Ken Fox

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

A deeply personal coming-of-age story steeped in heady nostalgia and all the creative myopia that too often comes with it.

It can hardly be called a children's film, but a masterpiece of feature-film animation for all ages.

Builds so gradually you probably won't realize it's a near-masterpiece until it's over, but there are hints along the way.

An entertaining road movie with a topical point: The three passengers on this cross-country trip are U.S. soldiers who've just returned from Iraq.

The film could easily be reduced to a parable of post-Communist Eastern Europe, but the allegory digs deeper into the very order of things, exemplified by 17th-century musicologist Andreas Werckmeister's arbitrary imposition of a "tempered" tonal system over naturally occurring tunings.

Amalric is extraordinary, creating a character literally without moving a muscle.

Each frame is exquisitely framed, the acting is superb -- Abedini deserves to be a star -- and the impermanence of the lives of displaced Afghans is hauntingly expressed.

If one masterpiece were to emerge from the recent glut of generally good quality Japanese horror movie, this chilling apocalyptic ghost story from Kyroshi Kurosawa is it.

This exciting, ultimately bittersweet, film was shot cheaply on video, but is nevertheless filled with moments of artistry and invention.

A marvelously entertaining, deeply moving treatment of a highly controversial practice: female genital mutilation.

Not only is it a reintroduction to a fascinating culture that has survived 4,000 years in a remote and most inhospitable climate, but it's also the first film ever directed by an Inuit filmmaker and featuring an all-Inuit cast.

It can be funny, but the humor is too often based in stereotypical perceptions of Asians (they're short, they're laughably polite, they eat weird food), and Coppola shamelessly invites us to laugh along with Murray's character, who, believe it or not, thinks it's hilarious when his hosts get their "r"s and "l"s switched.

Stylish and surprisingly effective thriller.

Denis dispenses with most of Melville's hefty Christian symbolism in favor of the story's other great theme -- repressed homoerotic desire.

This mordantly funny, emotionally piquant depiction of post-adolescent angst also has its roots in the graphic novel format.

The movie belongs to the fifth-billed Bishil, a truly gutsy young actress who captures the essence of young female desire in all its adolescent confusion.

The strangest thing about writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson's unusual romantic comedy is how much of it is based on a true story.

The accents are thick and the soundtrack noisy, but even as the screen explodes in chaos, Greenglass maintains a solid grip on the story.

Focusing strictly on stripped-down performances of great music and the charming chemistry between the two leads, it's a perfectly realized yet unassuming movie that deserves to find a big audience.

One of the most harrowing, viscerally upsetting films ever made.

Never less than gripping.

The French-language voice cast is first-rate, although the film will also be released in the U.S. in an English-language version featuring Sean Penn, Iggy Pop and Gena Rowlands in addition to Deneuve and Mastroianni.

For once, Carrey is more than merely tolerable. He's actually good, and the film that ebbs and flows around him is something you won't soon forget.

Rarely have six hours spent doing ANYTHING seemed so rewarding.

If you have the stomach - or the Dramamine - it's a touching, humorous take on Jewish life in contemporary Argentina.

A tense and tightly plotted fictional thriller is based on real tactics used by the Stasi -- East Germany's secret police force -- to spy on and interrogate their own citizens.

The film runs 95 minutes, and you'll be holding your breath for most of them.

A tale of conscience lost and found becomes little more than a smart but tepid ghost story for idealists and '60s survivors, and not a terribly spooky one at that.

The anger that fuels Ferguson's film is felt in nearly every frame.

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.

This is sentimentality of the best kind, a touching display of male bonding amid terror and aching loneliness worthy of Howard Hawks at his finest.

In a startling move, Oliveira devotes the first 15 minutes of the film to the final moments of Ionesco's play, and it's thrilling to watch.

Actor-turned-writer Dan Futterman's smart, subtle screenplay, which explores both Capote's determination to turn murder into literature and the deeply troubling questions he raised in the process.

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

A sad and sometimes funny tale of Alzheimer's, love and loss.

A small comic masterpiece that dares to deal with that of which many Sicilians dare not speak: the Mafia.

On a miniscule budget, Ghobadi conveys the terror of war, while the beautifully edited sequence in which Iranian villagers make bricks resembles nothing so much as a choreographed dance number.

Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda's most accessible film to date is also his most wrenching.

Throughout this raw, often brilliant drama, the Dardennes refuse to judge these deeply flawed characters. They instead maintain a moral objectivity that ultimately leaves room for the possibility of redemption, no matter how dire the sins committed.

The final effect, particularly the climactic ballroom sequence, is astonishing -- a haunting impression of the vast synchronicity of unbroken time that must surely stand as one of the great achievements in the development of the movie medium.

Simple but deeply touching documentary.

It's extraordinarily sexy: The atmosphere is all cigarette smoke and Nat King Cole songs, silk suits and tight sheath dresses.

An intriguingly mysterious, self-reflexive ode to the dream factory, it's one of Lynch's most satisfying films.

It's full of humor, pathos and a deep humanism that comes as a warm blast in this age of lifeless, cinematic junk.

This exceptional film features some of the most beautiful cinematography ever seen on film, in service of some of the most horrible images imaginable.

They're answers that will either earn your respect, or further damn him as the architect of an American nightmare.

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.

A bold, painful memoir that finds an innovative middle-ground between conventional documentary and a homemade, home-movie collage.

The film is filled with humor, compassion and cajones, and never once glosses over the fact that these guys are prickly personalities who can sometimes act like jerks. There are also a few tears, but remarkably, not a single one is shed in pity.

On the surface, nothing really happens, but to call it a nonevent would be to miss the point entirely.

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

Superbly acted by everyone involved (Rhames does his best work since "Pulp Fiction"), the film is really more about character than plot, though frankly, at more than two hours, it could have used a bit more of the latter.

Thanks to some first-rate acting from its stars, it ranks among Perry's best.

Herek does capture the rush and crush of a stadium concert, and the music (more Leppard than Priest) isn't half bad -- in a disposable, arena-rock sort of way.

Where this still vital series was once about what sets us apart, it now seems to be turning towards the things that, in the end, render us all equal.

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.

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.

The most infuriating revelation in Amy Berg's powerful documentary is the lengths to which current Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney and other church officials went to protect Father O'Grady and themselves, even though it meant knowingly delivering countless other children into a child molester's hands.

It's a mainstreamed, big-screen version of the bowdlerized, endlessly syndicated version of the show, not the raunchy original.

Swank's nuanced performance is remarkable and it's a powerful film.

Thom Andersen's idiosyncratic, three-hour masterpiece is both a dazzling work of film criticism and a fascinating piece of urban anthropology.

British director Shane Meadows' strongest film to date is also his most personal: A stylish fictionalization of his own wayward youth, spent among a group of working-class skinheads in Thatcher's England.

A beautiful, slow-motion melodrama.

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

Dabbed with sentimental touches, the film nevertheless avoids facile victim psychologizing and pulls no punches.

Once again brushing aside critical drubbings and public indifference, determined independent auteur Henry Jaglom follows up the abysmal "Let's Go Shopping" with something far better: an old-school Hollywood cautionary tale about -- what else? -- Hollywood.

Leaves you wanting much more.

Not surprisingly, we're left with characters that feel only half sketched and fail to resonate on their own -- but onto which much can be read by Hou's most ardent fans -- in a poetic looking film that's ultimately as inflated and empty as the balloon itself.

It's a humbling way of life, and one that, as Varda discovers in this wonderful, 80-minute essay, has survived in surprising ways.

Bardem's performance is simply shattering.

The action come fast and thick, and the sentimentality reaches near-operatic proportions.

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.

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

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

Broomfield's film is didactic, awkwardly acted by the cast of former Marines who are meant to lend the film credibility, and clumsily inflammatory.

The kind of brainy human comedy that only this formidable French auteur seems capable of making.

Poignant and sometimes downright hilarious, much of the film unfolds in the small area outside the arena -- an "offside" penalty box for women who just won't behave.

Apatow's clever comedy is a romance in reverse, and it works.

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

Exquisitely crafted drama.

Superb drama from New York-based filmmakers Ryan Flek and Anna Boden.

An exciting dramatization of the strange events that marked the turning of the legal tide against Big Tobacco, and a particularly dark moment in the annals of CBS News.

Despite the exotic locale, this is a coming-of-age tale that should be familiar to anyone raised on the tales of Jack London or Robert Louis Stevenson.

It's a fascinating film, simultaneously enthralling, infuriating and guaranteed to make viewers ask how such a perversion of the political process could be taking place in America.

Extraordinary documentary.

The writing is sharp and often blithely cynical, although not above using a shooting star to put a lump in the throat. The tone, however, is at times dangerously uncertain.

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

A bracing cover of Ian Tyson's "Four Strong Winds," performed by no fewer than seven acoustic guitars, rounds out the set, but be sure to stick around for the credits.

Ever hear of a rock musical that actually rocked? John Cameron Mitchell's glorious adaptation of his acclaimed Off-Broadway show might be a first.

The film is surprisingly satisfying and meaningful.

Far from proving the reality of the Horatio Alger myth it peddles, Chris Gardner's story is worth celebrating precisely because he managed to beat the odds stacked so high against him. Steve Conrad's screenplay is also curiously but insistently silent on the subject of race.

Also featured are countless cameos from local superstars ranging from the Fall's Mark E. Smith to Mani of the Stone Roses, making the film an absolute thrill for fans of the Manchester scene.

For the most part, the result is a smashing success, filled with great performances and exquisite production design. But those final moments, in which the true nature of the story is revealed, are an unmitigated disaster.

Never the most optimistic of poets, Sokurov does suggest the possibility of dialogue on the individual level, and the hope that by asking difficult questions of one another, these mortal enemies can find answers and reach an understanding everyone can live with.

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.

Evokes feelings of fascination and heartbreak, as well as a sense of disbelief.

A moving look at the choices parents make on their children's behalf, and the reasons behind those choices.