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This low-budget Irish indie, an arthouse hit last summer, is a modern sort of musical. It uses music not for glitzy dance numbers and Chicago-style theatricality as much as it uses it as a metaphor for time, momentary experience, and fleeting human connection. The film is about two people who share a deep human bond for a time, just as a song and its listener enjoy a sort of sacredly finite communion for a few short moments.Similar to Lost in Translation or Before Sunrise, Once is a divinely restless little film that shows the purity of unadulterated joy—even if it is only a finite glimpse of a greater, infinite experience. (Official website.)
—Brett McCracken

In 1920s England, Walter and Kitty marry for dubious reasons; he needs some humanity as he studies infectious diseases, she wants to prove to her high-society family that she's not becoming a spinster. When Walter discovers Kitty's infidelity, he accepts an assignment in a remote Chinese village ravaged by a deadly epidemic. In this beautiful but dangerous location, they discover tough lessons about punishment and forgiveness, social class and appearances, motivations and expectations, themselves and each other. Based on a W. Somerset Maugham novel, The Painted Veil offers perhaps the most moving lessons about the fragile, surprising, and redemptive nature of true love. (Our review.)
—Camerin Courtney

This film—the true story of Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale), a German-born U.S. Navy pilot who was shot down over Laos in 1966, tortured and thrown into a jungle prison—is a harrowing and rousing tale of comraderie and buoyancy of spirit. Dengler, modest and good-natured, even in the face of extraordinary adversity, has no doubt he will escape his shackles and find freedom. But he is utterly unwilling to succeed without his cellmate, helicopter pilot Duane Martin (Steve Zahn). Dengler's platonic bond with Martin, as strong as marriage and more resilient than death, is unforgettable. (Our review.)
—Brandon Fibbs

Films about adult brother-sister relationships are a rare breed, and Laura Linney has now appeared in two of them: 2000's You Can Count on Me, and this year's The Savages. Her brother is played this time by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and together, they have to figure out a way to look after their father, who is slipping into dementia, and who, it is suggested, did not treat his children so well in the past. The characters' lives are somewhat messy, and writer-director Tamara Jenkins allows some issues to go unresolved, but she does a masterful job of showing how family, for all the wounds it causes, can provide at least some of the healing, too. (Our review.)
—Peter Chattaway

Painted in the bright primary colors of their source material, the comic-book morality of theSpider-Manfilms is undimmed by Hollywood cynicism or sophistication. Though overstuffed with action, characters and spectacle,Spider-Man 3doesn't neglect its moral center. Where the original was about power and responsibility andSpider-Man 2was about sacrificing dreams and holding firm for the greater good, this threequel is about selfless love, the ugliness of vengeance, and asking and giving forgiveness. (Our review.)
—Steven Greydanus

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