Scott Tobias

The film wilts under the harsh light of rationality; after all, how could anyone make sense of a heroine whose doppelgänger is both distinctly separate and inextricably connected to her? And yet these parallel lives rhyme so tunefully through the reflective cinematography and sweeping score that any confusion or disbelief tends to melt away.

Flight was commissioned by producers overseas, and it feels similarly, impeccably slight.

Damon's minimalist style is key to why the Bourne movies have become an oasis from other blockbuster action fare.

Through Brody's remarkably controlled, self-effacing performance, Polanski succeeds in making his hero an invisible man, but the sights he conjures are surprisingly artless and ordinary, familiar from a dozen other Holocaust dramas. Among the casualties in The Pianist is a great director's imagination.

The film never feels entirely staid: Lu wriggles out of convention where he can, especially in the first half, and engages with history as an artist, not a hagiographer.

The frequent outbursts of comedy help alleviate a tone that's appropriately muted and sad, and Jenkins should be credited for refusing to tack smiley-faces onto a tough, possibly lose-lose situation.

The film's visceral assault extends to the sledgehammer script, an amassment of unsubtle ironies and war-is-hell clichés that often reduce it to an amateurish theatrical stunt.

A deeply off-putting independent comedy.

It doesn’t matter what’s real and not real in The Rider. What matters is that it’s true.

Quintessential noir.

Though frequently dazzling, Kings And Queen proves that a bunch of punchy singles don't necessarily make an album.

No one writes for ensembles better than Apatow, and his players are all skilled at giving his work a loose, improvisational feel.

When a director of Scorsese's caliber is working at the top of his game, it's a reminder of why we go to the movies in the first place.

Gosling excels at playing contradictory characters like this one, having kick-started his career as a Jewish neo-Nazi in "The Believer," but here, his inner turmoil rarely gets vocalized. It's a remarkably subtle performance.

Emerges as an improbably hopeful tribute to the human spirit.

Payne, the great satirist behind "Citizen Ruth" and "Election," loves to populate his films with throwaway details, which in About Schmidt accumulate into a portrait of Midwestern life that's almost chilling in its exactitude.

The Asphalt Jungle would be considered a heist picture if the mood didn't dictate otherwise. The standard "honor among thieves" theme applies, but dishonor gives the film its special noir flavor.

Brilliant in flashes, thinned out as a whole, the film seems ideal for the DVD revolution, where the greatest hits can be compiled at the touch of a remote.

The Pursuit Of Happyness represents a belated and calculated attempt to scrape off the glossy movie-star veneer and connect with the everyday struggles of living hand-to-mouth in the big city, but it's too late. Watching his (Smith's) performance here is a little like imagining an American version of "Rosetta" starring Julia Roberts.

Farhadi isn’t interested in judging his characters so much as comprehending them in all their complexity, and registering the consequences of their actions, particularly on children.

It’s odd to see a romance that commences with rough trade in an alleyway end up feeling like a spiritual descendent of Bend It Like Beckham.

Though bookended by extraordinarily powerful scenes that play off a potent religious metaphor, the middle section sinks into a morass of ill-defined relationships and uneven performances, which may be blamed in part on culture clash.

In terms of scale, The Tree Of Life recalls the mammoth ambition of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," but it's also more intimate and personal than Malick's previous films, rooted in vivid memories of growing up in '50s Texas.

Most of all, The Host functions as a popcorn movie par excellence, loaded with the most familiar conventions, but shot through with such conviction and visual panache that even its clichés seem invigorating.

With the conceptual rigor and emotional directness associated with the best of Iranian cinema, Oskouei simply listens to the stories of those who have never been listened to before. Their shattering testimony, elegantly harmonized in a chorus of stolen childhood, has universal appeal.

Meticulous and immersive, Meek's Cutoff feels like history in three dimensions.

Like many French films of its kind, Private Property remains content to simply observe a situation without tidying up the narrative, which in this case leaves some big questions unanswered. But Lafosse knows that problems that beg for a resolution sometimes don't get one.

A singularly beautiful nostalgia piece that radiates with love and sadness, and doesn’t extract one type of feeling from another. It’s a film of aching bittersweetness, impeccably realized, past perfect.