Steven Rea

The haunting mastery of Leviathan comes not from these broad indictments of a social order, but from the specifics of the performances, the actors wearing their hurt and rage, their defiance and dread, like well-worn clothing.

The Painted Veil is rich with history and heartbreak. It's stirring stuff.

Dazzling and delirious, The Fall is a celebration of cinema, of old-fashioned storytelling and globe-hopping spectacle.

Lord knows how Holofcener got the performance she did out of Goodwin, but the child actor's Annie, rude and unmanageable, is an extraordinarily rich and complicated figure.

A super-taut and superbly acted three-character piece.

Hunger is daunting and powerful work.

Chronicle is full of smart writing that isn't too smart.

Extraordinarily sensual and extraordinarily bleak, Claire Denis' Nenette and Boni depicts a world of diffident youth, of estranged families and displaced souls. [02 May 1997, p.15]

Stays with you like great movies tend to do. It asks you to examine the inner mechanisms of human beings, cheerful and miserable alike. It's not about looking at a glass half empty or a glass half full. It's about drinking down what's in that glass and letting it fill your soul.

The rare movie that manages to convey the inner soul of an artist.

It's a devilishly twisted affair.

Chuan's unsettlingly beautiful black-and-white, wide-screen account of those nightmare six weeks, re-creates that horror in ways that are at once allusive and lucid, mixing cinematic impressionism with documentary-like detail.

A story of companionship, loneliness, resilience. It's a small, artfully crafted thing, but it resonates in big ways.

Her life, and her work, transcended what we think of as "fashion."

Try not to let the film's overbearingly jaunty score get in the way. The Lady in the Van is quite a feat.

Although the pervading mood of Twin Falls Idaho - a beautifully shot, noirish thing - is one of sadness and loss, the Polishes' film is playful, too.

Tcheng finds Simons in moments of haughty self-confidence and tremulous self-doubt.

A gorgeous confection, packed with gargantuan gowns and pornographic displays of pastrystuffs, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette is also a sharp, smart look at the isolation, ennui and supercilious affairs of the rich, famous and famously pampered.

Rain is a quiet, disquieting triumph.

An amiable mix of "Grumpy Old Men" comedy and "Apollo 13" can-we-fix-this-jalopy-before-we-die? Drama.

David Ayer, the writer of "Training Day," director of "Street Kings," writer/director of "Harsh Times," does not make movies about princesses with witchy curses, about yuppie commitment-phobes, about talking plush toys. His territory is narrow, but he owns it: cops, in Los Angeles.

Tender but never sappy, Monsieur Ibrahim brings two people of vastly different age and background together in ways that are touching, and telling. It's a small, glowing gem.

Roiling with laughter, tears, drunken confessions, revelatory soliloquies, pain, sorrow, hospital visits, and various kinds of love, A Christmas Tale is a smart, sprawling, and sublimely entertaining feast.

A sly and surprisingly sublime little noir romance.

A gorgeous operatic tale of obsession and madness.

A beautifully mopey adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's much-praised novel.

Career Girls doesn't have the sweep of Secrets & Lies, nor the venom of Naked (which also featured the riveting Cartlidge). But in the small world it keenly describes, the film packs an emotional punch - silly voices and all.

It's a movie with a pulse. Sometimes, it flies off the chart.

Into the Abyss is a true-crime drama, to be sure, but in Herzog's hands it becomes something much more: an inquiry into fundamental moral, philosophical, and religious issues, and an examination of humankind's capacity for violence - individual and institutional.

A bruising, dark comedy.

A thinker and an educator, Zinn has led a life of commitment and compassion, and the film offers a loving tribute.

It's great to hear a director talking candidly about the actors he's worked with, dishing out good, juicy stuff.

Does what the best movies can do: take viewers to what might be unfamiliar places, into a culture with unique customs and traditions, and show, through drama and comedy, how the fundamental truths of the human experience need no translation.

Crash fools around with chronology in a Tarantinoesque way that brings its story full circle. You could argue that as events, and people, merge, Haggis' spiky screenplay (cowritten with Bobby Moresco) gets to be, quite simply, too much.

Mongol is great cinema, great fun.

Must-see stuff.

Offers a sometimes lyrical, sometimes gut-turning portrait of war seen through the eyes of children.

This beautiful, unfolding film is an antidote to the high-velocity, maximum-volume world most of us find ourselves immersed in, offering a glimpse into a rigorously spiritual alternative. Its calmness, its reflection, is full of allure.

Filled with bleak, beautiful Hopperesque tableaus and strange characters whose lives intersect.

With its mix of Lewis Carroll and William Gibson; Japanese anime and Chinese chopsocky; mythological allusions, and machine-made illusion, offers a couple of hours of escapist fun.

Eastwood and Morgan's movie, with its epic natural disasters (and a terrifying, man-made one) is optimistic. Hokey, even. But it's beautiful, too.

Its stars - especially the photogenic Leung and Cheung, fresh from Wong Kar Wai's jazzy romance In the Mood for Love - are wonderfully charismatic. And wonderfully athletic.

Quiet, quirky gem.

Fused with paranoia and almost unbearable suspense, The Hurt Locker is powerful stuff.

At once guileless and profound.

The Proposition, a beautiful, bloody meditation on justice, family, and the trap of retribution, is in every respect an artful addition to the canon of six-shooter morality tales.

In the end, what the movie is about: time and life, and what we do with them, and what we regret that we didn't do.

This is magnificent filmmaking, and a magnificent film.

The less said about the twists and turns The Illusionist takes, the better. Suffice to say, Eisenheim's masterful deceptions do not stop when he exits the stage.

It is the more satisfying of the two installments - less over-the-top, arterial-gushing violence and more investigation into character, motives, back-story.

An extraordinarily perfect little film: A bittersweet drama that explores sexuality and love, and their reverberations across the landscape of human emotions.

How I Live Now takes some frightening, gruesome turns. In tone and terror, it comes close to matching the jumpy dread of Danny Boyle's British Isles virus thriller "28 Days Later."

Impossibly charming and impossibly French.

While The Forgiveness of Blood lacks the narrative momentum of director Joshua Marston's previous film, "Maria Full of Grace" - it is nonetheless fascinating.

A smart, sensuous and sensory mind trip that caroms around a universe of thought.

A film full of a sense of impending danger, betrayal, seduction and destruction. Quite simply, it's great stuff.

Microcosmos is a Zen version of an old Disney True-Life feature: the hokum and phony palaver of those '50s pics supplanted by a wide-eyed sense of wonder. [08 Nov 1996, p.05]

A spectacularly satisfying reworking of the legend of Kal-El.

Resonant and surprisingly affecting.

As he's done in such otherwise diverse pictures as Lone Star, City of Hope, and The Secret of Roan Inish, in Limbo writer-director Sayles circles down into a community of friends, colleagues, strangers - and shows what happens when paths cross, and sometimes double-cross. [04 Jun 1999, p.03]

A slow-burning, character-rich study in desperation, grief, vengeance, loyalty, and love. It's the sort of arthouse entry - in German, mostly - that gets you thinking about an English-language remake.

Beautifully shot, in long, fluid takes, The Beat That My Heart Skipped is that rare thing: a remake that improves on its source.

Brings home the complexities and contradictions of the man.

A smart, sharp, stirring adaptation of the H.G. Bissinger best-seller.

There are some terrifically strong scenes and terrific actors contributing to them.