Sean Axmaker

The result is rich, lush -- simply exquisite.

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.

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.

A grueling and deeply affecting human drama.

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

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

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

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

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

Achieves its social commentary through passion and poetry.

It's Treadwell's contradictions and controversies that fascinate Herzog the filmmaker, inspiring him to create this enthralling documentary portrait, his best film in years.

Though he's foggy on the specifics, Angelopoulos makes the tides of history felt through each painterly frame.

Oregon-born and Seattle-based director James Longley profiles three lives in his impressionistic portrait of Iraq's Sunni, Shia and Kurd communities.

Director Mohammad Rasoulof has fashioned the ultimate metaphor for a society adrift from its culture.

The most emotionally rich and cinematically thrilling film I've seen all year, a film that pulses with human life in all its terrible and beautiful irrationality.

Romantic, real and as generous as it is vulnerable, the art of conversation has rarely been so acute, honest and revealing.

While Look at Me at times falls into familiar plotting, it never offers false hope or false characters.

The young cast, all nonactors who developed their characters with Cantet and Bégaudeau, brings the weight of full lives to each of the students.

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.

A celebration of the human spirit nothing short of sublime.

51 Birch Street, like the best of the recent wave of personal documentaries, is both a compelling story and an eye-opening bit of social history.

What begins as an introspective odyssey examining the effects of war on the young Israeli soldiers turns into a provocative exposé on the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

In the best Altman manner there are no real heroes and villains, only people trapped by their vanity and ambition and the straitjackets of classism.

Vital and alive. Frustration and malaise rumble through every richly textured frame, but behind it all is a restlessness and a desire for something better.

It's a chilly, lonely introduction to a man who has effectively stepped out of the social world of adult responsibility.

From the first voyeuristic peek into the ruthless world to the haunting, accusatory, unforgettable final image, it's a brilliant, stunning piece of work, perhaps not Assayas' best, but certainly his most fearless and impassioned.

It's unmistakably the work of aging cinema activist Loach, who wears his social-justice heart on his sleeve and pauses the story for lively debates among the characters, especially as Sinn Fein signs a treaty that many think betrays the cause.

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.