The Trip to Italy

Director Michael Winterbottom made my top-ten list in 2011 with "The Trip," and with the hilarious and completely delightful "The Trip to Italy," he's sure to do so again.

Philomena

Having set the bar for least screen time in an Oscar-winning performance in "Shakespeare in Love," Dame Judi Dench occupies almost every scene of the new tearjerker "Philomena," about an English nurse's search for the boy she was forced to give up for adoption fifty years earlier.

The Look of Love, You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet!

The Look of Love

You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet!

Props to director Michael Winterbottom and his production design for evocatively recreating the London of the mod 1960's for "The Look of Love," the new biopic about the English porn king Paul Raymond. Unfortunately, his movie never swings.

What Maisie Knew

Sensitive, knowing and true, Scott McGehee's and David Siegel's "What Maisie Knew" takes familiar material involving divorce and child custody to new heights with its intelligence and emotional honesty.