Ken Fox

Aside from its frank consideration of preteen sexuality, the most daring thing about Cuesta's extraordinary film is its willingness to put honest, intelligent dialogue in the mouths of kids.

The film flows like a sinister and unsettling piece of music, from gripping overture to the tightly orchestrated movements to the unforgettable coda.

Faithfull is marvelous: Once notorious for her own escapades, this great-great-niece of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch is no shrinking violet, but she's perfect as a plump, frumpy widow with a huge heart and a hidden talent no one would ever suspect.

Strikingly authentic, socially conscious crime drama.

Thanks largely to Tabatabai's superb performance, it's on this level that Maccarone's film is most affecting.

Harrowing, psychologically astute drama.

Allen Loeb's first produced screenplay is an unvarnished treatment of death and its aftermath that's unusual for a Hollywood film.

Peter Askin's powerful documentary serves as an important reminder of our First Amendment rights, and a tribute to one man who fought to preserve them in the face of Congressional intimidation.

For a film that feels so breezy on the surface, it's a surprisingly complex character study.

Poitras boldly dispenses with the traditional documentary voice-over, but her film is filled with telling moments that are far more eloquent than any scripted narration.

A truly fresh take on the romantic comedy: It's as sad as it is funny, and the boy-girl match so misbegotten you can't help but pray it won't work out in the end. Call it an anti-rom-com, and see it if you can.

Carries an important and timely reminder about the fate of torture victims, so deftly wrapped within a touching and beautifully acted melodrama that the result is the furthest thing from a didactic message movie.

A nonstop cavalcade of Roth-style animation starring Rat Fink, vintage footage, artfully animated black-and-white film, and fanciful "interviews" with beautifully preserved cars of the era.

Don't be put off: Hernandez's exquisite romance works on an emotional, as well as intellectual, level.

The film is surprisingly satisfying and meaningful.

A sharp, superbly acted character-driven comedic drama.

While Gyllenhaal is a competent actor, Ledger - surprisingly enough - is becoming a great one, and the levels of intensity they bring to their roles render this romantically star-crossed relationship emotionally lopsided.

The casual listener is easily put off, but by the end of the film, even a newcomer can see the magic that made fans of Kurt Cobain and Sonic Youth and led the estimable Yo La Tengo, Pearl Jam and Wilco to cover Johnston's remarkable body of work.

Baer asks all the right questions.

Akin achieves a peaceful balance here –- alongside the death and seemingly senseless tragedy, there’s also a kind of reassuring equilibrium.

A clever, ingeniously animated film filled with many shining moments.

Beautifully shot in rich colors by Franz Lustig, it's possibly Wenders' most accessible film to date, and among his most emotionally satisfying.

A wildly entertaining detective thriller that succeeds entirely on its own terms.

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

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

Expansive and undeniably brilliant.

Sweet, melancholy comedy; it's ineffable charm lies entirely in the delivery.

Eisenstadt has an unerring sense of comedic rhythm and a knack of cutting away just in time to extract the drop of humor from a potentially pathetic situation.

Newcomer Cassidy is excellent, and Hoskins gives a flawless performance.

Polanski's film is an unqualified success both dramatically and artistically.

Not many films have the power to change how one sees other people, but this remarkable anthology of loosely connected shorts from writer-director David Riker just might.

Unpredictable and hugely entertaining.

Versatile, highly skilled Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland's poignant drama examines the lingering effects of U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia.

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.

The results are a harrowingly intimate connection with a torn, tormented father, and an uncommonly powerful film.

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.

Extraordinary documentary.

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

Inexpensively shot on digital video, it's an invaluable work of art.

A dark and edgy teen comedy that's also one of the most excitingly unpredictable American comedies since "Pulp Fiction."

And while this director's cut doesn't really differ all that much from the original 1979 release, it contains a few minutes of never-before seen footage, including one serious bitch slap and an entire scene in which Ripley stumbles upon a few not-quite-dead crew members whose terrible fates foreshadow James Cameron's 1986 sequel.

It's nothing less than an examination of the very meaning of family.

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.

This film represents a perfect match of filmmaker and material. Akerman's fondness for long, static takes and circular, recurring dialogue perfectly suits the maddening repetitions that set the tone of Proust's darkest work.

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.

Homelessness is all too familiar to many inhabitants of the world's wealthiest cities, but rarely has the situation seemed so hopeless, or its victims so desperate.

Emir Kusturica's magnificent fresco rips through half a century of the tragic history of his homeland -- the former Yugoslavia -- with all the solemnity of an amusement park ride.

Gitai uses fictionalized characters to dramatize historical reality, and while minimalist in its presentation, the film becomes nearly operatic in its intensity.

Given the number of characters involved and the fact that the film flashes back and forth over a 40-year period, the film flows beautifully, thanks in large part to excellent casting and Kate Williams's fluid editing.

Ghobadi has little use for sentimentality, and never flinches from the fate of these children.

Jiang draws a great deal of humor from the situation, but the film inevitably explodes in terrible violence.

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).

The sheer size of the production dwarfs the human drama.

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

Barak Goodman and Daniel Anker have done a tremendous job of sorting the facts from a tangle of fictions, and include perspectives from a wide variety of experts and testimonies from a surprising number of surviving eyewitnesses. Together, they do the whole, horrible episode justice, something awfully hard to come by in the state of Alabama in 1931.

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

Oddly enough, this uncharacteristic offering from a director whose name instantly evokes a very particular kind of film -- call it postmodern American gothic -- is also one of his best.

Martel can barely contain her disgust, and like Bunuel before her, she knows just when to cut the laughs and go straight for the throat.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

A tightly woven tapestry of extraordinary breadth, and director Fernando Meirelles's control over the material is extraordinary.

A fascinating allegory of life in Iranian Kurdistan, a remote borderland still deeply scarred by years of war with Iraq.

Fontaine's thoughtful character-driven screenplay is the perfect vehicle for Berling and Bouquet and both are superb. As father and son, they play off each another in fascinating ways as the film moves towards its perfectly modulated, intriguingly ambiguous final moment.

A rare adaptation that actually improves upon the original material: It's everything a good children's adventure tale should be, and a powerful fable for adults.

Innovative sounds and striking visuals combine to form an exquisite cinematic work.

Wildly entertaining and a visual delight.

Look carefully at that final scene; few happy endings have ever felt so downbeat.

The result is an astonishingly complex, striking original portrait of an artist whose deeply personal art, intended for no one but God and himself, demands to be treated on its own terms.