Marvelous not in its evocation of horror but in the way it slowly chips away at the mundanities of day-to-day urban living.

A fanciful spiral of mythology, madness, cynicism and salvation.

This big-screen version of Wilde's stylish match of deceit and honor, loyalty and betrayal, is more parry than thrust.

So great are the charges raised against the Bush administration in the film, and so combustible the current state of geopolitics, that Moore’s film could actually prove to be the first in history to help unseat a sitting American president.

The influence of executive producer Alex Gibney is clear in the photography and editing (making Gibney-esque now officially a term of art), but he has his own adept, incisive skill in linking a truly global economic crisis in the making, threading the narrative all the way from rural China to Flint, Michigan.

With original director John Carpenter's blessing, Green manages something that is both a tribute to and an evolution of the 1978 classic, with moments designed to create resonances that are not just re-enactment but part of his bigger theme of trauma-causing scars (there are also, in a nod to his days as an Austin resident, a couple of subtle visual nods to the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre).

Synecdoche is the kind of movie that rewards repeated viewings. But sometimes, as Van Morrison sings, it's just best to "sail into the mystic."

The film's cast, all unknowns with the exception of comic/Broadway performer DeLaria, acquit themselves well, with the skinny, innocent-eyed Stafford a credible Candide navigating a new world of experience. His grounded performance charters Eric's stumbling progress to a sense of self that befits Edge of Seventeen: without apology.

Perhaps there was some confusion – should we play this as a lark or a lesson in geopolitical unrest? – or maybe there was some studio involvement to defang the politics; whatever the case, the noncommittal Charlie Wilson's War treads a good-natured but yawning in-between.

If you're searching for pure, unadulterated fisticuffs joy, you could do far worse than Ip Man 2.

Martin's inner giddiness makes Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid a classic. This loose film is more than a spoof of the hard-boiled noir of the Forties and Fifties; it is a tribute to the wonderful memories these films created in a generation.

What we witness onscreen is horrifying and deeply disturbing (as it should be), but a little more context might help us to not feel so marooned.

Don’t expect any hokey scare tactics here. Under the steady hand of Oscar-nominated director Abrahamson (Room), the film is a calculated slow burn, one that plays a cunning head game with those viewers willing to be entranced.

Having unfettered access to Armstrong during the 2009 Tour and a face-to-face sit-down with him in Austin hours after his national confession to Oprah, The Armstrong Lie comes across more a good save than a muckraking piece of journalism.

We bear witness, via Brügger's film, to the slow-motion train wreck that high-echelon, African graft becomes.

Part of the brilliance of Cummings’ performance is how he can turn on a dime, baring his soul one second and throwing off a well-timed jab in the same breath. Thankfully, the actors around him are able to keep up with his pace.

For most of the film, Bateman, the director, manages to bring out the two principals’ anguish without resorting to sentimentality, until the unsatisfying last quarter of the film.

The film's triumphantly perverse climax, in fact, is just that: a three-tiered split-screen of three couples shagging that resembles nothing so much as a national flag and is set to a rendition of "My Girl" sung by a black trio dressed as colonial soldiers. When it hits such giddily subversive high notes, Sammy and Rosie ... transcends provocation and bursts into ecstatic revelation.

The Last Duel is a thematic gold mine, one that sits nicely alongside some of Scott’s best work to date.

Dependably fascinating.

Provides a smart and funny respite from most of what passes for romantic comedy these days.

From a soundtrack of First Nations artists – including a score by the award-winning electronic group the Halluci Nation (fka A Tribe Called Red) – and stunning landscape cinematography by Guy Godfree, there are so many dynamic elements in Slash/Back that cause the film to punch way above its weight class.

The film has a lot to say, but it thankfully does it in a manner that is natural, gentle, and if you will, authentic.

Is it a comedy? A documentary? An underground gore-fest? Man Bites Dog, the first feature film from Belgian director Rémy Belvaux, is all of these and much more, a ghastly, shocking and explosive debut with all the genuinely ruthless ability to disturb as an oily blue-barreled revolver jammed in your mouth. And it's funny, too.

It's unclear if Van Sant intends to inspire guilt; here, as elsewhere, he is exasperatingly abstruse. And in this striving to not say too much, he ends up not saying much of anything at all.

To paraphrase Nathan McCall, this film makes you wanna holler.

uUltimately Better Luck Tomorrow feels nearly as hollow and unknowable as its characters’ hearts.

The film is set in post-WWII Scotland, but its tone and its telling are so stark, so Medieval, that it seems anachronistic when one of its characters picks up a telephone or plays a bebop jazz record.