David Stratton

Made with deft evenhandedness, Paul Devlin's accomplished film plays almost like a fictional drama, containing suspense, comedy and some colorful characters.

This poignant film about an Israeli family rendered dysfunctional by the sudden death of the husband and father is a strongly emotional experience despite its tendency toward cryptic dramatics.

Though it moves more slowly than the tortoise prominently featured in one sequence, Clouds of May is the kind of film that creeps up on the patient viewer.

The World of Jacques Demy is a major addition to films about filmmakers, and achieves its purpose in making the viewer immediately want to see the key films again.

This intelligent, engaging indie sets out to find a few answers and in the process introduces a clutch of interesting, very human characters.

Intriguing, provocative and very well acted.

Charismatic leads and a promising screwball-comedy premise are sadly frittered away by a weak second half in Antony J. Bowman's third feature, Paperback Hero.

This depiction of the trials and tribulations of a working-class Catholic family during the Depression is a far more intimate viewing experience than the similarly themed "Angela's Ashes."

Technically, this is Jackson's best to date, with state of the art creature and gore effects by Richard Taylor and prosthetics design by Bob McCarron. There's any amount of dismemberment, disembowelling, beheading, and the like, all of it handled with bloody conviction.

Develops into a powerfully emotional experience thanks to a career-best performance by Toni Collette.

Visually the film impresses, with Eduardo Serra's widescreen camerawork evocatively capturing the streets and interiors of London and a rain-swept Venice. Pacing is crisp, with little time wasted on inessentials. Dialogue is often caustically witty, and the relations clearly delineated.

Within the confines of this tried-and-true formula, Luhrmann has concocted a feel-good entertainment, which is lively, original (in an old-fashioned sort of way) and charming.

Think of an Anthony Mann Western made by an experimental film director and you get an indication of the challenging components of The Tracker, the story of a manhunt that is politically sensitive because of its depiction of atrocities perpetrated on aboriginals by a fanatical white cop.

Although writer-director Khientse Norbu breaks no ground in unfolding two parallel stories about young men seeking fresh horizons, he creates believable characters -- and has the great benefit of living in a country that provides seldom-seen locations at the top of the world.

Too often goes off on a tangent with unessential anecdotes and then fails to deliver in more important areas.

This is unquestionably Cronenberg Lite, but there is plenty of fun to be had from the absurdities and convoluted plotting, and a solid cast lends stature to the far-fetched fantasies.

A cheerfully vulgar and bitchy, but essentially warmhearted, road movie with a difference, which boasts an amazing star turn by Terence Stamp as a transsexual, Stephan Elliott's second feature is a lot of fun.

Haroun's film is both touching and, ultimately, almost perversely optimistic.

The film belongs to Eden, who creates a winning personality out of a combination of vulnerability, resourcefulness, toughness and fragility. It's an outstanding juvenile performance.

A taut, suspenseful, linear approach, and a trio of excellent performances.

A tremendous, stellar cast is mostly confined to minor roles, but all shine under Allen's assured direction.

A little gem that takes a potentially grim subject and mines it for maximum humor and insight.

The director has managed the difficult feat of making a nonlinear film that contains a handful of almost unbearably suspenseful sequences, each one undercut by bizarre black humor.

Though long-winded and discursive, the professionally assembled material is of immense interest and importance in reminding the viewer of the threat to world peace posed by the continuing posturing on the subcontinent.

Not exactly a police corruption thriller, the film is more a study of innocence betrayed, though its insights into Argentine law enforcement are pretty scary.

A gentle, sad and at times funny film in the best French tradition of high-quality cinema.

Utterly fascinating, playfully probing mystery story.

A visually lush and very Westernized vision of life in a remote Chinese village in the early 1970s.