Sean Axmaker

All the furiousness doesn't really add up to anything, but there is grungy fun to be had in gizmo-laden art direction and the increasingly bizarre battle of wits of the weirdly warped South Korean sci-fi black comedy.

This community finds its balance with an easy effortlessness.

It's both innocent and bizarre, with a mischievous sense of fantasy marked by simple but striking cinematic magic.

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

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.

Strong, evocative storytelling pared to the bone and braced with a sensibility perfectly matched to the material.

A sweet little comedy, as easygoing and warmly innocuous as the benign irony of the title.

It has a tendency to overextend its outrageous arias, but this pop-art confection both spoofs and celebrates the crazy conventions of movie melodramas and genre cinema with pure affection.

It's a little visually precious and obscure but still a marvelously wistful film of regret and retreat, in which even the magic wine of forgetfulness erases only the memories, not the pain.

Director Len Wiseman, confidently stepping up from the smallish budget "Underworld" films to mega-budget Hollywood mainstream.

Outside national borders, this naive vantage point is an entry into a country's history and culture, explaining without seeming patronizing.

For all its darkness and tragedy, Monster's Ball is a film that wants to be liked and Forster stumbles over his good intentions to win the audience over.

He (LaBute) pulls the farce and the violence and the fantasies together with a deft touch and a sweetness rare in American films -- especially his.

There's a real gee-whiz kick to the fantasy of being the brainiest kid on the planet, and a down-to-earth quality to Jimmy and his not-so-bright, but ever-so-stalwart best buddies.

Based more on rumor and supposition than fact. It's a highly entertaining set of hypotheses.

The most sensuous and intimate work of cinema of the past few years, a film that luxuriates in the immediacy of the moment. There is no guilt to the act, only exhilaration, joy and freedom. At least for the moment.

Mamet is more respectful than exciting as an action director, but his fascination with how things work, be it the mechanics of designing and promoting a big pay-per-view event or battling a world-class Jiu-jitsu master, makes it all quite mesmerizing.

An impressive, adrenaline-boosted action showcase.

Fascinating memoir of coming of age in Iran.

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.

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.

Techine has a delicate touch and these lovely moments flow with a life that Martin's heavy, stumbling psychodrama can't match.

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

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.

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.

Kurosawa leaves much of the explanation enigmatic but he fills the film with an eerie emptiness, where suicides erupt out of nowhere and mankind dissolves in an oily smudge of hopelessness, adrift between life and death.

There's plenty of ammunition here for liberal conspiracy theorists, which surely will limit the audience to those already in Jarecki's political camp. Which is too bad, for it is a sobering history lesson as well as a political polemic on foreign policy and the growth of war into America's biggest business.

There's a dark and demented little psychodrama of self-inflicted madness beneath the narrative contrivances. Vigalondo's direction makes it work more like a waking nightmare than a genuine experience, and he gives it the quality of madness.