Ken Fox

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.