Robert Koehler

Suffers greatly from both a visibly constrained budget and an extraordinarily dated feeling.

One of the most wildly entertaining docs of recent years.

With an accountant's eye for precision and a political scientist's grasp of the machinations that move national policy, Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight itemizes the errors, misjudgments and follies that have defined the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq.

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

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.

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

Feels particularly like old news after the risks of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle were laid out for the previously uninformed in last year's "Almost Famous."

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.

One of the most brutally awful comedies ever to emerge from a major studio.

Miyazaki’s first hit fascinates as a glimpse into the master’s then-developing style, even when the final-act storytelling gets woozy.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Gruff and downright smelly, especially when star David Arquette is forced at one point to flop around in a pile of doggy doo.

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.

As beautiful as it is unrevealing, James Longley's Iraq in Fragments rests on a debatable but firm premise -- that the embattled country is irrevocably separated by its three dominant groups, Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds -- but brings back nothing journalistically substantial from the war front .

Latest pic directed by Gil M. Portes, could be called "To Madam With Love"; vet Filipino helmer is out to open maximum tear ducts with sentimental tale.

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]

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.

Though tinged with the sheer gumption and personal resolve of amateur vidmaker and would-be rapper Kimberly Roberts, this is ultimately a minor doc contribution to the bulging library of Katrina-related films and TV reports.

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.

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

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.

No trendsetter or breakthrough, this is more than anything else a welcome chance for the fine actor Melissa Leo to finally dominate a film in a terrific and affecting lead role.

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.

It's the soundtrack, as much as the opticals, which makes this brief Imax trip a thoroughly sensory experience.

Made with gentle grace and sensitivity.

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.

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.

Overall aroma of movie junk food.

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

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

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

Writer-director Craig Ross Jr. offers both rigorously effective dramatic sections and terribly pedantic and melodramatic strokes of overkill.

The time away from the ring has done Rocky and the franchise some good, although it takes pic a good long while to gather momentum and clout before a surprisingly satisfying third-act heavyweight bout.

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.

Imax 3-D process has lost its original novelty, and little is done in Deep Sea to find new and exciting ways of using the medium.

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.

The film toys with audience expectations and perceptions by playing fast and loose with circumstances and clues, while leading to an almost unavoidable and dismayingly obvious conclusion.

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

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.

Elegantly constructed, deceptively complex documentary.

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.

Smith's utterly natural filmmaking there is impressive.

It's a wipeout once the pic skids into melodrama and an overly schematic sense of how success tore the group apart.

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.

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

First-time feature director's disciplined objectivity is coupled with humanism in this collaboration with a gifted cast and cinematographer. The artistic success, though, may be a bit too cool.

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.

Before the music takes over, the film inserts a few bits of charm, such as Emmylou Harris excitedly following the latest Major League Baseball scores.

To be sure, Kelley's Emmy-winning brand of off-kilter humor and cockeyed affection for rural folk is on display, but his attempt here to blend the citified angst of "Ally McBeal" (co-star Bridget Fonda was Kelley's first choice as that series' lead) with the countrified absurdisms of "Picket Fences," plus bits out of the Peter Benchley playbook, doesn't hold water.

Succeeds in displaying the physical drive and demands of cheerleading.

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.

Sensitively and methodically tells the story of the first U.S. soldier killed in the 2003 Iraq invasion.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 horror movie without horror, a spook pic without spookiness and a metaphysical drama without the slightest spiritual tug, Soul Survivors virtually dwindles away on the screen.

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.

The cop genre receives a shot of adrenaline in helmer Chris Fisher's Dirty, a no-nonsense dramatic response to the LAPD Rampart scandals of the '90s.

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.

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.

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

Building his dry comedy out of a basic confusion of names, an Army recruitment slip and one man's curiosity, Jacobs creates a droll, meandering and defiantly uncommercial film.

This makes the film feel perilously close to widescreen sitcom, as do montages of New York set to Beethoven's Sixth Symphony.

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.

Sometimes veering close to being a promotional film for the Special Olympics, pic will be applauded by the disability community and its advocates but quickly ignored by longtime fans of the Farrellys and Knoxville.

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.

Fascinating if overly self-involved Slamdance entry is among the few U.S. pics that deliberately smudges the line between non-fiction and invention as it tells how Crumley and Buice meet online and develop a relationship.

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.

Ghost throws its most powerful punch in its second half, reporting on contempo events as a direct repeat of the ghastly Leopold era.

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.

It will serve as a fine entry point for younger auds interested in learning about the price paid by moviemakers and their families swept up in the 1950s anti-Communist net.

Perky and effortlessly smooth.

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

Full of bold dramatic strokes and complex character shadings.

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

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 temptations of allowing a promotional video to seep inside a genuine non-fiction study nearly overtake East of Havana and its look at a bubbling hip-hop culture in Cuba.

Magnificently renders a fresh view of life on planet Earth.

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

Zhang Yimou's strangest and most troubled film, abounds in hysterical, mannered Tang Dynasty-era palace intrigue and dehumanized CGI battle sequences.

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.

Unlikely to draw new fans but destined to please followers who couldn't catch the live act.

An especially dramatic, if needlessly frantic, work of polemical reportage on racism in America.

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.

Pic's not-so-hidden agenda is to promote the fusion of science and New Age religion, making it a close cousin to ventures as Bernt and Fritjof Capra's "Mindwalk."

Von Trotta’s Arendt biopic feels like a movie stuck in another era, stolid and rote, more of an outline for a dramatic treatment than the real thing.

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.

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."

Result is a loose personal piece of reportage that places people over ideas and larger issues, and reveals the pic's severe limitations long before a surprisingly upbeat ending.

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.