Kenneth Turan

A vibrant and joyous new documentary.

Though Bottle Rocket is wryly amusing from beginning to end, the hard edges of the real world are never too far from its surface. And it is the particular grace of the film that though all its characters end up with something like what they're looking for, its not exactly how they'd imagined it would be.

Working closely with master editor William Goldenberg, Greengrass has given 22 July a relentless, remorseless quality, insisting on a matter-of-fact style that allows no escape from reality even while refusing to push anything too hard.

This modest film has virtues that come out of nowhere. It takes familiar material and develops it with such tact and skill that we find ourselves moved and sort of amazed at the same time.

Long Way North is a complete pleasure, a gorgeous piece of wide-screen animation that is as delightful as it is unexpected.

Charming, disarming and in some ways humbling film.

The Salt of the Earth deals with two kinds of journeys the photographer made. The outward one may have literally taken him to the furthest corners of the Earth and resulted in the stunning images the film features, but it is the inward journey that paralleled it that completely holds our attention.

Bleak childhoods make for the best cinema, and Ratcatcher stands at the head of the class.

Even decades after it was written Beirut is as relevant as it is entertaining, and it is very entertaining indeed.

It convincingly demonstrates that when done right, moral and political quandaries can be the most intensely dramatic dilemmas of all.

Thoughtful as well as sensual, particular yet universal, it is the kind of expertly made examination of the human condition we can never have too many of.

Emotional and analytical by turn, The Case Against 8 is a thoroughly engaging documentary.

Crouching Tiger's blend of the magical, the mythical and the romantic fills a need in us we might not even realize we had.

When Iris DeMent's impeccable version of the hymn is heard on the soundtrack as the final credits roll, it's the perfect touch to end a film whose aim is always true.

This jazzy crime melodrama is engrossing and exhilarating because of Espinosa's impressive command of a wide range of filmmaking skills.

If Asian martial arts movies interest you even a little bit, you're going to want to see Iron Monkey. Not only that, you're going to want to see it more than once.

A warm and feisty documentary that is as much inquiry as it is tribute.

No concept in the critical lexicon has been more devalued and debased than "inspirational." The term has been so misused, it's just about lost all meaning. A film that makes that word real and vital has to be special. The Interrupters is such a film.

Fireworks is bracing and original, an indefinable film made from familiar elements. "Hana-Bi," its title in Japanese, is a combination of the words for "flower" and "fire," and filmmaker Takeshi Kitano has, in the same way, adroitly fused genres, creating a film in which almost every moment pops out in unexpected ways. [20 Mar 1998, p.F4]

Funan is a stunning piece of animation in which the beauty of the visuals and the horror of the situation are inextricably intertwined.

A film that grips us dramatically, intellectually and emotionally.

Playful, absurd and endearingly inventive, this unstoppably amusing feature reminds us why Britain's Aardman Animations is a mainstay of the current cartooning golden age.

Matching the strength of these actresses and their personal drama is the film's masterful sense of time and place - the way it makes us feel that this was how it was during four pivotal days in July 1789 as the wheels came off the French monarchy.

As directed by Rachid Bouchareb, himself born in France to Algerian immigrants, "Days of Glory" is a kind of a North African "Saving Private Ryan," a taut, involving film that delivers all the things we look for in war movies and does so with intelligence and integrity.

Leisurely yet intense (Sayles does the editing himself), Lone Star reveals a director whose mastery does nothing but increase. Perhaps now his audience will as well.

Insomnia shows an equally welcome ability: a gift of creating intelligent, engrossing popular entertainment.

Music documentaries are thick on the land, and political ones are numerous as well, but Mali Blues is different in that it artfully combines hypnotic music with definite societal concerns.

Aftermath is a bombshell disguised as a thriller.