Lisa Schwarzbaum

I will salute the deftness and intelligence with which Goldfinger observes the reactions of the living to the revelations of the dead.

The nonprofessional cast of Bahman Ghobadi's remarkable, slow, rough edged feature reveals a simple, piercing grimness and determination framed by the gray, icy landscape of Iranian Kurdistan.

Stepping into sacred shoes once worn by Kevin Bacon, Wormald handily owns the role for a new audience. Same goes for a terrific Miles Teller (Rabbit Hole) in the sidekick role of Willard so memorably originated by the late Chris Penn.

Raquel's devotion to her employer is barbed with hatred, need, and an insecurity she manifests through constant tiny acts of sabotage that would be funny if they weren't also so chilling -- bordering on psychotic.

The tonal elegance of this black comedy set in a dark time -- is boldly dependent on performances that tug at taut lines of moral complexity.

An 
unexpectedly revealing, disconcerting documentary that benefits from the filmmaker's unmediated approach, his home-movie-
quality visual style, and his controlled use of on-the-fly moments.

A pitiless yet elegiac Australian Western as caked with beauty as it is with blood.

A muscular sequel to To's riveting 2005 gangster picture "Election."

Lathan, charismatic and beautifully strong, holds the screen in every scene.

Leconte (''Ridicule'') gives his heart to the luck of romance, to the dream state visual style of Fellini, and, most lyrically, to the passion of the dagger point swoon.

This super-duper deluxe nature documentary clearly aims to recruit young viewers as conservationists.

The result is a portrait that expertly mirrors its subject: Buck is shaped with the same economy, restraint, and unfussiness as the man, to unexpectedly inspiring effect.

The fine Polish director Agnieszka Holland (Europa Europa) pays her respects with a daringly murky-looking movie that demands viewers enter the void too and meet Socha and his Jews as real, flawed men and women behaving in flawed ways under suffocating conditions.

This funny, gory stab-athon is as sophisticated about the mechanics of Part 2s as the original was savvy about horror flicks.

It's a thin line between 20th-century Nazism and 21st-century corporate culture in Heartbeat Detector, Nicolas Klotz's rewardingly chilly psychological thriller.

What matters now, what Lumumba conveys, is the urgent chaos of revolution.

This sincere, delicate, and intrinsically religious comedy may also become that most unexpected of blessings - Danny Boyle's first family classic.

Frankenweenie is a cool little flipbook of historical Burtonian style. It even brings back old friends, including "Beetlejuice's" Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara.

Goes where all too few films dare to venture these days -- into the heart of moral darkness.

A warm and honest portrait of a marriage at its most mysterious, and ordinary.

Noyce's movie works because the director -- trusts himself, and his audience, to understand that catastrophe isn't always a matter of loud ideology. Rather, it's the result of age-old human weakness. And sometimes it's quiet.

The deliriously enjoyable noir comedy-thriller Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang does nothing by halves and everything by doubles.

Fonteyne edges closer than most to capturing the mysterious rhythms of liaisons -- pornographique, romantique, and otherwise.

Feels delightfully organic, eccentrically rambling, the found artistic collage of a woman who herself loves to collect.

Gere is terrific at suggesting the kind of addictive cocktail of excitement, panic, chutzpah, creativity, and naked hunger for fame and megabucks that might inspire such big, fat lies.

Following 2009's "Bluebeard," French filmmaker Catherine Breillat continues her unique and psychologically, erotically daring deconstruction of classic fairy tales and the female condition.

What's new about the unsensationalized portrait of one-day-at-a-time progress (and setbacks) is the low-key energy of this drunks' tale, by and for a generation with a high tolerance for humor and a low tolerance for soapiness.

Bong Joon-ho's wildly entertaining saga should become the hip, thinking-person's monster movie of choice.