Eddie Cockrell

An instant ancillary classic for music fan.

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.

Unflaggingly genial and universally funny.

Stunningly played story of faith vs. family.

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

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."

Goldstone is nothing if not a focused, unified piece.

Gripping, intimate genre triumph.

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.

Taxidermia sets a benchmark for body horror in the cinema.

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

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

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

Crowd-pleasing, darkly comic joyride.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

A savvy sequel that should speak to anyone who's let that one great love slip away.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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