Sean Axmaker

Beautifully observed tale of high-school kids in the projects outside Paris.

A quirky little film with an offbeat trajectory that rattles through the bones of story with eyes open to the texture of experience and the dimensions of character.

The texture and intensity of the odyssey makes it spellbinding.

So stuffed with Maddin-ess that it never manages to get past the glorious surfaces. McKinney strides through his role with a knowing wink, and the sheer volume of creative imagery is as distracting as it is entertaining.

It's crowd-pleasing stuff, to be sure.

Some audiences will find it an endurance test and Reygadas doesn't make it easy with his confrontational imagery, but he provokes emotions not often explored on screen.

The result is rich, lush -- simply exquisite.

Surprise of surprises, it's a blast.

The most imaginative and delightful computer-animated movie of recent years outside of the Pixar brand, Monster House is a Halloween ghost story by way of monster-movie adventure.

For all the testosterone-driven soap opera, this entertainingly confused coming-of-age story is a seductive fantasy, a rare portrait of urban underworld machismo without the violence and the viciousness.

It's more clever than smart, but Paul Fox directs with the same easygoing attitude of its slacker hero and finds some modest truths (also lower case) behind the props.

The story plays out in the sensuous textures and hypnotic rhythms as the rebellious youth Torres embodies eases into a serenity and acceptance that Montenegro brings so gently to her performance.

Hot Rod is a cousin to the comedies of Will Ferrell (for whom it was developed) with a younger skew, a kooky '80s nostalgia (complete with a pitch-perfect synthesizer score by Trevor Rabin) and a low-key amiability that keeps you rooting for Rod and company to triumph.

It's a pleasure to see and hear so much wit in a big-budget comedy, and the fine British cast of supporting actors makes every bon mot a tasty verbal morsel.

Ozon's greatest special effect is holding the camera in tight on the faces of Bruni-Tedeschi (one of the most expressive faces in French cinema) and Freiss.

Zambrano shows an impressive sensitivity toward his actors and their characters and never allows hopelessness to quash hope in this lovely film.

More reinvention than remake, this black-humored, blood-soaked adventure is a colorful if impersonal audience pleaser done up in a showy, fluid style with a tongue-in-cheek flair.

Hip-hop is not the beat I dance to, but you don't need to be immersed in the culture to understand the heartbeat it sets in the lives of Brown Sugar's main characters.

A delight, a vigorous, vibrant romantic comedy that mines emotional desperation and frustration for all its comic potential, but never at the expense of its temperamental heroine.

No more or less than it appears to be: a paean to the benevolent fate we'd like to believe watches over us.

It's almost too devastating for words, yet never less than compelling and heartbreakingly affecting.

A disturbing, and disturbingly funny, twist on adolescent love, and Shiota captures the emotional avalanche with understanding.

It's still too shrill and silly to take seriously, but the high spirits and naïve message of tolerance and pride is oddly, innocently winning.

There's nothing messy or unkempt about the beautifully, quietly heartbreaking story of unconditional love and emotional sacrifice.

Secret Ballot is an education hiding in a comedy, a parablelike portrait of the irresistible forces of modernization and democracy meeting the immovable inertia of tradition, culture and power relations written in the blood of the past.

It's great to see action stars cast for their moves -- their grace in motion is thrilling -- but they also have the charisma to pull off the characters.

Ultimately feels hollow and slapdash.

A grueling and deeply affecting human drama.

It makes for one of the best and most haunting of the recent Asian horror films.

It's a bracing reminder that before Hitler took power, it was handed to him. The lesson resonates long after the credits roll.

Wholesome, warm and energetic -- if predictable.

At its best, Company Man hums from one piece to the next, a harmless, good-natured, often silly spoof with a few cutting barbs and a comic showman's love of the well-executed gag.

Playful, predictable and more than a little precious, this entertaining if slight romantic farce makes it's hard not to mourn the loss of the adult romantic comedy.

It's so earnest it hurts.

It becomes a dreamy study in stillness broken by suicide fantasies, flashbacks, and the hired killers, but even the violence has a meditative even melancholy quality to it, as if it's all been processed through the eyes of its Zen hero.

The real gift of Elf is the simple pleasure of a sweet and funny comedy that genuinely embraces its message of holiday cheer and still has fun goofing with it.

Hot Fuzz is something all too rare in movie comedies: a story rather than a string of disjointed skits, with hearty characters behind its caricatures.

There's not a smarter, more demanding American film from the past year.

A family-friendly remake funnier, fresher and more affecting than the flavorless original.

There's no doubt that Kiarostami is giving us a lesson in social politics, but the education lies in the mosaic pieced together from conversations and situations.

The battery of startling shock cuts can get repetitive and the plot has a few potholes, but the palpable atmosphere of vulnerability keeps the drama knotted in tension and the audience rooted to the teens in peril.

Bujalski's gift for capturing the awkwardness of social relationships and the messy, unkempt details of everyday life is revealing.

The echoes of Douglas Sirk melodramas and Lassie movies just add to the fun.

There is an element of murder mystery and an edge of conspiracy thriller to Chris Paine's documentary about the rise and fall of General Motors' EV1 (Electric Vehicle 1).

The texture of Manic feels honest and the chemistry of the kids is well observed, but even the modest breakthroughs are dramatic conventions that favor the symbolic over the genuine.

Most Bond parodies tend to flatten because they fail to evoke the production design overkill and slick cinematic style of its target. Johnny English is no different. Director Peter Howitt delivers action like a journeyman, but Atkinson saves him time and again.

At times a bit stilted, a common quality of first-time directors who try too hard to sculpt every scene, but it's refreshingly bereft of slick cynicism and smart-ass snideness.

It's messy and unsettled, but Bellocchio's distaste for the cynicism and mendacity is potent and sincere.

Bekmambetov's tone is so gravely serious that the drama tends to become arch and theatrical, despite sardonic punches of dark humor. But his imagery is striking (his imagination overcomes his limited budget), his style is assured and he's given the subtitle adaptation a dramatically dynamic dimension by giving the words the presence of an incantation taking physical form.

A rousing celebration of a genuine people's hero and a timely reminder that a free press is the greatest weapon in the arsenal of democracy and freedom.

It's a simple film with a direct message, but the glimpses of the surrounding social culture that has adapted to the horrors give this Third World "How Green Was My Valley" its identity.

A drama that embraces the ambiguities and contradictions of family ties and human nature in all its irrational glory.

Yet for a film so affectingly steeped in loss, resignation and the ghosts of memory, the revelation that pulls it all together, while satisfying and even touching, lacks emotional resonance.

The Dardennes's masterful casting and austere style amplify this simple but powerful parable.

A thoughtful and often evocative drama of identity and assimilation, but she leaves Nazneen so cocooned in her protective shell of disconnection that we can't connect emotionally.

It moves so fast you almost forget it leaves the characters in its wake.

An old-fashioned Western with all the classic elements -- buddy loyalty, stalwart heroes, despicable villains, plenty of gunfights and marvelous wind-scoured desert landscapes -- marked by some modern ideas about relationships.

The impressive marriage of CGI backgrounds and traditional hand-drawn characters gives Oshii more tools to sculpt his vision in color and light.

The simple, unpretentious storytelling of Unleashed is a rarity in the glut of underwritten and overproduced action films that dominate American screens today.

The three stars communicate the fears and dreams and frustrations of teenage girls with subtlety, sensitivity and dignity.

For all it's warmth and wonder, it carries little more power than a storybook fable.

It's a rare film that gets smarter as it goes along, injecting a satisfying dash of pragmatism every time it seems ready to slip into either unearned idealism or cynical fatalism.

Michell captures the awkwardness of real-world behavior with gentle, unforced humor.

A sports empowerment fantasy of the best kind.

It's smart, instructive political cinema that tackles complex issues of the globalization with practical examples and vivid images and presents its effects in immediate human terms.

As exasperating as it is conventionally satisfying.

Doyle's handheld camerawork is intimate and curious and his hazy colors radiate off the screen.

Pitt won the Best Actor award at Venice for his Jesse...Yet it's Affleck who impresses most as the wary, skittish Bob.

One of the Coens' more playful projects, much lighter and significantly slighter than "No Country for Old Men" or "Fargo," but it's put together with such perfection that you can't help but be won over.

Think of this corrective to Kipling as "The Longest Yard" meets "The Seven Samurai" with cricket bats, choreographed dance numbers, romantic triangles and a rousing call to solidarity.

It's all quite deftly played with a maturity and introspection that may take you by surprise, though Sachs is perhaps too restrained in parts.

Emitai (1971) remains Sembene's masterpiece and his most important achievement. [03 Aug 2001]

The result is like a "Waiting for Godot" for the video-game generation.

The Divine Intervention of the title lies somewhere between hope and fantasy. In a world in which Santa Claus is assaulted in Nazareth, what do you have left?

Part treasure hunt, part disturbia.

Is it too much to ask that the fictional scenes have at least some of the complexity and unpredictability of the real-life theater?

It's filled to overflowing with mischievous gags for kids and adults alike, tickling the periphery of the story and crammed into every frame with playful abandon. It gives potty humor a good name.

A deliciously vivid adventure fantasy.

Danny Aiello is right at home as owner Louis, a paternal Italian father to all but his own son, reigning over the throng from his corner table like a benevolent lord and maybe underworld gangster.

Gunnarsson masterfully weaves these strands into a bold, multilayered tapestry surrounding a powerful story.

Sensitive and vivid response to the tangled issues of teen violence, race and self-esteem.

It could be more involving, but it's funny enough that you won't care.

Never quite transcends its origins as a high-concept action thriller, but the clean professionalism of Donner's direction, the low-key turn by Willis and the street-level heroics make it a satisfying piece of genre filmmaking.

Mühe's performance is brilliant, communicating more turmoil and pain with the droop of a lip and a flicker of the eye across an otherwise intently passive face than all the emotional storms of the cast.

It's more theatrical pageant than action movie, with the showy but rudimentary martial-arts action coming off like just another ritual with the players going through the motions.

Steel and Morris are simply a couple of ordinary citizens who stand up for their ideals and their rights in the face of intimidation. Which is what makes this underdog story matter.

Captures the overwhelming and uncontrollable emotional assault of loving and living through captured moments and sensuous images.

There's no particular tragedy or triumph, merely another step in the lives of two fallible people finding a little comfort while stumbling toward happiness.

It's the warmest, most generous portrait of American hospitality you've seen from a European movie in some time.

Despite the cat-and-mouse games between cop and criminal, this is less a battle of wills than one man's battle for his own soul. Nolan bravely treads where few American films dare to delve -- into the world of ambivalence and ambiguity -- and emerges with a compelling portrait.

Iliadis is more visually sophisticated than Craven was in 1972 and works hard to sustain the mood and tension while still hitting the audience with blunt scenes of wincing violence. (It gets grisly and grotesque enough for gore hounds.)

Eight Legged Freaks is a B-movie-and-proud-of-it thrill ride, probably the best of its kind since "Tremors." It does just what a good creature feature is supposed to do: It entertains with laughs, gasps, gooey spectacle and a bemused sense of fun.

Achieves its social commentary through passion and poetry.

It's a tricky tonal dance that Watt, minor missteps aside, glides through with feeling.

Behind the narrative twists and contrived dramatic complications is a searing and scary look at dysfunction.

The story is pure speculation, Van Sant's fantasy on what may have happened during those final days of self-isolation, but he loads the film with distinctive imagery.

This isn't the Bollywood blast of color and song or the brassy razzle-dazzle of "Chicago," but a quieter, sweeter approach that works against the chaotic comedy while humanizing the characters.

The insistent crosscutting suggests there is something powerful between the two stories, but apart from vague connections of jealousy, emotional tension and conversations that constantly dance around the real issues, they don't resonate across the years.