Marrit Ingman

Every movie about the Holocaust should be this good, but few are.

The film’s resolution is more implied than complete.

The film’s light hand, appealing style, and simple exposition make it an eminently watchable inquiry into the politics of food and public health, accessible to the documentary-shy and wildly appropriate for older kids, who may further respond to its generational emphasis.

With its wonderful veteran cast, its heart on its sleeve, and a love for the landscape that suffuses its technique, Don't Come Knocking is a peculiar but rewarding escape.

The House of Sand is a more transparently ambitious, prestigious "woman's picture" than Waddington's previous feature, 2000's "Me You Them."

More than worthy viewing. What it lacks at times in elegance it possesses in intensity and feeling.

The very concept of such an assassination isn't so absurd as to be wacky – at least not since somebody fired a rocket at UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last Thursday.

It's got practically everything you could stuff in front of a camera, with the possible exception of Rip Taylor throwing confetti. Dancing transvestites? Check. Elephants? Check.

Beneath its layers of epic detail, this Zatôichi is cinematic cotton candy.

This indie rambler was my favorite movie of South by Southwest 05, where it premiered. But before I go any further, let's establish that Mutual Appreciation is not for you if you go to the movies to see things blown up or if you expect such conventional niceties as a three-act structure or lighting effects not achieved by yanking up a window shade.

The overall execution add up to a film of beautiful, ultimately heartbreaking honesty.

The film is a wonderful choice for older teens and has considerable crossover appeal for adult audiences.

Abundant arthouse crowd appeal.

The movie's quirk isn't forced; it sincerely ponders the nature of love and of human need, opening with a quote by Jacques Lacan and ending with a shrug.

Made by teachers for teachers, this local indie – which now sports the imprimatur of executive producer Morgan Spurlock – offers no easy answers to its statistic that 50% of teachers quit within their first three years on the job.

Even at its most contrived, the filmmakers believe in this project so passionately that its atmosphere seems absolutely real.

There’s much to enjoy, even if the funny bits don’t add up to Spinal Tap greatness. And the titular anthem, performed in a star-studded closing jamboree, has a wickedly funny payoff.

Ill-suited to casual viewing. But its challenges are worthwhile, and the gifted Gleize is one to watch.

Hallström's latest is fine but unambitious, content with what it is – an arthouse trifle for the masses.

The film is set in post-WWII Scotland, but its tone and its telling are so stark, so Medieval, that it seems anachronistic when one of its characters picks up a telephone or plays a bebop jazz record.

The action set-pieces, double crosses, and narrow escapes are handsomely mounted and suspenseful as a Saturday matinee.

A paradox, balancing the contradictions and ambiguities of its characters and setting with a careful hand that rarely falters, even though the film seems dramatically thin at times.

This is not a conventional love story but a philosophical one.

Acted with such venomous restraint that it hurts to watch.

In casting an all-American Jersey girl and surrounding her with Manolo Blahniks and the Strokes, Coppola draws a connection between her audience (domestically, at least) and the doomed dauphine, who is likewise insulated and distracted from her country's pointless involvement in a disastrous foreign war that is bankrupting its government and starving its people – and all the while she spends, spends, spends.

A pleasant and often surprising ensemble dramedy set almost entirely within the walls of a busy, fashionable Tribeca trattoria on a spectacularly busy Tuesday night.

Monster is, at its best, simply a chronicle of people trying to get along, which makes it compelling viewing indeed.

Though the story is thinly conceived, Antal throws a fantastic curveball in the second act. Kontroll is a hot ticket.