Carrie Rickey

Heartbreaking? Sometimes. Involving? You bet.

Boasts rich texture, sly vision and rueful humor.

The imagery is uniquely that of Oshii, who deserves a place in the pantheon of visual artists.

Where Denys Arcand's delightful 1986 comedy "The Decline of the American Empire" celebrated the good life, his profoundly funny sequel The Barbarian Invasions heartily toasts the good death.

The result is a film that deeply engages us on multiple levels. Not only do we wonder what Maisie knows and how she knows it, we want to get this seedling to a place where she won't have to be transplanted every day.

Featuring seasoned warriors reflecting on whether we can best fight violence with violence is enormously compelling.

Not only is Bossa Nova a lovely romance, but one can say, as one can about few films, that it is restorative as a vacation.

It's hard to know whether this is a function of the sympathetic screenplay or of Krieger's sympathetic direction - or both - but Celeste and Jesse are endearing even when they do unsympathetic things.

Rees tells Alike's story in vignettes that are sometimes slapstick, sometimes heartbreaking, always tender.

DuVernay, a low-key director sparing in her use of emotion and music, has made an existential drama that is European in its feel.

It's a testament to Cage's canny performance and Jonze's seamless use of special effects that you believe Charlie and Donald are two entirely different people.

Collins and Pacino plumb the depths of acting, of Shakespeare, of the difference between law and justice.

Proves that the most local story is sometimes the most universal, the simplest tale sometimes the most complex.

A far more trenchant - and funnier - satire of the fame-afflicted than Woody Allen's "Celebrity."

First-time filmmaker Kolirin paces his can-we-all-just-get-along? parable as if it were a silent comedy, which for long stretches it is. This movie about musicians has no soundtrack. Its musical moments are few, but potent.

A superb film that begins with death, ends in renewal, and finds almost as much to laugh about as to cry for.

What gives North Country urgency is that it's about how a man comes to understand that it's bad for him and for his community to deny his daughter privileges and prerogatives he'd grant his son.

Macdonald's film brilliantly telescopes the '70s, an era when every physical action had its equal and opposite political reaction.

Corinne's journey begins with an act of blind faith. The movie ends, but you have a palpable sense that the journey does not.

Next to the cheerleader grunts and aerobic struts that pass for dance numbers on most music videos, the sequences in the compilation film That's Entertainment! III are like treasures from a highly evolved ancient civilization. [06 Jul 1994, p.E01]

A dynamic portrait of an artist by an artist, one as wry, audacious and erotically charged as its flamboyant subject.

For those dazed and dazzled by surf anarchists Noll and Clark, Hamilton comes off as the sport's technocrat, but he boldly goes where no surfer has gone before.

What begins as Lafcadia's journey into the heart of darkness ends as his pilgrimage into the light. Stunning.

French movies are not so neatly resolved. In fact, the point of many French movies, such as this provocative one from director Laurent Cantet, is that some problems don't have satisfying solutions - or resolutions.

Until a final conflict that more resembles a monster-truck jam than a superhero showdown, Iron Man is solid gold.

Wondrously emotional film, one that sneakily dismantles your defenses and purges grief you didn't realize you had.

It is not to everyone's taste. But if you like the lush film operas of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Douglas Sirk, or Luchino Visconti, this one's for you.

The script by Andrea Berloff is stunning in its simplicity and aching details.