Robert Koehler

Its mind-bending storytelling and themes of play and paranoia make it perhaps the quintessential Gallic movie of its era.

Solnicki demonstrates that a work of art can be made from the humble materials of home-shot video and various 8mm formats, especially when the eye and ear behind the camera are as observant and unabashed as they are here.

The final days of a band of 1930s Christian rebels in the central Mexican wilderness are depicted with majestic stoicism in Matias Meyer’s elegant ode to independence.

Plentiful screen time for three generations of femme jazzers, led by energetic and witty gals from the golden age of big band and swing who unlock a treasure trove of memories, make this a real crowdpleaser.

While a local filmmaker’s perspective may have brought more dimensions, the coverage of events here is impressive and on the mark.

Close encounters of the charming kind infuse The History of Future Folk, which will likely be remembered as the first neo-hipster Brooklyn sci-fi movie.

Haroun’s tender but unsentimental regard for his characters allows his storytelling a natural gravitas thoroughly suited to the simultaneously unfolding private and national tragedies.

[Mock] has made a movie that vitally captures an extraordinary character in extraordinary circumstances.

Adopting a postmodern method quite different from that of his remarkable "The Inner Tour," Ra'anan Alexandrowicz poses his questions from a legal angle, and finds these minds stumped by a system they've professionally defended.

Lacking the outrage and wit of Michael Moore's "Sicko," which dealt with the different matter of health insurance, this documentary is stronger on finding viable solutions.

Smartly engineered to engage sports fans and non-fans, the picture's account of Lithuania's 1992 Olympics bronze medal-winning team, presented as a symbol of post-Cold War freedom.

As a struggling rocker making a last-ditch attempt to gain shared custody of his daughter, Paul Dano delivers a beautifully wrought performance in a different key from any of his previous roles.

An intelligent overview that makes a radical artist's work comprehensible to audiences with no previous awareness of her or her chosen path.

Departing from two decades' worth of domestic and personal dramas and returning to his roots as Japan's maestro of mayhem, Kinji Fukasaku has delivered a brutal punch to the collective solar plexus with one of his most outrageous and timely films.

By turns gentle, deadpan, droll and sarcastic, Jimenez's film reflects on Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" to track a sweet but doomed love affair between literary -- and pleasurably randy -- college students.

The picture has a first-rate team of actors who visibly enjoy their roles and the sharp dialogue by Baruchel and Goldberg.

The title is an apt one, suggesting that for all its staging and overt theatrics, independent (read: non-WWF) pro wrestling makes huge demands on the body and spirit.

An unusual example of what can be termed a "gay Christian" film, Cone's feature is among the best of a recent spate of dramas observing American Christian life.

Taking the genre to a higher level of intensity, the Welsh-born Evans continues what he started in previous Indonesia-set actioner "Merantau," but this picture will seal his cult status.

Jeter's film takes on the quality of a sustained dream, as if the theatrical conceits of Jean Genet were married to a children's story retold via William Faulker's Southern brand of stream of consciousness.

Similar in its battlefield passages to last year's Danish-made "Armadillo," Dennis' film scores a layered perspective that follows Marine Sgt. Nathan Harris into combat and back home.

Detailing the birth, life and death of America's first major urban housing project in St. Louis, Chad Freidrichs' The Pruitt-Igoe Myth combines concise but thoroughgoing sociological-historical analysis and elegant cinematic resources in service of an uncommonly artful example of film journalism.

The film observes a guy verging on poverty or riches with a bounty of beautiful imagery and fresh angles on skateboarding culture.

The former Beatle, a longtime Maysles friend, could have found no better documentarian.

When this "Enemy Within" settles into key action sequences, such as a stunning nighttime ambush or a daytime battle against Fabio, it becomes wildly entertaining.

The film as a whole isn't quite as interesting, though it is noteworthy that action specialist Emmerich has clearly decided to change course here from anything he's previously made. Although this is primarily a writer's film, with John Orloff's screenplay (and dialogue) placed front and center, Anonymous surprises with how classical, staid and traditional Emmerich's mise-en-scene is, never straying from tried-and-true costumer standards.

Akomfrah's steady, patient pace makes it fairly easy and ultimately fascinating to absorb his many heady references.

Just as some of the footage deepens what is already there, additions in final reel, though closer to Blatty’s wishes, restate the obvious or add a feel-good patina which pushes the film closer to our own audience-pleasing period than the more daring early ’70s. [2000 re-release]

Samuel L. Jackson instantly takes the mantle from Mr. Shaft himself, Richard Roundtree, and runs with it on pure style and charisma.

The film is, at times, emotionally riveting -- yet also has an institutional feeling, largely because it attempts to cover too much ground in too little time.

Smartly and seamlessly blending a cast of talented Argentine and Spanish thesps, Pineyro seems to be testing how much cinema he can derive from a restricted space.

Intense, fair-minded entry in the pileup of Iraq pictures.

At its best, Garbus' account quietly depicts a set of wasted lives, and a closing image of Allen's plywood casket carted away by a bulldozer is emblematic of the tragedy.

Melds a great cause and Dominique's incandescent charisma with care using research from nine years of filming and reporting.

Pic drifts onto a familiar obstacle course for its wide-eyed hero, but displays a spirited, open-hearted goodness along the way. Combination of warmth, humor, danger and a cosmopolitan take on young, urban Eire sets pic distinctly apart.

Los Angeles may be the most photographed city in the world, but it has never have been captured with such complex layers of meaning and fascination as in Thom Andersen's remarkable Los Angeles Plays Itself.

Oil companies aren't the only ones profiting from a spike in prices at the gas pump. It's likely also to boost the prospects of Who Killed the Electric Car? a likable if partisan post-mortem on the now-defunct auto.

Even more than in "Far From Heaven," Moore's housebound wife is a study in pent-up brilliance, with extraordinary devotion to her family.

Sandler turns the joke around on his detractors and manages to lead a devilishly energetic vehicle that contains about as many laughs as his previous features combined.

Monica Ali's elegant and critically trumpeted debut novel, Brick Lane, about the travails, conflicting emotions and quiet liberation of a Muslim woman in London, is a far lesser thing in its bigscreen transformation.

The textured, thoughtful results may prove too cerebral and abstract for audiences beyond Smith's hardcore followers,

Proves that few can maneuver one of Cohen's dusky, lovelorn songs like Cohen himself.

The most extensive interplay of live action and animation since "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"

Sloppy but unconcerned about it, pic offers a trip back in time to a pre-PC and feminist era when men were sexist Neanderthals, women supported them from the sidelines and the guy with the biggest mouth scored.

Ingmar Bergman lays his soul on the line in Marie Nyreroed's gentle, intimate and thorough documentay.

Leo Heiblum's pulsating music and Samuel Larson's dense, fascinating sound editing rewardingly compliment Rulfo's electrifying visuals.

A resoundingly old-fashioned and well crafted study of evil infecting an American family, Frailty moves from strength to strength on its deceptive narrative course.

Simultaneously teasing and loving a subject doesn't make for easy comedy, but writer-star Will Ferrell and director/co-writer Adam McKay pull it off with good-ol'-boy good nature in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

Borrowing heavily from the current trend in zombie comedy and apocalyptic horror but shifting it away from the usual undead norms, pic carves out a fresh angle in the crowded indie horror universe while blatantly stealing ideas from Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Pulse."

Uneasily pivots between comedy and drama, with its best parts strongly reminiscent of Schepisi's previous, British-made drama about aging and dying buddies, "Last Orders."

Despite occasional awkwardness in character motion, viewers will be swept away by the luxuriant creation of alternate universes.

Not that it ever rises to the level of Sidney Lumet's Gotham police pics ("Serpico," "Prince of the City"), but 16 Blocks does raise the banner for the tradition of the textured urban cop drama, spurred by action but made substantial by characters at crossroads.

Departing less from his horror bailiwick than he did with "Music Of The Heart" in 1999, Wes Craven retains shocks but dispenses with scares in the negligible Red Eye.

Continually tickles the mind while leaving a heavy lump in the chest, establishing and sustaining a unique low-key tone of mystery and dread.

A blast and a half -- as entertaining as mainstream American docus get.

This day in the life of a young man attempting to earn cash for his family back home gathers impact by the reel.

Smith's utterly natural filmmaking there is impressive.

Intriguing and surprisingly witty.

A rock-ribbed sense of committed, personal cinema and a core belief in people being able to pull themselves out of misery supports Ballast, an extraordinary debut by editor-writer-director Lance Hammer.

Handling both directing and cinematography duties, Core invests both with a clearly impassioned sense of place, period and perspective regarding this fanfare for common men.

In a brilliant and precise reversal of Hollywood's current casting game of matching older male stars with younger female starlets, Roth takes hold of the mature end of a love affair with the ultra-handsome Becker and steers a course of vivid sexual and emotional power.

Never obtains the full impact of its potentially powerful inner core.

More ambitious than her 2002 debut, "Blue Car," Moncrieff's new film maintains her focus on women, expanding to include a range of ages, circumstances and psychologies. Picture's drama, however, is deliberately fractured into a quintet of stories that vary considerably in their overall impact.

Perky and effortlessly smooth.

Burning with a quiet intensity, Monster's Ball is bolstered by a poetic, intelligent sensibility not seen in an American film since Terrence Malick's "The Thin Red Line."

Certainly not a piffle, nor an impressive departure into a new filmmaking realm, Allen's second film in a row about crooks ranks in the middle range of his work.

The funny stuff continues for a quite satisfying conclusion during the wedding prep and ceremonies, which Stifler single-handedly transforms into his own personal gross-out comedy masterpiece.

Ghobadi in this pic displays a complete command of his art as he shifts between -- and even blends -- wrenching tragedy and amusing comedy.

Belzberg's unsparing camera sometimes portrays a level of cruelty that tests viewers' tolerance, but her fearless aesthetic is also a measure of the film's brilliant indictment of any society that can allow its most vulnerable to slip into oblivion.

The concert film has never looked or sounded classier than Jonathan Demme's superbly crafted Neil Young: Heart of Gold.

While the point of view of privileged, Anglo observers on African issues usually raises hackles, such is not the case with The Devil Came on Horseback, a tense account of former Marine Capt. Brian Steidle's witnessing of the genocide in Sudan's western province of Darfur.

While the loyal male-teen aud core will not be disappointed with the spate of gags just for them, story contains solid date-movie material.

The deft shading he (Byler) elicits from his thesps is of a piece with his dramatics and his understated, artful approach to compositions and movement.

Tender, sensitive Sunset Story sidesteps a maudlin tone for a wide-ranging account of two fragile but opinionated retirees.

With Undisputed, writer-director Walter Hill is back in contention as one of Hollywood's last defenders of the muscular, no-nonsense genre movie.

My Best Friend is a sex farce on steroids, overflowing with energy and excessive curiosity about what the movie camera actually can do.

Stylish and substantial enough to prompt even a couch potato to action, Kelly Duane's Monumental: David Brower's Fight for Wild America delivers a stirring and visually dense account of the life and times of Brower.

Falling short of being truly memorable but sharper than the general slagheap of comedies.

De Felitta seems a born documaker. He brilliantly constructs a tale born of a genuine love of jazz and a need to understand how Paris went from sensation to footnote in a generation.

While it creaks along at times, director Csaba Kael's new film version of a Hungarian opera masterpiece, Ferenc Erkel's Bank Ban, is ultimately an invaluable entry in the opera-on-film library.

Not surprisingly based on a comic book series by Brett Lewis and R.A. Jones (whom pic fails to credit), pic hurtles along at a pace designed by vet music vid and ad helmer Paul Hunter to engage short attention spans.

Disney's tradition of intelligent, live-action family period cinema is magnificently revived in Tuck Everlasting.

Because it's bolstered by proud memories of Vietnam vets who turned against the war, Sir! No Sir! rings with an exultant, even elated tone.

A thoroughly winning and unexpectedly observant lark about the antics of seven Latino skateboarding pals in South-Central Los Angeles.

Light, taut and compact, the zippy adventure is sometimes much too hip for the room.

Alternately glib, superficial and amusing, pic vainly attempts to absorb some degree of Serbian irony into a story that's unavoidably lessened by its privileged American vantage point.

Balances intelligent humor, slapstick, Blighty reserve and Yank spunk along with environmentalism.

Picture sets the gold standard for political documentaries.

With verve, style and a fine sense of the human side of surf culture, Jeremy Gosch makes a terrific splash with his debut doc, Bustin' Down the Door.

Eye-popping lensing and an appreciation of social complexities combine for an entirely satisfying experience.

A history of verse is laid alongside that of warfare, and the ways in which they are braided together proves fascinating.

Well-turned adult comedy.

Though it never disguises its sympathies for Kasparov and contempt for a powerful corporation's machinations, documentary is finally a speculation on the limits of the human mind and how truth can never be fully known.

Full of bold dramatic strokes and complex character shadings.

Enough action, a tiny pinch of sex and some campy moments from Morgan Fairchild.

Closer to pics like “The Hit” and “Miller’s Crossing” than to McDonagh’s bristling, funny plays, this half-comic, half-serious account of two Irish hitmen who are sent to the titular Belgian burg to cool their heels after a job is moderately fair as a nutty character study, but overly far-fetched once the action kicks in.

An unusually intelligent adventure film scaled for younger viewers, which never leaves adults behind.

Superior sequel, which is the very model of the limber, transnational Hollywood action comedy.