Carina Chocano

Whatever its weaknesses, Tsotsi is redeemed by its excellent performances.

Grant's second coming as a rake and an egotist is the best thing to happen to his career since "Four Weddings and a Funeral." He is twice as enjoyable as the preening bad guy as he was as the bumbling good guy, and Weitz makes perfect use of the new persona.

Beautifully shot on location in New York and consistently well-acted, but it sticks a little too closely to the surface to be very compelling.

The movie does have its flashes of genius. "Home for Purim," the movie, is set in the Deep South, where Yiddish is spoken with a drawl.

Loverboy is a grim little story, but it's leavened unexpectedly with humor and energy. A stylish and thoughtful director, Bacon marries music to image beautifully.

For all its sad moments, Romulus, My Father is a love story between father and son kept aloft by unalloyed admiration.

Funny, but its lacking at the core. Judd Apatow's comedy takes the guy's side of things, but how does the woman feel about all of this?

Small and intimate, Game 6 is a meditation on American theater and the Great American Pastime that hovers above the surface of reality but never quite takes off, either.

An intimate movie in every sense, Conversations With Other Women sets out to explore well-trammeled yet at the same time uncharted territory without grinding any axes. What it offers is a modest fantasy that will be familiar to contemporaries of Bonham Carter and Eckhart especially. It's sad and funny, satisfying and frustrating, totally familiar.

Neither linear nor overly explained, Pulse completely dispenses with smash cuts, cymbal crashes and other editing tricks of the horror trade.

Sweet and often hilarious.

Modest but well wrought and witty, Snow Cake is full of unexpected moments and clever observations.

The movie has no higher ambition than to please a crowd; the fact that it easily does is proof of the world's heartening capacity for change.

A dark comedy with a melancholy streak and punchy sense of humor.

With its R&B soundtrack and footage of civil unrest, Talk to Me might seem to cover familiar ground. But as an intimate portrait of the complex, fruitful and extremely volatile friendship between trailblazing African American men whose daring came to redefine an industry, it's fresh and revelatory.

Tightly plotted and suspenseful enough to keep you guessing until the satisfying, unexpected end, which is worth suspending disbelief for. After all, as they point out in the movie, "It doesn't work if you don't believe it."

The real reason to see it is its style, which sets an otherwise fairly unremarkable whodunit in a seedy, lite-Lynchian wonderland that's enjoyable to hang out in for a while.

It's a grisly but sweet ode to friendship, love and the George Romero zombie trilogy.

Keanu Reeves has no peer when it comes to playing these sort of messianic roles -- he infuses them with a Zen blankness and serenity that somehow gets him through even the unlikeliest scenes with a quiet, unassuming dignity.

It says something when you come out of a film as weird and fantastical as Oldboy and feel that you've experienced something truly authentic. I just don't know what. I can't think of anything to compare it to.

Rather than come across as fantastic or dreamlike, the stories have a vivid, hyperreal quality to them.

Ratner seems to have found a theme that he can relate to: A terrifying trio of angry, undomesticated women who all but run away with the movie.

The result is an insightful look at a remarkable behind-the-scenes life and slice of American and Hollywood history. Told from an outsider's perspective, it sheds light on the workings of a glamorous but often treacherous business.

What Teixeira has set out to do, and accomplished brilliantly, is to find drama and pathos in the mundane details, thoughtless betrayals and casual cruelties. What lingers after watching Alice's House are not the moments of conflict but the inexorable rhythms of daily life.

As pared down, stylish and deceptively simple as the stark glass and concrete block inhabited by two of its main characters, La Mujer de Mi Hermano (My Brother's Wife) is an adultery drama that skips the big life lessons in favor of observing the mysteries of human interdependency and social behavior.

The Devil Wears Prada spins Weisberger's rant into a sharp, surprisingly funny excursion into the catty realm of women's magazines. The movie skips the condescension usually aimed at this world in favor of rapt observation.

Marion Cotillard astonishes as Edith Piaf in 'La Vie en Rose.

The movie belongs to Blethyn, who takes a difficult, easily misunderstood role and gracefully cracks it open to reveal what's inside.