet, Israel’s super-secret domestic counter-terrorism agency, add up to a documentary potent enough to alter how you see the world. (K.Tu., Nov. 26) In Hebrew with English subtitles. (1:37) PG-13.
Les Miserables Director Tom Hooper (in his first film since the Oscar-winning “The King’s Speech”) has doubled down on this musical’s greatest strength and magnified its ability to create waves of overwhelming feelings in an audience by casting topflight actors and having them sing live. (K.Tu., Dec. 25) (2:39) PG-13.
Life of Pi Ang Lee’s film asks that we take a leap of faith along with a boy named Pi Patel and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker as an angry ocean and the ironies of fate set them adrift. Their struggle for survival is as elegant as it is epic with the director
creating a adventure so cinematically bold, and a spiritual voyage so quietly profound, that if not for the risk to the castaways, you might wish their passage from India would never end. (B.S., Nov. 21) In 3-D. (2:06) PG.
Lincoln Steven Spielberg turns on a dime and delivers his most restrained, interior film, and Daniel Day-Lewis surpasses even himself and makes us see a celebrated figure in ways we hadn’t imagined as history comes alive in the best possible way. (K.Tu., Nov. 9) (2:25) PG-13.
Silver Linings Playbook Stars Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence will make you laugh, but don’t expect this David O. Russell film to fit in any genre pigeonhole. Dramatic, emotional, even heartbreaking, as well as wickedly funny, it has the gift of going its own way. (K.Tu., Nov. 16) (2:02) R.
Zero Dark Thirty Director Kathryn Bigelow, aided by a splendid performance by Jessica Chastain, proves herself once again to be a master of heightened realism and narrative drive in this retelling of the decadelong search for Osama bin Laden. (K.Tu., Dec. 19) (2:36) R.