Scott Foundas

If Napoleon Dynamite really is, as reported, a semiautobiographical exercise, it is one of the most astoundingly self-hating such exercises in memory.

Love it or hate it, Northfork is a cinematic vision (visually and textually) unlike any with which most moviegoers, even arthouse regulars, will be familiar.

For a movie conceived and executed in the mainstream Hollywood idiom, it has uncommon depth and honesty.

Bardem, given the only fully fleshed-out character to play, is a marvel to behold...If only he had found a more soulful, less didactic movie to be plunked down into.

This genuine curio gets surprising mileage from Houellebecq’s deft, self-effacing performance at the center of a lively comic ensemble.

Beyond that surface grit, Intermission is still a fairly saccharine collage of self-redemptive gestures and happy endings that, true to its title, only fitfully compels.

While the entertainment value of Cloverfield is highly negotiable, it's clear that Abrams has consciously aligned himself with those filmmakers who have used the template of a grade-B monster/invasion movie -- Don Siegel, George Romero, Steven Spielberg -- as a stealth vessel for social commentary.

A perceptive, unsettling psychodrama marking the assured feature writing and directing debut of shorts filmmaker Kyle Henry.

An utterly brazen mix of screwball comedy, film noir and sharp social commentary that hits its own strange bullseye more often than not, Bozon’s third full-length feature (and first since 2007’s WWI musical, “La France”) benefits immeasurably from actors willing to go as far out on a limb as their intrepid director.

The problem, dare I say it, is that the movie just ... isn't ... that ... funny.

It all sounds like a recipe for the most noxious liberal jerk-off movie since "Crash," but in the hands of writer-director Richard LaGravenese, Freedom Writers turns out to be a superb piece of mainstream entertainment -- not an agonized debate over the principles of modern education à la "The History Boys," but a simple, straightforward and surprisingly affecting story of one woman who managed to make a difference.

On a storytelling level, Robots is in dire need of an upgrade.

The movie looks like it cost a fortune, with Dean Cundey's glistening widescreen compositions and Bill Brzeski's towering, storybook sets providing the backdrop for seamless visual effects. What's more, it's equally rich in ideas.

The boldest provocation of Mitchell’s sweet, tender and gently funny film may be its exuberant celebration of community and togetherness at a cultural moment rife with fatalism and disconnect.

Like two of the year's other standout American films, Kelly Reichardt's "Old Joy" and Ryan Fleck's "Half Nelson," it's a movie of ideas in which the ideas flow effortlessly out of the material instead of being plastered on top with a heavy cement roller (as in "Crash," "Babel" and "Little Children").

This is some of the best filmmaking ever done by director Richard Donner, a longtime Hollywood journeyman known more for his proficient deployment of three long-running movie franchises (The Omen, Superman and Lethal Weapon) than for his lyricism.

At its best, The Summer of Sangaile captures the special intensity of those relationships in which everything seems to fade away save for the other person.

A mostly superb bit of modern horror from the writer-director-editor previously responsible for the Frankenstein story "No Telling" and the urban vampire pic "Habit."

In its depiction of a fleeting, but nevertheless factual, peace in the Middle East, Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven may seem a more quixotic Hollywood fantasy than all six Star Wars movies lumped together.

A perceptive character drama both delicate and tragic.

Cooper seems to make actors feel safe and willing to expose themselves in ways they ordinarily might not, and time and again he takes scenes to places of unexpected emotional power.

There's something magical about seeing a packed house of 300 Taveuni locals laugh equally uproariously, and, without a nanosecond’s worth of culture shock, at Queen Latifah in "Bringing Down the House" and Buster Keaton in "Steamboat Bill, Jr."

Looks with fresh eyes at a new millennium in which, seemingly, the entire world is bought and sold in neatly wrapped packages engineered for mass consumption.

A breathtakingly original nonfiction work by Seattle-based filmmaker Robinson Devor (whose "Police Beat" was among the highlights of Sundance's 2005 dramatic competition).

It’s a measure of Benson’s sure, skillful hand with actors that all the relationships in the movie — husband and wife, parent and child — feel lived-in and true, even when the dialogue strains too hard for the meaningful and poetic.

What gives Rocky Balboa its unexpected pathos is the titanic humility of Stallone's performance, the earnestness with which he plays a man knocked down (but not out) by the ravages of time.

A minor-key but eminently enjoyable work by a master craftsman.

A deep-fried piece of Southern Gothic that wears its unpleasantness like a merit badge.