Ken Fox

It's all confusing, woozy and slightly stoned, and feels very much like adolescence.

Warm and utterly beguiling fable.

Wildly entertaining and quite poignant.

This film's splendid visuals suit the subject, Spain's greatest painter, but its stilted dramatics are wholly at odds with Francisco de Goya's tumultuous life and times.

May be the best film to date about the humanitarian and environmental impact of China's enormous Three Gorges Dam project.

Haynes took an enormous risk here, but thanks to his thoughtful script and an utterly sincere performance from Moore, what could have easily become a cold, calculated exercise in postmodern pastiche winds up a powerful and deeply moving example of melodramatic moviemaking.

Ends on a cruel, cynical note that would surely make Billy Wilder snort with approval.

Gowariker's stunningly choreographed, four-hour spectacle (reportedly one of the most expensive films in the industry's history) is a fascinating mix of Hollywood genres and tropes.

Far more than mere fish tale, Sauper's dark, devastating documentary profiles a socio-ecological nightmare with unimaginable consequences, and it's one of the best films about the ugly reality of the global marketplace.

So it should come as no surprise that what Maddin eventually produced is a film about HIS Winnipeg, a psychological terrain that's no more -- nor less -- "real" than William Carlos William's Paterson or Marcel Proust's Combray.

There's also very little dialogue, but what there is is often very funny, and Ceylan is a master of the dead-pan visual gags that reveal volumes about his character.

Likably low-key, character-driven dramatic comedy.

The film's highlights are far and away the musical performances.

A bold, vibrant piece of filmmaking.

Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzman's powerful and sometimes triumphant documentary is not only an excellent overview of the affair, but serves as the perfect finale to his monumental trilogy about the coup and its aftermath, which began with "The Battle of Chile" (1978).

Tragically, the title of James Longley's beautifully shot 90-minute documentary refers to not only the state in which he found the Iraq during the two years he spent there shooting over 300 hours of footage, but the structure the violent factionalism that divides Iraqi Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds imposes on his film.

A marvelous, deceptively simple accomplishment shot on grainy 16mm film and featuring a cast of mostly nonprofessional actors delivering loosely written dialogue.

Moodysson puts it across with a sincerity that's genuinely heartwarming, and he sets it all to a surprisingly good soundtrack culled from the Swedish rock (who knew?) of the era.

Dracula fans will appreciate the witty ways in which Maddin has drawn Stoker's troubling racism and xenophobia to the fore, while making the most of the sexual ambivalence that helps make the story endlessly fascinating.

His (Finkiel) ability to control economical dialogue with subtle but unusually powerful images -- haunted faces peering out from behind foggy bus windows; train tracks that once carried other passengers to a death camp -- lend this quiet, unforgettable film an uncanny power.

One of the best movies Hollywood has ever made about itself, a extraordinary meta-narrative that continually questions its own ability to capture human experience, disappointment and uneventful loneliness. It's hilariously funny.

About as subtle as a hammer blow to the skull and marred by a heedless mixture of fact and fiction.

Alternating between the sad facts of Nascimento life -- which included a stretch at one of Rio's notorious prisons -- with the events unfolding outside the botanical garden, the film is a pulse-pounding piece of documentary reportage, and a terribly important account of a social problem in developing countries that won't be going away anytime soon.

Often thrilling, if overwhelmingly brutal, trio of interconnected short stories.

The film serves as a potent reminder of what conditions were like in Afghanistan before the U.S. bombing campaign ended the Taliban's reign of terror, and, as such, its timing couldn't be any better.

Bahrani's willingness to expose the shameful reality of third-world conditions in the Land of Plenty while telling a crackling good story marks him as a filmmaker as important as he is accessible.

Nearly perfect.

The film is ridiculously overplotted, and very little of the plot serves any purpose other than to motivate what you can pretty well guess is going to happen from the outset.

Akinshina and Bogucharskij are remarkable together, and Moodysson once again demonstrates a sophisticated visual skill matched only by his innate understanding of the adolescent heart.

Staunton is phenomenal - she barely speaks throughout the entire last third of the film, but the power of her posture and distraught expressions are enough to break your heart.

Does find a spot closer to the middle than most.

Generations of healthy spirits were twisted and deformed by the good Sisters of Mercy, all in the name of salvation.

An intoxicating dream of a film that speaks to the daydreamer in all of us.

Sensitive, extraordinarily well-acted drama.

Fred Frith's lovely and subdued score is a perfect accompaniment.

It's simply one of the most beautiful films he's (Hou Hsiao Hsien) made to date.

It's a fascinating story teeming with pride, arrogance, greed and overweening hubris, and Gibney attempts to give it all an added dimension by finding the archetypes of Greek tragedy among the sleazy deals and Ponzi-scheme financing.

A sprawling, semi-biographical account of two real-life filmmakers who both found work during darkest days the German occupation.

Rather than trading le Carré's downbeat but agonizingly true-to-life ending for something more palatable, Meirelles has crafted a rare sort of thriller that refuses to resolve real-life issues for the sake of feel-good entertainment.

A funny and touching adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winner Jhumpa Lahiri's novel about two generations of Bengali-Americans attempting to reconcile the world of their collective past with that of their individual futures.

You'll gladly surrender to the whole gorgeous muddle.

Luckily the story behind the suds is a pretty good one.

Indeed, Hirschbiegel himself seems reluctant to single out a protagonist, and finally settles on Junge.

What one interviewee calls a "fog of ambiguity" surrounding what was and wasn't officially authorized shielded superior officers and key members of the Department of Defense -- namely Donald Rumsfeld.

Still passable popcorn fare, even if you'll barely taste it before swallowing.

Jonathan Demme gets personal with this affectionate tribute to courageously outspoken radio broadcaster Jean Dominique, the pro-democracy advocate whose unflagging support for president Jean-Bertrand Aristide eventually cost him his life.

On the list of WWII stories criminally ignored by six decades of combat movies in the past 60 years, the heroics of French colonial soldiers ranks pretty high. But Rachid Bouchareb's powerful drama -- which won the 2006 Cannes Film Festival's best-actors award for its superb ensemble cast and was nominated for a best foreign-language-film Oscar, went a long way toward rectifying the situation, both on screen and in real life.

Greenebaum manages to portray old-age as a condition with its own peculiar beauty and considerable grace.

Strikingly authentic, socially conscious crime drama.

An enthusiastic recommendation.

This superbly played film, directed with remarkable skill for a first-time feature filmmaker, is truly an adult drama.

It's a shocking story, made all the more so by the film's final revelation, an outrageous allegation no one even bothers to deny.

Bogumil Godfrejow's raw cinematography and Huller's poignant, close-to-the-bone performance transform what might have been a morbid curiosity into an entirely enthralling, quietly terrifying experience.

Cornillac is excellent as the emotionally immature Gilles, but this is Devos' show.

This loud and exhilarating documentary from director Julien Temple brings it all back in a vitriolic spray of spite, spittle and raw rock and roll that still hits like a heart attack.

Oddly, once removed from the museum setting and strung together into an hourlong feature, it's Maddin's most cohesive narrative.

Stylized to the point of poetry.

Both farcical and deeply troubling, it unfolds with the kind of breathless, minute-by-minute immediacy that only eyewitness reportage can bring.

Interestingly, the real horror lies in the film's depiction of the era: The sight of guillotined bodies -- naked, headless and dumped under the shady trees of Picpus -- is truly shocking. Rarely has the horror of the Terror been so graphically and effectively evoked.

While it stands as a distinct film in its own right, this film is still very much of a piece with "Shoah," and the subject is presented in the same haunting manner.

Meyrou follows the family through the three day trial, the verdict and its aftermath, but the perpetrators remain a mystery.

Even worse than its hypocrisy, gratuitous homophobia and cheap proselytizing, the movie is dull.

This dark, almost mythic heart is what makes the film such an emotionally rich experience.

With its quiet pacing and dry-as-a-bone wit, the film strongly recalls the deadpan comedies of Jim Jarmusch or early Hal Hartley, but it gradually reveals a welcome new sensibility, one that's entirely McCarthy's own.

"All of us are by nature wild beasts. We must be like animal trainers and teach ourselves tricks alien to our bestiality." Cutting-edge Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul uses this quote from the novelist Ton Nakajima to introduce his entrancing third feature.

[Solondz's] blistering, brilliantly transgressive satire is sure to rattle even the most jaded filmgoer. It's also a remarkably compassionate profile of American life at its most desperate.

This touching documentary is many things at once: a fascinating biography, a gorgeously shot travelogue, a provocative disquisition on the relevance of architecture and, above all, the record of a son's poignant search for a father.

Marker revisited (the film) in 1993 after the fall of the Soviet Union: He trimmed an hour and added a remarkably prescient coda: "Terrorism has replaced Communism as the ultimate evil."

Basilio narrates his tale with such wit and wisdom that one comes away from the film wondering how much youthful potential is slowly being choked to death deep within the bowels of the earth.

Few of China's Sixth Generation filmmakers have turned to their country's explosive economic growth and its attendant upheavals with so sharp an eye and so heavy a heart as Jia Zhang-ke.

Boorman's original script is razor sharp and very funny, and Gleeson's portrayal is nothing short of brilliant

Not just an engaging melodrama that explores the class conflict and sexual mores of feudal Japan, but a work of extraordinary beauty; you could literally hang any random frame on the wall and call it art. No doubt the master would have been pleased.

Wildly entertaining and a visual delight.

Maverick Chinese director Jia Zhangke examines the rapidly changing face of China as its economy edges further toward a modified form of market capitalism with yet another complex, multicharacter masterpiece.

Audriad's film articulates an uncomfortably familiar vision of a nation desperate enough to believe its own lies, where the copy is inevitably much better than the real thing and heroes are only as genuine as one needs them to be.

A deranged penguin is seen racing toward his certain doom amid the crags of a mountain range. It may not be "Happy Feet," but Herzog has made a penguin movie after all.

The complete absence of world leaders is a bewildering sign that the world still doesn't care much about small African countries with no exploitable resources to speak of, and a troubling indication that such atrocities can, and no doubt will, happen again.

What's most offensive isn't the waste of a good cast, but the film's denial of sincere grief and mourning in favor of bogus spiritualism. Only devotees of Ouija boards and TV's "Crossing Over" will find anything of merit here.

The film is an original work by a filmmaker who throughout his career has absorbed the best of what Ozu had to teach, and as such it stands as beautiful tribute from one master to another.

Starts with a bang and ends in a long, protracted whimper.

Whether you conclude that this project is a brilliant hoax that exposes how the rapid transition from communism to a free market economy has created an ad addicted, consumer-mad culture in the Czech Republic, or simply a cruel joke, one thing is undeniable. It's a fascinating account.

Filled with moments of real poignancy and gentle epiphanies, the film is also marked by strong Christian undercurrents, but, like everything else in Salles's film, they're handled with extraordinary delicacy and never feel exclusionary.

Beauchamp reconstructs the actual crime with disturbing immediacy, and his treatment of how Till's death galvanized a country makes this short film a good way to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a crime that still has the power to outrage.

While the homeless, the mentally ill and the generally downtrodden are scattered about like so much shabby furniture, Rifkin has no qualms about wallowing in their filth, but he misses the tragedy of their lives -- just as he misses everything else.

The surprisingly tragic climax may make it rough going for kids too young to grasp the film's comforting message.

A rare, unexpected treat.

Has everything one could ask of a true-crime expose.

Despite a terribly conceived coda, Luke and his brothers have mostly succeeded, thanks in large part to sharp dialogue, a solid vintage soundtrack (Rick Nelson's "Garden Party" features prominently) and some great older actors -- Cassel is a particular standout -- from the heyday of American cinema.

Thrilling, heart-wrenching tale of the real-life incredible journey.

Perfect introduction to a remarkable career, and a moving memorial to a remarkable filmmaker.

what makes Caro's film a future classic is What so many movies geared toward younger audiences lack: a cool and very courageous 'tween heroine whom boys and girls of all ages can admire

Aside from the women themselves, the most remarkable thing about Gabbert's unexpectedly entertaining film is how effortlessly it dispels misconceptions about the elderly.

Peralta includes amazing archival footage to demonstrate just how far surfing in general permeated American popular culture, but also narrows his focus to follow the evolution of the surfboard itself.

The film is informative, often grisly and undeniably riveting.

Wragby is a stately manor straight out of English House & Garden, rather than a sprawling, suffocating warren teetering on the edge of a coal pit, and sex is portrayed as a means of personal deliverance rather than a universal salvation, leaving Lawrence's admirers still waiting for the film that will finally do the novel justice.

Cheung, slinking around the corridors of her hotel in her sheath of shiny black latex to the dissonant chords of Sonic Youth, is an instant icon of everything.

A remote, Israeli desert town is the setting for this droll, endearing comedy about an accidental cultural exchange that very quietly says some very important things about contemporary Arab-Israeli relations.

Rather than adapt the novel per se, Winterbottom has adapted Sterne's hilarious attempts to make the mess of life fit the neat contours of the novel by making a movie about an attempt to make Sterne's chaotic and confusing novel fit the contours of a film.