Damage, like "Last Tango in Paris" and "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," is one of those rare movies that is about sexuality, not sex; about the tension between people, not "relationships"; about how physical love is meaningless without a psychic engine behind it. Stephen and Anna are wrong to do what they do in "Damage," but they cannot help themselves. We know they are careening toward disaster. We cannot look away.

This is an uncommonly intelligent film, smart and amusing too, and anyone who thinks it is not faithful to Austen doesn't know the author but only her plots.

A sober, even low-key documentary about how the American death penalty system is broken and probably can’t be fixed.

While Friedkin will always be heralded primarily for the towering twin achievements of “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection,” this is a more than respectable farewell.

This is a rare fight movie in which we don't want to see either fighter lose. That brings such complexity to the final showdown that hardly anything could top it - but something does, and Warrior earns it.

I Will Follow doesn't tell a story so much as try to understand a woman. Through her, we can find insights into the ways we deal with death.

This is a sometimes wrenching and draining film, but it’s also a powerful and ultimately deeply moving tribute to a group of good and decent men who have been emotionally and, in some cases, physically wounded by war but refuse to surrender.

I like this movie. More important, I like Mike Birbiglia in it. Whether he has a future in stand-up I cannot say, but he has a future as a monologist and actor.

The kind of parable that encourages us to re-evaluate the good old days and take a fresh look at the new world we so easily dismiss as decadent.

Aronofsky brings a new urgency to the drug movie by trying to reproduce, through his subjective camera, how his characters feel, or want to feel, or fear to feel.

Separate Lies reminded me of Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors"... seemingly about the portioning of blame. It is actually about the burden of guilt, which some can carry so easily while for others, it is intolerable.

The movie felt long to me, and there were some stretches during which I was less than riveted. Is it possible that there wasn't enough Sendak story to justify a feature-length film?

To describe the plot is to miss the point. Fallen Angels takes the materials of the plot -- the characters and what they do -- and assembles them like a photo montage. At the end, you have impressions, not conclusions.

Animals is a stark, brilliant, uncompromising, beautifully acted piece of work that deserves to be mentioned with “Panic in Needle Park” and “Requiem for a Dream” as a cautionary tale about drug addiction that doesn’t glamorize but also steers clear of proselytizing.

Aubrey Plaza is a sensation as Ingrid, who is alternately charming and sad and pathetic and absolutely insane. Plaza has a unique and magnetic screen presence that creates great empathy, even when she’s portraying a mostly off-putting character.

A disquieting film about testing faith.

It's so clever that finally that's all it is: clever.

Told as a melodrama and romance, not docudrama, and that makes it all the more effective.

"Willem Dafoe is Max Schreck." I put quotes around that because it's not just a line for a movie ad but the truth: He embodies the Schreck of "Nosferatu" so uncannily that when real scenes from the silent classic are slipped into the frame, we don't notice a difference.

Slight and sometimes wearisome.

In its quiet, dark, claustrophobic way, this is one of the best films of the year.

In a prison filled with vivid, Dickensian characters, several stand out. There is, for example, the unlikely couple of Lady Di (Rodrigo Santoro), tall and muscular, and No Way (Gero Camilo), a stunted little man. They are the great loves of each other's lives.

This is a rare thriller that's as much character study as sound and fury.

We believe every frame of this performance, whether Harry is an emaciated figure in the ring in the concentration camp, a formidable opponent as a pro fighter in America or an older man who seems to have found some measure of peace in his life, though the horrific memories will never die.

It stands with integrity and breaks our hearts.

The Tenant's not merely bad -- it's an embarrassment. If it didn't have the Polanski trademark, we'd probably have to drive miles and miles and sit in a damp basement to see it.

Alexander's performance makes the film possible to watch without unbearable heartbreak, because she is brave and decent in the face of the horror. And the last scene, in which she expresses such small optimism as is still possible, is one of the most powerful movie scenes I've ever seen.

Although Clockers is... a murder mystery, in solving its murder, it doesn't even begin to find a solution to the system that led to the murder. That is the point.