There's not much story here, but the characters are substantial: a single mother (nicely played by Juliette Binoche) who runs a local avant-garde puppet theater and is preoccupied with such matters as a downstairs tenant who refuses to pay rent or leave, her neglected but mainly cheerful son, and his Taiwanese nanny, a filmmaker in her spare time.

Constrained by formula but executed with heart and humor.

A caustic satire masquerading as an action-adventure. Or maybe it's Hollywood escapism masquerading as satire.

This is intelligent, committed, and politically provocative, though its narrative puzzle box may prompt you to throw up your hands and let Exxon go on running the world.

Effective advocacy film about the genocide in Darfur.

Stylistic excess, comedy, and romance often help make extremes of cruelty and horror function as cathartic metaphor, and all three figure, not always successfully, in this sequel.

Fast-paced and intelligent documentary.

This documentary on the history of gospel music can't measure up to George T. Nierenberg's colorful "Say Amen, Somebody" (1982), but it's so jammed with great archival performances, most of them included in their entirety, that it's worth seeing.

You won't come out of it indifferent, and even if it winds up enraging you (I could have done without most of the ending myself), it nonetheless commands attention.

The opening half-hour--the burglary of a jewelry store, filmed in meticulous detail--is as good as its inspiration in The Asphalt Jungle, but the film turns moralistic and sour in the last half, when the thieves fall out.

Isabelle Huppert gets a respite from her usual ice queen roles with this shattering psychological drama about the danger of children staying too long in the nest.

A corny but sincere weeper written by Jonathan Marc Feldman, directed by Thomas Carter, and shot mainly in Prague.

The postmodernist evocations of the past (roughly the 50s through the 80s) are a charming mishmash, delivered with wit and style.

It certainly fulfills all the conventions of the genre: sci-fi premise, noir stylings, martial arts, snarky dialogue.

Actor John Turturro follows his charming and colorful travel documentary "Rehearsal for a Sicilian Tragedy" (2009) with this assured and freewheeling look at the music of Naples (2010).

After a sluggish half hour, this well-crafted adventure kicks into high gear and never lets up.

Dramatically objectifies the unfair trade practices that help keep Africa mired in poverty.

The social criticism is as unforced as the humor (and the references to "The Conversation") in this 1998 conspiracy thriller, whose spirited action is balanced by an almost contemplative attitude toward surveillance phobias and the movie cliches they've spawned.

It reminded me of "Pump Up the Volume" in many ways.

This is jammed with cliches but completely engrossing, in the manner of a movie ardently in love with its own bullshit.

Perry benefits from the fire, heft, velocity, and lyricism of the language, but he also updates the material and makes it work onscreen, eliciting powerhouse performances from an ensemble of actresses.

With his delicate mix of sick humor and compassion, Goldthwait is that rare comic writer who can legitimately be compared to Lenny Bruce.

The movie's realism is unimpeachable, though American cops might be stunned by the idea of a half-dozen detectives being assigned to the murder of an anonymous floater.

This is affecting and thematically pointed but much more pat than the situation that precedes it, in which two different realities must coexist uneasily on the same screen.

This elliptical, poetic movie is filled with yearning, humor, and warmth.

What might have been a routine coming-out story is enriched by Wright's accomplished and honest performance, Markowitz's straightforward dialogue, and Joseph White's cinematography of the majestic surf and melancholy sunsets off Malibu.

First-time director Chen Shi-Zheng shows great sensitivity to the pressure and isolation felt by Chinese brains at American universities, and the relationship between Liu and Quinn provides a rare look at the intellectual serfdom of graduate study.

The Scandinavian moodiness of the first half gives way to a series of jolting set pieces in the second.