Proves to be a wonderful reality check.

Acted with such venomous restraint that it hurts to watch.

For two filmmakers best known for their comedic scripts like the Jump Street films and The Lego Movie, they know when to pull back on the humor and instead embrace the spectacle, and find their perfect proxy in Gosling.

While the evil that men do to one another in this film may well be rooted in the Cain-like enabling of original sin from one doomed brother to another, the final familial tragedy feels exactly like classic Lumet.

The three-and-a-half-hour-long movie revels in talk as this man ponders life, philosophy, the sexual revolution, the workers' revolution, love, death, and so on. He smokes, drinks, flirts, and talks –­ and the movie is exquisitely of its time.

What Martelli and her co-conspirators have created with the radicalization of Carmen in Chile ‘76 – and what, incidentally, eludes so many contemporary horror films – is the palpable sense of dread.

From its silent opening moments to its breathtaking double-cross conclusion, Le Samourai is the work of one of the film world's great directors working at his expressive peak.

This Stanley Kramer-produced film is the original biker movie.

Smart, uncanny, resistant to the short cuts of pop psychology, and shocking in the best since of the word, Steers' debut is a stunner.

Cast aside any preconceived expectations you might have regarding this documentary and remember simply this: Winnebago Man is one of the best films you're going to see all year.

The end result goes far beyond the simple colorization of moldering battlefield documentation. It restores the humanity of the combatants, both the British and, surprisingly, the German. Ultimately, it’s a you-are-there time capsule of enormous emotional and historical importance.

There is little in the way of narrative eventfulness in the film, but Leigh luxuriates in the moments, and provides glimpses of what it takes to be an artist amid the fray.

Looper makes a full-meal entertainment out of piecemealing genres: It boasts the kicky mental gymnastics that come with time-travel terrain, the relentless rapid heart rate of a crackerjack thriller, and the bursts of extreme violence, buttressed with black humor, of a modern actioner.

Scores its ultimate coup de grace though its interviews. Macdonald has lined up an amazing collection of interviewees.

The Disappearance of Shere Hite is an illuminating, haunting, and ruminative documentary worth watching, if not for crystalizing the history of Hite’s work on film then for a look at how much and how little things have changed for women.

Scary, funny, brutal, smart, and perverse – this is the stuff that future classic horror midnighters are made of.

A gorgeous, violent, brilliant puzzle box of a movie that relishes in how convoluted it is, and pays off every second of attention.

A beautiful, quiet, lyrical, funny wilderness trip, a meditation on loss and picking up the pieces, and the most perfectly poignant performance of David Cross' acting career, all based on the best-selling autobiography of a leading lepidopterist (butterfly expert, to you and me).

Like the man to whom this film is dedicated, Ken Kesey, Gerry just wants to go "further."

As things turn out, Clooney’s butt is just one of the many delights to be found on a trip to Solaris.

One of the many charms of Kaurismäki’s films is the way he fuses the impassive emotions he’s subtly evoking with his characters with his absurd, hilarious signaling of the form of filmmaking itself.

By restricting the action almost exclusively to this one building, the audience is taken floor-to-floor on an adventure that stays engaging throughout. Bunny is a race against time and an exercise in controlled chaos.

At long, long last: the real thing.

Spanning three decades, Map of the Human Heart is one of those rare films that illuminates a single human story, and does it so well that you're hardly aware you're watching a movie.

Labyrinth of Cinema is a chaotic entanglement of ideas and endearing characters, a sweet departure for the luminous artist Ôbayashi was.

This is high fantasy of the best kind.

Small Engine Repair is a real American horror story, skillfully shot, perfectly cast and acted, and carrying a sorrowful message that resonates with brutal truth.

Though the story is thinly conceived, Antal throws a fantastic curveball in the second act. Kontroll is a hot ticket.