Marc Savlov

Even if you're familiar with the details of the game, Rafferty's suspenseful editing draws you to the edge of your seat and beyond, back into 1968 itself.

Mamet's dialogue is still on the mark, rapid-fire, and as cutting as an antique straight razor.

As a documentary on the origins and backstory of the unfilmed film, Jodorowsky’s Dune is unsurpassable. More than that, however, it also allows audiences a rare glimpse inside the furiously creative mind of Jodorowsky, who still, at 84, is a wonderfully mad genius of the moving image.

Riveting, and frankly it's great fun to see Leth best the smirky von Trier five times running.

Is it classic cinema? Perhaps not, but then again, American shores and citizens have never been lacerated by atomic weapons. What do we know?

All I can seem to muster, post-screening, is a modicum of fondness and a probably impermanent relief that the film isn't anywhere near as awful as it might have been in less capable hands.

And Favreau? If you'd told me 12 years ago that Swingers' comic linchpin would end up helming one of the best, most visceral, and downright fun foray of all the comic-book franchises waiting in the CGI wings, I'd have told you to amscray, kid. But what the hell? Turns out irony's good for your blood.

At almost three hours, it's a masterwork of brilliant editing and design; not a frame is unwarranted, not a scene excessive, and it holds together over its lengthy running time in a way few films half its length can manage.

It's an out-of-this-world, real-life adventure for kids of all ages, budding Neil Armstrongs and Ray Bradburys alike.

Unfamiliar to most these days and it goes without saying that Harris performs a great service in the eyes of history with his film.

Let Me In is by far one of the best-looking films of the year, genre or no genre. It's a nightmare, sure, but what childhood isn't?

This is Denzel Washington’s third at bat behind the camera while directing himself and, holy smokes, does he knock it out of the park with a vicious, visceral performance that fairly sets the screen ablaze.

Like an early Clash number, it's by turns lovely and ugly, loud as bombs and quiet as a revolution's first-thrown stone; it acknowledges the legend while uncovering the truth.

High Heels becomes mired in its own best intentions - primary colors and all.

This is highly personal artwork writ in a grand, towering script, and all the more intellectually and artistically legible for it.

Smith's film is a celebration of quirkiness, eccentricity, and certain individuals' tendency to let it all hang out, and damn the consequences.

While 28 Weeks Later ultimately falls shy of classic status (it's no Panic in Year Zero!), there are several hard-to-shake scenes -- nightmare visions, really -- that reveal the infected populace to be far less dangerous to the fabric of a civilized society than, perhaps, the very notion of civilization itself.

Even though we're aware of the tragic trajectory of the singer's life, for a while it almost seems as if reality got it wrong and Curtis might just squeak past the reaper's scythe with no more than a shave and a haircut.

Bad writing, shoddy effects work, and Laser’s nonstop shouting of every single line of dialogue do not add up to a transgressive statement about the American for-profit prison system, but instead achieve the dubious honor of being the most annoyingly in-your-face horror flick of the year thus far.

The third and final chapter in Araki's teen-angst-run-riot-in-L.A. triptych is as gorgeously messy as the first two opening salvos (Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation), but this time Araki employs a far broader and more complex character canvas than previously.

It's also and most interestingly about the writing process itself, a difficult feat to pull off on film, which Wagner and co-screenwriter Fred Parnes manage to display with unvarnished realism.

A film for the young at heart and those who still appreciate honor, valor, love, and the earth.

As concert films go, this is heady stuff.

The heist itself is a charm with the kids zipping about in go-karts and eluding klutzy security guards, but the film seems trapped in a strange Twilight Zone somewhere between comedy and drama.

For all its Del Toro touches (Goodwin as a young autistic boy kidnapped by the bugs), Mimic is a surprisingly hollow thriller.

A Better Tomorrow isn't his best film ever -- that title remains securely attached to The Killer -- but it is required viewing for anyone remotely interested in Hong Kong cinema. After all, there might not be any filmmaking in Hong Kong come 1997.

For all its stentorian performances, though, Shadow of the Vampire is a bit much, from the detailed period sets to the final, bloody scene.

At once eerie, picaresque, evocative, and utterly alien to the reality most viewers inhabit, Into Great Silence is a daring and breathtakingly constructed documentary dream. So much so that the more restless among us may find themselves nodding off.