Ken Fox

Slow but charming film.

Weerasethakul mixes fact, fiction and filmmaking into a blend that's intriguingly obtuse, yet surprisingly revelatory.

Takashi Miike's frenetic comic yakuza thriller embodies the best and worst this notorious Japanese genre auteur has to offer: It's endlessly inventive, consistently intelligent and sickeningly savage.

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.

Makes for a great story.

More reminiscent of Hitchcock's progeny than of the master's own films, Cedric Kahn's intelligently menacing thriller combines Brian DePalma's sexy style with the ice-cold cool tone of Claude Chabrol and the sense of mounting panic George Sluizer exploited in "The Vanishing."

"There is no antidote for the human bomb," one Sri Lankan official flatly states, but Ziv's film offers a number of important insights into a phenomenon that's only gaining momentum.

It's an ideal collaboration: A stylish director desperately seeking substance transforms the first, somewhat flat novel of a promising young writer into powerful and brutally honest film about a highly controversial subject.

Harrowing, psychologically astute drama.

A gentle, offbeat drama that hails the arrival of a new talent in writer-director Eric Mendelsohn, and bids a poignant farewell to a uniquely gifted actress, the late Madeline Kahn.

Terminal illness, depression, suicide and one very angry young man: If there's such a thing as a kitchen-sink comedy, writer-director Lone Scherfig's sad but often very funny film is it.

A sloppy, self-indulgent valentine to the theater, delivered with all the grace of a letter-bomb.

Sicilian-born filmmaker Emanuele Crialese takes a huge leap forward from his pretty but simplistic "Respiro" with this highly original, startlingly beautiful and emotionally resonant film.

For what amounts to a fairly sentimental glance backward, the film is oddly styled; Andrew Dunn (who also shot the baroque "Monkeybone") favors oblique angles and lighting worthy of an Italian horror movie.

Grim tale of good and evil.

Wickedly funny, deeply disturbing, live-action retelling of an old Czech folktale.

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.

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

Serrill wisely divides his film into chapters according to year, which helps structure the story's natural repetitiveness.

The cast is wonderful, the soundtrack features a well-chosen array of bouncy period pop tunes, and Graeme Wood's cinematography makes the most of the stately beauty of the dish itself.

You'll gladly surrender to the whole gorgeous muddle.

Veteran conspiracy buffs probably won’t find much of Stone's material particularly new, but Stone’s film does serve as a neat summary for the rest of us while offering a number of intriguing insights into how conspiracy theories work and what they say about specific cultural and political climates.

Perleman has little control over his characters; they simply go to pieces in the most ludicrous ways. He has even less control over Kingsley, who soon slips into full-blown Yul Brynner mode.

Even more astonishing that the superb acting is the simple fact that director Gianni Amelio has managed to craft a touching tale of a father reunited with his disabled son without the slightest whiff of sentimentality.

While maintaining the appearance of clinical objectivity, this sad, occasionally horrifying but often inspiring film is among Wiseman's warmest.

Now seen for the first time in close-up, these "boys" are well past adolescence, which makes Bennett's sympathy for poor Hector a bit easier to take.

Though absurdly criticized for being too "white" to play Mariane Pearl, Jolie gives an excellent performance. She portrays Mariane as gutsy, smart, passionate and highly efficient.

Zieger's thoroughly researched film is a vital reminder that beginning in the mid-'60s, a few conscience-stricken military individuals -- including dermatologist Dr. Howard Levy, sickened by cynical attempts to win Vietnamese "hearts and minds" through medical treatment, and Navy nurse Susan Schnall, who wore her uniform to a civilian antiwar demonstration -- actively and openly voiced peace sentiments.

Deneuve has never been better.

Equal parts "Oliver Twist" and "Pinocchio," Russian director Andrei Kravchuk's fictional hearttugger exposes a troubling real-life practice in contemporary Russia: the buying and selling of abandoned children to rich foreign couples.

Rivette brings a refreshing realism to what could have been a stodgy costume drama, it's still pretty slow going.

If nothing else, this utterly charming -- if ultimately inconsequential -- road picture proves that there is such a thing as German romantic comedy.

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.

At a brisk 97 minutes, the film skips over many episodes that make Hahn's book a pulse-pounding page-turner, but offers her rare perspective on both sides of civilian life during those nightmare years.

The film not only stands as an important street-level document of that time, but makes a valuable contribution to the growing compilation of 9/11 storytelling.

Thoughtful look at the itinerant street musicians of Paris.

A grim meditation on faith and betrayal that focuses on a relatively obscure corner of Holocaust history: the fate of the Catholic clergy under the Third Reich.

German filmmaker Malte Ludin's gripping documentary about the father he barely knew is both an extraordinary exercise in family history and an example of what Germans call Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung: "facing the past," particularly the years of Hitler's Third Reich.

A modest but finely tuned look at small-town life.

This grim black comedy from Belgium would be unbearable if it wasn't scripted with such wry humor.

Toni Collette's extraordinary performance, Alison Tilson's sensitive script and Ian Baker's sensational cinematography add up to a surprising film.

Brilliant, in its own twisted way.

In the end, the film is both a fitting elegy for Arna and the children she tried to help and a deeply disturbing warning about what will continue to breed within the occupied territories until peace is brought to Palestine.

Academy Award-winning live-action-short director Andrea Arnold makes a startlingly assured debut with this low-key psychological chiller.

Flawed but refreshingly intelligent.

With his carefully controlled pacing and superb use of sound, Sarkies draws the viewer deep into the experience of a town caught completely off-guard by a kind of violence they could never have expected, and won't soon forget.

Salles is a master storyteller, and the film's pacing is flawless.

Shot on reverse film, poet-turned-director Lukas Moodyson's debut feature has a grainy, immediate feel that nicely enhances the story's emotional honesty.

This modest film delivers a simple but powerful message:... the real work of creating a lasting peace must be done on an personal level, one individual at a time.

Béart and Berling are both superb, while Huppert -- imperious as a woman who turns her world into a moral prison to prove a point -- is magnificent.

In the end, it's best to make peace with the film's essential and deliberate inscrutability -- something Lynch fans have learned to do since Twin Peaks -- and to simply marvel at Dern's astonishing performance, which few actresses are likely to top anytime soon.

It's also very cleverly edited - one scene will often branching off from another in much the same way a crossword puzzle works - and features a bang-up ending that will actually leave you cheering over a word game.

An uncanny and thoroughly creepy nip-yuck nightmare about plastic surgery and identity.

In the end it remains an academic exercise, though a dazzlingly ambitious one that’s well worth seeing.

(Valli) brings an ethnographer's eye for detail to a plot that amounts to little more than the good old generation gap.

Occasionally melodramatic, it's also extremely effective.

Overall, the filmmakers are a little too reverent -- it would have been interesting to hear Derrida respond to criticism leveled against deconstruction as an academic methodology -- but then again, they're not entirely in control here.

The true star of this nerve-racking family crime drama, shot with a minimum of fuss by Ron Fortunato, is playwright and first-time screenwriter Kelly Masterson's deft script, which carefully develops each fatally flawed character and tells their stories in achronological flashbacks that seamlessly fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

You'll feel lucky for such a comprehensive introduction to Turkish music.

It's a surprisingly uplifting experience, and in the end, unmistakably a Kiarostami film.

Wrenching documentary.

Brilliantly edited from well over 100 hours of tape, the final two-hour film recalls Michael Apted's 7 UP series.

A wild, endlessly inventive romp set in a post-war world so full of machine-guns and hand-grenades that people barely flinch when one or the other goes off.

It's never dull: Shalhoub's direction is smart, the dialogue is tart and the Adams' family shares a palpable intimacy that translates directly onto the screen.

Davaa's second fable of animals and the people who love them mixes aspects of ethnographic filmmaking with heart-grabbing story lines that wouldn't be too far out of place in a 1950s live-action Disney feature.

Both De Bouw and Decleir are superb.

Belvaux is no Douglas Sirk, but the film is an admirable, if uneven, conclusion to an audacious project.

Every frame gleams and the camel -- a double-humped wonder whose unusual majesty and quiet mystery drives this wonderful film -- is magnificent to behold.

Ratanaruang's simple willingness to tie different strands of melancholy melodramas and violent yakuza thrillers together with flashes of surreal mystery immediately sets him apart from the herd.

An illuminating depiction of Islamic women that is entirely at odds with what we are often lead to believe.

Director Laurent Cantet's fourth feature abandons the contentious French workplaces of "Human Resources" and "Time Out" for sunnier climes, but this Haitian idyll is an equally excoriating look at labor and exploitation.

The final confrontation is a slow-motion, De Palma-esque massacre in a hotel lobby that begins and ends in the amount of time it takes for a high-flying can of Red Bull to hit the floor. Breathtaking.

Neo-Gothic fantasist Tim Burton and writer John August (Big Fish) play it strictly by the book for this darker but far more faithful adaptation of Roald Dahl's cautionary 1964 young-adult novel.

Through the hard-won experiences of these families, Karslake shows that Scripture and homosexuality are not mutually exclusive, and with the help of a number of academics and theologians, shows how the Bible has been misread, particularly during the 20th century.

Teenage angst and adolescent agony are the stuff of sharp, observant comedy this quirky, wonderfully dry first fiction feature from documentary filmmaker Jeffrey Blitz (Spellbound).

The subject matter is certainly controversial -- it's not every day that we see a sympathetic portrayal of a pedophile -- but Cuesta avoids the taint of salaciousness, thanks in large part to a brilliant performance from Cox.

Rough, breathless adaptation of Fernando Vallejo's ferociously sardonic novel.

Bakan's arguments are buttressed by entertaining clips culled from commercials, industrial films and, appropriately, monster movies.

This is much more than a typically one-dimensional message-movie -- it's obviously the work of a master filmmaker .

Holding nothing back, Walters is, once again, remarkable.

A powerful anti-war film.

Law-abiding Americans who hand off a solid chunk of their salaries to the IRS might be interested in what filmmaker Aaron Russo has to say on the subject of income tax.

A slow and pensive tone, but for all its lyrical pretensions it lacks real poetry.

Even Wong's detractors, who consider him more stylist than auteur, will have a tough time dismissing the extraordinary emotional depth he achieves here.

This handsomely mounted documentary takes the same, indulgent tone that at lot of Thompson's friends and associates seem to have had.

Unexpectedly poignant documentary.

Fun without ever being particularly funny, this one-joke comedy-of-bad-manners features a hero who will either tickle your funny bone or make you vaguely uncomfortable.

There are moments of such breathtaking grace and artistry that you'd be forgiven for thinking you're watching the most beautiful movie ever made.

It's almost inconceivable how Glass could have gotten away with so much, but the movie makes a convincing case for how Glass used office politics, the good faith of his editors and his own personal charisma to get away with the worst offenses a journalist could commit.

Zhang's film is sweet and sentimental nearly to a fault; luckily, he's such a master, you'll hardly notice how shamelessly you're being manipulated.

Heartfelt but only intermittently interesting documentary.

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.

A touching examination of the ravages of Alzheimer's disease, made even more so by the extraordinary chemistry between Swedish actor Sven Wollter and his real-life wife, Viveka Seldahl, who died shortly after the film was completed.

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

The devout will no doubt enjoy this picturesque dramatization of an inspirational story many have known since childhood; others may understandably expect something more.

What is interesting is Ceylan's depiction of life among the Turkish upper-middle classes, a world rarely seen in international art-house cinema outside his own films.

If you can get past the lips, Ryan gives a touching performance as a woman determined to battle her cancer while knowing life offers no guarantees except death -- an understanding no doubt sharpened by Kasdan's own experience battling Hodgkin's disease as a teenager.

This might be the only documentary that will appeal to punks and Mormons alike.