Eddie Cockrell

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.

A beautifully atmospheric vessel that will seem infinitely deep to some and chafingly dry to others.

Picture's cliched underlying story of restless youth plays as too naive for an older audience and too provocative for teens.

Director Bert Marcus’ Champs is the moviegoing opposite of a prize fight, a slick but not particularly stylish documentary that actually becomes more focused and energized in the late rounds.

As interesting as all this is, and as challenging and perilous it must have been to capture these images, Jirga’s elliptical approach to plot and selective use of subtitles does the finished product no favors.

Helmer Bruce David Klein's near-reverential treatment is a nice contrast to the rough-and-tumble of tour life.

The big, burly Samoan Wedding is a shrewdly written, impeccably timed and audaciously played romantic comedy.

A genuine and tangible fondness and respect for the characters and their eccentricities.

Prolific helmer Kari Skogland draws a fiery performance from vet Burstyn and a beguiling one from Christine Horne as the young Hagar. Yet the book's sheer "Giant"-like scope necessitates generational cross-cutting that's both rushed and cluttered; pic would have have been better served as a more leisurely miniseries.

Topolski and his story are so engaging that the resulting discord of voices and agendas can't drown out the voice of the little guy questioning the system.

Writer-producer Rishi S. Bhilawadikar’s too-busy script nevertheless scores legitimate points about the complexities and paradoxes of the visa application process, the resulting limbo in which many legitimately productive immigrants find themselves, and other frustrating and soul-searching issues facing ethnic communities.

The Time We Killed reps avant-garde vet Jennifer Todd Reeves' most ambitious work yet, a dense-packed feature-length black-and-white journey into a beautifully restless mind.

Will be of keen interest to fans but plays to the unwashed as cringingly pompous.

The star plays Doyle as just rough enough around the edges to warrant the character's setbacks, but not so unpleasant that the twinkle in his eye is extinguished.

Admirably idealistic but dramatically awkward.

Bids to whip homoerotic iconography into something palatable for those suspicious of the cuisine.

Intense but inscrutable tale involving a woman's gradual remembrance of a long-suppressed trauma.

Sublimely pointed in its idealistic simplicity yet willfully scruffy in presentation -- much like the enduring Young's best music.

A mildly diverting, largely inoffensive teen laffer that's long on cartoonish high school hijinks but short on dramatic concentration and crucial story details.

The film is an energetic, candy-colored romp through genre tropes that manages to take its subject matter seriously while poking fun at itself at the same time.

A little bit of Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek goes a long way. In the verbose profile documentary Zizek! there's a lot of esoteric, eccentric theories, and little context within his globetrotting life.