Sean Axmaker

Scott owns the film from scene one.

The poetic justice strains the verisimilitude of a film otherwise grounded in a tough reality, but there is a guilty satisfaction to it all.

Bruckner's restrained performance reveals a girl drowning in her own lack of self-esteem. When she finally comes up for air, she shatters the surface with a force that, in the hands of a less thoughtful director, could send her spinning down the melodramatic road to ruin.

Delivers the expected adrenaline-driven thrills with a fresh eye and a refreshing attitude.

Cronenberg's most disciplined exploration yet of that shadowy realm: the world refracted through the prism of a schizophrenic mind.

The camera drinks in the angles, curves and textures, and the way it all shapes the light as if it's yet another of Gehry's non-traditional materials, and Pollack creates his own video sketchbook of Gehry impressions.

In the face of intolerance, Two Family House lovingly celebrates the triumph of love and acceptance over prejudice.

It's bloody brilliant.

You don't have to be a teenager to appreciate the raunchy humor and the uninhibited overkill of Seth's porn-obsessed chatter, though it probably helps to be a guy.

Looks simultaneously ahead of its time and delightfully quaint, a simple romantic comedy that revels in the dreamy artifice of a meticulously re-created fantasy Las Vegas.

Pleasantly modest, endearingly etched and briskly set to a pounding beat.

A playfully offbeat, willfully wide-eyed tale of lonely, inarticulate people looking for connection in a disconnected world.

An alternately angry and sad portrait, passionate in its presentation and moving in its portrayal of individuals who sacrifice their love for the tenets of their religion.

What it lacks in melodramatic punch it makes up for in unexpected shadings in the characters, predator and victim alike.

Ararat is less about history than the necessity of dialogue and debate, and the devastating effects of stifling dialogue.

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.

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.

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

The funniest film you'll see this year about a political assassination.

With less lampooning and satirical asides, Sicko may be less "entertaining" than Moore's previous films, but it's also more affecting and effective.

The nuttiest big-screen video game you'll ever have the pleasure of seeing somebody else play.

It's an appealing mix of an old Hollywood movie world of Upper East Side sophisticates with the character-driven spontaneity of a modern American indie, all very slight and light but deftly done.

While the characters lack the quirks and affectations that have enlivened the impulsive figures from past Dogme films, the passion of the players and Bier's sensitive direction give these utterly normal figures a vivid aliveness, along with dignity and everyday beauty.

A mix of H.P. Lovecraft madness, David Cronenberg biological mutation and David Lynch small-town weirdness, it teasingly dangles explanations never delivered and escapes never sought, while diving into one of the most gonzo horrors to twist onto celluloid in years.

Venus is the second film from director Roger Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi to explore the sexual lives of folk that the movies treat as sexless -- the elderly. But where "The Mother" was a cold film of sexual greed and emotional pettiness, this robust yet delicate comic drama finds a kind of dignity in the old lothario whose vital life force struggles against a failing body.

Anyone who claims to support the troops owes it to them to see the film and hear their stories.

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.

Carrera's direct, unadorned style has none of the searing imagery or cinematic imagination of "Y Tu Mama," but it bristles with passion, anger and a palpable sense of betrayal.