What can you do when you know that death is approaching? Joaquim Pinto contracted HIV and hepatitis C twenty years ago. In this film-diary which he directed he reveals his innermost thoughts as he lines up one difficult day with another, powerless to do anything about his debilitating afflictions. And yet, his documentary is less about the philosophical implications of life and death as it is, more simply, about how to live with

As a critic it’s important to remember that there have always been bad movies. While Godard was at his peak and Arthur Penn and Warren Beatty were making "Bonnie and Clyde," Hollywood was unrolling horrible Cold War spoofs and beach blanket movies. The bad fade. The good last. It gets really hard sometimes. I tried to keep that in mind while suffering through "Guardians of the Galaxy," the latest Marvel Comic books adaptation.

In "An Unwanted Man" Philip Seymour Hoffman is Gunther Bachmann, the leader of a secret team working for the German government fighting the war against terror from Hamburg. The film follows a plan to bring down a doctor (Homayoun Ershadi, who was seen notably in Abbas Kiarostami's "Taste of Cherry" in 1987) suspected of financing terrorism and Al-Qaeda. Bachmann works with a tight-knit posse of spies, the group's

This is the surreal and poetic story of a young idealistic and inventive man, Colin, who meets Chloe, a young woman who could be the incarnation of a blues piece by Duke Ellington. Their idyllic marriage turns to bitterness when Chloe falls ill due to a water lily that's growing in her lung. To pay for his care in a fantasyland Paris, Colin must work under increasingly absurd conditions while all around them their apartment deteriorates

Watching Pawel Pawlikowski’s drama “Ida,” is to immerse yourself in a film of great silences. Set in the grim landscape of postwar-Poland “Ida” follows Anna, a young Catholic nun (newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska) as she prepares to profess her vows in the convent she's lived in since childhood. Before she can take this important step, the convent’s Mother Superior insists that she pay a visit to her only living relative, her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza). Obeying reluctantly, Anna’s appearance in Wanda’s life unmoors not only the older woman but Anna herself, who learns that her real name is Ida, and that her Jewish parents were murdered during World War II.

Bravo, Clint Eastwood! With “Jersey Boys,” the director moves away from his sometimes schlocky and often manipulative movies such as “Invictus,” “Gran Torino,” or “Hereafter,” and gives us a biopic as moving as it is entertaining. Like the Broadway musical, it’s a story of greed, success, fall and redemption, none of it unpleasant as the protagonists are young, gifted, and for the most part naïve.

In scandal-prone filmdom, not the least is the lackluster career of a great actor, Guy Pearce, though his choice of unclassifiable turns (“Memento,” “Two Brothers,” etc.) may be a factor.

Case in point, the strange and strangely moving “The Rover,” where in a desolate post-apocalyptic wasteland, his character, Eric, maybe a former soldier of fortune, farmer or adventurer, and surely

How alienated does our work/family/play/social-media environment make us? What if we took the time to measure this alienation, what if we looked, really looked at what’s around us, what if we grew wings and flew high above it all, taking stock, seeing our lives from a distance with an uncritical but lucid eye?

Such is the premise of Pascale Ferran’s lovely and thoughtful

There are two types of British indie movies. Some are touched with deep or crazy ideas too creative for mainstream release. Others give middle-aged British stars something to do in between “Harry Potter” movies. Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan are the middle-age British stars of record in Jeff Hopkins’s romantic comedy, “The Love Punch.” They play a divorced English couple driven to both revenge

German director Jan Ole Gerster's droll and energetic feature debut "A Coffee in Berlin" narrates a day in the life of Niko, a twentysomething college dropout who's able to live without a care in the world, apparently.

Niko (played by a Tom Schilling who bears a strange resemblance to James McAvoy) lives for the moment as he breezes through the streets of Berlin, observing everyone around him with an insatiable