Sean Axmaker

Linklater powers the film with the energy and attitude and beat of his soundtrack.

Movie magic is only as powerful as the imagination that casts it. Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki's imagination is the most creative in animated filmmaking.

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

It's a little long and dissipates some of its power in an unfocused subplot, but the skewed sensibility of the film is both innocent and feral and offers a smart and satisfying reworking to the familiar genre. An American remake is already in the works.

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.

Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo creates the same world of devils and innocents that grounds so much of Spain's modern, seeped-in-Satanic-evil horror, recast in a secular cinematic vocabulary.

It's a rich work, lush and lovely and bustling with activity but paced at a contemplative stroll, like a time lapse recording in first gear.

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.

A witty little comic gem with a heart and a soul.

A film more textural than narrative, it's for viewers willing to lose themselves in a truly sensual jungle experience.

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.

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.

The funniest thing I've seen this summer.

The live camel birth (shown in all of its excruciating beauty) is enthralling, and the cultural details, however staged, provide a vivid window into a world that is fast disappearing.

Jia's compassion for the drifting souls struggling to create a life for themselves in such a transitory existence makes the metaphor resonant.

An engaging and generous profile of the fascinating folks who have chosen to live at the end of the world.

Blunt, somewhat artless, but very effective.

It's a tender, tough, uncompromising film, photographed with a disarming directness and seeming simplicity that looks almost naked next to the dramatic constructions of most films. It just makes her precariousness all the more real.

The slapdash comic flailing of screenwriter and TV scribe-turned-director Ed Decter is only compounded by a script so disconnected you have to wonder if pages were lost on the way to the set.

An inspired melding of action thriller, satire and biographical drama through the looking glass of a funhouse mirror.

It's so beautiful and moving and simple that I'm willing to forgive Majidi his contrivances.

It may not keep you guessing to the end, but there are enough surprises and wry revelations, right down to the last play, to make this a most satisfying cinematic confidence game.

Feels like the effort of a tired artist reworking the same themes.

This beautifully sculpted poetic naturalism has more in common with the expressive use of words in the great screenplays of '40s and '50s than with modern movies.

These are mortal souls and unglamorous bodies and Ferran explores their affair in its earthy, physical and fleshy reality.

Winterbottom carves his own intimate tale out of the sprawling material, a modest miniature with witty flair and moments of humility.

A classic fairy tale with a contemporary sensibility and a spooky horror under the candy-house fantasy.

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