Robert Koehler

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

One of the most wildly entertaining docs of recent years.

Not only does this rank among Miyazaki’s finest achievements, it reflects his personal love of aviation, his political concerns and his fullest expression to date of a non-fantasy world resembling our own.

An exquisite ode to a working-class hero, Cinderella Man takes the almost impossibly perfect elements of the saga of underdog boxer James J. Braddock and fills it with emotional gravitas, wrenching danger and a panoramic sense of American life during the Great Depression.

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.

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.

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.

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

Picture sets the gold standard for political documentaries.

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.

A powerful and creative film.

Flirting with predictable tragedy but displaying an immense sense of empathy toward its central character, pic is finally an emotionally stunning journey of a father's return to his senses after a horrible accident.

Elegantly constructed, deceptively complex documentary.

Observing locally and thinking globally, Laura Dunn's astonishing debut doc feature The Unforeseen is the kind of transformative viewing experience that has made the current period a golden age for nonfiction film.

Captures the excitement of lightning in a bottle.

The balance between feeling and distance is never a contradiction here but, rather, the dynamic that makes this film an especially humanistic entry in the Maysles canon.

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.

A gently and genuinely observed film whose subject is a garish, artificial display of mayhem.

The elusive, quicksilver nature of young love is often reduced to crude simplicities by the movies, but director Sebastien Lifshitz and writing partner Stephane Bouquet have observed it with a superb balance of aesthetics and insight in Come Undone.

A triumph of indie casting of unknowns, Good Housekeeping is knee-deep in delicious thesping.

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.

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.

Jacobson produces a remarkably creepy piece of cinema that disturbs by suggestion, nuance and ambiguity.

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]

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

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

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.

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.

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

The 10-year run of the “Fast and Furious” roadshow isn’t slowing down a bit in Fast Five, by most measures the best of the bunch, combining fresh casting choices, interesting Rio locales and literally smashing bookended action sequences.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Irresistibly entertaining and full of unique character portraits.

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

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.

So harsh and damning is the pic toward the current Catholic leadership -- personified by Los Angeles-based Cardinal Roger Mahony, who oversaw O'Grady's stewardship at various central California parishes in the 1970s and '80s, that charges the church operates "like the Mafia" sound spot-on.

A beautifully observant and wholly unpretentious film with roots more in Cassavetes than Sundance-style showbiz.

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

A stunning indictment of Belgium's brutal colonization of the Congo in the late 19th century, Brit documaker Peter Bate's White King, Red Rubber, Black Death illustrates how European exploitation in Africa caused irreparable damage to the continent.

Director Phil Alden Robinson -- has done just about everything he can do to build a sleek, involving and -- for a few minutes -- terrifying movie that can get viewers past the young Ryan factor.

Made with gentle grace and sensitivity.

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.

Superbly researched and constructed, pic is an improvement over last year's "The Weather Underground," which backed away from judging political terror on the left.

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

Often mocked and rarely understood, the movement in communal living that blossomed with Flower Power in the '60s gets its most honest appraisal yet on film with Jonathan Berman's Commune.

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 forthcoming line of high-octane summer entertainments will be hard-pressed to top this one for both thrills and wit.

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

Brimming with cinematic confidence, cynicism, chutzpah plus dramatic bungles, Andrew Niccol's ambitious Lord of War views today's international arms trade through its anti-hero.

The Francises are aces behind the camera, displaying an elegant sense of composition that makes their subject visually ravishing. Andreas Kapsalis' gorgeous score lends doc a grand quality.

Gleefully upends expectations and delivers an energetic comedy tracing two guys'all-night search for the perfect White Castle burger.

Christian Bauer's engaging The Ritchie Boys captures the excitement, ironies and "good war" feel of World War II.

Though animated sequels of popular kids' fare tend to perform lower than their progenitors, this one should buck the trend.

Though quite routine on the logistics of deep-sea exploring, pic develops a visual style as it replays the events of the sinking that some viewers may find more visually exciting and satisfying than what Cameron staged in his original mega-blockbuster.

Magnificently renders a fresh view of life on planet Earth.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Smith's utterly natural filmmaking there is impressive.

Intriguing and surprisingly witty.

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.