Leslie Camhi

The fierce rigor of María Galiana's performance keeps this film from ever falling into sentimentality.

An inspired homage to his father's work, and a bracing, bittersweet testament of filial love mixed with pain and compassion.

"A very odd thriller" is how Italian director Marco Bellocchio describes My Mother's Smile, his uncannily beautiful and deeply humanist exploration of the nightmares that resurface from a Roman atheist's Catholic childhood.

Scenes from a marriage unfolding at the limits of love and personality.

Bening's comic gifts make the most of Ronald Harwood's witty screenplay, though she falls flat in her character's rare moments of sincerity.

It lacks the toughness and social insights of its Mexican new wave predecessors like "Amores Perros." And even as the story of one woman's midlife crisis, it's a bit lightweight.

Unusual in its ambition to pose deep spiritual questions, but its enticing surfaces -- including the beautiful working girls and Isabelle Adjani's surprise cameo as a Bardot-esque starlet -- are the best thing about it.

At once subtle and visceral, the film never succumbs to the trap of the maudlin or tearful, offering instead with its unflinching gaze a measure of faith in the future.

Without condescension, Debrauwer offers comic glimpses into their separate dreams of grandeur, but he lets Pauline's touching simplicity unite them.

Though Hopkins lovingly re-creates the surfaces of shtetl life, its deep spirituality seems to elude him.

Offers an incisive glimpse into one woman's inner transformation -- her secret sense of loss in the midst of plenty and her sudden perception of a world of suffering lying just beyond her home.

In a flawless performance, Bacri lets us glimpse the tender desperation beneath his character's harsh, curmudgeonly exterior.

Fast-paced feminist thriller and witty black comedy.

A life so tragically and quickly extinguished presents maudlin temptations, but director Marc Rothemund ably resists them. His gripping, moving film focuses on a breathtakingly brief five-day period.

The film's occasional dips into sentimental cuteness and its too-pat ending can't cancel the gap that yawns ever wider between rural and urban society.

It traces a sustained and moving portrait of the worldly Sam, whose despair as the society he embraced abandons him is both clear-eyed and devastating.

The storyline sometimes veers into melodrama; a subplot concerning Alex's involvement in the white-slave trade is particularly lurid. But the director retains a light touch in the character of Aurelie, whose combination of innocence and knowing is magical.

Appears strangely dated, and its unspecified location seems existentially hokey.

By setting this intimate conflict against a wider social drama, Daldry makes his portrait of a dancer all the more compelling.

Norway's hallucinatory, edge-of-the-world beauty imbues the story with a woozy, alcoholic haze and a sense of the marginal spaces into which the messiest aspects of private life are shoved.

If you can suspend your disbelief regarding Nello's naïveté, this film offers some quiet pleasures.

What makes After Midnight more than just another ménage à trois (in homage to Truffaut) is the way Ferrario, who also writes about movies, weaves the allure of early film into a contemporary story, shot with the latest high-definition technology.

Noteworthy for its rich characterizations and startling plot twists, including a delightful surprise ending that is both a sexual double entendre and a matriarchal triumph.

Baltasar Kormákur's wacky version of "King Lear," set in an Icelandic village where virtually everyone plays the fool.

This is a tender and engaging portrait of a marvelously elusive personality, whose style remains timeless.

Pays off in laugh-out-loud lines, adorably ditsy but heartfelt performances, and sparkling, bittersweet dialogue that cuts to the chase of the modern girl's dilemma.

It's rare that a documentary conveys an artist's worldview so compellingly, but then Glennie is no ordinary musician.

Backed by a strong supporting cast, Whaley makes Jimmy a vivid character, but he never achieves anything like the tragic grandeur of a Willy Loman. He's at once too earnest and too unappealing.

Politics hover at the edges of even the most affectionate encounters among Danae, her parents, and the Obeidallah family. Amos Elon's negativity regarding the future of the Jewish state mars the film, yet Another Road Home moves beyond dark predictions.

In his film's better moments, Kollek makes us laugh at these visions while also revealing their grace and frailty.

Hardcore Kiarostami devotees may miss the master's harsher clarity, but Hatami, best known for her starring role in Dariush Mehrjui's "Leila," makes her character's inner transformation both subtle and palpable.

Despite the choppy script and cartoonishly bad villains, what emerges is a compelling tale of the moral compromises a corrupt system demands of even its most unwilling participants.

Vardalos's parodies of Greek family values are loving and witheringly hilarious.

This evocative film is a poignant testament to the twin forces of love (however blighted) and the unconscious.

Chillingly naturalistic.

If the film's redemptive ending is a fairy tale, it's one we willingly embrace.

Himalaya lacks such lightness, humor, and grace, offering instead the surface beauty of an ancient and inviolate culture.

Falters when it takes a final, violent turn into melodrama.

French director Michel Deville has managed to preserve the work's great virtues--the intimacy, discretion, grace, and humor with which it speaks of both irredeemable disaster and the taste for life that survives it.

With improbable charm, Gabizon knits it all together, his characters' sexual obsessions and earthiness tempered by a soulful melancholy.

Relies on the hefty talents of its two leading ladies.

The complex questions Walk on Water raises receive only confused answers.

It's also frustrating-we long to learn more about each individual. Still, the sheer fascination and profoundly moving power of these stories transcend the film's more conventional limitations.

Wargnier has assembled a stellar French and Russian cast, but all that talent can't overcome his heavy-handed screenplay.

At times the film's Buddhist lessons feel a bit forced, but the naturalistic performances Davaa has coaxed from a real-life Mongolian family, and her intimate understanding of their culture and values, give this sensitive portrayal its heft.

Marshall Karp's script is clever and funny, though studded with anachronisms.

Berliner captures the eerie beauty of their music alongside their strange dignity. But his mannered style (colored filters, multiple exposures, jump cuts) leaves an uneasy impression about the balance of power in his relationship to his subjects, women of surprising strength and enduring frailty.

Infusing Rendell's intrigue with warmth and humor, Miller makes the film's sometimes mechanical and giddy narrative into something grander -- a meditation on maternity as a form of inspired madness.

Van Looy has created a fast-paced and stylish thriller. Declair's Ledda, marvelously suave and vulnerable, provides most of the pathos.

The admirable Gainsbourg refrains from overacting, but her leading men never quite transcend the emptiness and inanity of their characters' dilemma.

What saves this deeply affecting film from being merely a collection of wrenching cases is Corcuera's attention to detail.

Brought to life by the weirdness of its subject matter and the risks Madhur Jaffrey takes in her brilliant performance.

There's much to admire here, including an often witty script and a cast that includes Theresa Russell, Seymour Cassel, and the irrepressible Lupe Ontiveros (Celia's mother-in-law).

The filmmakers skillfully evoke the sense of menace that nature holds for many urban dwellers. -- Sometimes, though, the editing is choppy, and the film could use more of a script.

The film's broad performances and heavy-handed moralizing strike a note of condescension sure to be heard by the alienated teenager within us all.

The pacing feels choppy, and the characters' emotions are sometimes too sudden to be believable. (One exception is Rhys Ifans, affecting as Amelia's long-suffering and neglected suitor.)

A meditation-brilliant, humorous, and moving-on history and memory.

He's (director Abranches) so focused on creating a strikingly mannerist visual style that he forgets to flesh out his plot and characters.

Flawed but fascinating.

Disturbing and compelling.

Marvelously grizzled and tender, Josef Bierbichler's Brecht wheezes and grumbles through it all.

A bit naive and formless.

The real star of this film is the crowded, neon-lit byways of the city itself.

Manchevski has a rare visual intelligence, whether filming the face of a dying woman or Times Square's reflection in a windshield. But in reaching for a cubist style of storytelling, he sacrifices character and motivation.

The film's pathos lies not with people who have justice on their side, but with those who don't know where they belong.

"No poetry after Auschwitz," Theodor Adorno proclaimed. One sometimes wishes he'd added, "And no big-name cinema either."

This extraordinary story still sparks controversy in France, but in Berri's hands, it never comes alive...a shadow play of historical icons, rather than a portrait of people in love.

The writerly restraint that confines them to the airport is admirable, though the fairy-tale ending in Acapulco seems like a throwaway.

Krabbé alternates exaggeration with sentiment, but the main characters are relatively complex, and its surprise ending is genuinely affecting.

It does best when it leaves behind hothouse literary discussions and closes in on these two legendary behemoths, battling for sexual supremacy.

Beyond its rare visions of remote vistas, Camel's great charm lies in its seeming simplicity. The camera records the events of the day -- from a little girl's tears to an afternoon sandstorm -- with a childlike clarity and curiosity.

Handsomely shot, German filmmaker Sandra Nettelbeck's third feature suffers from a certain romantic predictability.

It's a giddy farce worthy of Lucy and Ethel, and Peploe plays up the buffoonery.

Pitch-perfect performances and a light-handed but razor-sharp script keep this satire brisk and biting.

The subjects can be amusing, chilling, or tragic -- but in the end, they offer few surprises.

Montias's script lacks surprises -- Still, the minor figures surrounding him (Bobby) -- from teenage Puerto Rican beauties to a mobster's middle-aged groupie -- form a gritty urban mosaic, and Bobby's wanton energy is utterly convincing.

Serry perfectly captures the peculiar climate, creating uncanny echoes with today's situation. Persian stars Shaun Toub and Shohreh Aghdashloo are extremely convincing as Maryam's parents.

Child abuse, domestic violence, and the struggles of single mothers deserve better treatment than this.

A remarkably vivid portrait of a teeming third-world metropolis

The problems come in the shadow world, where everything's a jumble, where Dark's compositional strategy ("all clues and no solutions") eventually becomes wearing, and Gordon's direction can't hold it all together.

Even Mastroianni cannot hold our attention for over three hours.

How did this rude monk, prey to depression and satanic hallucinations, change the course of history? Luther offers scant illumination, for the big brown eyes that served Joseph Fiennes so well in "Elizabeth" are little help with the spirit of Reformation.

Slesin's film is a profound meditation on the resilience of children -- their ability to take sustenance from whatever love is available -- and on the persistent presence of the child hidden within each grown-up.

This delightfully sensual documentary gets inside the artist's creative process while also treating viewers to glorious music by the likes of Wagner and Satie.

Most of the redemptive notes ring false, as does the mythical Manhattan, where the snow is just too clean and everybody lives around the corner.

A darkly comic tale of characters riven by divided loyalties and neurotic inhibitions.

It manages to be both ponderous and silly.

Chilling and thoroughly engrossing documentary.