Jami Bernard

Tense, fiercely optimistic movie.

Alnoy's unnerving mood piece is spare and atmospheric, even funny. The movie is accomplished, but gets hung up on arty composition.

Uplifting and moving in a traditional Hollywood way, while also seeming as raw and unfiltered as cinema vérité.

The film, written and directed with an intimate, hand-held camera by Assayas, is notable for the details how love that is ended sometimes flares up in little brush fires, only to be banked down again; how lovers awkwardly balance the push and pull of new relationships; how things neither start nor end with any punctuality or precision. [07 Jul 1999, p.38]

The first two stories are so well-drawn you hate to leave them. But Miller's femaleempowerment anthology carries a smart whiff of other literary looks at ordinary, extraordinary women, such as Grace Paley's "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute."

A poetic and somber film that underscores the bum deal women usually get in any restrictive society.

Freewheeling and mindless.

An unexpected delight.

One of the most honest and harrowing depictions of female adolescence ever put to film.

You can't go wrong with an uplifting, anti-war story like this, but director Christian Carion trowels on the schmaltz, and the movie's emphasis on Christian values actually seems to spell doom for solving today's conflicts with the Middle East.

The direction is still slick, but Matchstick Men gets most of its thrills from the unknowable in human interaction. This could be the biggest "scam" Scott himself has pulled off.

David Cronenberg is one of the most intellectual film makers around.

A ­movie that takes impartiality to new places artistically. The film is infuriating.

Could easily serve as an instructional video for repressive regimes who have not yet learned you can get more with honey than with vinegar.

It makes sly sense to link female hormonal bursts with the lunar cycle of the werewolf, but the movie's final act is the usual matted-fur chase.

This one uses sweeping compositions of nearly solitary figures as a reminder of what individuals stood to lose, and an auction scene is horrifying -- some livestock and a basket of everyday items are exchanged for a man's future.

As pat as some of its conclusions may seem, this low-budget effort has charm, fine acting and one of the few realistic screen depictions of the awkward dynamics of a family trying to circle its wagons.

Without Crowe and Paul Giamatti, this movie would have little in its corner.

Maintains a light, dainty tone despite the heavy-handed metaphor, but in crossing the Pacific to the U.S., it is bound to leave most viewers dry.

Satires like this tend to throw a lot of stuff at the wall, and in Undercover Brother, a surprising amount sticks.

Like most Iranian films, it's a shaggy-dog story that builds so slowly you don't see the quietly shattering climax coming.

This movie hyperventilates with pessimism to the point of perversity.

It's a misguided, miscast remake of the 1974 Robert Aldrich classic.

A black comedy that features Renee Zellweger as the most adorable psychiatric-trauma victim ever.

It revives an innocently pleasurable genre - shades of Burt Lancaster and Errol Flynn - that combines lusty adventure, humor, the great outdoors and satisfying storytelling without having to concoct it in a special-effects lab.

The movie clearly portrays how the glory and salvation of being a team hero is ephemeral.

An unsubtle allegory about a way of life withering on the vine.

Refreshingly offbeat documentary.