The performances are spot on and so is the film's ever growing sense of horror.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the intellectual action flick of your dreams.

Forty-four years after his exciting debut feature "Fists in the Pocket," Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio continues his late-career renaissance with the passionate, beautifully crafted, period melodrama Vincere.

Aggressively impressionistic and unapologetically spiritual, Malick's long-gestating meditation on the meaning of life is, if nothing else, a singularly original and deeply personal film - a growing rarity in American cinema.

The filmmakers have created a wrenching piece of work that allows the viewer to draw his own conclusions-and should make anyone of whatever political persuasion think about exactly what they mean when claiming to "support the troops."

Epic in scope, and featuring a powerful lead performance by Williams, Reichardt does justice to the myth of the wagon train settlers and makes a Western every bit as beautiful and poetic as Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven," and thankfully a bit more energetic.

Jeon received the Best Actress at Cannes for her wrenching performance. She's the first Korean to receive an acting award at this Festival.

The director of quirky fare with a rabid cult-like following has made a charming, magical and really funny new work about two unique young kids discovering love over one unforgettable summer, and it's the director's most accessible movie yet.

Director Rian Johnson's resulting film, a cornfield neo-noir, is the coolest, most-confident sci-fi flick since 2006's "Children of Men."

The Descendants is that rare bird, moving, enlightening, funny and unapologetically human. It's one of the year's best pictures, one to savor and think about.

There's more to it than a black-and-white political conclusion, and the laundry list of California documentary heroes in the credits suggests this film is humanist before it's agenda driven.

Wiseman's approach will surprise none of his veteran viewers: no voiceover, no real narrative, just a pure evocation of a place that acts both as a specific site and a microcosm of a larger sphere.

Equally nostalgic and fresh-faced, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench is a bohemian musical that owes as much to Cassavetes "Shadows" as it does the French musicals of the '30s.

British filmmaker James Marsh recreates this tale of an ambitious primate language study through traditional face-the-camera interviews, clever graphics and dramatic recreations.

It’s a marvelous document of a still vital musician whose unbending indifference to pop fashion has proven him more creatively durable than any other figure from the golden ’60s moment that gave birth to his career.

It's a mood piece more than a conventional documentary and it should do comfortably above average business on the theatrical documentary circuit, particularly given its location on the list of Oscar nominated documentaries.

This could have been a slick little thriller. Instead, it evolves into the unfolding of an epic tragedy.

Magical and imaginative, this eye-popping masterpiece from director Martin Scorsese will transport audiences to a place they won't believe.

As in "L'Humanité" and "Twentynine Palms," the director presents a cogent study of emotional excess with a sure handed control that harkens back to Robert Bresson.

Joseph Cedar's Footnote is a wry, wise little film that revels in the cataclysmic import of a life's most ostensibly trivial details.

The kids, especially Néron and Nélisse are irresistible and supporting players are well-cast. Human dramas like Monsieur Lazhar are a rare breed these days and this exceptional example is one to be cherished.

A timely and timeless look at the intersecting lives, fortunes and fates of Jews, Christians and Muslims in the fragile Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa, Israel.

With a tour-de-force performance from James Franco and an imaginative shooting style that relies on two cameras and inventive angles, what could have been static and deadly dull comes blazingly to life in this powerful and compelling story of one man's will to survive.

For all lovers of old style animation it should build up the same cultish following as "Triplets."

The romantic fable of love, marriage, art and second chances may not add up to all that much but the journey is exquisite.

An industry that's lost 90% of its silent films and which has consistently demonstrated - montage lip-service aside - a staggering lack of interest in its own history can hardly be trusted to transfer films from format to format and keep them intact, let alone in good shape.

Offers the kind of intimate, naturalistic look at human interaction that recalls the heyday of Eric Rohmer.

A feast for the eyes, Mysteries of Lisbon deals with 19th century passions, love affairs and escapades on a broad canvas. It might have made a lovely TV series, parsed out over several weeks, but at one sitting it's a challenge.