Eddie Cockrell

Taped in stark black-and-white and clocking in 15 minutes shy of six hours, invigorating pic is big, passionate and brimming with compelling human details and broad sociopolitical idealism.

Exquisitely modulated and superbly mounted, the directing debut of skilled cinematographer Lajos Koltai went through an extended, unpredictable production history to emerge as a genuinely new way of looking at the Holocaust that is markedly different in tone from other such stories including "Schindler's List" and "The Pianist."

A blue chip cast is wasted in the painfully unfunny ensemble comedy Niagara Motel.

An instant ancillary classic for music fan.

An extraordinary performance by vet thesp Yolande Moreau in the title role.

It doesn't make for involving drama, unless the audience is already invested in the subjects' fortunes. Thus, 49 Up will have more appeal for long-time followers than newcomers.

Though it may feel undernourished to the faithful, Winnipeg is an easily digestible meal, for the uninitiated and fans alike.

Taxidermia sets a benchmark for body horror in the cinema.

Stunningly played story of faith vs. family.

Filmed over the course of nine months' worth of night shoots, the resulting coverage is hypnotically immersive.

Wenders lets the music and the sprightly people who make it speak for themselves, although the director's ongoing fascination with the urban environment is in top form as the camera serenely cruises the streets of Havana, often at a velvety dusk.

A curious young helmer tracks down the profanity-spewing subject of a two-decade-old viral video with results at once scabrously funny and uncomfortably poignant.

No-frills talking head docu eschews vintage photos and period footage, rendering visually static pic of greatest interest to history buffs, fests and the tube.

Exercising admirable restraint in its expose of ingrained racism in the Romanian educational system, absorbing docu Our School follows the sad yet resilient journey of three Roma children over four years as they grapple with prejudice and stereotyping.

Fine, gritty, contempo love story.

Undeniably powerful on the bigscreen.

A humanistic, warts-and-all battle of wills between a dissolute father and an emotionally ravaged daughter.

The moral quandary of Nazi complicity is revisited in taut drama The Counterfeiters, which tells the true story of a disparate group of imprisoned artists, financiers and swindlers secretly assembled in a concentration camp to forge millions of pound and dollar notes to support the German war effort.

An atmospheric and cumulatively impressive feature-length debut from Argentine writer-director Lucrecia Martel.

A barkingly funny new "mockumentary" that does for those canine pageants what the helmer's 1996 "Waiting for Guffman" did for smalltown theatrics.

A vibrant, immediate treatise on love and cultural identity in a complex new world of fluid borders and deep suspicions in the stunning new Czech drama Up and Down.

Goldstone is nothing if not a focused, unified piece.

Todeschini has the most physically demanding role, with a gaunt face and ravaged body that utterly convinces of the brutality of the ailment.

A forceful, affecting experience.

A tonal triumph of true-life storytelling told with equal measures of tension and redemption.

Deftly balancing epic sociopolitical scope with intimate human emotions, all polished to a high technical gloss, Deepa Mehta's Water is a profoundly moving drama.

The most nonconfrontational and thus accessible title in the Dogma lot to date, and will speak the international language of proletariat love to arthouse auds who go for such fare.

Tale of an idealistic local caught in the crossfire of an illicit affair is too pat and pretty to connect with upscale audiences.

Joyously funky documentary.

Thesping is pitch-perfect across the board.

An uncommonly resonant sports drama in which a talented yet troubled gymnast comes to terms with a turbulent past.

The film overstays its welcome by punctuating his story with ill-advised dramatic fantasy sequences that are meant to illustrate the anguish of a gay man in mid-century America, but come across as heavy-handed and mean-spirited.

Charlie is the vessel through which de Heer navigates these turbulent waters, and the script was developed during sessions when the actor would throw out ideas and the director would structure the results. It is to both men’s credit that amid the suffering, there’s a ray of hope for Charlie in the end.

Fans of the Grammy-winning musician will revel in the proximity to their idol, though second pic from talented helmer Thomas Riedelsheimer plays a tad long to those unfamiliar with his, or her, work.

Stands reasonably well on its own as an urgent, updated genre meditation on nurture vs. nature.

A natural crowd-pleaser.

Recent history once again intrudes on the present-day lives of working Czechs in the masterful multicharacter drama Beauty in Trouble.

A taut police procedural that craftily blends ripped-from-the-headlines genetic issues with foreboding Icelandic stoicism, Jar City reps a supremely confident stride into mass-appeal genre fare for Icelandic hyphenate Baltasar Kormakur.

A stately, intermittently gripping, ultimately overlong drama.

An entertaining profile of the self-avowed participatory journalist and his tumultuous life and times.

Sixty years after World War II, descendants of a prominent Nazi responsible for implementing Hitler's policies in Slovakia reignite debate over their heritage in emotional docu 2 or 3 Things I Know About Him.

A harrowing ride that morphs from discrete horror to probing character study and back again in a vivid yet admirably restrained 108 minutes.

Although the outcome is public record, picture is undeniably gripping as it reveals a distressing degree of voter complacency.

Noteworthy for its detail and evenhandedness.

A rueful yet gentle fable about the price of individuality and the value of dignity that preserves the intellectually stimulating spirit of Kieslowski's best work while tapping into a universally understandable vein of low-keyed absurdist comedy.

Continuing the late-career renaissance of historically urgent, politically engaged fiction filmmaking that began with 1999's "The Legend of Rita" and 2004's "The Ninth Day" German vet Volker Schloendorff stumbles slightly, but doesn't fall, with Poland-set Solidarity saga Strike.

A so-so pic on an incendiary subject, Full Battle Rattle follows the training regimen of one battalion during engagement and occupation in one of 13 fake "villages" comprising a massive Iraq simulation somewhere in the Mojave Desert.

A virtual primer on the unique mixture of self-deprecating dark humor and personal tragedy that has been the Czech cinema's stock-in-trade since their celebrated 1960s New Wave.

Crowd-pleasing, darkly comic joyride.

Timely and entertaining concert documentary.

The intuitive selection of the four leads, and their complex, perceptive playing of the material, is a credit to Lawrence’s deft direction of both veteran and non-professional talent.

Not so much harrowing as achingly reflective.

Anchored by another marvelously quirky yet deadly serious performance from John Malkovich, and likely to be relished by the fan base of J.M. Coetzee's Booker Prize-winning novel, this is a strong, perceptive, old-school arthouse picture.

Helmer-poet Amie Siegel delivers a provocative, confident film.

Universally embraceable subject matter, coupled with helmer's sterling rep as benevolent booster of humanistic pioneers.

It’s not so much the destination but the physical and emotional journey embarked on in this thoughtful, culturally authentic road trip.

This unaffected charmer treats a hot-button contempo issue with old-fashioned grace and benevolent wit, rendering it a sure-fire word-of-mouth crowd-pleaser.

The writer discovers a people physically and psychologically worn down by decades of dictatorship, sanctions, war and occupation.

A dignified and wistful look at the unusual life, difficult career and lasting influence of singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt.

A surprisingly conventional portrait of a decidedly unconventional man.

Confronts an incendiary topic head-on with grace, style, compassion and exquisitely practical wit.

Picture raises pithy questions sure to provoke animated discussions pro and con. Credit Davenport for a mostly unbiased presentation that presents her own disenchantment in a balanced manner.

A deliberately coarse character style that's more Gumby than Gromit.

Helmer Douglas Mackinnon does what he can to make the most of emotional bullet points and gloss over the lack of connective tissue.

The trio is so individually and collectively charismatic that the film eventually neglects fully fleshed-out narrative in favor of sublime characterization.

This triumph of historical verisimilitude in the service of solid storytelling requires no detailed knowledge of the period to be appreciated as the moving story of a son's unconditional love for his mother.

It will garner critical huzzahs from those it lampoons, which will broaden the duo's (Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy) fan base.

Unflaggingly genial and universally funny.

TV scribe Kundo Koyama's first bigscreen script peppers the proceedings with rich character detail and near-screwball interludes that shouldn't fit but somehow do.

Arresting and fascinating.

Sure, it's all been done before, but seldom with this degree of vigor and panache.

Scrub away a needlessly fussy visual style, trendy narrative tweaks and a climax both morally repugnant and logically absurd, and there’s a tough little noir about buried transgressions coming out of the past in Renny Harlin’s lackluster thriller “Cleaner.” Too mainstream to attract genre interest, and too tangled in its character motivations to sit well with the multiplex crowd, this is a minor stain that should fade quickly and leave only faint traces in ancillary.

Girl Asleep is an exuberant example of imaginative filmmaking that takes its cues from imagination and talent — with nary a focus group in sight.

The Final Member finds hilarity in humanity.

A seesaw chronology and generally chaotic approach plagues Haven, an overly ambitious, multicharacter love story-cum-underworld revenge drama set on a fleetingly exotic island.

Managing to be at once epic and intimate, Zelary matches a resilient urban woman against a compassionate rural man in the spectacular Moravian countryside during World War II. Results rep a triumph of regional filmmaking, but in the David Lean tradition.

Gripping, intimate genre triumph.

Explores another courageous, little-known chapter in the saga of resistance and heroics during World War II.

Lanthimos’ point seems to be that everyone has their own private weaknesses, but after a Lynchian first act in this strange world, he avoids any mainstream dramatic or satiric elements.

Laugh-out-loud funny, tartly off-color and ultimately touching.

A cumulative feeling of urgency and you-are-there world-beating are key to the picture's seductive appeal, though lack of informed dissenting opinions reps an unfortunate editorial choice.

An intermittently gripping story about an idealistic young boxer who becomes disillusioned with the Third Reich during his elite training, Napola is finally KO'd by an overdose of Nazi fetishism.

As engaging and stimulating as the man himself.

What elevates the picture above the norm is a series of remarkably candid and eerily prescient interviews.

Longtime fans of Walker's warm, sepulchral baritone, startlingly evocative songwriting and lushly imaginative instrumentation will rejoice at this revealing documentary.

Picture reflects the no-nonsense storytelling skills of prolific helmer Michael Apted, whose career-long mix of feature and documentary work holds him in good stead once more.

Part mob-trial thriller, part "dese 'n' dose" extended standup routine, character-rich pic plays like vintage Lumet, mining the grim comedy from life-and-death legal wranglings in the manner of "Dog Day Afternoon," "Prince of the City" and "The Verdict."

A plea for attention to despicable conditions of female servitude in contempo Iran.

Links narrative fiction filmmaking to avant-garde with vision and authority.

The aural landscape here is key, as Wilson’s strategy is to create a visual theater of the mind in which the majority of the action is heard and not seen.

The Forest of Lost Souls is a nasty and impressive little thriller that goes about its business with ruthless cinematic efficiency.

A natural for kidfests, pic is a fine example of old-fashioned story-telling and also will dance wherever detailed character development and leisurely-paced drama are appreciated.

The miscalculated and overlong Julia proves a startling misfire for "The Dreamlife of Angels" writer-helmer Erick Zonca and dependably fearless actress Tilda Swinton.

A successful novelist whose films bear the expansive plotting and telling character detail of the page, Doerrie never seems in any particular hurry to tell her tales, preferring the journey to the destination.

Deeply involving and emotionally searing, The Daughter reps a confident and profoundly moving bigscreen debut for established theater director Simon Stone.

Washington reveals himself to be a filmmaker with a clean, uncluttered storytelling style. Too often, overtly inspirational material such as this can become strident or mawkish.

An Argentine writer dying of AIDS searches for a medical cure and some human warmth in the hospitals and S&M clubs of Buenos Aires in dignified, thoughtful drama A Year Without Love.

Superbly modulated yet unrelentingly grim, Mirage builds upon a remarkable performance from young Macedonian newcomer Marko Kovacevic to tell the tragic tale of a talented schoolboy driven to violence through neglect and manipulation.