Desson Thomson

Unusual, unexpected and strangely refreshing. For this movie to have resorted to a familiar action-flick finish with everything explained, pressed and dry-cleaned would have rendered it banal.

The movie does what any great musician should: It lifts an idea to the heights of ecstasy; it sells its song.

This all makes for a deeply entertaining experience that engages our hearts as well as our funny bones. And it's gratifying to see Cruz finally get her due.

A truly satisfying holiday picture, the kind everyone can enjoy.

A disconcertingly assured tango between tenderness and brutality.

The chemistry between the actors, particularly between Anton and Kinnaman, is sometimes magical.

The movie's big action scenes, at times, make you forget you're even watching animation. There's an in-your-face sequence involving a runaway, crashing train that will make you squirm in your seat trying to get out of the way.

It's a wonderful postmodern hug of a movie, and never once do you not know you're watching a movie.

The dance between authenticity and storymaking works beautifully.

There's visceral horror, too, including a grisly image -- a horror-in-miniature involving a fingernail -- that located an open nerve in my jaded ability to endure screen violence.

Notre Musique is really a poetic essay, masterfully intermixing the director's mournful-toned, philosophical narration with documentary and staged moments.

John Boorman's childhood and the London Blitz happened to coincide. Which is great for the movie Hope and Glory, because he turns both events into exquisite myth.

It feels like real life unfolding before your eyes.

It's the atmospheric sideshow that earns the highest marks.

Without its animation, A Scanner Darkly would have made a fine cautionary tale about drug addiction, paranoia and institutional treachery in a police state. But with a technique that turns the existing live action into a two-dimensional cartoon, the movie goes one -- maybe even 10 -- better. It becomes its own living, breathing metaphor.

Mamet doesn't just give us an enthralling heist flick, he makes the language something to savor. You're biting your nails with your ears peeled.

Steers refreshingly clear of the usual cliches. Character takes the wheel and dictates the action, not the other way around.

Costner (with Michael Blake's screenplay) creates a vision so childlike, so willfully romantic, it's hard to put up a fight.

Merchant's attention to Trinidadian culture, locales and general atmosphere is inescapably alluring.

This isn't a stand up and cheer flick; it's a sit down and ponder affair. And thanks to Kline's superbly nuanced performance, that pondering is highly pleasurable.

Mullan's movie is admiringly uncompromising. He refuses to augment the horrors with relief.

Passionate, literally shimmering movie.

This is a fully realized movie, whose intelligence -- despite its grim findings -- dwarfs any Hollywood production.

Franklin's picture is effortlessly wise beneath its entertaining surface.

Surprisingly powerful and universal: the search for meaning and small blessings in the face of life's utter randomness.

Kidd, a first-time writer and director, has created a sophisticated but intriguingly toxic comedy of manners.

It's his best work by far.

A memorable and devastating indictment of the oppression facing many women in Iran.