Andrea Gronvall

he Diving Bell and the Butterfly fuses experimental techniques with a highly accessible and sometimes humorous narrative; it’s deeply personal yet universal in its humanism.

Animation may be the ideal medium for replicating dreams, and in this unsettling feature by Ari Folman it also proves well suited to autobiography.

Koreeda was inspired by his guilt over having neglected his own parents, and the story is remarkable for the quiet, seemingly casual way he depicts the fallout of bitterness and grief.

Director Daniel Alfredson grounds the mystery in a real sense of place: his Stockholm looks and feels like a major city where corruption lurks behind attractive facades. The reporter character is better developed than in the first movie, but most of the supporting characters from the book have been shrunk to little more than walk-ons.

Writer-directors Pete Docter and Bob Peterson present hilarious insights into bird brains and canine psychology and treat thornier human emotions deftly.

Directors Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV, brothers and native sons of Sidney, find poetry in images of the mundane.

Bar-Lev ponders myth in both senses of the word-as a web of lies, but also as a psychological construct that gives life purpose. An atheist and critical thinker, Pat Tillman had no use for either.

Compared to "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Kiki's Delivery Service," this is one of the anime master's weaker efforts.

When the interrupters do succeed, the results can be riveting.

Disappointment, inhuman work schedules, sluggish exports, and the crush of a two-day rail journey ratchet up the familial tensions, which finally explode over a holiday dinner.

Cinematographer Eduardo Serra underscores the sense of dread with a rich charcoal palette, and the outstanding CGI and 3D effects make the otherworldly threats more corporeal.

Samuel Maoz drew from his own war experiences to write and direct this searing drama, which ranks alongside "Platoon" and "No Man's Land" as an antiwar statement and recalls the claustrophobic despair of "Das Boot."

The elegiac tone here isn't set just by nostalgia for a vanished lifestyle: bereavement, lost love, and the ever present floodwaters add poignancy to the elliptical story, whose characters float in and out unbidden, and sometimes unexplained.

Isabelle Huppert gets a respite from her usual ice queen roles with this shattering psychological drama about the danger of children staying too long in the nest.

Characters occasionally address the camera, which helps disentangle the competing story lines of madness, adultery, and betrayal.

Writer-director Gotz Spielmann (Antares) avoids the clutter and manipulation of most thrillers, escalating tension almost solely through the characters' turbulent emotions.

Trained in Sanford Meisner's acting techniques, the director wrests surprisingly emotional disclosures from his subjects.

Provost and cowriter Marc Abdelnour explore the mutable boundaries between spirituality, naivete, genius, and madness, showing how the two outsiders and polar opposites cultivated a mutual understanding.

This gritty melodrama is tempered by surreal black humor.

Directed by Louie Psihoyos, this well-intentioned documentary exposes the harvesting of dolphins by Japanese fishermen, yet its theatrics suggest a cross between reality TV and "Mission: Impossible."

Michael Cera elevates deadpan to an art, starring as a slacker turned action hero in this wildly inventive comedy that's one of the most vivid and spirited adaptations of a comic book since Spider-Man--and one of the hippest since Ghost World.

Sexual politics, family dynamics, the debate over heredity versus environment, and the dubious ethics of scientific research on animals are rigorously explored in this ambitious, bittersweet work.

The movie he (Wenders) went on to make with her Tanztheater Wuppertal is more than an elegy; his meticulous use of 3D endows the performances with a corporeality and intimacy hitherto unseen in a dance film.

It loses steam once the wraiths become fully visible: they're just not scary enough.

Shani and Copti (who costars as a hipster druggie) elicit moving performances from their nonprofessional actors, who ground the somewhat breathless action in a streetwise realism.

The fulcrum of this deeply humanist work is an extended two-shot of the strike's leader, Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), as he converses with a priest (Liam Cunningham); the virtuosic sequence encapsulates the whole sorry history of a horrific civil war.

Under the harsh lights of the meticulously re-created, claustrophobic bunker, that scrutiny is relentless.

For a movie about the undead, this lacks any supernatural chills, and by the time its obligatory final showdown arrives, it seems as hollow as the terra cotta soldiers brought to life by CGI.

Inspired by anthropologist Donald Thomson's early-20th-century photographs, this collaboration between a Western filmmaker and the native people of Ramingining is an impressive achievement of ethnographic cinema.

The intersections between sleep and waking, memory, cinema, and the Internet lead to a spectacular battle of titans who spring from the mind's darkest recesses.

Director Juan José Campanella weaves together two love stories--between the victim and her husband, and the investigator and his former boss (Soledad Villamil)--and creates some masterful set pieces; his breathless chase through a packed soccer stadium is a marvel of choreography and top-notch CGI.

In the films of Swedish director Jan Troell (The Emigrants, The New Land), ordinary lives assume epic dimensions, and this drama, based on the experiences of his wife's protofeminist grandmother, doesn't sugarcoat the hardships of the early 1900s.

By the end theyve acquired a measure of self-knowledge at a cost dearer than they expected, which reminds us that what we think we know can be just the beginning of an existential journey.

Director Anne Fletcher delivers more bite and brisker pacing than she did with "27 Dresses."

Julianne Moore proves game for anything in this pitch-black true-crime reconstruction.

Screwball office comedy.

Bell presides over this insightful, often droll survey like a sweeter, buffer version of Michael Moore, trolling gyms, universities, and Congress to grill assorted experts.

It's an edifying art history lesson, but it lacks the showmanship of, for example, Peter Greenaway's "Nightwatching."

Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa switches gears from supernatural horror to poignant social satire.

The fallout decades later provides the drama in this documentary by Doug Pray (Hype!), who lets his eccentric octogenarian subject off a little too easy.

What begins as a leave-taking turns into a homecoming that reflects the mixed-race society of the modern south.

Director Peter Sollett (Raising Victor Vargas) and cinematographer Tom Richmond transform nocturnal New York into a soft-focus wonderland for their sweet but screwball courtship.

Flawless comic timing and vivid imagination power this rollicking sequel to "Jumanji."

The special effects are better and the dialogue slightly more humorous than in the first movie, but the anti-Arab subtext is repugnant.

Sam Riley is fascinating as Curtis, a hypersensitive young man hobbled by his incurable disease, and Samantha Morton is poignant as his put-upon wife.

Steve Buscemi supplies the only spark of intelligent life in this numbingly flat universe, despite the fancy gadgets, the high-speed chases, and a skyscraper collision reminiscent of the World Trade Center attacks.

Tongue-in-cheek dialogue, inventive slapstick and fight sequences, and luminous production design make this a treat.

Ryan, barely refining her "When Harry Met Sally" persona, is a dud; Annette Bening, playing the best friend who sells her out to a tabloid, is better in the scenes she doesn't share with her.

The husband learns nothing, and his monstrous behavior makes the movie relentlessly downbeat. No one, including the viewer, achieves catharsis.

"Weird but cool," as one character says -- yet the movie is also remarkably touching.

Writer-director Cary Fukunaga keeps the story lean while peppering it with realistic details.

The altitude, extreme cold, quicksand, and crushing poverty are potent dramatic elements, but of course there's no mention of China's complicity in the area's economic ills; instead writer-director Lu Chuan frames the story as a showdown between the head ranger and the leader of the poachers.

Though a bunch of the jokes are milked too thin, there are some absurdly goofy sight gags--like a hacky sack game enlisting a family pet--and a lineup of fun, silly cameos by guests from Chris Rock to Mariah Carey.

Director Alexandre Aja (Haute Tension, The Hills Have Eyes) keeps the suspense tight for most of the movie, only to fritter it away in an overblown ending.

Free of grandstanding and sentimentality, this powerful 2008 documentary follows missions to Liberia and the Congo undertaken by volunteers for Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Over too soon.

This features the usual slapstick, double entendres, and riffs on classic films, but what elevates it above a cheeky romp is the skilled CGI work, not only the wealth of tactile detail lavished on the parched townsfolk but also the painterly, sand-swept vistas they call home.

A major star in Mexico, Bichir is quietly affecting as the father, a humble striver who faces loss at every turn.

The tale of Rapunzel gets a cheeky make-over in this gorgeous Disney animation, which combines the studio's traditional hand-drawn look with the sculptural qualities of digital 3D.

Mixing horror and comedy while minimizing the gore, writer-director Paul Weitz (About a Boy) serves up a witty adventure fantasy with a tasty dollop of schadenfreude.

Disney goes meta in this witty, exuberant musical comedy whose parody and nostalgia serve a sweet and affecting romance.

Finely calibrated French neonoir.

Lurid and stylish, this 2008 Danish feature plays like a cross between "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "High Noon," with a dash of Gothic thriller.

This delightful computer animation is less twee than Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, with more action and a broader American sensibility.

Chiwetel Ejiofor (Dirty Pretty Things) is the sinister operative dispatched to retrieve the ship's psychic passenger, who as played by Summer Glau kickboxes better than Maggie Cheung and Zhang Ziyi combined.

The most gleeful movie about a single-minded kid since "A Christmas Story."

Director Max Farberbock (Aimee & Jaguar) mainly avoids graphic depictions of sexual assault, but that only increases the tension in this austere, claustrophobic drama.

The movie, to its credit, recognizes that the quest for spirituality sometimes leads to another pew.

Except for one manipulative deathbed scene, Ken Kwapis directs with sensitivity, steering the multiple story lines toward a satisfying conclusion.

May be derivative, but it's still engrossing, largely because of its appealing juvenile lead.

How can a romantic drama tailor-made for Julia Roberts from Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoir about self-actualization--shot against alluring locales in Italy, India, and Bali, and directed by the acclaimed Ryan Murphy (TV's Nip/Tuck and Glee)--go so ass-numbingly wrong?

Director David Barker creates tension by crosscutting between shots of the sun-drenched landscape and charged close-ups of the cloistered characters before delivering a bloody climax.

A murky screenplay leaves most of the humans ciphers, save for Hal Holbrook in an exquisitely calibrated performance as the avuncular desert retiree whose advice McCandless should have heeded.

The casting of Reeves in the lead role is inspired: who better than the star of "The Matrix" and its sequels, a trilogy that borrows heavily from Dick's sensibility and obsessions, to play a personality split through overindulgence in drugs and manipulation by outside forces he barely recognizes?

A welcome return to the Disney tradition of 2-D animation, this lively musical spices up Hans Christian Andersen's "The Frog Prince" by transplanting it to New Orleans in the early 20th century.

This meticulous restoration dazzles with crisp, formally rigorous black-and-white images and a complex sound mix, as its minimalist story of three families of manual laborers unfolds against a harsh, barren peninsula.

Despite the exotic locale and the photogenic moppets, that's not enough for a satisfying movie.

With her large, expressive eyes, abundant warmth, and radiant energy, Faour commands our sympathy, even through some weak dialogue and even weaker plot points.

There's more than a nod to Sergio Leone in Kapadia's rugged wide-screen landscapes, minimal dialogue, and extreme close-ups, but there's scant humor to relieve the harshness, and though he has presence Khan is no Eastwood--or even a Mifune.

The suspicion and contempt the band encounters along the way symbolize the Kurds' historical sufferings, but the movie has many comic moments courtesy of the eager bus driver, who keeps putting his foot in his mouth. The nonprofessional cast is highly persuasive under the sure hand of director Bahman Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses).

This first feature from Disney's new nature division has an encyclopedic reach and spectacular footage shot by more than two dozen crack cinematographers.

The kids are impressively plucky, but Weihenmayer comes off as an egomaniac, arguing with his team and endangering the youngsters' lives. Lucy Walker directed this cloying and manipulative 2006 documentary.

Writer-director J.J. Abrams overloads this sci-fi adventure with so many homages to his co-producer Steven Spielberg that it plays like the elder director's greatest hits, minus his characteristic scares and sense of wonder.

Director Will Gluck (Fired Up!) shows wicked comic timing and uncommon warmth in an overworked genre.

This scathing study of middle-class angst plays like a cross between Buñuel and Almodovar, but the satire never achieves liftoff despite the actors' best efforts.

This small gem about a South Central LA girl with a gift for spelling restores luster to the family genre.

The long campaign waged by the Yokotas and other families demanding Japan's diplomatic intervention forms the core of this haunting BBC digital documentary.

The tradition of Russian stage acting enriches this satisfying update of Reginald Rose's TV play "Twelve Angry Men."

This 2006 drama is refreshing not only for its gentle comic touches but for director Wang Quanan's refusal to sentimentalize China's vanishing nomadic culture: life is harsh and no one's a saint, including his outspoken heroine.

Less magic also means less fun and discovery, as Harry battles depression and a hostile press; this is the bleakest Potter installment to date, and under David Yates's choppy direction, Maggie Smith, Emma Thompson, Brendan Gleeson, and David Thewlis have little more than walk-ons.

Like many fairy tales, this handsome family film concerns a child coming to terms with his fears and the death of a parent.

This narrative feature debut by Emmanuel Carrere, based on his own novel, is deliberately open-ended, but however one interprets the outcome, the film reminds us how fragile intimacy is.

The tolerance and loopy poetry of the beloved book by Dr. Seuss have been nicely captured.

This high-powered sports melodrama benefits from its strong male leads, a sinewy narrative, and the maverick attitude of MMA. But for all the contemporary references, it's essentially a spin on the story of Cain and Abel, which may be the reason it feels timeless.

Slyly exploiting audience expectations and prejudices, Lelouch calls into question our very ways of seeing, even as he and his longtime writing partner, Pierre Uytterhoeven, craft an elegant meditation on loss and rebirth.

Amiable screwball comedy.

Based on two of his previous shorts, this lurid vision is good for a few laughs-some intended, some not.

This quirky 2004 documentary ends with the Shopsins' forced relocation after 32 years, an uprooting made all the more poignant by Eve's death during filming.