Ken Fox

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.