Marc Savlov

It's childhood done just right: part cotton candy angels, part gurning adult frighteners, and all wide-eyed kidhood bravado.

A gorgeously crafted love poem.

A Woman in Berlin is like a tour through the blast-cratered psyche of two colliding cultures, each with its own nightmarish tales to tell or acts of violence to experience.

Despite the hardships depicted, Golden Door is a sweet film at heart, playing witness to the birth pangs of modern America with both due respect and the occasional comic grace note, but not, oddly, one single shot of the Statue of Liberty.

The balance between the slight, near-mythic narrative and the eye-wateringly beautiful cinematography (courtesy of Bradford Young), as well as the aching, spare score by Daniel Hart, create a movie that’s a more lovingly crafted tone poem than anything you’re likely to see on Texas screens this summer.

Based on actual events, this claustrophobic epic is as emotional as they come: a Holocaust story shot through with a layer of darkness both literal and figurative

Should be required viewing for prospective parents still sitting on the spermatazoan fence; after all, you're going to need a good sense of humor, aren't you?

A drop-dead gorgeous period noir, rife with paranoia, femmes fatales, and good men inexorably sinking into the bloody mire and opaque texture of life (and death) during wartime.

Eastwood keeps his direction lean and mean. There’s not an ounce of wasted screen time in Sully’s 96 minutes, but the story, an example of “truth is stranger than fiction,” has all the thrust it needs, and then some.

Relentless and mercurial, this new outing by "Swingers" director Liman takes off somewhere around Mach 3 and never lets up, leaving you with either a pounding headache or a wicked grin, or perhaps both.

Herzog, ever the eccentric filmmaker on a mission, may have met his match in this man of the cloth.

Duris and Demoustier are excellent in a pair of exceedingly complex and emotionally fractious roles, and Ozon’s supremely confident directorial hand and clear affection for these characters transforms The New Girlfriend from a could’ve-been psycho-thriller into a smart, humanistic examination of identity reshaped in the shadow of grief.

Utterly charming.

The voice acting, from new Batman Bale to the almost unrecognizable Bacall is fine – even Crystal reigns in his usual Borscht Belt bravado – if a little plain.

Feels overlong and underscripted.

The "Citizen Kane" of Oedipal zombie-cannibal-right to death-comedy-love stories... So gleefully over-the-top that it's decidedly hard not to gag while you're laughing yourself incontinent... Sick. Perverse. Brilliant.

There are plenty of great things to say about director Janice Engel’s portrait of the late, legendary Ivins, but maybe the best is that after watching Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins, you'll immediately want to go back and re-read all her books.

Two Lovers is an intensely felt, character-driven film, and there's no stronger character onscreen – not even Leonard – than Leonard's wise, Jewish mother, Ruth, played with effortless, pure perfection by Rossellini.

Quarantine is a one-note nightmare, nicely pitched to the high-C howls of the bitten and the biters but offering considerably less froth than last year's "The Signal," which mined similar nightmares with far more fulsome results.

Honestly, this ultra-noir adaptation of Frank Miller's black-and-white cult comic series is a visual feast ripped straight from the original medium's blood-soaked pages.

Above all, it's a satisfying, almost restful work, as welcome in this less-than-thrilling cinematic summer as a cool soak on a hot summer's day.

It's not nearly as complex and eerily existential as the director's debut, "Moon," but in its own way it's an even more satisfying time slice of identity-scrambled sci-fi.

Narco Cultura smartly and movingly focuses on the cultural cycle of violence, beginning with a young, Los Angeles-based rapper, Edgar Quintero, whose main job is penning lyrics celebrating the orgiastically violent lifestyles of the drug thugs for his band Buknas de Culiacán.

Teacher’s Pet feels more like Ren & Stimpy's John Kricfalusi on a mild dose of Prozac, and I mean that in the very best way.

The most remarkable aspect of Lemon Tree, however, and the one that's most likely to land this film on many year-end Best Foreign Film lists, is Abbass' devastating and marvelously restrained performance.

Director Margaret Betts’ superb debut feature arrives in theatres at perhaps just the right moment.

A bore... The film leaves you with the feeling, once again, of having enjoyed a lovely meal fit for royalty only to discover, too late, that the fruit was made of wax and the roast was little more than a Styrofoam mock-up.

By far the freakiest and most unnerving shocker in theatres this season.