Maitland McDonagh

The result is slick, mainstream entertainment with just enough surprises that you don't have to feel like a fool for enjoying it.

Anyone looking for the comfort in a tense thriller ending in a satisfying restoration of order and psychological security will be bitterly disappointed, but Haneke isn't in the business of encouraging comforting illusions.

Though screenwriter Dianne Houston spent time observing the real-life Dulaine, her screenplay is a showcase for triumph-of-the-underdog sports-movie cliches and coming-of-age-through-adversity moral lessons.

Filmmaker Barry Hershey's impressionistic documentary about the casting process is the antidote to years of comic "audition montages," those guaranteed laugh-getting freak-show parades of no-talents mangling monologues and pulling nutty stunts in hopes of standing out from the crowd.

Delivers plenty of sharply funny moments.

It features truly monstrous bogeymen in the Reavers, cannibalistic renegades who, legend has it, went to the edge of the universe and were driven mad by the abyss.

Indie director Bezucha has held on to just enough individuality to breathe a little life into the cliches.

They're frank, funny, resilient and altogether captivating.

It's a great place to visit, even if you wouldn't want to live there.

The same super-heated visual imagination that made Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" such a darkly thrilling delight is very much in evidence in his sequel to "Hellboy." It's a shame that it's at the service of such a blandly conventional story.

Engrossing documentary about the life and times of publisher Barney Rosset, who spent much of his career advancing the cause of free expression, is a flawless match of style and subject.

Luis Orjuela's sweet, slight comedy is about a middle-class Colombian family and the huge, cherry-red Chevrolet Bel-Air convertible that conveys them through several years worth of life's little dramas.

This being a Michael Moore film, the filmmaker is as enraging as the subject: His belligerent court-jester shtick wears thin fast and undermines the segments on universal health-care systems in Canada, the U.K., France and Cuba.

A delirious fever dream of pulp-western conventions by way of 1950s Hollywood melodrama, Thai filmmaker Wisit Sasanatieng surreal oddity unfolds in heavily manipulated colors so rich they seem ready to leap off the screen, punctuated by spasms of over-ripe dialogue, floridly dramatic songs and maniacal villainous laughter.

There's nothing subtle about Pelegri and Harari's culture-clash romp, but it's sometimes frantically funny; that it's thoroughly forgettable is an issue only if you expect it to do more than poke easy fun at the thorny issues it raises.

The person who can resist a formerly homeless senior citizen gradually restored to sufficient stability to the degree that he can take in his own "castaway cat" is hard-hearted indeed.

It aspires to greater moral ambiguity than the average crime thriller, and if it doesn't entirely succeed it nevertheless avoids the lazy moral bankruptcy of movies like "Lethal Weapon 4."

And if the film's 11th-hour CGI effects aren't entirely convincing, the notion that oil itself is haunted by the restless spirit of every once-living thing that time reduced and mingled into the earth's black blood throws off a primordial chill.

The story is compelling enough that even glib phrases like "healing through hip-hop" can't drag it down.

Though the material is familiar, Sciamma has a light touch and avoids many teen-movie cliches.

Portabella has no interest in conventional biography -- it's hard not to suspect that he included the tale of Felix Mendelsson (Daniel Ligorio) discovering the score for the "St. Matthew Passion" wrapping a meat delivery precisely BECAUSE it's probably apocryphal.

Funny, eye-opening and ultimately very moving portrait by director Kirby Dick.

Eckhart is dazzling as a born phony.

It's ripe for an American remake, given the popularity of reality TV shows like "My Super Sweet 16" and "Bridezillas," but it's hard to imagine a better cast than this ensemble.

Though Estevez's achievement doesn't quite live up to his ambitions -- the climax of Altman's "Nashville" (1975) evokes the same brutal loss of innocence to more shattering effect -- it still contains enough powerful moments to balance the weaker sections.

But it's also old-fashioned family drama that invites audience participation ("Don't you go making eyes at your cousin's husband, you little slut!"), and is surprisingly satisfying, in a gooey kind of way -- like macaroni and cheese or peach cobbler, perhaps.

The only famous person in the film, actor Peter Coyote, is an eloquent spokesman, but he was only a visitor to Black Bear; the stars are the full-timers, and their willingness to share their rich and sometimes painful memories is captivating.

This dark comedy of addiction, delusion and humor as a weapon marks the feature directing debut of veteran writer Peter Tolan.

Sentimental, manipulative, predictable and utterly charming.

Though O'Toole, whose ruined beauty Michell emphasizes in frequent and tight close-ups, and newcomer Whittaker have a striking rapport, the film's most haunting moments pair him with Vanessa Redgrave -- amazingly, this is their first movie together -- as his ex-wife. They evoke a lifetime of love, betrayal, regret and forgiveness in the space of a few lines, then move on without missing a beat.

The twists and turns continue until the very end of Choi's mesmerizing, high-energy romp, whose 139 minutes zip by like a round of speed poker.

It's genuinely funny, oddly romantic and surprisingly engaging for what could easily have been an obnoxious vanity project.

Though at heart a tightly-wound, bitterly bleak comedy of manners, Eyre's film is less funny than brilliantly squirm-inducing, a dissection of bad behavior via rapier-sharp dialogue.

As is always the case with compilation films, some segments are far better than others. But they're all so brief that the least of them passes quickly and the best are small miracles of economical storytelling.

Jones handles his fellow actors well, drawing a hard, anguished performance from Pepper and allowing January Jones (no relation) to bring a touching vulnerability to Mike's bored, vapid, baby-doll wife.

Briskly directed by "Sex and the City" veteran David Frankel, the movie is far better than the source.

While most anthology films have one standout and one weak link, all three tales are short, sharp shockers -- there should be at least one for every taste.

A quirky charmer.

It's hard to say which sight is more depressing: That of Chinese girls mortgaging their futures in the hopes of helping their families, or drunken American girls, surrounded by privilege and opportunity most of the world can barely imagine, arguing that it's fun to degrade themselves for cheap baubles.

Crowder and Dower's film is a refreshing reminder that without Ross and the Erteguns, pundits would have had to coin an entirely different term to describe "soccer moms," since without the Cosmos' brief and shining moment in the sun, suburban soccer leagues would be as rare as collegiate boccie tournaments.

The film's greatest incidental pleasures are images of a time when outlaw musicians wore suit jackets and the craggy Dylan was a delicate, unconventionally handsome young man.

It's way too violent and perversely excessive for many tastes, but there's more to its outrages than meets the eye, and that second look is well worth taking.

Clever, fast-paced and surprisingly moving.

It's a back-to-basics, gore-and-gristle look at the no-frills nastiness of 1970s films, in which monsters, mutants and ghosts can't hold a candle to the sheer, unadulterated evil that lurks in the hearts of men.

If Caspian has a fault, it's that viewers familiar with neither the books nor the first film may have trouble picking up the strands of the story in the early scenes… but in all honesty, how many Lewis neophytes will choose Caspian as their point of entry?

Bielinsky's "Nine Queens" was a complex romp through the machinations of high-stakes con artists, but this intricately plotted mystery ventures into darker psychological territory and never misses a step.

Sardonic and steeped in the tumultuous history of the former Yugoslavia, this absurdist comedy of contemporary mores can be appreciated even without intimate knowledge of its specific cultural context.

In different hands and different lands, the same story could easily have been a pretentious bit of "Red Shoe Diaries" piffle. But exceptional performances and the oh-so-Frenchness of the complications instead produce an erotic tale that plays like the best gossipy story you ever heard about people you thought you knew.

Togman, an associate professor in political science at Seton Hall University, paints a clear-eyed and unsentimental picture of Sheree's efforts, and there are no happy endings for her or for Mary, who's quietly battling breast cancer as she helps Sheree line up paperwork and negotiate with creditors. The film leaves them both where they started: struggling.

Wahlberg acquits himself well, and the supporting cast -- which includes pioneering rocker Levon Helm in a scene-stealing cameo as an aging gun buff who knows a thing or two about cover-ups, Ned Beatty as a corrupt politician, and a Strangelovian Rade Serbedzija -- is so strong you almost wish the film were longer so they could have more screen time.

Shopsin is a small piece of New York history, and Mahurin's film is the portrait he deserves: small, noisy and oddly engaging beneath the bluster.

The crews are perfectly cast for maximum drama.

Sleek, stylish and ephemeral as a fireworks display, Ocean's Thirteen is the definition of light, but not totally brainless, entertainment.

Overall, McGrath's film has superior star power (including Gwyneth Paltrow in a one-scene role as a Peggy Lee-like chanteuse), is franker about the sexual nature of Capote's fascination with the murderous Smith and his sad, strangled dreams, and spends more time establishing Capote's glittering New York life before setting him adrift in the heartland.

The story eventually resolves itself a little too neatly, but it never devolves into a freak show or a fable, thanks in large part to Farmiga and Stahl's deft, quirky performances.

Diablo and director Jason Reitman never undercut Juno, whom Page brings to a fully rounded life (no pun intended) that verges on the frightening: Her vulnerable center doesn't belie her formidable exterior -- it just makes her more than a sitcom-patter machine.

Canet and Lefevre pruned subplots and fixed the novel's ending -- it's now merely preposterous rather than patently absurd – but it's the cast that makes the genre clichés feel vivid and even fresh.

Ejiofor's polished, energetic performance -- including several song-and-dance numbers -- enlivens what's basically comfort food in movie form, but sometimes comfort food is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Given the controversy, which strongly suggested that the filmmakers had it in for President Bush, the film's biggest shocker may be how kind Range and coscreenwriter Simon Finch are to him.

It may not be by-the-book history -- a relative term in any event, when discussing the ancients whose worldview embraced men, gods and monsters -- but what a spectacle!

Lafosse's razor sharp dissection of relationships strained to the breaking point is hypnotic in a road-accident kind of way.

A sprawling, messy, frustrating and impassioned examination of the psychological fallout from America's obsession with a highly artificial and all-but unattainable standard of beauty.

A down–under fable with a sweet country-music twang.

Mitevska telescopes centuries of conflict between nations into an intimate story of siblings whose hopes for the future are being slowly poisoned by the sins of the past.

Ambitious, deeply flawed and studded with sequences that achieve pure, majestic greatness.

It's easy to envision the big-budget remake, but hard to imagine a mainstream American production capturing the original's sour, sweaty immediacy.

For a movie rooted in reality, Italian filmmaker Saverio Costanzo's taut psychological drama is in desperate danger of drowning in metaphor.

Raised in Mumbai, classically trained actor-turned-writer-director Khanna addresses the volatile issue of women's rights within Islamic households, and if his sensationalistic debut feature makes its point with a heavy hand, it's also starkly effective.

Raimi and company deftly balance spectacle and character-based drama, occasionally tweaking the comic-book mythology but always respecting creator Stan Lee's idea that costumed crime-fighter Peter Parker's life as Spider-Man isn't all derring-do and public accolades.

A surprisingly tight, clever, twisty heist tale.

The writers get the mix just about right, and first-time Bond director Martin Campbell moves things along fairly briskly.

What divides opinion is the film's tone: Are those naive, portentous pronouncements about media, voyeurism and the numbing, pornographic allure of atrocity footage a sly reflection of the YouTube generation's boundary-free narcissism and callow youth, or evidence that Romero – never one to underplay a metaphor – has become a hectoring, tin-eared fogey?

Markowitz 's low key coming of age/coming out story isn't particularly original, but features subtle performances and a vivid sense of place.

A quietly harrowing chronicle of addiction and fragile recovery anchored by Vera Farmiga's intense performance.

Banned for many years in director/cowriter Alfonso Cuaron's native Mexico, his debut feature is a bawdy comedy that pivots on the comeuppance of a serial philanderer.

This intimate coming-of-age story benefits from excellent performances, notably Gregory Smith's.

Cocaine cash financed Miami's renaissance, but the film never downplays the human cost at which that urban renewal was purchased.

This sly, subtle and very French psychological drama dissects the relationship between three insecure Sorbonne students and their deeply flawed idol.

The larger message remains clear: Unified communities have more power than they realize, and the most vicious enemy of progress is learned helplessness.

Scenemaker Dito Montiel's rough, grating memoir of growing up in a poor, violent section of Astoria, Queens, in the mid-1980s features a few too many arty flourishes, but also packs a raw power that's hard to shake.

A workmanlike piece of storytelling elevated by fine performances.

It's a serious and well-researched consideration of natural childbearing vs. hospital delivery that explores the larger social conditions and assumptions that shape women's choices.

French up-and-comer Alexandre Aja's full-bore do-over is a shockingly successful update of a seminal 1970s shocker.

As M, Dench knows she has a tiger by the tail and isn't fazed in the slightest. Reservations aside, the film marks the beginning of a new phase in James Bond's history, and it promises to be a gripping one.

Surprisingly effective supernatural tale in which there's more to fear from the living than the dead.

Not for all tastes, but produces haunting juxtapositions.

Lee occasionally stumbles as a documentarian... But the material is so profoundly moving that it hardly matters.

Inspired by accounts of underage vigilante girls in Japan turning the tables on Internet predators, playwright Brian Nelson's schematic tale of the hunter captured by the game, a queasy blend of exploitation-movie nastiness and blunt moral lesson.

Monica Cervera's fearless performance as the homely Marieta, whose movie-made dreams of glamour will never come true, is mesmerizing.

That this deceptively quiet crime thriller about an ex con's troubled homecoming sat on the shelf for four years before finding commercial distribution speaks volumes about both the voracious appetite for sand/surf/summer-break cliches and Hollywood's willingness to pander to it.

Yugoslavian-born writer-producer-director-editor Vladan Nikolic weaves together the intersecting stories of lost souls who bring their international miseries to New York in this cool, cynical thriller.

First-time writer-director Greg Mottola has a real feel for characters, a quality that's in disturbingly short supply among young filmmakers. The Malone family could easily be a one-dimensional collection of sitcom caricatures, but by the movie's end they feel like real people. He also pulls off a tricky shift of tone, from pleasant, mild comedy to something far more bitter and haunting.

The end result is the very definition of a summer movie: breezy, undemanding and a carefully balanced blend of the familiar and the not-quite-what-you-expected.

Though the portentous title is taken from the Old Testament -- Elah is where little David took on Goliath -- the film's concerns are painfully timely and forcefully articulated.

Groundlings alumnus Prendergast's dark comedy, drawn from on his own family experiences, is firmly rooted in messy, selfish, often-unappealing human behavior rather than self-referential irony and juvenile goofiness.

It's not earthshaking or life-changing, but it's cute, occasionally predictable and only requires ACTUAL idiots, like Barry, to act like idiots. As formula entertainment goes, that's a pretty sweet deal.

A charming comedy-drama that's surprising true to the events that inspired it.

Character-driven thriller, which plays out against a backdrop of desperation, self-loathing and grinding poverty.

Director and cowriter Niall Johnson's black comedy falters at the end, but until then it manages to wring gentle humor from murder most well bred.

Intelligent and engaging, this documentary about rave culture overcomes the challenge inherent in its subject; rave's appeal is by nature nonanalytical and experiential, while documentary films play to the intellectual observer.

Though meticulously researched, well acted and filled with striking moments, the movie ultimately feels oddly disconnected.

A tabloid slice of tabloid life, ragged, vivid, awkward and punchy all at once.

It's lavish, clever entertainment, a welcome opportunity to laugh without shame.

A creepy, clever, film buff's delight of a fantasy.

Ribisi is painfully intense without being histrionic.

If he were a more subtle director, it would be a great film; as it is, it's an extremely good one, anchored by the subtly devastating performances of Penn, Robbins and Bacon. The supporting cast is equally good, and blue collar Boston's mean streets take on a beaten-down life of their own.

Propelled by a soundtrack as diverse as its international gallery of thieves, Jordan's cheerfully scruffy neo-noir caprice even lays on the religious imagery with a palette knife and sweetens Melville's ending without seeming terminally sappy.

The film's uniformly excellent performances are a delight, and fans of Irish actor Farrell (whose pitch-perfect American accent has served him well in Hollywood) can hear both his natural inflections and his singing voice.

Their doomed fling is oddly hypnotic and ultimately haunting.

Seductive, funny, whip-smart and ultimately tragic.

It's the kind of film Hollywood doesn't make any more, and a pleasant retro diversion.

Beautifully acted, minutely observed story.

The film's ensemble portrait of women caught between nostalgia for the tough and free-spirited babes they were (however much that freedom may have been illusory) and uncertainty about what their futures hold is almost painfully on target.

Thoroughly dotty and surprisingly endearing.

This intelligent, oddly aloof thriller is a worthy follow-up to director Steven Soderberg's "Out of Sight."

Brawny, he-man spectacle combined with a surprisingly solid story and buttressed by excellent performances.

Heir to a long tradition of apocalyptic scare stories, the film wears its influences proudly.

Often technically rough, but it's painfully compelling.

Alternately sweet and raucous comedy.

A tour de force and an utter delight, studded with priceless supporting bits by Miriam Margolyes, Maury Chaykin, Rosemary Harris and Rita Tushingham, each of whom steals at least one richly deserved moment in the spotlight.

Roos' sly, throwaway insights into the ways people deceive and undermine themselves are both ruefully funny and painfully on the mark.

This Australian tear-jerker finds more humor than you'd imagine possible in the story of a dying woman getting to know her adult children.

The film rests on Depp's evocation of Barrie's gentle, playfulness and deeply buried sorrows; it's difficult to imagine another actor so gracefully evoking Barrie's childlike qualities without seeming creepy or emotionally malformed, and only the hard of heart will come away dry-eyed.

Less a sequel than a variation on a haunting theme -- the nature and origins of humanity.

Would be funny if it weren't so horrifying.

Antal's debut is a sharp, blackly comic hugely entertaining thriller.

Gray doesn't condescend to his outer-borough characters and elicits pitch-perfect performances from his ensemble cast.

Above all, Jackson evokes an almost palpable sense of the will to power trapped within the ring. Without this evocation of the ring's insidious ability to sniff out the potential for corruption and capitalize on it, the entire enterprise would be precious drivel.

Moreno's subtly calibrated mix of intelligence, naivete, rebelliousness, charisma and practicality produces an unforgettable protagonist; even Maria's recklessness seems reasonable because it's so clearly rooted in desperation.

Its imagery is never less than breathtakingly beautiful, and is occasionally truly awesome

Serrau effortlessly navigates the tricky transition from ruefully comic chick flick to gritty crime picture.

Piercing, sweetly melancholy and acted with a breathtaking eye for nuance.

William Klein's film documents a turbulent time and an outsized personality, but the film's glories are in the details and its intimacy would be unimaginable in the rigidly spin-controlled atmosphere of 21st-century sports.

The framing story is pointless and almost insulting, even though it's part of former New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen's novel.

This amazing footage alternates with interviews that include more than a dozen surviving members of the troupe, whose recollections are by turn funny, touching and mind-boggling. What a time!

You don't have to be a chem-lab wonk to be seduced by the seven scientists who discuss their work and lives in this engaging film.

A rapt fascination with transcendent lunacy runs through Herzog's work, both fiction and documentary; while disdaining Treadwell's rhapsodically anthropomorphized vision of nature.

Steven Soderbergh's direction conjures an understated '70s vibe, striking an apparently effortless balance between grit and glamour.

Medem's stupendously gorgeous puzzle movie features strong performances from its four leads.

A very entertaining, hugely neurotic romantic comedy.

Enthralling, darkly funny, horrifying and hopeful.

One of the flat-out creepiest films ever released by a major American studio.

Romero isn't a subtle filmmaker -- the sociopolitical underpinnings of his DEAD films have always been brutally clear -- but LAND is alive with subtle touches.

A beautifully acted slice of intersecting lives defined and driven by the business of beauty.

A cut above the preposterous action spectacles that now pass for espionage films.

Overall, Owen and Law are more nuanced than Roberts and Portman, but Portman's dewy youth is 90 percent of Alice (the remaining 10 is an eleventh-hour twist), and Nichols uses the unkindly costumed Roberts so skillfully that her performance looks like a revelation.

This fast-paced entertainment is a surprisingly successful mix of spectacle and human-scale drama.

Though the specifics of the story may be unfamiliar to Western viewers, its broad outlines and underlying themes are universal, and Christopher Doyle's ravishing cinematography transcends language.

Tricky thriller relies on its smoothly unrippled surface, leisurely pacing and slightly awkward performances to create a false sense of security that sets up viewers for a shock when it takes an abrupt turn into Patricia Highsmith territory.

Utterly enthralling even for viewers unfamiliar with the Congo's complicated political history.

Frequently funny, generally fizzy and occasionally piercingly perceptive about the price love exacts.

Unlike Woo's successful but rather disappointing "Broken Arrow", this brutal, stunningly choreographed spectacle weaves together lyrical beauty, blasphemy, sadistic cruelty and grotesque sentimentality with breathtakingly smooth assurance.

In a story driven by questions of loyalty and allegiance, no candidate is identified by party. It's a bipartisan nightmare from which no one escapes unscathed.

This cheeky fable rests on the slender shoulders of Etel and McGibbon, and the lovely, natural performances Boyle elicits from them are the film's real miracle.

By turns enthralling, seductive and deeply disturbing.

This intimate, bittersweet romance is proof that a familiar story and the trappings of a done-to-death era can still seem fresh and engaging in the right hands.

It's both the shortest 3 1/2 hours you'll ever spend at the movies and spectacle of such magnitude that it's hard to imagine feeling you didn't get your time and money's worth.

Both informative and intensely moving.

Non-musical scenes that move the narrative forward are staged realistically, while the lavish production numbers reflect the star-struck imagination of one-time chorine Roxie, for whom all the world ought to be a stage.

Craig Brewer's sweaty, feel-good story about a small-time pimp and dope dealer making one last, desperate grab at his long-deferred dream is driven by longtime supporting player Terrence Howard's subtle, go-for-broke performance as Memphis mack Djay.

Anchored by Friel and Williams's exceptional performances, the film's power lies in its complexity. Nothing is black and white, starting with the girls' complicated relationships with their parents, which are simultaneously nurturing and fraught with psychological peril.

Despite its length, the film only starts feeling as long at the end -- or, more correctly, ends. Serious fans of the novels will be prepared for the serial codicils, but the uninitiated are likely to think the film is over several times before it actually is.

Whatever the complicated truth about PTL, Tammy Faye's homespun charisma is undeniable; if only the Lord would give her the strength to say, "Get thee behind me, false eyelashes!"

The result is truly a family film, not a kiddie time-waster that throws the occasional sop to adults; whether you like or love it is a function of how vividly the material reflects your own childhood fantasies.

Henry James's novel of social-climbing, forbidden love, friendship and betrayal, given a lush treatment that neglects neither the elaborate period trappings nor the story's intensely contemporary emotional underpinnings.

The main event is the Mamet-esque battle of foul words between vintage hard-case Ray Winstone and the seething sociopath played by Ben Kingsley.

A cool indictment of television's near-irresistible pandering to the inner peeping tom.

Such astringent details as a banjo player plucking a few ominous notes from "Dueling Banjos" when Ed first lays eyes on the Norman Rockwellian beauty of Spectre ensure that the story's fundamental sweetness never becomes cloying.

Story of small triumphs and everyday sorrows is never maudlin or sentimental.

Classic melodrama given a thoroughly modern, utterly Almodovarian face-lift.

Kusama's impressive feature debut is an affecting coming-of-age drama whose story is familiar without being hackneyed.

Generous, slyly tough-minded documentary.

It starts slowly, but this contemplative drama's cumulative effect is genuinely haunting.

Blanchett's quietly radiant performance anchors even the most outrageous plot developments, and she's well-supported on all sides.

The competition between man and machine is fogged by distrust and obfuscation. And for now, the result is a draw.

Hailed as a clever exercise in neo-Hitchcockianism, this clever and very satisfying picture is more accurately Chabrolian.

A scary, intelligent thriller that remains haunting long after it's over...features what has to be one of the creepiest first half-hours in recent film history.

So adorable you don't ever mind that the story's so slight it's in danger of shriveling up and blowing away, or that it drags a little in the middle.

A collaboration between the notoriously offbeat Coen brothers and thoroughly mainstream screenwriters Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone, this piquant romantic comedy is both resolutely generic and bristling with barbs that go down with a delicious fizz and leave behind a refreshing blast of tartness.

Deville gently reveals that they're all simultaneously hauntingly fragile and amazingly resilient, their smiles as piercing as any resigned gaze.

Offbeat and ravishingly beautiful.

Rough around the edges but rock-solid in its sense of place and its depiction of real people overreaching their apparent limitations.

Diop Gaï's performance is equally beguiling: She's both bold and mysterious, a femme fatale bursting with life.

Mamet's jabs at Tinseltown's silken ruthlessness are quietly pointed, and the ensemble cast -- even the brittle and sometimes annoying Pidgeon (Mamet's wife) -- is brilliant.

This taut crime thriller is a welcome antidote to brainless action extravaganzas in which the mayhem is the message, and rests on two shrewd, perfectly modulated performances.

It's probably not the last word in WASP angst, but it's eloquent, witty, graceful and as sharp as can be.

Kassell's visual influences are evident -- she's clearly a fan of the down-and-dirty films of the '70s -- but the consistently fine performances smooth over the rough patches.

Like the original "Fantasia's" eight segments, the results are a mixed bag.

Spare and quietly heartbreaking, this French-Canadian feature uses a fine brush to depict a teenage girl in the midst of a quiet crisis.

If you ever wondered why they call it "the curse," this movie will enlighten as it entertains.

Its minutely detailed revelations work their way under the skin like slivers of glass.

The wonder of it all is how bitterly funny the complications are, especially as filtered through Dedee's monstrously self-centered voice-over.

(Fugate's) portrait of Valentine/Baker is rich and compelling.

Funny, thought-provoking and, yes, touching.

Both genuinely funny and authentically horrifying, it puts the average horror comedy to shame.

Eastwood's slow-building story of loss and deliverance is a fine, understated piece of storytelling that earns every emotional body blow it lands.

The film's measured pace may put off impatient viewers, but the brilliantly underplayed ending is worth the wait.

Roberts fans will, of course, be delighted to see her in a role that plays to all her strengths -- fresh-faced looks, charming gangliness, air of infinite approachability -- and neatly sidesteps her glaring inability to act by having her more or less play herself.

An enthralling, suspenseful documentary about spelling bees.

The result is a beguiling mix of the familiar and the exotic, vivid proof that a good story can withstand endless variations without losing its fundamental vitality.

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.