Stephen Holden

A skillful assemblage of newsreel clips, cartoons ridiculing the American interlopers, television commercials and interviews with power officials and ordinary Georgians. It gives new and darker meaning to that comfy adage "We're all connected."

Mr. Garfield's performance makes Jack so endearing and vulnerable that as he takes his first wobbly steps, like a baby bird shoved from its nest, your instincts are protective.

Throughout the film there is an abundance of sumptuously photographed flesh on view. But House of Pleasures is not an erotic stimulant so much as a slow-moving, increasingly tragic and claustrophobic operatic pageant set almost entirely in the brothel.

Holofcener's smart, acidic comedy Lovely and Amazing zeroes in on contemporary narcissism and its fallout with a relentless, needling accuracy.

The movie's sense of emotional claustrophobia is underscored by a complete lack of interest in Middle Eastern politics, or in anything outside the troubled family unit.

The tone of the narration is so wrenchingly honest that the film never lapses into self-pity or relies on mystical platitudes.

As much as the film is shadowed by a keen awareness of mortality, One Cut, One Life often pulses with an almost ecstatic vitality. In its vision of human existence, life is as messy and unpredictable as it is precious.

Honey, the impressive debut feature by Ms. Golino, sustains a contemplative mood with undersaturated cinematography that evokes the world as perceived through a light mist.

Albrecht brings out a side of Mr. Nolte rarely seen on the screen, and he gives a deep and touching portrayal of a haggard, beleaguered older man.

This is synergy of a high order.

Crammed with enough melodrama to fill several soap operas.

The author's fantastical world of wonders and the director's tender-hearted compassion mesh into what is easily the finest film realization of an Irving novel.

There are many moments when what is on the screen stops looking like acting and becomes life itself, and you're watching real people change and grow before your eyes.

Clive Owen conveys a sharp, cynical intelligence that rolls off the screen in waves whenever he widens his glittering blue eyes.

Charles Ferguson’s latest documentary, Time to Choose, is a sobering polemic about global warming that balances familiar predictions of planetary doom with a survey of innovations in renewable energy technology that hold out some hope for the future.

You may become impatient with the leisurely pace of The Invisible Woman and its occasional narrative vagueness, but its open spaces leave room for some of the strongest acting of any contemporary film.

The rainbow connection is a smooth, unbroken arch.

The movie offers a revealing case study of the relationship between politics, celebrity and the media in today’s polarized social climate.

A modest, quietly touching portrait of an older woman radiantly embodied by Blythe Danner.

This spare, minimalist film is not realistic. It has the simplicity of a silent movie, and the blocking of the actors, especially in the scenes with Koistinen and Mirja, emphasizes the distances between them.

The Witnesses may frustrate those who prefer movies that tell clear-cut stories in which hard lessons are learned. But in the director’s farsighted vision of life, the ground under our feet is always shifting. As time pulls us forward, the shocks of the past are absorbed and the pain recedes. In its light-handed way, The Witnesses is profound.

Hal Holbrook strips the stereotype of the grumpy old man of sentimental shtick and cutesy old-codger mannerisms.

[An] incisive, queasy-making documentary.

Dark Days illustrates even the worst nightmare can have descending levels of horror.

The film reminds us again and again that Monk was as important a jazz composer as he was a pianist.

One of the juiciest male characters to pop up in an independent film this year.

If Liberty Heights is much too soft at its center, it still offers a deeper immersion in that old '50s feeling than any other Hollywood film in recent memory.

If repetition has stripped Iran's post-revolutionary cinema of some of its modish luster, The Deserted Station is still a valuable addition to a literature whose characteristics are now internationally well-established.