I expected this to open out into another loud, thumping thriller. Instead it remains quiet and focused, exploring the couple's frayed relationship and the economic divide that separates the husband from his captor.

A persuasively feminine coming-of-age story.

Evelyn Glennie has worked with everyone from Bjork to Brazilian samba groups and also gives solo concerts, and the best segments simply show her at work in her mid-30s, explaining what she does.

Baier's interweaving of documentary-style sequences with poetic, dreamlike imagery underscores the competition between Loic's harsh external circumstance and his lyrical internal yearnings for a better life.

Clever and unsettling.

Like so many satires in the Strangelove mold, this never comes close to working as a story, but its lampoon of U.S. imperialism and military privatization is so bracingly obnoxious I didn't really care.

Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa switches gears from supernatural horror to poignant social satire.

The tone of this 1980 feature is too muddled for it to be really memorable, but it's impressively slick, with intimations of the adult decadence themes that informed Roger Corman's Poe films of the 60s.

It’s a gothic horror film that significantly benefits from its B-movie makings, going hard with the blood and gore, which only seems possible because of its lack of color. And while it’s by no means perfect, it does hint at Coppola’s capabilities, which would later captivate many.

The women, many in their 70s and 80s, are still tough and proud--and nursing grudges that go back decades, something Leitman plays up by crosscutting between rivals' accounts.

Despite Scorsese's efforts, there just isn't much to look at, and the film plays less like a movie than an illustrated record album.

A graceful, understated sense of period allows the behavior of the characters in this love story to be unusually nuanced, making their experiences seem uncontrived as well as archetypal.

As an interweave of crosscut miniplots, this isn't nearly as interesting or as pleasurable as Jeremy Podeswa's recent "The Five Senses."

A pretty impressive horror film.

The conventional ghost-appeasement scenario isn't very suspenseful, which may be part of the reason it's so gripping.

More tart than sweet, this contemporary fairy tale provides a worthy vehicle for the fearless Christina Ricci.

The beguiling creature design--from minotaur to dragon, sea serpent to one-footed dwarf--and 3D effects heighten the illusion of a storybook coming alive, while the rousing sea adventure drives home Lewis's Christian ethos better than either of the previous entries.

The old-fashioned theme of disaster as an existential test of character still works.

Prior to its hyperbolic final act, this is one of Robert Altman's most skillful and least bombastic features in some time.

Flawless comic timing and vivid imagination power this rollicking sequel to "Jumanji."

Gordon is so visually and stylistically inventive and the actors are so skillful that you aren't likely to lose interest.

An absorbing and compelling account of a historical episode that should be better known.

Directed by Louie Psihoyos, this well-intentioned documentary exposes the harvesting of dolphins by Japanese fishermen, yet its theatrics suggest a cross between reality TV and "Mission: Impossible."

With a distinctively middle-aged zest, Carpenter retools even the hopeless cliche requiring action heroes to spout bad puns while dispatching bad guys; his eminently stylish movie proves that new blood can flow from an old vein.

Director Cedric Kahn, Laurence Ferreira Barbosa, and Gilles Marchand collaborated on the well-honed script, derived from a Georges Simenon novel. The film works well with quiet tensions, but becomes less convincing and interesting once it moves beyond them.

This runs 192 minutes and has very few jokes, but there are many references to Citizen Kane to put us in the right frame of mind.

The astronauts playfully mug for the camera, and the footage is spectacular, from a fiery liftoff montage to familiar but lovely shots of the earth from space to the moon's mysterious gray surface. But it's telling that a description of the problems of defecating in zero gravity is more interesting than astronauts' trite musings on “out of this world” views, and the ahistorical editing is occasionally irritating.

Despite the usual amounts of gore, this is a surprisingly tender, ambiguous, and sexy film in which Romero's penchant for social satire is for once restricted to local and modest proportions.