Stephen Holden

As I Open My Eyes is best when it observes the fraught but loving mother-daughter relationship between Hayet and Farah.

Mr. Young's passionate cracked whine assumes an oracular power.

This deliciously nasty French deconstruction of male pecking orders, directed by Bernard Rapp, should send a pleasant shiver down the spine of anyone who has ever obsessed about wanting to please a devious and manipulative boss.

Uplifting, witty.

Mr. Cage gives his most committed performance in years as this divided soul, but it still looks like acting when compared with Mr. Poulter’s embodiment of pure evil.

Although The Song of Sparrows has some of the trappings of a naturalistic drama, it is really a series of strict moral lessons pieced together into an austere Islamic sermon.

Julie Gavras’s wonderful film, Blame It on Fidel, views its ideological conflicts through the eyes of a smart, willful child.

Narco Cultura feels like two short films sandwiched together to make a feature. One is a shallow pop-music documentary focusing on Mr. Quintero. The other is an equally superficial portrait of the embattled Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso.

A wrenching, richly layered feminist allegory as well as a geopolitical one.

The movie's unhurried rhythm eventually works a quiet spell, and after a while you find yourself settling back, adjusting to the film's bucolic metabolism and appreciating its eye and ear for detail.

Very funny, extremely obscene movie spinoff from the popular animated Comedy Central series.

In withholding biographical information about the characters, the movie supplies just enough material to prompt you to fill in the blanks.

The movie's disparate voices coalesce here as an emotionally charged microcosm of the conflict.

A grim, suspenseful farce in which unpredictable human behavior repeatedly threatens an operation of astounding technological sophistication.

The movie, which often threatens to disappear into a tub of soapsuds, is elevated immeasurably by the calm, stately performances of Mary Alice and Mr. Freeman.

Frantz takes pains to show both sides’ lingering hostility after a devastating and (the movie implies) senseless war.

A mildly diverting period heist movie.

The performances are so crackling that you can imagine Ms. Salazar and Mr. Pally, given richer material, becoming a slapstick comedy team: the spitfire and the nerd.

The movie's rejection of even a tinge of melodrama lends it a special integrity.

This is high-speed action realism carried off with the dexterity of a magician pulling a hundred rabbits out of a hat in one graceful gesture. The crowning flourish is an extended car chase through the streets and tunnels of Moscow that ranks as one of the three or four most exciting demolition derbies ever filmed.

The prisoner rather eloquently portrays himself as a victim of human rights abuse.

Ms. Hamilton’s straightforward documentary skillfully interweaves reminiscences by members of the group with re-enactments of the burglary.

Dramatically Joe the King feels unglued, as if crucial sequences had been left on the cutting-room floor.

Somersault, which the Australian Film Institute garlanded with 13 awards, including best film, director, actor and actress (for Ms. Cornish's astonishing performance), is a movie about the looks on people's faces and the disparity between the surface and the roiling chaos beneath.

As technically innovative as it is emotionally unsettling.

A facile exercise in nihilism posing as an indie "Training Day" with street cred. Don't believe it.

Few films have explored the human face this searchingly and found such complex psychological topography. That's why The Wings of the Dove succeeds where virtually every other film translation of a James novel has stumbled.

Sonatine, made in 1994, predates the Japanese director's art-house hit Fireworks by three years and is arguably stronger than its successor.