Paula Nechak

First-time feature film director Max Farberbock has given a terrific visual style, resonance, sense of hope and power to the material.

Daniels gives a career-best performance.

It works because it never tries to be more than the very personal memory piece it is.

There are two reasons Ramsay succeeds with a story that might at best be called morbid: She visually transforms the dreary expanse of dead-end distaste the characters inhabit into a poem of art, music and metaphor -- and she has the perfect actress to embody Morvern.

It's the chemistry between Vardalos and Collette that gives the film its magical dazzle. Despite Vardalos' ingratiating, big and breathy presence, Collette, as the pulse and conscience of these two dreamers, very nearly steals the film.

Ullmann has honed a too-long and sometimes relentless film that delves into the selfishness of passion but also captures the elusiveness and unpredictability of love.

Darkly funny.

The performances by Davidtz, Weston, Wilson and especially Adams stand out as Morrison paints his character study with raw, true bits continually tested by the absurdities of pain life dishes up.

An odd charmer with a whisper of autobiography (Blitz makes his film's protagonist a stutterer, just as the director was in school) and it's made even better by young lead actor Reece Thompson.

It's a quiet anti-war film full of lovely, heartbreakingly assured performances and real situations and responses.

It's LaPaglia's finest, deepest role and he's matched by Armstrong, who makes Sonja's undaunting optimism palpable within a trying marriage that's gulping for breath.

If you can forgive some plot artifice and gloss, there's a seductively intuitive and resonant theme resting at the core of Jeremy Podeswa's haunting new film.

Compassionate, potent documentary.

It demands people pay attention and look inward to find the private compass that will navigate us through murky sensibilities that are as capable of seducing us as they are Tom Ripley.

The real find in this lovely family film is Castle-Hughes, who makes Pai's confusion, emotional fragility and devotion palpable.

This devastating film is buoyed by Dequenne's bravura willingness to go all out; she's a baby-faced kid when the camera focuses full on and an exceptionally beautiful young woman in profile.

It's a solid study in paranoia and gamesmanship.

Nettelbeck has created a movie recipe that ladles great dollops of dessertlike joy and equally dark tragedy around her strong-willed heroine. It wouldn't work without actors capable of finding vulnerability, humanity and kindness in sometimes inaccessible characters.

The film is so crisply acted and smartly drawn that you barely notice the cracks in the veneer.

Captures the lovely, heart-and-eye-opening ode to youthful possibility with affection and compassion.

Sometimes so intimate it's embarrassing, and the messiness at falling in love at any age is disquieting.

The film is a hopeful, rollicking, rocking, humorous, heartbreaking journey.

Truly raunchy but it's more sweetly stupid and silly than anything.

Call it "E.T." for a new generation.

There are a lot of terrific creative energies at play in Robots and they overcome an overreliance on amusement park sensibilities in the animated adventure.

The real humor comes, once again from Murphy, whose Donkey is so genuinely funny and clever that he very nearly steals the film. Except that it's stolen by Banderas as a rogue Puss In Boots.

Breathtaking visual accomplishment.

Mullan is a great choice as Frank, playing the silent guy with all kinds of baggage perfectly.