Cloud Atlas

It's elating to watch filmmakers you admire take on the impossible. David Mitchell's 2004 novel Cloud Atlas is an uphill battle incarnate. And nobody makes it to the top. A sprawling literary opus that tells six stories that range across continents from the 19th century to the post-apocalyptic future is a killer to squeeze into one movie, even a movie that runs nearly three hours. So naturally the Wachowski siblings, Andy and Lana (the former Larry, now identifying as female), took the dare. And the Matrix creators brought along their Run Lola Run buddy Tom Tykwer to share the writing and directing. The trio started by casting starry actors, led by Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Hugh Grant, in a multitude of roles. Just the cost of all the latex and prosthetics must have dented the reported $100 million budget (check out Berry in a Fu Manchu mustache). Like Mitchell's book, the laudable attempt is to show we're all connected. But audiences may only unite in their confusion. At one point, Hanks – playing what I believe is a tattooed Polynesian tribesman of the future – pleads in pidgin English, "Tell me the true true." OK, then. For all the spectacular settings and visionary designs, Cloud Atlas left me feeling disconnected. Sad. But that's the true true.

The Sessions

Getting laid is a bitch for most people. For San Francisco poet and journalist Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes), it's damn near impossible. Since he contracted polio at age six, O'Brien has spent all but a few hours a day in an iron lung. Now, just two years shy of being a 40-year-old virgin, he decides to see a sex surrogate. What Hollywood hack makes this stuff up? As it turns out, no one. The Sessions, based on O'Brien's experiences while living in Berkeley in 1988, is the stuff of real life. If you're thinking, "How depressing," snap out of it. Writer-director Ben Lewin, drawing on O'Brien's essay "On Seeing a Sex Surrogate" (published in 1990), has crafted an exhilarating gift of a movie that's funny, touching and vital. And Hawkes (Winter's Bone, Deadwood) does the kind of acting that awards were invented for. Having learned to twist his body, use a mouth stick to dial a phone and type, and suggest the sheer effort it took for O'Brien to simply breathe, Hawkes and his technical virtuosity are astounding. But it's how Hawkes uses his voice and expressive eyes to reveal the inner Mark that makes his performance a triumph. Lewin, who also suffered some of the debilitating effects of polio as a child, knows this material from the inside. The sex scenes with O'Brien and surrogate Cheryl Cohen Greene (Helen Hunt) are handled with rare delicacy and blunt, bubbling humor. "Nice shirt," Cheryl tells the painfully vulnerable Mark, as he lies in bed awaiting her first touch. Hunt plays the role full-out, no nonsense about her nudity or the intricacies of a job she must reconcile with being a wife and mother. Hunt is spectacular in every way, finding just the right balance between tough and tender. William H. Macy also scores mightily as Father Brendan, the priest who helps O'Brien reconcile sex surrogacy with devout Catholicism in ways you won't see coming. OK, no more spoilers about The Sessions. Just see it. This movie will take a piece out of you.

Holy Motors

Leos Carax, the French writer and director of the wondrous and wicked Holy Motors, has met the challenge of filming the visions dancing and dueling inside his own internally exploding head. Love him or hate him, Carax does Carax brilliantly. From 1984's Boy Meets Girl and 1991's Les Amants du Pont-Neuf through his last film,1999's hugely divisive Pola X, Carax goes his own artful way with a talent that makes up its own rules. Holy Motors swept me up in its surreal landscape of film genres by the sheer force of Carax's devotion to cinema (he's a former film critic). The great Denis Lavant, a Carax muse and an actor of shimmering physical grace, takes on a dozen roles, male and female. As Monsieur Oscar, Lavant begins his work in Paris by climbing into a white stretch limo chauffeured by loyal Celine (a mesmerizing Edith Scob). Each stop will require Oscar, with the help of wardrobe and makeup in the back seat, to transform himself into a variety of characters – a tycoon, a gypsy beggar, a ninja warrior. You get the picture. Even if you don't, you'll be transported by Lavant as Monsieur Merde, a sewer troll who kidnaps a model (Eva Mendes) from a fashion shoot in Pere-Lachaise cemetery, or as an assassin sent to kill his own double, or – in a rush of pure romantic yearning – a man reunited with a former amour (Aussie pop star Kylie Minogue) in a deserted department store that becomes the setting for a musical interlude of surpassing loveliness. Minogue's singing of the emotive "Who Were We," co-written by Carax, makes a gorgeous coda to a movie that's drunk on its own movie love. Don't be afraid to leap into the wild blue of Carax's untamable imagination. Holy Motors, fueled by pure feeling, is a dream of a movie you want to get lost in. It's a thing of beauty.

Argo

Just so we're straight, Ben Affleck doesn't merely direct Argo, he directs the hell out of it, nailing the quickening pace, the wayward humor, the nerve-frying suspense. Hold off on the sniping. I didn't say Affleck was the next Hitchcock. I'm saying job well done. Argo takes Matt Damon's BFF out of his native Boston, where his first two directing jobs were set (Gone Baby Gone, The Town), and zaps him onto a global stage, namely the 1979 Iran hostage crisis that saw 52 Americans held captive for 444 days. Affleck does himself proud, detailing the attack on the American Embassy in Tehran by Islamic student militants and the plight of six U.S. embassy staffers who escaped but needed help to get out alive. Argo is a ferociously exciting thriller. Yes, it's based on fact. Yes, that's Hollywood code for truth-stretching. But, no, you shouldn't be that worried. The Top 10 Actors Who Direct in the 21st Century And speaking of Hollywood, that's where the truth of Argo becomes stranger than fiction. Top CIA extractor Tony Mendez (Affleck cannily underplays except for a scary Seventies haircut that's the tonsorial equivalent of shag carpeting) enlists the dream factory to get his escapees out of hiding – they're cocooned for nearly three months by Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor (Victor Garber) – and on a plane to safety. Not only does Mendez pose as a Canadian film producer scouting Iran to film a fake sci-fi epic called Argo, he must train each of his six charges to persuasively play members of a film crew. Rich satire is mined as Mendez makes the phony Argo movie look legit, complete with casting calls, production meetings and posters. He gets help in L.A. from real-life Planet of the Apes makeup artist John Chambers (John Goodman, wonderfully droll) and Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), a composite of every film producer who ever barked his way to being boss. Arkin is comic perfection, relieving the stress with deliciously cynical line readings. As the tension mounts, with protesters savagely rocking the van carrying the crew as they drive through the Grand Bazaar (a great sequence), you'll feel nothing but grateful for the Arkin-Goodman shenanigans. Everything culminates in the film's final third, as Affleck takes the next step in what looks like a major directing career. There's no doubt he's crafted one of the best movies of the year. Added props to Chris Terrio, whose gathering storm of a script puts the major players in motion: Mendez and his nervous embassy workers speed off for the airport. CIA boss Jack O'Donnell (a superb, soulful Bryan Cranston) sweats out the "best bad idea" the agency could concoct. Chambers and Siegel keep their sham B movie humming in L.A. Only the Canadians, who spearheaded the rescue, get short shrift. The Argo operation stayed top secret until Clinton declassified it in 1997. But given current U.S.-Iran relations, the film practically screams with topicality. Shot by the gifted Rodrigo Prieto (Brokeback Mountain), with Istanbul standing in for Tehran, Argo has a propulsive energy that sweeps you along. And if the jacked-up climax, with its narrow escapes and a chase down the tarmac, doesn't jibe with pedestrian reality, don't sweat it. That's Hollywood for you.

Seven Psychopaths

What movie junkie out there wouldn't leap at the chance to see merry pranksters such as Christopher Walken, Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson go bug-fuck nuts in something called Seven Psychopaths? Walken, his line readings a thing of bizarro beauty, is reason enough to sign up. The icing on the cake is Martin McDonagh, the acclaimed Irish playwright who took a winning stab at writing and directing for the screen in 2008's In Bruges. Two years ago, Walken made Broadway hum with mirth and menace in McDonagh's A Behanding in Spokane. Now they're back together, with Walken playing a priceless McDonagh creation called Hans, an L.A. con artist who teams up with Billy (Rockwell) to kidnap dogs from wealthy owners and hold them for ransom. Their big mistake is nabbing Bonny, a Shih Tzu belonging to Harrelson's Charlie Costello, a gangster with a sadistic streak for anything non-canine. Harrelson is hilarious, especially going goo-goo over Bonny. And Walken and Rockwell have mad skills at, well, everything. Their byplay gets mired by a subplot involving Marty (Colin Farrell), a boozy Irish screenwriter stuck in Hollywood and blocked on his new script. He hasn't written anything but the title, Seven Psychopaths. To help, Billy puts out an all-points alert for scum of the earth. Not a bad idea when the great Tom Waits, playing a serial killer, becomes a contender. Blood splatters, heads explode, and McDonagh takes sassy, self-mocking shots at the very notion of being literary in Hollywood. It's crazy- killer fun.

Smashed

Addiction dramas are as common as reality shows and often just as rank. The standard bearers for movies about alcoholics range from The Lost Weekend and Days of Wine and Roses to Leaving Las Vegas with Nicolas Cage at his staggering, Oscar-winning best. Smashed joins the ranks of the winners, mostly because of an unmissable and unforgettable performance by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Her character, Kate Hannah, is married to Charlie (Breaking Bad's exemplary Aaron Paul) a wannabe composer who likes to get wasted as much as his wife. Charlie, who basically hangs out with his buds all day, believes he can handle his drinking. Kate, who teaches first grade at an L.A. school, is soon disabused of that notion. After projectile vomiting in front of her class, she tries to get off the hook by lying to the principal (a very fine Megan Mullally) and claiming she's pregnant. It's only when the school's vice principal, a recovering alcoholic played with deeply affecting restraint by Parks and Recreation's Nick Offerman, gets Kate to an AA meeting that she sees the need for a change. Kate gets help from a sponsor (The Help Oscar winner Octavia Spencer in a lovely turn), but finds herself increasingly estranged from Charlie. She needs to do this on her own. Smashed covers a lot of familiar ground, but writer-director James Ponsoldt deftly dodges gooey sentiment. Winstead and Paul are dynamite, artfully walking the tightrope between pain and denial. And Winstead, too often relegated to the action-horror game in The Thing, Death Proof, < a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/scott-pilgrim-vs-the-world-20100812">Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, is a revelation. With resonant intelligence and healing humor, she reveals Kate right down to her nerve endings. Don't forget Winstead when making a list of the year's Best Actress contenders. Yes, she's that good.

Frankenweenie

A stop-motion animated movie in black-and-white and 3D. Who'd think of that? Try Tim Burton, the undisputed wizard of odd who's been yearning to do a full-length feature of the live-action short he made in 1984 when he toiled as an animator at Disney. Well, now Frankenweenie is here, and it's a honey, a dark and dazzling spellbinder that scares up laughs and surprising emotion. Only Burton, inspired by his own time growing­ up different in suburban California, could envision this Frankenstein-inspired tale of a boy scientist named Victor (voiced by Charlie Tahan) who invents a machine to bring his dog, Sparky, back from the dead. It's not just his parents (Martin Short and Catherine O'Hara) who are horrified. The whole neighborhood is in a spin, especially Edgar "E" Gore (Atticus Shaffer), a deformed pal of Victor's. Burton's artistry is on par with his animated imaginings in Corpse Bride and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Getting creeped out has never seemed this totally cool.

The Paperboy

Boring it's not. This campy Southern trash-wallow is too jaw-dropping for that. Already infamous is the scene in which Nicole Kidman squats down and pees on Zac Efron. Hey, a jellyfish stung him; urine is the best cure. There's no cure for The Paperboy, the shamelessly lurid film version of Pete Dexter's 1995 novel. Director Lee Daniels, Oscar-nominated for Precious, follows his instincts, no matter how pervy, leaving plot, character and logic to catch up. The movie, with a script by Dexter himself, has guts. And heaps of atmosphere. You can practically feel the humidity dripping in Lately, Florida, circa 1969, as Miami Times reporter Ward Jansen (a livewire Matthew McConaughey) returns home to investigate the case of Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack taking creepy to the max), a swamp rat about to be executed for killing a cop. Charlotte Bless (Kidman), a bottle blonde with a jones for guys on death row, thinks Hillary is innocent. Ward's younger brother Jack (a surprisingly vivid Efron), who delivers the local paper published by his and Ward's daddy (Scott Glenn), thinks Charlotte sizzles. He's right. And Kidman, with enough come-on carnality to singe the screen, savors the role like a juicy peach. As Ward and his black partner, Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo), dig for a crime story that might win them a Pulitzer, kinky secrets spill out all over the place. This hot mess got booed by the snobs at Cannes, but there's no denying its profane energy.

Butter

The chance for delicious satire melts away quickly in Butter, a spoof without oomph. Jennifer Garner stars as Laura Pickler, an uptight Iowa housewife whose husband, Bob (Modern Family's Ty Burrell), has won the state's annual butter-sculpting contest for the past 15 years. Now they're asking Bob to step aside to make way for fresh blood, like Destiny (Yara Shahidi), an 11-year-old black foster child with a flair for shaping butter into art. Laura is so mad that she decides to take on Destiny herself and keep the butter prize in the family. By now you can see where the script by Jason Micallef is going. Butter elections are no different from presidential ones. And you can bet that the conservative tightasses fight dirty, especially in contrast to the liberal all-inclusiveness repped by Destiny. Yes, it's that obvious. Wait till you see Hugh Jackman as randy car dealer Boyd Bolton. British director Jim Field Smith has no shame about shooting ducks in a row. But political satire needs more than a fresh setup – it needs barbs that stick. And you can't have that when the script keeps throwing in distractions like a stripper (a wildcat Olivia Wilde) who shags Bob and then takes it out on Laura by taking her on in butter. Best in show is definitely Garner, who knows how to play comedy of the absurd. Too bad she's stuck in a movie that wishes it were a Christopher Guest sendup but comes off like a cheap imitation.