Nathan Lee

This powerful, conceptually sure film is relevant beyond the concerns of the moment as both a model of documentary method and compassionate social filmmaking.

The most impressive special effect here is Mr. Matsumoto's hilariously restrained performance, a tour de force of comedic concision in a movie bloated by increasingly surreal developments.

The movie is legitimately greasy, authentically nasty, with a good old-fashioned sense of laying waste to everything in sight -- including the shallow philosophizing and computer-generated fakery that have overrun the summer blockbuster.

At once a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse, bittersweet autobiography and witty trip down art-world memory lane, Guest of Cindy Sherman isn't out to settle scores or exploit access, public or otherwise.

Take Out is the season’s freshest, most sympathetic movie about making your way in modern-day Manhattan with a little help from your friends.

Directed by Auraeus Solito from a screenplay by Michiko Yamamoto, Maximo has charmed film festival audiences from Sundance to Jerusalem with its refreshingly blasé handling of homosexuality, its amiable actors and its delicacy of milieu. Credit, above all, the talented Mr. Lopez, whose effortless charisma buoys the movie even when it goes heavy with contrivance.

This particular wheel hasn't been reinvented, but at least it gets a nice fresh coat of bubblegum-pink paint and a star to pilot it with aplomb.

Where "Pusher" worked fresh texture and authenticity into a classic noir template, Pusher II reaches toward the mode of hyperrealist allegory perfected by the Dardenne brothers.

May or may not appeal to fans of the Japanese fantasy franchise it is based on, but aficionados of apocalyptic teenybopper kung fu extravaganzas are in for a real treat.

The Mother of Tears is silly, awkward, vulgar, outlandish, hysterical, inventive, revolting, flamboyant, titillating, ridiculous, mischievous, uproarious, cheap, priceless, tasteless and sublime.

Debased, infantile and reckless in the extreme, this compendium of body bravado and malfunction makes for some of the most fearless, liberated and cathartic comedy in modern movies.

Fearless sustains the tradition of ethically inflected Chinese action movies.

A bright, nimble diversion, a quick-witted picture that's fast on its feet.

An itsy-bitsy, ultra-indie, super-silly comedy packing huge laughs and unexpected heart.

Smart, resourceful indie.

As much a work of sculpture as of cinema, this 71-minute movie, 13 years in the making, is the handmade brainchild of Christiane Cegavske, an artist who dabbles in film but whose talents and sensibility align more naturally with those of the contemporary-art world.

With a script that snaps, characters that pop, a blaze of streetwise attitude and enough firepower to pulverize a significant chunk of South Philadelphia, Next Day Air nears neo-blaxploitation perfection. Good things come in strange packages.

One of the more disciplined entries in the LaBruce oeuvre, Otto is sexy and silly in just the right proportions, a cult item with a real heart.

The atmosphere is so thick, the talk so assured, the performances so disciplined and the fear so fearsome, that Mr. Refn’s final iteration of his pattern achieves the hard, bright light of an archetype from hell.

A gentle, pleasantly unrushed piece of moviemaking. There’s a tonic simplicity to how it gets the job done, and if the film comes off as fairly conventional stuff, it nevertheless succeeds on its own modest, middlebrow terms.