Aaron Hillis

Folklorist Alan Govenar has dedicated himself to exalting their work in dozens of books and films. His knowledge and affection are contagious, but this enjoyable documentary is a sampler plate crammed with bite-size pieces that only hint at the original fare’s distinctive flavors.

With unpretentious formal rigor and a lighthearted deadpan, the film tracks Xiaobin’s development through self-reflexive escalation.

The setup may be as unsubtle as a metaphoric morality lesson about Europe’s not-too-distant past, or perhaps it’s politically timeless; it’s not a far leap to also think about a certain someone’s insane need for backscratching loyalty within the White House.

Machines proves both uncompromising and unforgettable.

This self-reflexive ode to following muses, finding meaning in nothingness, and transcending the sensitive roadblocks between fathers and sons is loopy, irreverent, and more intensely personal than anything its mystic creator has invented before.

Herzog smartly takes a broad, bird's-eye perspective of our early techno-evolution.

Manically imaginative and very funny.

The performances are undeniably authentic, the cinematography could make Terrence Malick stand to give a slow clap, and sometimes a sensitive mood and evocative milieu are enough to sustain when there's barely a plot.

Viko Nikci's undeniably poignant doc surprisingly chooses to follow threads of hope and forgiveness over the angers of injustice.

Elegantly shot to emphasize the suffocating atmosphere of its believably frightening scenario, the film speaks clearly about generational expectations and the disintegration of the middle class, even when the brothers communicate without using words.

The film's convoluted moral trajectory to hell may be as unoriginal as quoting Taxi Driver, and the pervasive violent menace can be needlessly punishing (including a drugged sexual assault), but as stylish, scorched-earth entertainment, it'll get you in its teeth.

As the waves of this cinematic dream break, the profundities left behind come not from character arcs, but observed states of being that feel subjectively experienced.

It's a tough, gripping watch made emotionally rewarding through trenchant plotting and Gosheva's tight-lipped expressiveness.

Come for the cult of personality, stay for the nostalgia of a dirtier, dodgier, far cooler scene.

Amalric's impish dexterity and Del Toro's mild catatonia make for a memorable mismatch, but Jimmy P.'s profound slow burn might be too clinical for some to consider dramatic.

Kazan holds together a decent coming-of-age script that's emotionally sincere if tonally unfocused.

Too madcap or not self-serious enough to be called transgressive, Moritsugu's degenerate romp splits the tonal difference between Nick Zedd and John Waters.

Don't discount October Country filmmakers Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher's tragicomically beautiful art-doc, which sensitively favors unflinching testimonials and visually impressionistic observations over journalistic activism.

The line between creative ambition and risky obsession is sharply drawn—or rather, carved out of New Mexico sandstone—in the life and work of wholly motivated artist Ra Paulette.

A rich, artful quartet of shorts mirroring the diverse idiosyncrasies of four significant auteurs.

So far the funniest, headiest, most playfully eccentric American indie of the year, Bujalski's perceptive avant-garde comedy...teases out unanswered existential and behavioral questions about mankind's curious obsession with artificial intelligence and automation.

The retro photos and footage are also bountiful and, natch, jazzily edited enough that the standard talking-head techniques are instantly forgivable.

Youssef Delara and Michael D. Olmos's variation on the too-familiar subgenre (the rising inner-city superstar here is a Latina tomboy) is more heartfelt, humanistic, and entertaining than such a clichéd showbiz cautionary tale has any right to be.

De Niro is constantly upstaged by the showstopping, sunburnt duo of Streisand and Hoffman, but even their material is so recycled (more Focker puns, etc.) that it doesn’t matter who steals the most chuckles.

Marker's even-handedness and playful spirit tries to show that innocent art and activist politics are two sides of the same culture, even if deviant government duplicity threatens the balance between them.

An enjoyable mess that aimlessly goofs like "Men in Black" when its script calls for "Black Adder."

The Aristocrats lies halfway between two potentially great films: it's neither a smartly austere succession of jokesmiths with all the critique left to the audience, nor a deconstructionist essay on "crossing the line" and the language of comedy itself.

A truly remarkable and compassionate debut from a savvy, self-confident filmmaker. No bull.

Anchorman is the kind of wonderful, cotton-candy escapism that should leave you with the right kind of stomachache.

The mood never droops, however, saved by Mario’s well-studied ability to channel his father, a performance as delicately nuanced and polished as the film is frenetic and raw.

Has masterfully polished mechanics, some of the most seamless CGI effects in recent memory, and the Wells veneration is admirable. However, the film takes far too many creative shortcuts, like bookended narration and aliens that make strategically humanlike mistakes, completely incongruous to their technological superiority.

Open Water may not be a pristine or complex suspense thriller, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anything else as terrifyingly potent in such a tiny package.

It may be a crowd-pleasing escapism, but it's that feel-good shmaltz that ultimately plays the film off-key.

The film's ambitiously eye-opening hypothesis, colorful characters, genuine compassion, and unexpected humor will make for a great vintage in years to come.

Marie Antoinette churns a symphony out of a single note, too light and hermetically sealed in the minds of Coppola and her queen to transcend its artfully cared-for fluffiness.

This is as exceptional as microbudget cinema gets.

It may not be saying much, but what keeps this movie afloat, aside from solid performances, is the nearly sophisticated dynamic of an otherwise redundant punchline.

The film stubbornly refuses to fill empty space with dialogue or adhere to any structure other than its own downbeat atmosphere, forcing viewers to be intensely patient or squirm. It's the best film I’ve seen in a while that I wouldn't recommend to anyone.

Where Dans Paris truly pops, besides its spot-on leads or the slick curation of its fashions and locales, are in its mood-mixing musical moments.

The Orphanage's joys come from the experiential: Bayona's cultured technical skills, including some phenomenal sound design, and sustained anxiety. It's about as healthy as junk food gets.

Dullaghan's film is a bit too straightforward and introductory to be declared a definitive portraiture. The gold nuggets worth sifting for lie in the anecdotal minutiae.

Van Sant has mastered this kind of driftingly contemplative imagery and his layered soundscapes would make Sonic Youth proud (of course, Kim Gordon makes an appearance), but the introduction of other characters fracture the film's greatest asset, its lonely first-person atmosphere.

Stylized with a recurring misty focus, the film's economically captured detail shots (gestures, expressions, caught moments) convey genuine sensitivity without the expected weepiness.

Inland Empire is interchangably terrifying, maddening, shockingly hilarious and perversely exciting, and that's just to those who end up disliking it.

A wildly creative amusement, thanks mostly to Campbell, whose weathered yet still-taking-care-of-business Elvis is alone worth the price of admission.

Land of the Dead is Romero's long-awaited masterpiece, a slyly suspenseful and droll thrill-ride that expounds on both the highbrow and the chewed-off-brow concepts of his previous trilogy, then flippantly dismisses the cheap scare tactics of the control-pad generation's gimmicky genre knockoffs.

Scene for radiant scene, shot for nary a wasted shot, The New World is the most artfully sculpted film in American cinema this year.

Documentarian Liz Garbus masterfully turns her minimalist camera's eye on young girls institutionalized at the Waxter Juvenile Facility near Baltimore.

Stylistically, Carandiru is definitely less monochromatic than an "Oz" rerun.

Underscored by the fragility of a plinking piano and well-timed flourishes to uplift, this heroic heartstring-tugger is still frequently and unexpectedly affecting, so much that it's able to hide its true face as a glorified movie-of-the-week.

The true sensory delight is when the two men share screen time, and the palette is bombarded with their contrasting hues, the score (by Pascal Esteve) even meticulously interlacing their two musical personalities.

The brilliant subtleties of this absorbing, must-see drama are best seen through Penn, who transforms a strongly nuanced script into the greatest performance of the year.

At its most simplified, Sucker punches its way to the top of the Italian-western mountains, but never reaches the peak of its immortalized trilogy brethren.

Preaches post-9/11 family values to conservatives while appeasing liberals with ideas of tolerance and social activism.

Under the clichéd spell of rock-and-roll promiscuity and pills popped, Seigner shows astonishing range as the detached superstar who still fixates on her ex-boyfriend and has mood swings like a manic-depressive on fast-forward.

DiG! never delves deep enough to act as a true cautionary tale. It's an amusingly drunken PBS-worthy human-interest doc, unless you're too old or not cool enough to have played in the embarrassing hipster zoo, in which case DiG! may be the closest you'll ever get to the uncaged animals.

The real top billing, what audience-goers are obviously shelling out to see, is the computer-generated chaos, and as they should: Digital technology has caught up with our collective imaginations Now More Than Ever.

Watching the Vogels mull over art that they don't need to understand only makes their delight more infectious.

A conventional but genuinely heartrending exposé of the Indiana boy who grew to be a powerful religious cult leader, director Stanley Nelson's thoroughly researched doc is not a posthumous character assassination, which would be all too easy and unnecessary.

For such a pedestrian exercise in Spielbergian sentiment, the somewhat stale Seabiscuit dunks into some gravy moments; the always dependable William H. Macy is three honks and six rattles of comic relief as the sound effects–happy, kooky radio reporter Tick Tock McGlaughlin, and the racing scenes themselves are spectacular.

From Oshima’s later career (after one stroke, he made 1999’s Taboo; after two strokes, it’s unclear whether he’ll direct again), most notable is this bilingual, end-of-WWII tearjerker about forgiveness and understanding between cultures, which could have been dubbed The Man Who Fell to Java.

What On the Run has going for it: solid acting, taut editing, smartly economical dialogue, an elevatingly reverberant score, and a rousing vitality that left me salivating for The Trilogy in full.

Paprika ain't no kiddie 'toon, even if its thumpin' techno-pop and bubble-gum thrills have the same splashy palette as an episode of "Pokémon" or "Dragon Ball Z."

This critic found much to digest (pun barely intended), with thoughts of FDA politics and standard practices, the ritualism and sacrifice of our own species, why baby animals are considered protectable innocents (and inversely, grown steaks-to-be just a fact of life), plus, on a meta level, how people's dietary philosophies will inform their reactions to the work.

Law owns every scene he’s in--which is literally all of them--plus a decent supporting cast and dapper dialogue truly make for a breezy good time.

As a visceral experience, it’s entrancing, especially during Shinji’s fight sequences, when his anxieties are cruelly exacerbated by having his body and mind symbiotically bonded to his father’s combat toy.

It's an overall heady conceit about image and invention, clever and fun with compelling lead performances -- especially Reynolds, who finally gets to show some chops in a career littered with Van Wilder–grade junk.

Best appreciated as a rather amusing farce called The John Malkovich Show, the movie's every scene is anchored, then stolen, by the commanding thespian's Alan act.

The interpersonal dynamics haven't been scripted out very thoughtfully, so as the final 20 minutes wind down, it becomes increasingly tough for Penn and his talented cast to mine humor from a story that mandates they actually play elimination rounds of poker.

Whatever you want to label this quick-paced crowd-pleaser, it is definitely one of the year's must-sees.

Though Steamboy could have been smarter and more dramatically engineered, this razzle-dazzle ride won't disappoint if you just need to blow off a little you-know-what.

Not bad for summer jollies, au contraire, but -- "Holy Raised Bar, Batman!" -- let's pray that the next installment measures up to the sequel summits of "Spider-Man 2" and "X2."

Listen up, fanboys and enthusaiasts of sophisticated visual wizardry: this theological noir-horror actioner-a stand-alone, rapturous good time-craftily and accurately captures the straight-faced camp, wry wit and episodic structure of its source material.

A richly drawn, ambitious character piece both socially relevant and genuinely suspenseful.

Strikingly shot with some wicked hand-held virtuousity, Assault is rivetingly suspenseful in how it toys with the morals of good guys flip-flopping to the dark side (and vice versa).

Kasper Collin's melancholy, beautiful feature debut does more than just chronicle this undervalued musician; it brings Ayler and his message of spiritual unity back to life.

The Queen is a surprisingly compassionate portrait (excepting Blair's reactionary wife with the "shallow curtsy") of a rigid pragmatist in denial over the monarchy's out-of-touch dysfunction.

How 49 Up differs from its precursors for the better is that it's the first to have its participants interact with Apted the filmmaker, no longer a one-sided interviewer.

As The 11th Hour's message of Profound Importance warrants a four-star rating, the film itself does not.

Subtly gaining momentum as it dexterously glides through pages of good-time, snappy dialogue, Criminal offers no time to catch your breath, let alone enough to think through its reality-stretching story flaws and subtext-lacking motives.

Looks, feels, and tastes like a more accessible evolution of "Cremaster," so try to gauge your own tolerance for indulgent eccentricity (at 135 minutes, it could stand to lose 20).

The entertainingly unhinged Hostel reeks of kneeling reverence to the grisliest of psychotronica while simultaneously striving to out-gore and out-shock its predecessors.

An enchantingly cryptic, ethereally photographed slice of somber surrealism that should definitely appeal to fans of David Lynch and Luis Buñuel.

An unexpectedly retro throwback to '80s actioners and '90s hacker movies, totally preposterous in both its heroic near-death escapes and abstract tech-jargon explanations for how anyone with geeky inclinations can remotely override any computer system with a few easy keystrokes.

Perhaps with an open and willing mind, you'll also see the vast difference between this wily consciousness experiment and, say, Rob Zombie's new box of schlocks.

Rock the Bells doesn't just delve behind the scenes; it makes a showstopping guest-MC out of each crazy new obstacle.

Guaranteed to deliver more innovative eye candy and smarter fun-per-second than most of this summer's fare, and that one-two punch ought to knock you off your seat.

Aesthetically wild and otherwise mild.

Wisely unbiased-but also unfocused, uneducated, and underachieving-which makes for an occasionally hilarious, frequently anemic parody that misses its opportunity to permanently document a scathing critique of current events.

A rough-and-tumble magnum opus of digital filmmaking that thrillingly basks in the sick, slick, sexy and quick-witted excesses of its imaginatively mutant stylizations.

Mafioso isn't a straight black satire of Sicilian culture so much as a suspenseful near-tragedy leavened by the zesty, irreverent wit that helped define the golden age of Italian comedies.

An amply entertaining tale of survival terror, fully realizing the epicness of Romero's vision by infecting every wide-angled overhead shot with as many computer-generated cadavers as possible, and bridging tense moments with a laugh-aloud, plucky wit.

While Bartley and O'Briain flat-out lucked out with this felicitous endeavor, their fearlessness, unobtrusive narration, and lack of Michael Moore man-and-microphone pandering is to be saluted.

Refusing to dumb down for a mass market, Primer is "Mullholland Dr." for math geeks, "Memento" for mad geniuses, or simply one of the most inventive films ever made for pennies on the Hollywood dollar.

Fantastic news, true believers: Spider-Man 2 is smarter, hipper, faster, funnier, and flat-out more electrifying than the original, swinging to new summer-movie heights as the greatest comic-book adaptation yet made.

A riveting urban drama that tackles a myriad of sociopolitical issues -- conflicts of race, sex, class, marriage and politics -- without spreading itself thin.