Scott Tobias

It's the definition of a film meant to be admired more than loved, but Desplechin's fierce intelligence and uncompromising sense of character come through, as does some of the sharp wit and stylistic flourishes left over from his last film, 2004's "Kings And Queen."

There's none of the poetry of "For All Mankind," just visual support for a meat-and-potatoes recap of events that have already been chewed over plenty.

Quietly asserts its eccentric romanticism with an assured, matter-of-fact blend of humor and pathos.

Moonrise Kingdom is Anderson's most completely satisfying film since the one-two of "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums," in part because it's the perfect distillation of both.

Though the story's Shakespearean underpinnings give Kagemusha the weight of classic tragedy–in this case, the tragedy of a man rendered helpless by larger historical forces–the film astonishes mostly as pure spectacle.

While it falls short of its predecessors, the film is generally more confident and inventive than any of the non-Toy Story Pixar sequels.

Anarchy finally reigned supreme in 1932's classic Horse Feathers, which was the first Marx brothers comedy that smoothly integrated the story into the troupe's routine.

Trier doesn't allow the bleakness of the material to swamp the film in a miserablist tone, but he doesn't hold back, either, in revealing every hairline crack in Lie's fragile psyche.

Old Joy doesn't try for too much, but its subtle victories leave plenty to savor.

Writer-director Charles Sturridge doesn't mess with the Lassie formula--he provides plenty of dog-porn shots of the collie bounding through scenery in slow motion--but the overqualified cast puts the film over the top.

Sun and Chiang strike a tricky balance between a high-stakes making-of documentary and an intimate, observational family portrait, but Maleonn is such a thoughtful, sensitive, brilliant subject that the film is compelling no matter where on the creative spectrum they find him.

Even as The Quiet American loses focus and urgency, Caine's performance keeps the doomed spirit of Greene's hero intact.

This Arthur cravenly turns Susan into a monstrous status-seeker, making her less of a human being and thus much easier for Arthur to trample over in securing a meaningful adult relationship.

Bujalski's brand of stylized dialogue sounds genuinely fly-on-the-wall.

Stray Dogs evokes the whole of Tsai’s filmography, but also pays off his collaboration with Lee, who shows a side of himself that’s been hidden away for all these years.

An inspired, original, and gracefully integrated collaboration of theater and cinema that complements not only both forms, but also the seductive, dreamlike qualities of the source material.

Shapeless and overlong, How Do You Know unfolds in a heap of unprocessed ideas and emotions, as if Brooks started production two or three drafts too early.

The great Kôji Yakusho stars as a revered samurai who decides that enough is enough, and sets about assembling the assassins of the title like a men-on-a-mission movie.

Schumacher choose to start the movie in outer space? The opening shot epitomizes everything wrong with Phone Booth: Given the chance to stage human drama on an intimate, suffocating scale, Schumacher begins in the endless expanse of the void, tricked out with gratuitous CGI effects.

The Wrong Man, an overlooked masterpiece from his greatest decade, eschews suspense for the straight-up nightmare of an innocent man dragged through the justice system.

Has an exhilarating edge. It's only when they open their mouths that the movie gets into trouble.

So why, given its moment-to-moment surplus of visual imagination, does the film feel so hollow and unsatisfying?

Kaufman strikes just the right balance between playfulness and sincerity, leaping freely from one absurd situation to another before pulling back on the reins.

The experience is two-thirds thrilling to one-third enervating, a winning ratio for what's essentially a tightly curated anthology film.

The Secret Of The Grain stretches out at the relaxed pace of a seven-course meal, but at the end of it, Kechiche has squeezed the most he can out of percolating dramas within the family and he lets the audience get to know its members without needing to throw them all a subplot.

A tasteless, witless, mindlessly perfunctory bloodbath that has the discourtesy to take itself seriously. Pitting aliens against predators may be the height of frivolity, but God forbid anyone have fun with it.

Amen should be a powderkeg of a movie, yet the urgency and force that defined Costa-Gavras' earlier work has been drained away, along with his invigorating newsreel craft.

Making his feature debut, director Sacha Gervasi follows up his fine documentary "Anvil: The Story Of Anvil" with another story about the perils of uncompromising creative endeavor, but his Hitchcock goes only a step beyond caricature.