Maitland McDonagh

Catches you with a creepy sucker punch.

Actor-turned-director Andrey Zvyagintsev's feature debut is haunted by an elusive past and suffused with dread about the future, and it's all suggestion without explanation.

Despite its scant 48-minute running time (which many viewers will find frustrating), the film sets up a provocative equation between vampirism and American involvement in Asia.

If the ending isn't conventionally happy, it's certainly deeply satisfying.

Culkin's Alig has the face of a debauched cherub, but the former child star never quite captures the charisma everyone swears was an essential component in Alig's success. Green's St. James steals the picture out from under him (poetic justice of a sort), and the supporting cast is nothing short of amazing.

Shot on location in Manhattan, the film is steeped in understated New York City ambiance and discreetly tinted by Jeffrey M. Taylor's subtle score.

For what could easily have been a slickly vulgar variation on "American Pie" or "Porky's", this libidinous comedy explores some unusually complicated territory, and benefits greatly from Verdú's unpredictable performance as Luisa.

His epic reworking of their lurid conventions proved so long that it was divided into two parts, and this one ends on a hell of a cliff-hanger.

An excellent introduction to the subject, and a movie buff's delight.

A behind-the-scenes documentary that manages to be unabashedly sympathetic without being a puff piece.

A surprisingly charming fable.

Though occasionally repetitive, Gramaglia and Fields' admirably evenhanded documentary gives the Ramones the respect they deserve: Fans will be grateful and the uninitiated should listen and learn.

Surprise! An intelligent, well-written high school story.

A loving, gently funny and slightly claustrophobic tribute to theatrical life.

A bittersweet rite-of-passage story driven by the subtle performances of newcomers Nathalie Press and Emily Blunt.

This deliriously unsettling film evokes H.P. Lovecraft's exquisitely creepy stories of encroaching madness -- not so much in story terms but in its perversely spooky ambience -- with a subtle dose of David Lynch's dark sense of humor.

The high-profile cast -- play their roles with just the right mix of seriousness and tongue-in-cheek self-awareness.

A slick, mannered and frequently clever comedy.

An illuminating glimpse into what goes on in the dance studio.

Shunji Iwae's film began life as an interactive online "novel" and unfolds in a series of achronological vignettes whose cumulative effect is chilling.

Spare and coolly evocative, it's a chilling accomplishment.

Past and present, reality and fiction blend seamlessly into each other in Satoshi Kon's dream-like animated drama.

The flashback structure drains the story of momentum, but Mashkov and Uchaineshvili portray the reptilian glamour of cultured thugs with frightening intensity.

You don't have to be a Trek weenie to have a good time at this spoof cum homage to fandom and the enduring appeal of cheesy TV, but it helps.

Roundly condemned (though not banned) by Church officials in Mexico, the film became a smash hit -- probably in part because the public wrangling gave it an enormous publicity boost.

No doubt about it: Unlike David Lean's much-loved classic, Cuaron's film is loosely based on Dickens. And that's just fine.

John Walter's documentary suggests that Johnson, who made no distinction between his life and his art, designed every detail of his own mysterious 1995 suicide with the same whimsical care that went into his painstakingly assembled pieces, and provides an engaging overview of Johnson's eccentric career in the process.

Familiar story, electrifying execution.

Old-fashioned fun that goes down as smoothly as a vintage cocktail.

But what truly distinguishes the movie is Cage's performance, which is so off the wall that even if you don't like it you have to watch in awe.

The stripped-down production give a disturbing sense of immediacy to an otherwise fairly conventional story about boys being prepared for war.

The film isn’t a genre changer, but it’s elegant and admirably remorseless—and when it breaks bad, it breaks very bad indeed.

He (Anderson) manages to guide his cast of characters through an epic story of self-delusion with a skill and grace that many more experienced filmmakers would be hard put to match.

What begins as a sorry exercise in cynical seduction becomes a case of amour fou.

But once you're good and drunk on the look, details like the tin-eared tough-guy dialogue (which sounds especially stilted issuing from flesh-and-blood mouths) don't seem so important.

Carrey's relentless showboating is almost its undoing.

The battle sequences and lightsaber battles are gripping, and for every scene that doesn't deliver the goods, there's another that hums with surprising intensity.

Thoroughly gripping.

This film pivots on a romantic triangle as overwrought as it is stylized. It's like a Douglas Sirk melodrama ratcheted up with fists of fury and wrapped in apparently endless yards of shimmering silk.

A brightly colored, picaresque adventure that's equal parts telenovela melodrama and pop-magic realism.

This coolly beautiful film is both a superior thriller and an engrossing study of a sociopath's progress.

This stylized tale of guilt and retribution is a surprisingly sleek and affecting drama.

The movie's mimicry of reality TV clichés is eerie, from the use of re-creations and supplemental footage (especially the experimental video Dawn and Jeff made together for a high school art project) to the smarmy commentary.

You come away from the film wishing her the best, but fearing the worst.

Adapted from J.G. Ballard's cult novel, a dispassionate exegesis of warped desire, Cronenberg's movie is suitably cold, cold, cold: proof positive that movies about sex aren't always sexy movies, at least by conventional standards.

A tragicomic Holocaust fable that's by turns silly, triumphant and achingly sad.

Bizarre, utterly original and truly indescribable comedy...You just have to see it for yourself.

A murder mystery wrapped in an experimental portrait of life in a rural Hungarian town, writer-director Gyorgy Palfi's engrossing feature debut is a breathtaking feat of filmmaking.

Though it includes a couple of sword fights, Yamada's epic domestic drama could easily be called an anti-samurai film. But its aim is less to subvert the genre's conventions than to deepen them, extending its parameters to include the minutia and rhythms of everyday life.

Though the ballets themselves are beautifully shot, they lean heavily in the direction of gimmicky and prop-heavy pieces; they're visually interesting but, by and large, they're not great dance.

Their downward spiral is like a slow-motion highway pileup: You might think you don't want to watch, but you can't tear your eyes away.

It may be long, but it's not boring -- how could it be when jack o' lanterns float lazily overhead in the dining hall, and the venerable Maggie Smith turns into a cat?

Slickly entertaining documentary.

Richly imagined and resolutely unpredictable, this dark and profoundly optimistic paean to passion -- for glass, for horses, for the thrill of the moment after a coin is flipped but before it falls -- is held together by Gillian Armstrong's solid direction and by strong, if occasionally strident, performances from Fiennes and newcomer Blanchett.

Punjabi weddings are notorious for their lavishness, and Nair's intoxicating soap opera revels in the sights and sounds of this clamorous family ritual.

Engaging, high-spirited tale.

Like "Lone Star," this group portrait mourns a rapidly vanishing American landscape while acknowledging that the past, free of corporate homogeneity though it may have been, is never the unspoiled paradise it appears in retrospect.

A beautifully acted, intensely felt story.

Depp's tight, guarded performance is almost painful to watch, and Newell seems to have reined in the flamboyant Pacino, whose portrait of the mobster as a grumpy old woman may be his best work in years.

Bielinsky's feature debut is a smart, enormously entertaining thriller whose preposterous conclusion in no way diminishes the fun of getting there.

Rests on three excellent performances, of which the most difficult is Stephen Rea's.

It’s clearly meant to be a light romp –a party movie to be enjoyed in group settings—and it is.

First-time feature director Eytan Rockaway (also producer and co-author, with screenwriter Ido Funk, of the film's story) does a commendable job of ratcheting up the scary atmosphere and images.

Don’t Go is sufficiently subtle that some viewers will find it dull and lacking in traditionally “scary” moments. But others will appreciate the care with which it walks the line between supernatural and psychological horror.