Scott Tobias

Beyond theme, however, these stories are united by the agonizing, low-level tension Östlund brings to bear on every scene, which vary in importance, but not in consequences for the characters involved.

Handsomely produced and photographed, which alone distinguishes it from the guerrilla standards of its cut-rate peers, Enron succeeds most by simply making a complex situation graspable, a tall order when the perpetrators are masters of grand-scale deception.

Starlet shows enough of her unbalanced, unsustainable situation to make sense of her connection to Sadie, however frail a ballast her new friend might be. Their need for each other is disarmingly sweet, but far from sticky.

The fact that Morris applies the same basic methodology to The Unknown Known that he did to the The Fog Of War makes the contrast between the two men meaningful, and says something profound about Rumsfeld, too.

From the combustible opening-credits sequence, Caan displays a whip-crack sense of timing, pace, and energy that's so rare for a first-time filmmaker that it's tempting to call him a savant.

Morvern Callar not only attempts to reveal an interior life, usually the province of novels, but also focuses on the interior life of a woman who refuses to open up to anyone.

Ferrara blows up the everyday threat of harassment and violence against women into a magnified force.

Goes through its airport-thriller paces with dazzling kinetics and style.

A big, family-style Italian dinner, catered to the broadest tastes, yet satisfying all the same.

In its dramatic shift from the real to the allegorical, the ending of Andrey Zvyagintsev's auspicious debut feature The Return is likely to leave many viewers scratching their heads.

In the end, Harold And Maude metes out these life lessons directly and without much ambiguity, yet that does little to diminish its power.

An impeccable minimalist drama that's tailored specifically to Devos' expressive capabilities, which say more than the sparse dialogue.

It seems like a departure, but soon turns into a Bruno Dumont film—and one of his most rigorous and powerful at that.

Director Tiller Russell doesn’t spin this gripping tale out of cinematic bravado like Scorsese—just extensive interviews with all the people involved, footage of a commission hearing after the fact, and a wealth of stock material on Brooklyn’s East Side. But he paints a vivid picture all the same.

Make no mistake: Rich Hill is a social document, and conclusions can and should be drawn from its beautiful, empathetic portrait of life on the fringes. But Tragos and Palermo content themselves with shining a light and leaving it at that.

Makes heavy demands of even jaded viewers, who are unlikely to stomach de Van's anatomical noodling from the same curious distance. But for the brave, the film's literal journey to find the "I" inside the body moves forward with a riveting single-mindedness.

The film has much more sophistication than the average throwback, but the search for justice across Indian Territory is uncomplicated and righteous, and the half-contentious/half-sentimental relationship between a plucky teenager and an irascible old coot grounds it in the tried-and-true.

Little about [Östlund’s] work is simple-minded or cut-and-dried. His films marinate in viewer discomfort.

Witherspoon's broad, obsessive comic performance is bound to get the most attention, but Broderick does the best work of his career, finding an affecting spot between the all-purpose defiance of Ferris Bueller and the put-upon foil of his recent work.

The Christophers is a slippery customer, an ingenious and twisty two-hander that shifts in tone as Lori and Julian get their hooks into each other. Coel and McKellen prove to be a combustible pair, two actors of contrasting generations, genders, and race who parry in darkly funny sessions that morph in complexity as their characters continue to try to outflank each other.

Caouette's shattering Tarnation represents a landmark in personal filmmaking: It finally realizes the digital dream of a raw, unsanctioned glimpse into the soul.

In the wild and consistently surprising Y Tu Mamá También, anything isn't the half of it.

Adjusting to Martel's style requires patience, but her indirection pays dividends, culminating in an unforgettable final shot that flies in the face of narrative expectations.

In any form, Apocalypse Now remains an audacious, powerful, and haunting vision of war as a waking nightmare, and the new print looks and sounds better than ever. But as much as Redux was born of Coppola's intellectual restlessness, it also speaks to his unwillingness to make tough choices and live with them.

Buoyed by Hong’s romantic optimism, the immensely satisfying conclusion hints at the possibility of love as a renewable resource, so long as both partners are flexible to different terms. Yourself and Yours asks the audience to take the same leap — best to keep an open mind and go with the flow.

In keeping with his concept that the mind and the body are inseparable, Sade builds to an extraordinarily powerful centerpiece when the two come together, fusing fear and desire, pleasure and pain, innocence and enlightenment.

John Woo's smart thriller Paycheck may not intend to be political, but it's marked as much by its era as post-Watergate thrillers like "The Parallax View" or "Three Days Of The Condor."

In a sense, Oasis is an unabashed tearjerker, but Lee keeps knocking the melodrama off-balance, making all the big emotional payoffs a little discomforting, because they're not that far removed from something really disturbing.