Peter Rainer

The openness of these people is often astonishing – and a sign of hope.

In Panahi's case, he is insuperably handicapped by his current constraints. And yet, despite everything, here is This Is Not a Film, which is emphatically a film – and an extraordinary one.

It has what the most heartfelt Disney animated features used to have: rapturous imagery matched with real wit.

The film is an indictment of a cultural tragedy; a testament to the steadfastness, against all odds, of the Indigenous community; and a plea for healing.

What grounds the overflow of incident are the many human touches that personalize both the anguish and the stray glimpses of freedom.

Perhaps inevitably, it falls short of its ambitions. But it’s bracing to see a studio movie these days, particularly one with such huge scope, that at least attempts to serve up more than recycled goods.

What struck home the most forcefully for me in Cold War is its depiction, insidious and unrelenting, of how artists under communism suffered for their art. At its best, the film is like a bulletin from a benighted world.

The film drags a bit and Irglova's inexperience as an actor sometimes leaves her costars in the lurch. But it's a sweet little film just the same.

The extraordinary tact and compassion with which Victor dramatizes Agnes’s assault and its aftermath allows us to see this story for what it truly is – a diary of personal reclamation.

Driver’s low-key charisma in the role rescues it from terminal dullness, and there are a few fine sidelights.

What United 93 demonstrates, as if we needed proof, is that it is too soon - it may always be too soon - to sort out the feelings from that day.

Jarecki shows off this footage as evidence of a truly dysfunctional family in various stages of denial. What it reveals at least as much is the modern phenomenon of reality-TV self-exposure carried to such lengths that, by comparison, the Osbournes look like the Cleavers.

The film suffers from late-stage Scorsese-itis – wacky, low-slung, high-octane melodrama with lots of yelling and overacting.

The film's final seven-minute shot is one of the great denouements in film history.

For most of Eternal Sunshine, I found myself fighting off Gondry's hyperactive intrusions in order to get at the melancholia at its core. Fortunately, the idea behind this movie is so richly suggestive that it carries you past Gondry's image clutter.

Jesse Moss’s documentary The Overnighters is being hailed as a modern-day “Grapes of Wrath,” which, up to a point, it is. But it’s far more complicated than that.

I don’t get the enthusiasm for this movie, written and directed by Damien Chazelle, which is such a cooked-up piece of claptrap that I half expected Darth Vader to pick up the baton. We’re supposed to think that Terence’s tough love is more “honest” than the usual pussyfooting tutelage, but in any sane society this guy would have been brought up on charges long ago.

The director is fortunate to have cast actors who fully embody their roles. Muehe, who once played Josef Mengele in Costa-Gavras's "Amen," has the ability to let you see far beneath his masklike countenance. Koch, dashing and intense, is entirely believable as a man of the theater; Gedeck exudes a sensuousness that this covert society cannot abide.

In a series of deft vignettes, the Dardennes offer up a microcosm of an entire working-class contingent, and each vignette is a universe all to itself.

An honorable try, the movie nevertheless doesn’t fully capture the enormity of the tragedy. At best it’s a sorrowful, necessary dirge. Other times, it’s like “Goodfellas” on the range but, understandably, without the spring-coiled momentum of that film.

Frederick Wiseman’s documentary National Gallery is for art lovers, movie lovers – basically for anybody. Ostensibly a film about London’s famous museum, it’s really about the experience of art in all its manifestations.

Petit, by the way, is still very much alive and spry. I saw him at a screening of the film at the Sundance Film Festival where he spoke to the audience afterwards. On his way up to the podium, he tripped.

The funniest and most emotionally charged erotic road movie since Bertrand Blier's "Going Places."

The film pays off in the end when, almost imperceptibly, the rush of emotions it stirs in us rises to a soft crescendo.

I hate to sound blurby, but Borat is the funniest comedy I've seen since I don't know when.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a movie that better conveys the sheer passion both performer and listener have for great music.

This delicate, hand-drawn marvel is lyrical and heartbreaking in ways that most live-action movies never approach.

Perhaps the most cogent and straightforward dissection of the Bush Administration missteps leading up to the current Iraq nightmare.