Ken Fox

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

Hopkins plays "Hopkins," and the buff, terribly miscast Gyllenhaal will be convincing only to viewers who've never set foot on a university campus. What makes it worth seeing, however, is the extraordinary chemistry between the atypically raw and unguarded Paltrow and Davis, a fabulously talented actress once again testing her range with a performance unlike any she's given in the past.

An intelligent, imaginative children's adventure refreshingly free of rapping cartoon animals, fart jokes and mind-numbing special effects.

Dreams With Sharp Teeth Or, Why is Harlan Ellison so gosh darned angry?

It honestly delivers the goods without all the preachy moralizing about violent entertainment and cultural ruin.

Works best as an illustration of the way conspiracy theories serve to weave threads of order, however fantastic, during moments of incomprehensible upheaval.

Occasionally overrated as a writer but consistently underrated as a director, Towne does a marvelous job resurrecting all the seedy jumble of the long-gone Bunker Hill neighborhood.

John Curran's pretty melodrama rubs off a few of the barbed edges from W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel about love and infidelity in a time of cholera, but no matter: the centerpiece is Naomi Watts' outstanding portrayal of an adulteress redeemed.

It's a thoughtful and ultimately chilling take on a tragedy that still has the power to disturb and divide.

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.

While at times overly familiar, the film never feels self-mocking.

You just know that any film that opens with Nietzsche's aphorism about hope being an evil that only prolongs the torments of man isn't going to a comedy.

It's both very funny and very scary, and never descends to the level of spoof.

Dark, dank and violent, filled with terrifying scenes in which exploited children are beaten, shot or starving to death. In other words, it's just as Dickens wrote.

Heartfelt and often very funny.

Despite its flaws, the film has the same dreamy, romantic melancholy that distinguishes Wong's best films.

A drum-tight, extremely grisly thriller. And odd as it may sound given the subject matter, it's also surprisingly funny.

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

The morbid theme notwithstanding, this is by no means a downbeat film, and it ends with the rather hopeful thought that for every disaster there's also a chance for survival.

Silly but endearing comedy.

What the film lacks in artistry it makes up for in commitment.

Stylish and surprisingly effective thriller.

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.

It was really no bigger than a beach ball, weighed about as much as a full-grown man and it beeped. And aside from transmitting a radio signal and accidentally opening a few automatic garage doors, it didn't really do anything except orbit the globe once every 96 minutes.

"Queer as Folk's" Peter Paige makes a strong debut as a writer/director with this original black comedy.

Pitch-black and bound to offend anyone who's not on its wavelength, Nick Guthe's entertainingly slick debut is a mordantly funny slice of lust, crime and sleaze life set in the world of L.A.'s industry elite: Call it 9021-noir.

There's little difference between this joyful holiday film and the standard-issue yuletide-miracle movie, except that the holiday isn't Christmas.

Like the film's giddily intoxicating cannabis hybrid, Rogen and Goldberg's script cross-pollinates Cheech-and-Chong style stoner comedy with Tarantino-esque ultra-violence.