Mark Jenkins

Arguably the most dynamic Asian action film since the 1990s peaks of John Woo and Tsui Hark, The Raid: Redemption works as sheer gladiatorial ballet.

The movie is less than incisive, but it's utterly well-meaning.

The movie's first word is oishi, Japanese for "delicious," and what follows is a treat for sushi veterans. First-timers, however, may wish for a little more context.

The movie is not a story but a text, and Cedar is its playfully intrusive interpreter.

The Salt of Life is easygoing and naturalistic, but clearly a work of imagination.

Deeply silly in a classic mode, The Fairy continues the French new wave of near-silent cinema.

It's hard to make a movie about a pederast without being exploitative, and Michael eventually comes to feel like an art house stunt.

The Turin Horse is an absolute vision, masterly and enveloping in a way that less personal, more conventional movies are not. The film doesn't seduce; it commands.

A veteran film editor making her first feature, Israel emphasizes the area's low-key beauty.

There's plenty of material for a lively, profound documentary about Norman Foster. But How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? is, by design, lightweight.

As the loosely aligned band of survivors turns into a pack of sociopathic loners, the only reasonable conclusion is that they were all pretty rotten to begin with.

The stories are horrific, if laced with Tarantino-style humor.

DeNoble aside, Addiction Incorporated finds most of its heroes in Congress, the White House and federal agencies.

Klapisch is a master of the half-biting, half-soothing farce, and he usually keeps the divergent tones in harmony.

It was frantic sex that earned Shame an NC-17 rating, but this arty drama is mostly slow and methodical. And thoroughly unsexy.

The clinical style doesn't play to the director's strengths. A Dangerous Method didn't have to be another "Naked Lunch," but Freud plus Jung plus Cronenburg should have equaled something a little more dissonant and troubling.

Would be more satisfying if it were a more definitive look at Guantanamo's workings. All Cote and Henriquez can provide is some glimmers of insight about just one of the men held there. But that's enough to make their movie enlightening, compelling and, finally, heartbreaking.

It's a campy rampage that runs a few minutes shy of four hours, dooming what otherwise would likely be a bright future as a midnight movie.

A Good Old Fashioned Orgy deserves credit for not entirely wimping out.

Circumstance is best during its simpler, more naturalistic moments. In one, Mehran rebuffs a junkie who stumbles into the mosque, only to see that an Islamic hardliner is more compassionate.

Perhaps the ending worked better in the book, Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which sold more than a million copies in France. Certainly this adaptation, Mona Achache's directorial debut, is a very bookish movie.

Neither innovative nor profound, but it is kinetic, visceral and sometimes moving.

This slackers-go-gangsta comedy demonstrates that less than 90 minutes can be a very long time.

For those already somewhat familiar with the subject, the directors' distillation of these 40 hours of film will expand their knowledge - if not their consciousness. But other viewers may spend the whole movie wondering exactly when the merry magic is going to kick in.

Ruiz, whose best-known films include his 1999 adaptation of Proust's "Time Regained," coolly roams the ambiguous territories between tragedy and soap opera, and between the traditional and the modern.

If the movie's mix of nihilistic violence and snarky attitude suggests "In Bruges," it's a family resemblance. The writer-director of that film, which also starred Gleeson, is Martin McDonagh, the younger brother of this one's. Despite the similarities, the older McDonagh has a lighter touch. Where "In Bruges" ultimately became a mechanical bloodbath, The Guard scampers quickly through the action scenes, delivering commentary on genre conventions as it goes.

Quietly astonishing documentary.

The glib story and hectoring structure undermine the filmmakers' best intentions.