Scott Tobias

Much of the fun of Baghead is that it's unclassifiable, by turns a movie-movie lark, an Eric Rohmer-like relationship comedy, and a surprisingly effective "Friday The 13th" kids-in-the-woods slasher film.

Like his underappreciated "Haywire," Side Effects screws around in its own thriller architecture, toying with feints of structure and clever bits of misdirection, and otherwise playing the audience like a fiddle. At this point in his career, Soderbergh pulls it off with the unpracticed ease of a maestro.

Like other great pastiche artists, Gomes has created a time machine to a cinematic era that never quite existed, so it feels simultaneously borrowed and new.

Zahedi isn't afraid to put himself out there, even when his thoughts and actions are profoundly unflattering; his self-effacement makes the film a reflection on narcissism and misogyny rather than an exercise in both.

Chronicle becomes what "Hancock" wanted to be - a dark superhero story with firm footing in the everyday. Perhaps now the found-footage gimmick has been fully exploited; let us never speak of it again.

Mexican writer-director Fernando Eimbcke got his start in short films and documentaries, and his first feature reveals a gift for concision: It doesn't overexert itself trying to come to big conclusions about these characters, and even the comedic scenes settle for gentle quirks over broad guffaws.

Towne never strains for effect, justifiably confident that his polished staging and wry, sneaky wit will be enough to give resonance to Pre's life.

It’s not always easy to sort out the legitimately inspired touches from the merely campy ones, but the film has a deranged, go-for-broke spirit that makes such distinctions irrelevant.

Broadly speaking, Canner hails from the Michael Moore school of first-person editorializing, but Orgasm Inc. isn't given to vanity or cheap shots.

With juicy supporting roles for Chiwetel Ejiofor and Willem Dafoe as Washington's fellow officers, the film works best when the characters are just sitting back and shooting the breeze, which is what they're doing much of the time. Here, puzzling out a robbery is more fun than stopping it.

Head Games is particularly devastating when it shifts from the NFL and NHL, where brutality and headshots are a given, to girls' soccer and under-14 football leagues, where still-developing young necks and skulls make kids perhaps more vulnerable to head trauma than their professional counterparts.

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.

It's a film where the feelings and experiences of young people are highly specific in detail, yet fundamentally universal and timeless.

Drawing on a wealth of footage from inside ACT UP meetings and protests, David France's powerful documentary How To Survive A Plague pays tribute to their courage and relentlessness, but it's even better as a record of the tactics of effective activism.

The grand concept is really just a vehicle for a more intimate study of depression and its dangerous, shifting polarities.

Cul-de-sac functions better as an affectionate goof on Waiting For Godot, enhanced by an unforgettable setting that naturally severs the trio from contact with the outside world.

Fighting doesn’t break new ground so much as animate B-movie types, but New York movies this gritty and flavorful don't come along very often.

His film powerfully suggests that violent death of any kind, whether personal or state-mandated, transforms everyone in its vicinity.

Mara's Salander is the film's lifeblood, a shrewd yet vulnerable outsider whose resilience and pluck help Fincher elevate The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo above the standard procedural. But just barely.

Poised on the edge of camp, Horror Express nimbly cycles through genres, with drawing-room mystery and procedural elements bleeding into Universal-style monster effects and science-fiction hokum.

Miller directs with intelligence, though not flair, but the script makes up for any flagging energy with crackling Sorkin dialogue and performances that sing with revolutionary fervor.

In an era full of auteur-driven turbulence in Hollywood, The Sting stands out as a model of old-school craft, a richly appointed studio production with big stars and a premium on efficiency and pace.

His outrageous, self-destructive journey lands him in a place just as ironic as Rupert Pupkin’s in "The King Of Comedy," but it’s haunting and mysterious, too, reflecting the dream that consumes his life.

The Lookout's thriller elements could stand to be more surprising, but they're ultimately in service of a better understanding of the characters. Usually, it's the other way around.

While La Sentinelle doesn't end with a conventionally satisfying payoff, Desplechin's thoughtful and meticulously detailed direction offers many other rewards.

Though Away We Go lacks the screwball unpredictability of something like "Flirting With Disaster," it compensates with a unexpected depth of feeling, a novelist’s (or memoirist’s) sense of detail, and a panoramic view of what home means.

A caustic, witty, regretful elegy for a place so transformed that it's virtually unrecognizable.

It's a hilariously half-baked scheme, one that quickly turns them from hunters to hunted, but the strength of The Hunting Party is its shaggy-dog quality.