Michael Atkinson

For audiences new to this type of moon-mad magical realism and unembarrassed romanticism, Orfeu can spellbind.

The storytelling is eloquent and genuine, but the Manns' unadventurous approach (compared to, for instance, last year's intimate road movie "Fighter") rarely hits emotional pay dirt.

Some kind of fever-dream masterpiece, easily the most breathtaking and kinetic anime ever made and one of the most eloquent films about atomic afterclap.

Kurosawa strolls through his narrative with relaxed confidence, suggesting apocalyptic significances without assuring us that he has anything particular on his mind.

Chabrol sets us up, of course, which is half the fun, and the experience is a delight for lack of pomposity (his visual storytelling remains no-nonsense) as well as genre expertise.

What emerges is not only an Underdog v. Simon Bar Sinister saga but a fascinating character study.

Winterbottom was set on bare-bones realism, and so the scalding lyricism of ferocious terrain and sociopolitical absurdity seen in, say, "Kandahar" or "A Time for Drunken Horses," is never resourced.

The film is a vehicle for Applebroog-appreciation, daughterly and otherwise.

Bizarre, off-putting, and finally demanding of rubberneck respect, this fish-tank indie never leaves a rather lovely duplex apartment, occupied by an unemployed Everyman (Brendan Fletcher) and his roommate, Jimmy (director Matt D'Elia).

Although the film has a righteous heart, by focusing solely on government as showbiz, it's part of what it decries. Curry makes uproarious hay with the illegal shenanigans of incumbent mayor Sharpe James, but is that all there is? That said, Street Fight has enough cultural crosscurrents to fill out a novel.

If only this epic had enough substantial melodramatic hooks to hang this woman's beauty on; emotional traction is most often buried under acres of carefully coordinated vistas and CGI-hued flora.

It's hard to be certain whether the film's placidity is an ironic gag, but the modesty at work turns out to be pretty likable, as strange as that sounds.

Still, the textures of Refn's wallow in bad behavior are completely convincing, if the plot-stuff is a little familiar and if the overarching notion that, as Quentin Tarantino said somewhere, "gangsters have kitchens, too" seems by now valid but no longer terribly fresh.

Though at times it threatens to meander off, Penn's movie fulfills its destiny as an alienated fable of justice and luck, personified by Jack in the twilight of his iconicity, babbling to himself at the crossroads of nowhere.

May worship heedlessly at Duras's memory, but it's a testament to Moreau alone.

In terms of raw wit and fearless satire, the South Park kids put Mike Myers and Adam Sandler to shame.

Idlewild has a sober, loving respect for history and the old South, and thereby grants itself a measure of distinction.

You don't watch prolific doc-master Wang Bing's new film about a Chinese mental hospital so much as get imprisoned within it, pacing its dingy corridors and rooms like a zoo animal.

So Goes the Nation has no new conspiracy theories, settling instead for a meticulous examination of the two political parties' hellbent voter-seduction strategies, from demographic outreach to slam ads.

Continuing the autobiographical torrent begun nearly 30 years ago, Bright Leaves is an utterly mundane miracle, a sampling of gentle insight and poetic retrospection quietly at odds with the exploitative culture around it.

Dynamic but preachy.

All told, and in giant widescreen, it's only blood-red adolescent fun, but it blooms like Douglas Sirk with a Gatling gun compared to the teenage demographic's current fare. Matrix, schmatrix: This is the season's supreme party movie.

In time, Carrey's monkeyshines, Jude Law's silhouetted reappearances as Snicket, and the inevitable descent of Beverly Hills pathos blunt the movie's fastidious dark-carnival humor.

How enlightening you find Damian Pettigrew's obsessive film depends on whether you're as adoring of Fellini as he was of himself; for the devoted, it's a gold mine.

Jacques Perrin's Winged Migration is merely about birds, and though you learn less about the various species Perrin circled the globe to document than you might from an afternoon with Animal Planet, you become intensely chummy with the process and labor of flying.

Quietly and atmospherically touches on the Kiarostamian Uncertainty Principle, with Aljafari liberally corrupting his demi-documentary with scripted dialogue, rehearsals, and even digital effects.

Uncompromising in its way, the film's portrait of codependent compulsion is so organically conceived, you start to smell the sulfur of traumatized childhood, no exposition needed.

Barrett's trajectory is exciting, but his tribe is hilariously, dryly Irish about the experience.