Andrea Gronvall

Dramatization is often a questionable tactic in documentaries, but by picturing Leopold (Elie Larson) on trial like Adolf Eichmann, Peter Bate adroitly compares the colonial genocide to the Holocaust.

There's enough adrenaline pulsating throughout this bang-up Marvel Comics adaptation to erase 2003's Hulk from memory (Ang who?).

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.

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.

Wain and Marino try to tie all this together with a framing narrative about an unfaithful husband (Paul Rudd), which turns into a clever parody of Woody Allen movies.

Amiable screwball comedy.

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.

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.

Extraordinary.

Dazat coscripted, felicitously blending elements of documentary and travelogue much as he did in Himalaya. The resulting portrait sidesteps ethnography yet conveys the essence of a magnificent people.

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

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.

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

Engrossing and timely, this crackles with ideas about art, politics, religion, and the terrible costs of war.

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).

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

Director Eran Riklis entertains without sermonizing, though the story clearly identifies women as the region's best chance for peace.

Depardieu, a great actor who in recent years has delivered several overblown performances, is here measured and naturalistic, a sympathetic match for Ardant's icy obsessive, and Beart is suitably mysterious as a spy in the house of love.

Lessons about family loyalty, tolerance, ingenuity, and sacrifice add depth to the screenplay by Etan Cohen and directors Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath, but thankfully don't detract from the lunatic maneuvers of a delusional lemur king (Sacha Baron Cohen) and those wily spheniscidae.

N’dour’s concert numbers and family visits are captivating, but Vasarhelyi is so uncritical toward the singer that she inadvertently makes him look as though he’s running for sainthood.

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.

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.

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

Perceptive, faith-based romantic comedy.

The period details are so exact they're occasionally distracting, the use of gospel music at the end is questionable, and director Randall Wallace (We Were Soldiers) shows a surer hand in the track sequences than the domestic scenes. Still, there's no denying this movie has heart.

North Face also deals with actual events, offering plenty of thrills and spectacular vistas.

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.

After a sluggish half hour, this well-crafted adventure kicks into high gear and never lets up.