J. Hoberman

Terror's Advocate is largely a mix of talking heads and archival footage, but as Vergés's connections to Swiss neo-Nazis and Congo secessionists are explored, the movie becomes a fantastic international thriller.

Boldly facetious and monstrously clever.

A notably confident and achieved debut.

The climactic Christmas Day dinner of dreadful retribution is a terrifying prospect, but for anyone with a yen for our great lost genre, it's also some sort of gift.

Complex, superbly rendered, and wildly eccentric anime-even by Miyazaki's own standards.

An entertainingly raffish action-comedy.

Jackson's adaptation is certainly successful on its own terms.

Ostensibly a conventional tale of triad loyalty, As Tears Go By announced the presence of a genuine Hong Kong new wave—as well as an ambitious cineaste.

Ari Folman's broodingly original Waltz With Bashir -- one of the highlights of the last New York Film Festival -- is a documentary that seems only possible, not to mention bearable, as an animated feature.

Like "Chuck & Buck," The Good Girl is a droll, well-acted, character-driven comedy with unexpected deposits of feeling.

It can feel a bit slight and, given the epic sweep of its subject's life, somewhat underplotted. But there's no denying the incendiary power of Ramos's performance -- he's present in nearly every scene. The movie is as much the story of his transformation into Madame Satã as it is João Francisco's.

Psychologically rich, unobtrusively minimalist, at once admirably straightforward and slyly comic, Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard is a lucid retelling and simultaneous explanation of Charles Perrault's nastiest, most un-Disneyfiable nursery story.

Opens cute and poignant, turns wildly visceral, and ends in a burst of magical realism.

The movie is a superb riff with a boffo finale, a terrific, cynical punch line, and a crazy closing image of Bob's Plymouth on an empty beach.

A fascinating and painful account of an entertainer trapped not only by his Jewishness but by his overwhelming need to make theater.

As dense and fluid as Martel's movie is, the viewer--like the protagonist--is compelled to live in the moment. And a rich moment it is.

John Sayles's Amigo aspires more to educate than entertain, but it's no less engrossing for that.

Alamar provides a nearly hypnotic immersion in the brilliantly aqua, impossibly tranquil Caribbean--a Paradise Regained not just for Natan, but for everyone

May be pumped-up, but it's rarely boring

The surface blandness does not efface, and might even amplify, its disturbing qualities. Never Let Me Go is not a movie about death but, more painfully, about the consciousness of death.

As usual, Jia's people tend toward the opaque--one of the movie's most enthusiastic conversations is conducted with ringtones. But his compositions have their own eloquence. Everything's despoiled and yet--as rendered in cinematographer Yu Lik-wai's rich, impossibly crisp HD images--everything is beautiful.

An action film at once baroque and austere, hypnotic and opaque.

Paranoid, hysterical, and programmatically subjective, the movie is in every sense a psychological thriller. Although the payoff is ambiguous, the experience remains in the mind. It's an absolutely restrained and truly frightening movie.

The filmmaker might be accused of preaching to the choir were the story not so compelling and the performances so strong.

Warmhearted but unsentimental, touching but not mawkish, clever but never cute, Divan is almost miraculously modest.

Cinematic as it is, Meek's Cutoff has an uncanny theatricality. The scenes alternating between windswept emptiness and the dark void could be played on a barren stage. For all its detailed authenticity, this minimalist "Wagon Train" is less naturalistic than existential.

The movie is ultimately about the philosopher's personality -- if you loved "Lingua Franca" (and what lumpen academoid did not?), you'll certainly dig Derrida.

A near-irresistible button-pusher that's agile enough to hold a mirror to its own aspirations: The Sundance prize-winning filmmaker and her prize discovery, Michelle Rodriguez, merge in the image of a self-invented amateur boxer.