Stephen Holden

While most films in which the angry past confronts the guilty present degenerate into mawkish reconciliations, Emile errs on the side of restraint.

What ultimately sinks this stylish but heartless film is a flat lead performance by the eternally snippy Meg Ryan.

It works just fine as a sophisticated wildlife documentary with a submerged narrative. But if you enjoy the challenge of solving difficult mysteries, Hukkle presents a tantalizing case waiting to be cracked.

It is hard to imagine that any other actress could muster the stubborn ferocity that Isabelle Huppert brings to the role of Maud.

Zero Days has a similarly balanced outlook along with a critical political viewpoint that avoids hysteria and demagogy. Its strongest protest is against what Mr. Gibney sees as the dangers of excessive American secrecy.

Because Stevie has none of the glamour of "Hoop Dreams," with its portrait of gifted teenage athletes struggling for glory, it is not nearly as likable a film; but in its earnest, plodding way it is every bit as deep.

Often feels like two movies loosely sewn together. By far the most compelling of the two is its portrait of Ms. Boyd, a woman who for all her quirks and self-dramatizing flourishes, emerges as a noble spirit on the side of the angels.

The movie partly resists the temptation to follow a predictable feel-good route to a fairy-tale ending. That said, it has enough conveniently timed little triumphs to send up warning signs.

Seduced and Abandoned may be the year’s most entertaining put-on.

Underneath it all, The Gift is a merciless critique of an amoral corporate culture in which the ends justify the means, and lying and cheating are O.K., as long as they’re not found out.

Victoria is a sensational cinematic stunt.

Throughout the movie, you have the feeling of being dragged along on an impromptu journey by a filmmaker who is traveling without the benefit of a GPS device.

May be the first movie about a painter to transcend the gushy clichés found in movies that try to unravel the mysteries of artistic creation.

The characters in Alamar may be playing versions of themselves, but the writer, editor and director Pedro González-Rubio has constructed a film in which the journey has an overarching mythic resonance that evokes fables from "Robinson Crusoe" to "The Old Man and the Sea."

With its casual deadpan attitude, Buzzard offers a nightmare portrait of arrested development and anomie for the age of inequality.

Until the end, when it begins to go soft, the movie takes two strands of soap opera convention -- a life-changing accident and an adulterous affair -- and spins their suds into gold.

A cinematic tone poem as much as a biography.

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

This calm, hardheaded film never sacrifices its toughness for a swooning, misty-eyed moment of hope.

So inept on every level, you wonder why the distributor didn't release it straight to video, or better, toss it directly into the trash.

A visually enthralling 40-minute tour of the southwestern Pacific depths.