Carina Chocano

15 minutes into it, you are spellbound, heartbroken and unaccountably cheered -- your faith and admiration in humanity restored.

A brutal encounter with mortality told with uncommon humanity, wit and humor.

A work of breathtaking imagination, less a movie than a mode of transport, and in every sense a masterpiece.

As ambitious, honest and subversive as any American movie since "Election."

Youth and death meet again in Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park, a gorgeously stark, mesmerizingly elliptical story told in the same lyrical-prosaic style that has characterized his latest films.

A story about generational expectations and cultural shifts, The Edge of Heaven raises questions it can't answer, which makes it only more powerful.

There's a rawness and immediacy to his (Bujalski's) work that cuts straight to the experience, a starkness that's startling in an age of bloated spectacle.

Takes a premise that, in less competent, less empathetic hands, would have had the depth of a pancake, gives it a soul and turns it into a surprisingly sweet and funny ode to male friendship and middle-aged love.

This is no nostalgia trip taken by an 83-year-old director. It's a fierce, hot slap of a movie, a shameless melodrama with bite.

Illusion and disillusionment entwine through the film like twin helixes, weaving a dreamy, free-form look at his life and legacy.

Marie Antoinette gives a wide berth to the conventions of period dramas, especially their time-capsule remove, and instead tries to mainline the singular personal experience of the arch-villainess of French history (and freedom history, for that matter). The result is a startlingly original and beautiful pop reverie that comes very close to being transcendent.

What's best about it is that it seems real by the logic of childhood - it looks as things SHOULD look, if kids had it their way.

What Live-in Maid offers is a pitch-perfect observation of life on a continent where forms are adhered to, distances aren't really kept, and your best friend is the person who knows to pour the cheap domestic whiskey into the empty bottle of imported stuff before your bridge buddies show up to judge you.

With Bad Education, Almodóvar is at his most breathtakingly complex and mature, and at his most pessimistic.

A glorious blend of kitsch, grit, humor and uplift.

King Kong is an homage not just to the original but to the history of movies themselves.

The brilliance of A Scanner Darkly is how it suggests, without bombast or fanfare, the ways in which the real world has come to resemble the dark world of comic books.

Raucously funny and surprisingly insightful.

With outstanding performances, including a turn by Judi Dench as the evil Lady Catherine de Bourg, Pride & Prejudice is a joy from start to finish.

As David Rakoff once wrote, "Youth isn't wasted on the young. It is perpetrated on the young." Exactly how is brilliantly captured by Andrew Bujalski in his debut feature, Funny Ha Ha.

Optimistic and humanistic to the core, Me and You and Everyone We Know is a paean to perseverance and finding ways to cope.

It says something about Paul Greengrass' directing style that he's able to make a movie as fresh and frank as The Bourne Ultimatum from a genre as moldy and bombastic as the spy thriller.

Bardem's performance is a marvel of restraint and control, both physical and emotional.

An exquisitely evocative movie that elevates rueful melancholia to a superpower.

It's billed as an environmental horror story, but The Last Winter bears all the hallmarks of an ever-popular genre that has always pitted science, technology and reason against emotion, awe and nature. It bears all the hallmarks of the gothic: ghosts, death, alienated sexuality, decay, secrets, madness and, of course, awe and trepidation in the face of the sublime power of nature.

A deceptively simple, deeply resonant story about the inherent loneliness of family, the odds against assimilation and the enormous distances that can divide two people.

Miller and Futterman avoid the pitfalls of the genre by refusing to mythologize the artist, plunging instead into the soul of the man.

Aside from a riveting adventure story that Herzog tells in all of its terrifying, stripped-down simplicity, Rescue Dawn is a fascinating study of human particularity.

Brilliantly choreographed and shot, Kung Fu Hustle is often grisly, visually spectacular and unabashedly silly, sometimes all at once.

Miniaturist in its level of detail and evocatively abstract, Old Joy captures the weary mood of a generation that's crested its peak along with an era, quietly making a case for how well suited film can be to capturing the finer points of human interaction while preserving their mystery.

Norwegian director Joachim Trier's inspiring first feature Reprise joyfully tackles the process of self-creation, as well as the friendships that feed and sustain it. He captures, in a way that's cool and romantic and heady, the moment in life when nothing matters more than ideas, influences and the possibility of shaping one's life into a work of art.

The camera is so unobtrusive and the acting so naturalistic that it takes a while for a narrative to emerge. When it finally does, you're surprised to find you're deeply invested in the characters.

Wong brilliantly blends musical styles and eras to create an intoxicating mood.

Poignant, wise and unafraid -- just the sort of film for a young person, or any person, for that matter, to make.

In some ways, it reminded me of the final "Seinfeld" episode. As much as I laughed throughout, I kept wondering what was with all the emotional lessons.

Good Dick carries its messed-up, highly improbable premise so lightly and gracefully that it ultimately comes off as a sweet, plausible and curiously grounded love story -- and touchingly old-fashioned.

28 Weeks Later lacks the streamlined thrust of its predecessor but makes for compelling, adrenaline-fueled viewing just the same.

Why aren't there more American movies like this? I mean smart, unpretentious, sophisticated, un-condescending and cheap.

A sweet, funny and gripping romantic adventure, it's about the limitations of political activism in this day and age, and what happens when your girlfriend and your best friend fall in love.

Gently seductive, genuinely tender and often moving without being maudlin.

Spritely, tender and unpredictable.

A squarely suburban movie with a distinctly bourgeois-shaped window on the world, but it's genuine and exceptionally well observed.

What Last Days offers is a blank and narrative-free, but pitch-perfect, dreamscape on which to project your own personal ruminations on Kurt, fame, whatever, nevermind. If you have none, you're on your own.

Buoyed by an unreserved humanism and a cheerful sense of the absurd.

What's rare to see, and what ultimately makes Nacho Libre so enjoyable, is the story of an underdog who's allowed to remain a humble clown all the way to becoming a hero.

An unassuming but quietly heartbreaking drama.

An impassioned piece of activist filmmaking that's as persuasive and entertaining as it is disturbing.

Ghobadi uses the lack of resources and the surfeit of drama that had been the lot of the Kurds throughout Hussein's dictatorship and both Gulf wars much in the way De Sica and Rossellini used the European tragedies of the '30s and '40s,

Captures the energy and exuberance of a young nation in the throes of optimism and works it into a foreboding frenzy.

If Linklater regards the fake culture that has replaced real places with horror, he has nothing but respect and affection for his characters, and the movie is rescued from nihilism by his humanistic view.

Among other things, the characters in A Love Song for Bobby Long really know how to turn a phrase, in itself a pleasure so rare it all but demands any flaws be forgiven.

The beauty of this film is in its lapidary details, which sparkle with feeling and surprise.

For an exquisitely melancholy story steeped in a sense of the past as a succession of great waves of political, ideological and economic change, it's fitting that the movie should end with an underwater sequence. It looks like a dream of a memory of a place about to be wiped out by the next great flood of history.

Volver is just as funny as "What Have I Done," but it's also more sanguine and complex. Its humor is brighter and loopier, more a function of the characters' indomitable spirit than of their terminal despair.

It's a deeply affecting performance, and it drives this quietly powerful, unrelenting film.

The plot, naturally, is silly and not exactly bound by logic. But it's Judge's gimlet-eyed knack for nightmarish extrapolation that makes Idiocracy a cathartic delight.

Clean is one of those movies that's slightly off the mark in ways that are hard to put a finger on, but it is shot so soulfully and features such beautiful performances that it's easy to forgive the occasional false note.

2 Days in Paris is pure Julie Delpy, figuratively and otherwise. Since first becoming known to American audiences in the early '90s, she's revealed herself to be an artist of sundry and unexpected talents, with a distinctive voice and point of view.

Quinn discovers an unexpectedly funny, trenchant fish-out-of-water-eye-view of American life.

Blame It on Fidel is the thoroughly engaging, clear-eyed and charming story of a little girl grappling with the domestic fallout of tumultuous political times.

A wickedly funny satire.

Immensely entertaining.

Beautiful, spacey, trans-oceanic odyssey.

A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, or so the saying goes, but the unadulterated joy Irène takes in throwing open the closet door to show Jean how this gold digging is done is positively infectious.

What emerges from these stories is a picture of the fallibility of the system and the vulnerability of innocent citizens, whom even scientific evidence cannot protect from incompetence, ego and prejudice, and of the courage of the exonerated victims to make meaning of their tragedies.

Ultimately, Mermin's film is a profound reminder of the things that make us human. Things that don't matter much, in the scheme of things, but loom large when taken away. Things we all have in common.

Johnson has taken a well-worn, much-revised genre, adapted to what's become a clichéd setting and transcended both in the process.

A complex, boldly experimental movie plotted like a thriller and paced like a farce, Kings and Queen is category-defying film that's as smart and emotionally resonant as it is entertaining.

It's not entirely surprising that Burton's Sweeney Todd feels heavier on style than on substance -- so much that the style almost subverts the story. Still, it's a gorgeous artifact and pretty enjoyable in all.

A familiar story set in an unfamiliar context, it's a paean to the universality of human experience, a testament to the endurance of individuality during great political and fanatical upheaval, and a reminder that even the most complex situations, identities and stories are heartbreakingly simple.

A fascinating reflection of the era when it was made; but a starker indictment still of what film culture has become. In 1975, The Passenger was a night at the movies.

What with everyone so focused on the raunchiness, it comes as a complete surprise to find that Superbad is in fact a love story.

Ejiofor brings a calm magnetism and a beatific serenity to his roles that have the effect of knocking you flat -- there's something about this guy that's messianic.

A challenging film, one that I suspect can only benefit from multiple viewings. The success of its approaches varies, but its intent is unfailingly interesting.

A straightforward, surprisingly faithful and definitely loving adaptation of the original.

As depressing as it is hard to watch, Palindromes is also consistently, horrifyingly funny and sharp-witted, and the darker and more well-observed its humor, the more it belies the director's unsentimental, even grudging empathy for his fellow DNA monkeys.

49 Up is more than a deeply satisfying movie; it's a reminder of the wonder contained in ordinary lives.

Captures Los Angeles in a straightforward, naturalistic way, neighborhood-hopping like a native.

The trouble with describing a story this complex and digressive is that it's hard to keep it from sounding complicated and hard-to-follow. But for a movie about movies, it's surprisingly humanistic, cheerful and true to life.

In this sinister but gorgeous and compelling film by director Tomas Alfredson, being human and acting human don't always go together.

A resolutely odd, occasionally absurd movie, but it's as charming and stylish as one could expect from this pair - if you like that sort of thing.

Yu's film may be challenging to synopsize, but it's thoroughly engrossing and wildly surprising.

Deceptively superficial at the outset, the movie deepens into something poignant and unexpected.

Expertly realized and gunmetal slick, Eastern Promises whirs along with perfect efficiency, but doesn't stir much in the way of visceral horror despite its penchant for treating the human body like a chicken carcass on a block. (Squeamishness, yes.)

Black Gold moves at an inexorable pace, painstakingly building a case until suddenly it looms very large and casts an even longer shadow.

The film is a rigorously thorough biography and an impassioned accolade. Temple spends as much time on Strummer's life before and after the Clash as he does charting the band's powerful musical and political influence.

Campy, shameless and sophisticated, Lichtenstein's debut is gutsy and original, and it makes "Juno" look positively tame by comparison.

Breillat's first foray into comedy is playful, whip-smart and far breezier in both tone and look than the stylized gender polemics she's known for.

The India of the movie is more an idea than a reality...Exotic, spiritual and, according to Peter Whitman (Adrien Brody), "spicy"-smelling, it's a magical mystery place where wayward foreigners can go to get their souls back on track.

Dreamy and creepy, tender and terrifying, Somersault is a frank and visceral film that at the same time exudes an unexpected innocence.

Witty, unhinged and fearless, it's exactly the kind of movie we need now.

Can't rightly be called a romantic comedy in the dismal, contemporary sense, though it is at times romantic and is consistently very funny. It's also emotionally realistic, even brutal.

It's rare for young actors to exude as much charisma and charm as Gainsbourg and García Bernal.

Impressive as is Wilson's output and oeuvre, it's the fully-engaged, aesthetically driven life that fascinates. And Otto-Bernstein's movie is a portrait of an artist at his most essential, in every sense.

What it offers isn't really a nostalgic look at a "more innocent time" so much as a saucy wink at a casually vicious time that is constantly being sold to us as innocent.

It pretty much keeps its pulse steady, its blood cold and its nerves tamped down -- which, combined with cinematographer Remi Adefarasin's architectural Hitchcockian flourishes, lends a queasy, cool air to the proceedings.

As original as it is lovely.

It's the kind of observational comedy, that'll be hard to find come summertime and should be enjoyed while there's still a chance.