La Promesse is a penetrating coming-of-age story, one that argues that adulthood begins with the emergence of moral convictions.

Certainly one of the most lovingly crafted, end-of-the-world, cinematic feasts ever made, a spectacle of destruction and survival not even C.B DeMille could have envisioned.

This is Martin Scorsese, and in the end, it's his town, and his show.

The action set-pieces, double crosses, and narrow escapes are handsomely mounted and suspenseful as a Saturday matinee.

Tilting surprisingly dark – I suspect the film is at least in part about how we process trauma – but also somewhat impenetrable on first watch, it was another startlement when I realized I was crying. I can’t wait to go back.

Damon, particularly, stands revealed as a comic ace.

In the end, it's a love story after all, but a peculiarly Gallocentric one -- cheap, nasty, but salvageable nonetheless.

The most remarkable aspect of Lemon Tree, however, and the one that's most likely to land this film on many year-end Best Foreign Film lists, is Abbass' devastating and marvelously restrained performance.

The filmmakers go to obvious pains to add a bit of nutritive value to their sweet, frothy confection.

The language barrier borders the Babel-esque; it’s a surprise fount of humor, too, as when a translator is terrified to pass along an Italian tailor’s request to the French-speaking chief seamstress, knowing she’ll be furious at the added work.

Searingly potent and suggestively supple, Carax's images are rich with emotion and ideas.

Starving the Beast does an admirable job of making even the most arcane of arguments and abstruse alliances plain and clear.

The fifth Scream is an ultimate reflection of the beloved first film, and perhaps its only misstep is that the directing duo didn’t relish in their finale, soaking in some of the beautiful homages they visually set up. Even so, Scream is a blast, a solid setup for more to come.

Radical may hit all the requisite narrative arcs, but it does so with a level of nuance and examination that other films of this type either gloss over or ignore entirely.

The Salt of the Earth travels to the heart of darkness, but thankfully comes out on the other side and leaves you with a hopefulness that no matter what kind of madness and repression happen in the world, there is still hope for humanity.

It's a mix of nonviolent black liberation, mysticism, 1970s psychobabble, and a dedication to Black Santa, all based on God talking to him through a duck (Moses’ delusional mental health issues are dealt with, as is Morris’ way, with both humor and sensitivity).

What Greene both shows and helps enable may be the first steps toward a new understanding in a shattered community.

If there are two signatures to Indonesian horror, they would be an overwhelming sense of relentless dread, and poisonous centipedes. The Queen of Black Magic has plenty of both, and an enthralling supernatural siege story binding everything together so tight you'll barely be able to breathe.

This is a wonderful, disarming film, sort of like Ghost, but with all the Hollywood drained from it, leaving nothing on screen but the truth of the matter. Which is the way it should be, of course.

Innocence is possessed of a highly literate, almost classical story.

It's a riveting, nail-biting, two-buckets-of-popcorn return to form for Howard.

Carnahan and co-conspirators Kurt McLeod and Mark Williams are clearly having a blast orchestrating this symphony of Grand Guignol.

Noa may not be Caesar's heir as leader of the apes, but he definitely walks in his footsteps as a worthy protagonist in the latest iteration of this ever-intriguing sci-fi classic.

Yet it's really as a director of actors that he's a revelation. Abbott never lets the audience walk away because they have already spent so much time – if not liking him, at least understanding him. We're right there with his wife, Lydia (Newcomb, extraordinary in what could have been a cipher of a role), when her world starts to fall apart. Dumb and evil may be different, Dick Long says, but it doesn't make the damage hurt any less.

Although a few bits (the film is done in blackout sketch style) fall flat and a good ten minutes could be shaved off the running time with no visible damage, it's an impressive and irascible debut that rings true even when you're laughing too hard to hear it.

Just like the best of the 1980s actioneers, Nobody has just the right mix of brains, brawn, and gut-busting laughs.

As for the Austin-based Green, the director’s characteristically understated style is well-suited to this material. Joe recalls, in many ways, the filmmaker’s earliest features – "George Washington," "All the Real Girls," and "Undertow" – not to mention his heavily wooded last feature, "Prince Avalanche," films that capture a poetic sense of bewildered young people in the rural South.

For those who loved movies like "The Last Winter" or "Wendigo," Depraved is more of the same in the best possible way.