Lisa Schwarzbaum

So much goes down on Nick and Norah's one enchanted evening that the best advice is to enjoy the ride -- the actual ride -- around this vibrant new New York.

A pleasurably unsettling, sunbaked tale of sex and politics set in late-1970s Haiti.

Jaoui handles her crowd of vivid characters so naturally, and shoots her scenes so unobtrusively, that the diagrammatic cleverness of the plot never overwhelms the intelligence of the observations.

Kelly, the 26-year-old writer-director of this excitingly original indie vision, shares more artistically with Wes Anderson or Paul Thomas Anderson than he does with Spielberg or John Hughes, but the point is, he's out on his own here. He swings big -- with flair.

Amir Bar-Lev's engrossing film is as much about the stubborn ambiguities of art, truth, meaning, and relationships as it is about the authenticity of the Olmstead oeuvre.

This tender documentary considers the mysteries of both art and coping.

Crystal turns in his best (read: least sappy) performance in ages, getting through an entire movie -- most of it, anyway -- without mugging.

In the creature’s mating habits and its wriggling life, Imamura creates a parallel to the upstream battle of these fragile outsiders, and he makes his points with abundant, tender humor.

Earnest messages about bad climate change and good parenting skills have been replaced by a we-all-share-a-planet sense of fun that's more "Finding Nemo" than National Geographic.

The players are timelessly familiar in American Teen, too. But filmmaker Nanette Burstein tells their stories with a distinctly 21st-century pop and audacity.

What the activist drama "Fast Food Nation" does with talk and the aid of movie stars, Our Daily Bread, a riveting documentary by Austrian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter, does even better, with no voice-over and barely a word spoken by the unidentified workers involved in matter-of-fact killing and harvesting.

Fantasy leaks into reality.

The startling power of Tomboy, a beautiful, matter-of-fact French drama about a young girl who wants to be a boy - and for one singular summer around her 10th birthday passes as one - begins with the one-of-a-kind natural performance by Zoé Héran as Laure.

Amreeka is strategically inviting and carefully mild even when making unsubtle points about Palestinian suffering and American insensitivity.

Thrilling little epic set in the bewildering arena of the English language.

If only for the comedy glory of Sigourney Weaver as a TV network president who confuses acid reflux with gut instinct, this very smart, very funny movie about the making of a network sitcom is a cut-glass gem of a showbiz conceit.

I don't know what tools of the trade Paul Rudd and director David Wain share to dream up the kind of inspired nutso stuff Rudd has done in smart-funny-raunchy winners like "Wet Hot American Summer" and "Role Models." But whatever it is, the two are in a groove - and backed up by some blissed-out creative co-conspirators.

The blessings of salvation have rarely felt so mixed, the parameters of Lolita-hood so elusive - which is exactly Martel's specialty.

Spirit, animal, and human worlds coexist in dreamy harmony in this remarkable drama.

But Solondz also creates keen portraits of the participating characters in Dawn's daily drama. (The only downside: The drama veers unsteadily toward outlandishness.)

Blithe and exhilarating romantic comedy.

A stirring action movie -- in the international manner of ''The Fast Runner'' or ''No Man's Land."

If I ran the circus, the gang that made the sturdy, witty, inventively animated Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! would get first dibs on any future movie productions of the Theodor Seuss Geisel canon.

What blows us away is the power of Ifans' moist puppy eyes and chilling smile as a true believer undeterred by reality.

In the juxtaposition of cataclysmic matter-of-fact misery and cinematic poetry, the filmmaker finds a calmly stunning way to convey the experience of living with death as something intimate, and, unnervingly, almost natural.

Superb family drama.

French mood-and-feeling master filmmaker Claire Denis returns to the Africa of her youth for an intense, mysterious drama exploring revolution and loss.

The worldview, the sense of childlike fun shaded with adult melancholy, and the joyful, serene attention to visual oddity and wordless beauty could only be made in Japan. And, specifically, made by Hayao Miyazaki.