Written and directed by

Todd Solondz

IFC Films • Not rated

Most critics take notes while watching movies, the better not to forget their pithiest thoughts when it’s time to write the review. Here are a couple I jotted down at a screening of Life During Wartime.

“Am I supposed to be laughing? This is about suicide and pedophilia and all kinds of really sad, confused people. Why am I laughing?”

Written by Michael Bacall and Edgar Wright; directed by Edgar Wright

Universal Pictures Rated PG-13

Give yourself five minutes to figure out if this is the right movie for you. If you’re immediately annoyed by the loud rock music, by words popping up – onomatopoeia-like – onscreen, and the presence of doe-eyed, squeaky voiced Michael Cera in the lead role, perhaps you should ask for your money back (or sneak in to see Inception again).

Written by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Guillaume Laurant;

directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Sony Pictures Classics
Rated R

Written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia

Sony Pictures Classics

Rated R

Following in the grand storytelling footsteps of his father – Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez – filmmaker Rodrigo Garcia’s newest film presents a trio of separate stories that all eventually intertwine. The result is a gripping, compelling, moving drama that celebrates, warts and all, both the joys and trying times of motherhood.

Written and directed by Nicholas Stoller

Universal Pictures Rated R

First there was Judd Apatow, who gave us The 40 Year Old Virgin, which led to Knocked Up, which begat Superbad and Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

You know the drill: raucous, sex-driven comedies peopled by characters with hearts of gold.

Written by Eduardo Sacheri and Juan Jose Campanella; directed by Juan Jose Campanella

Sony Pictures Classics

Rated R

It’s always a good thing when you can argue that an Oscar-winning film is well deserved of the honor. That’s the case with The Secret in Their Eyes, the Argentine entry that nabbed this year’s statue for Best Foreign Language Film.

Directed by Thomas Balmes

Focus Features

Rated PG

For no easily understood reason, this sweet, charming, kind of fluffy documentary opens with a couple of Namibian toddlers playing in the dirt, banging rocks, fighting, crying, and drooling. Then it flashes back to “a few months earlier,” when one of them was born.

Written and directed by Raymond De Felitta

Anchor Bay Films

Rated PG-13

Pretty much unknown outside of New York, City Island is a fishing village just off the coast of the Bronx. It’s here that the Rizzo family lives, sort of happily, even if they don’t get along very well with each other.

Written and directed by Floria Sigismondi

Apparition • Rated R

Written and directed by

Noah Baumbach

Focus Features • Rated R

When we first meet Florence (indie darling Greta Gerwig) in the opening frames of Greenberg, she’s walking the dog, running errands, doing the kinds of things people do on a typical day. Just a few minutes later, it’s clear that nothing she’s doing has anything to do with herself. She’s living someone else’s life – as a personal assistant, or maybe a “Gal Friday” is more like it – to a wealthy L.A. family.