Amy Taubin

Takes its shape from (Viard's) performance, which is as big as life.

Crouching Tiger's dramatic line is so blurry that the central character is only a bystander to the climactic fight between forces of good and evil.

A dark and unsparing study of female masochism and a brittle sex comedy of manners, Romance is unsettled in tone, to say the least.

It remains one of the most wrenching films about adolescent angst, thanks largely to the performance of Phil Daniels.

The most audacious debut feature of the year.

Unabashedly personal and uncool...but between you and me, dear reader, I love it to death.

The relationship between the hysterical Gerard and the careful, compulsive George is classic screwball material and more compelling than the relationship between George and Alicia.

As ethereal, moving, and uncompromising as its subject.

Justman's A Trial in Prague acts as something of a corrective to the exuberant but oversimplified "Fighter."

It seems like a more witty, wise, and succinct "Magnolia."

Takes us inside the consciousness and the coded masculine world of a single character.

Isn't convincing on every front, but as a political conversation piece, it's potentially effective.

A magisterial film, but not quite a great one.

What gives the film extra weight is the sense that these are not just actors trying to enhance their careers but real people seizing a chance for immortality.

Prince-Bythewood gives the film a style that's easy on the eye but also has muscle -- on and off the court.

It could be described as the most gripping political thriller to hit the big screen in many years, although given the events it depicts through interviews, photographs, and news footage, the words "gripping" and "thriller" have inappropriately frivolous and commercial associations.

There are big crowd scenes, intimate close-ups, and lots of bug’s-eye point-of-view shots. Call me gullible: I believed every second of it.

As fragmented and unresolved as the experiences of mother and daughter, Alma bears witness to a situation for which there are no easy answers.

Goodman and Anker adroitly shape a cohesive drama out of a complicated history.

A tender and hilarious vision of female adolescence.

Eccentric and thoroughly winning.

Thanks to some brilliant casting, Venus Beauty Institute provokes ideas about women, movies, sexuality, and age that extend beyond its frothy fiction.

A spare, formally ingenious, journalistically acute piece of filmmaking.

Compelling viewing, even if there's nothing pretty (pictorially or emotionally) about it.

Not as skillful, subtle, or hilarious as "Some Like It Hot," but its anti-essentialism vis-à-vis gender roles is just as sharp and exhilarating.

Josh Aronson's thoroughly engrossing documentary Sound and Fury is as much about children's rights as it is about the impact of cochlear-implant technology on a family in which deafness runs through three generations.

Derails toward the end, becoming platitudinous, not to mention kitschy, but, given the Cheerios wholesomeness of most gay indies, its grief-stricken delirium is a welcome relief.

A veritable Chekhov tragicomedy of provincial life.