Robert Koehler

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.