David Edelstein

Moneyball stars Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the Oakland A's general manager who used analytics and statistics to stay competitive against other teams with much larger payrolls. Critic David Edelstein says the film, based on the 2003 Michael Lewis book, is "entertaining as a sports-underdog story."

Drive is what Driver does, and driven is how audiences will feel after a screening of Nicholas Winding Refn's brutally moving thriller, which stars Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston and Albert Brooks. (Recommended)

Vera Farmiga makes her directorial debut with Higher Ground, which centers on a woman who joins and then flees a fundamentalist religious order. Film critic David Edelstein says the movie is "complicated and unresolved in the best possible way."

Raoul Ruiz's 4 1/2 hour Portuguese/French melodrama -- a puppet theater of the upper class -- won't be everybody's cup of tea. But critic David Edelstein says the film's haunting mix of distance and intimacy makes the hours fly by.

Emma Stone and Viola Davis star in the film adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's best-selling novel about a white woman who sets out to tell the story of black domestic servants in 1960s Mississippi. Critic David Edelstein says that both Stone and Davis pull off stunning performances.

The sci-fi Western Cowboys & Aliens and the low-budget British film Attack the Block both open this weekend. Critic David Edelstein says both movies bring people together from different walks of life — but only one is really worth seeing.

The latest Marvel Comics superhero movie stars Chris Evans as the 98-pound weakling who transforms into Captain America. Critic David Edelstein says the film "has an easy, classical pace and a lot of good, old-fashioned craftsmanship."

The Boy Who Lived takes his final bow, in what proves to be a majestic, engrossing, proper fantasy conclusion. Critic David Edelstein approves of the film's steady aura of doom and will be sad to see the now-grown boy wizard hang up his wand for good.

Documentary filmmaker James Marsh recounts the efforts of a Columbia University psychology professor to teach a chimp sign language in Project Nim. Critic David Edelstein says the brilliant documentary reveals more about humans than it does about the animal kingdom.

One humble, one humongous, these movies couldn't be more different. Larry Crowne is low-tech with human-scaled characters. Transformers: Dark of the Moon is like War of the Worlds on steroids. But in their own way, each one is perfect for the holiday weekend, says critic David Edelstein.