Steven Rea

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

The movie is, start to finish, candy-colored angst.

Ghosts haunt Heart of a Dog - but so, too, does love.

Ann Savage, the femme fatale from a slew of old Hollywood noirs, is savagely funny as Maddin's beauty-parlor proprietress mom.

Unlike "Caché" and "Code: Unknown," where Haneke's investigations into societal and spiritual despair resonated with poetic force, The White Ribbon doesn't resonate at all.

Late in Looper, when a highly telekinetic kid starts levitating things, it really does look like Christopher Nolan had wandered onto the set and taken over.

This glum and grandiose new King Arthur has little to do with the Camelot monarch we've come to know through books and film.

Clooney has never been better, subtler, more deeply rooted in a performance than he is in The Descendants. And he's funny, too.

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.

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

A mordantly funny, clear-eyed view of an extended family's mounting dysfunction in a changing society.

13 Assassins is, at turns, thrilling and funny, visually exquisite and emotionally charged.

Crazy Heart is the real thing, and a real gem.

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

This is a story about legacy, the sins of the father, the restlessness in our souls. It's powerful, it's bold, it hits you hard.

For the casual viewer who feels like maybe all the Sith hoopla is worth checking out, well, it's like tuning in to the season finale of "24" without having watched a minute of its lead-up episodes.

Jessica Biel is Vera Miles, the star who had the nerve to get pregnant when Hitchcock wanted her for "Vertigo." He feels betrayed, and she feels relieved, consigned to a supporting role in Psycho as Marion's sister. And Toni Collette, in glasses and a dark wig, is Hitchcock's long-suffering secretary, Peggy. Both Biel and Collette are very good, engaging.

Witty and wonderful, Fantastic Mr. Fox is the perfect Thanksgiving entertainment.

It's a feminist nightmare, the world brought to life -- in hard-hitting documentary style.

It's not that Fay Grim isn't amusing. It is, in that deadpan, skewed way that indie auteur Hartley's pics always are. But there's not much else going on here.

Beautifully observed, and beautifully acted by the novice thespian Polanco (culled from a New York City public school), Chop Shop is at once a heartbreaker and a story of hope and the American Dream.

Sappy, sentimental and redeemed only by the quiet radiance and fidgety intelligence of its leads, Last Chance Harvey is a fantasy about mopey middle-agers getting a second chance at love.

1971 is a testament to a generation's idealism, heroism, foolhardiness, fearlessness.

Avatar delivers. Combining beyond-state-of-the-art moviemaking with a tried-and-true storyline and a gamer-geek sensibility - not to mention a love angle, an otherworldly bestiary, and an arsenal of 22d-century weaponry - the movie quite simply rocks.

The real 3-D experience of the season is Pina, Wim Wenders' shockingly beautiful and moving tribute to the late German choreographer Pina Bausch.

Like "The Square," the startling Down Under noir released a few months ago, Animal Kingdom explores the down and dirty side of human nature, fraught with greed, suspicion, and betrayal.

What about the kids and families who have no connection to Méliès, little familiarity with Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton? Will Hugo keep them in their seats? I'm not sure.

Gloria, spare and keenly observed, plays like a short story - there is no sweeping narrative arc, no momentous triumph or calamity. But there is a bit of justice meted out, and the act of its meting brings a slow, small smile to Gloria's face.