Post Mortem portrays the specter of dictatorship through the lens of one man's private hell.

Keyhole never comes together, but that's part of Maddin's creed. He makes movies about movies to express his love for movies, which is to say he makes movies about himself.

One development gets short-shifted: the onslaught of studios drowning out what made the Con so attractive in the first place.

American action movies are almost entirely defined by cutaways, blaring music cues and grunts. The Raid: Redemption, a hyper-energetic Indonesian martial arts movie, delivers an effective rebuke to that meek norm. Bones break, blood flows and swift, excessively complicated fight choreography puts virtually everything released in North America since "The Bourne Ultimatum" to instant shame.

The long take pulls you into the realism of the moment, heightening any sense of unease already established by the story. In Silent House, directors Chris Kentis and Laura Lau ("Open Water") exploit the hell out of that uneasiness and keep pushing its limits.

With its persistent inventiveness and a lack of unearned sentimentality, the movie provides an antidote to a lot of lazily produced dramas about death, American or otherwise.

The Snowtown Murders manages to become a compelling exercise that excels at making horrible acts look shockingly listless.

The Forgiveness of Blood examines the barriers of ritual and the passage from youth to adulthood in Albanian society with the perceptive detail of a grand literary feat. At the same time, it retains the simplicity of a parable.

Alternately mortified and charmed by the unhinged lifestyle, the film goofily celebrates the idea of a societal escape before drowning its idealism in a puddle of half-formed jokes.

Possibly the best war movie of the year.

The beautiful desolation of Bombay Beach makes it difficult to describe as a documentary. Alma Har'el's directorial debut takes a nonfiction setting and displays its haunting qualities in poetic terms.

Over time, Holland's approach pushes beyond despair and turns into a pure exercise in grim atmosphere, shifting from a story of staying alive to a closeup of a private hell.

You've never seen anything like Chico & Rita, simply because that jubilant palette and likeminded jazz soundtrack embraces its predictability with such vitality.

West, who demonstrated a penchant for extensive build-ups in "The House of the Devil" and "Trigger Man," continually makes it unclear if the inn actually harbors a ghost or if his heroine (Sara Paxton) has simply imagines it. Both she and her hilariously frazzled co-worker (Pat Healy of "Great World of Sound") want to believe in supernatural affairs for the thrill factor alone.

In each tense moment, Miss Bala has a lot to say in a few words.

Pummeling forward from its first diner-set fight scene to a sweeping final showdown on the beach, Haywire is a literal blast.

The Divide manages to transcend its numerous flaws while indulging them: No matter where it falters, the underlying purpose stays put.

Imagine "Harold and Maude" directed by Eric Rohmer with shades of film noir and doused in philosophical chatter enhanced by ample white wine. But Domain isn't pure formula, because the subversion of expectations is its centerpiece.

Admittedly lovely and heartfelt, Norwegian Wood is also hollow.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's mesmerizing Once Upon a Time in Anatolia plays like "Zodiac" meets "Police, Adjective."

If "Extremely Loud" came out in the weeks or months following 9/11, more audiences (and critics) might find an excuse to appreciate the way its soul-searching protagonist works through his grief. Ten years later, his struggle actually feels outrageously old-fashioned.

It's a frantic microcosm of life itself.

Pina is a beautiful, heartfelt ode and a delicious feast for the eyes, but not an essential work of art on its own terms.

It's no less of an accomplished performance than Hilary Swank's similar turn in "Boys Don't Cry" or newcomer Zoé Herán's delicate achievement as the lead in "Tomboy." Unfortunately, Albert Nobbs traps Close's sizable talent in a simplistic drama--not unlike Nobbs herself who winds up trapped in a restrictive period.

The most impressive thing about In the Land of Blood and Honey is that Jolie makes you feel it.

There's nothing slick or entertaining about the crumbling existence of Pomes' unsalvageable antiheroes.

With the exception of a few candid moments featuring James at home, Knuckle isn't particularly well-made, but there's an inherently fascinating quality to the material.

Can actors save a mediocre movie? In London River, they come close. Blethyn's frantic, sad naivete creates a fascinating contrast to Kouyaté's understated performance.

W.E. is less outright bad than underwhelming; if the director were unknown, it would hardly deserve notice. Like her first film, the 2008 "Filth and Wisdom," it suffers from countless storytelling flaws.

I had to see the new version twice to realize that there's so much to appreciate about this multilayered production.

With self destruction as destiny, Reitman has made the equivalent of a Roland Emmerich disaster movie writ small, an apocalyptic scenario internalized by a single person.

On the one hand, Outrage suffers from a cold removal from the events portrayed onscreen, mainly a series of arguments and gory acts of retribution. It's often a terrible bore. But the stylish execution renders many moments into imminently watchable pastiche.

With its subject still behind bars and the Russian government on the brink of reelecting Kremlin's United Russia party, the biggest triumph of Khodorkovsky is the case it makes for a sequel.

The Artist plays around with the distinction between silent and sound cinema, resulting in the superficial entertainment value of a high concept film school joke. But it's a charming and supremely gorgeous joke -- sometimes too clever for its own good, other times not clever enough, and always at least an attractive diversion.

In the movie's final shot, Jung's confidence crumbles and he looks supremely troubled, still uncertain of a world he once believed could be explained with textual prowess. Better than any analysis, his expression sums up the dangerous method at the heart of every Cronenberg movie.

Rampart is co-written by crime writer James Ellroy as a messy, disorienting noir, and shot by cinematographer Bobby Bukowski with an unsettling degree of realism.

The Descendants constantly hovers on the brink of a dark comedy. But it never takes the big plug. By treading carefully, Payne has created his warmest, most earnest work, if not his best.

As exercises in pulp go, this one yields a solid workout.

The Love We Make provides sufficient behind-the-scenes nuggets for diehard fans of McCartney and Maysles alike.

Padilha channeled national frustrations into zeitgeist entertainment. The follow-up, Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, has less success than the first installment in achieving that aim, but still keeps the snazzy combination of spectacle and polemics in check.

Neither goofy enough for camp status nor lackluster enough for extreme derision, Son of No One is just mediocre enough to be an easy target.

While the contradiction of punk rock parenthood may not have a solution, The Other F Word successfully has fun with the mystery.

The measured vérité style of Frederick Wiseman meets the visual polish of Terrence Malick in Dragonslayer, a fascinating slice of crude Americana from first-time director Tristan Patterson. However, it stands alone with an infectious hard rock attitude.

Dennis Farina's washed-up hustler in The Last Rites of Joe May is designed in the in the mold of a classic movie star tough guy, but the veteran character actor's performance also serves to disassemble it.

Although not exemplary, Janie Jones at least manages to give its tired scenario a sense of legitimacy.

Having laid out the scenario, Brandt drags it through the motions of a tired procedural.

Melancholia hovers in ambiguity with riveting aesthetic prowess.

Emmerich takes the story at face value and delivers a film unlike any of his others. That is to say, a boring one.

Of course, it might take time for Jim Loach to catch up with his father's track record; Oranges & Sunshine is a good place to start.

In Sundance terms, Like Crazy qualifies as this year's "Blue Valentine," but it's more observational about the details of a doomed relationship than relentlessly bleak like the aforementioned Derek Cianfrance movie.

The result is a subpar comic adventure that's nonetheless admirable for its restrained vision of Thompson in his early gestation period.

Catechism sometimes feels intentionally obscure, much like Rohal's last movie. It's essentially a hilariously brazen lark, which is reason enough to embrace it.

Elevate nails the mission, but not the message.

Like "Afterschool," Durkin's first feature explores the dangerous extremes of youth vulnerability.

With its bouncy soundtrack, deadpan humor and good-natured disposition, Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki's Le Havre is an endearing affair.

Despite its predictably cheery vibe, Being Elmo implies a certain darkness lingering beneath the surface of Clash's life.

The Spanish auteur has a good time with outrageous plot twists and offbeat sexual intrigue. However, Almodóvar appears unmotivated to even try holding it all together. Instead, he lets the mess pile up and enjoys it.

The younger Mann goes through the motions of a gritty murder mystery with plenty of technical proficiency but only a modicum of soul. The Mann touch is not only in the DNA of the director but in her movie, which inadvertently makes the case that atmosphere is more hereditary than innovation.

There are plenty of guts, but The Woman doesn't have enough to make its feminist rhetoric stick.

Estevez treats the drama with a straight-faced, utterly earnest approach with dual respect for the material and the audience's awareness of how it can go wrong. By playing it straight, The Way never goes off the deep end.

Artistically, however, the movie delivers on a surprisingly effective scale, no matter how Lonergan sees it. Alternately perceptive, subversive, tragic and profound.

Polanski struggles to make the material more cinematic, toying with clever mise-en-scene to showcase the mounting tensions. However, Carnage repeatedly suffers from an internal tension between the possibilities of two media at odds with each other.

Like the original, the most shocking aspect comes from the revelation that Six can actually tell a story.

Paranormal Activity 3 hardly adds anything new to the situation; instead, it pretends to fill a gap while basically just heaping on one calculated "boo!" after the other.

Deeply sorrowful and drenched in ambiguity, My Joy adopts a patient rhythm that departs from reality while studying it in depth.

As with "Shotgun Stories," Nichols assembles a tense portrait of blue-collar life, while deepening his thematic interests and working on a bigger scale. Burrowing into the subconscious of a damaged man, he delivers a modern American epic with extraordinary restraint.

For anyone frustrated with countless formulaic exercises that drain modern horror of fresh ideas, Tucker & Dale is a downright cathartic indictment that encourages comparison to the "Scary Movie" franchise. It's mostly a smart spoof that looks awfully dumb for a reason.

The action scenes in Machine Gun Preacher work fine on their own, but they cheapen a work that attempts to command great importance.

Weekend builds into a powerful encapsulation of an identity crisis over the course of three passionate days.

Ellen Barkin puts on a bold, candid performance in Cam Archer's Shit Year, but the enigmatic movie is composed of too many fragments to sustain her efforts.

Art History is essentially Swanberg's version of "Zach and Miri Make a Porno," and, within the larger context of his career, just as inconsequential.

The title suggests a dramatic Shakespearean twist, but Clooney's aims are much simpler. As he builds to a western showdown divorced from political specificity, the Manchurian-like manipulation turns Ides of March into an allegorical monster movie in which everyone's competing for the role of the monster and most people can't see it.

Director Bennett Miller has produced a warm and generally agreeable character study about the pratfalls of athletic institutions and the willingness to think outside the box.

The first half of I'm Glad My Mother's Alive effectively inhabits a child's mind in a manner that recalls Maurice Pialat's marvelous 1968 debut "The Naked Childhood."

While there's a casual dissonance to each twist in its winding plot that results in a disconnected and emotionally vapid experience, Detective Dee unquestionably achieves the escapism it intends.

Largely a cut-and-paste affair, although useful for that very reason; it provides a glaring reminder that scary movies have evolved, both in terms of style and expectations, but the evolution isn't worth the effort.

An earnest, sometimes bland and unsophisticated look at Corinne's undulating relationship to spirituality in general and Christian dogma in particular. But it's also a surprisingly well-made character study outside of its specific theme.

Hiding behind a shaggy beard and a stoner grin, Paul Rudd plays an amusingly oblivious shlub in Our Idiot Brother, but the movie can't keep up with his comic inspiration.

The Tiniest Place calls to mind Patricio Guzmán's brilliant "Nostalgia for the Light," which focuses on the remnants of Chilean atrocities strewn about the Atacama Desert. Huezo, however, relies more on irony, juxtaposing the wartime setting with storybook images, acknowledging her distance from the events in question.

Anne Hathaway's faux British accent might be the first obvious conceit in One Day, but not its most cumbersome. That distinction belongs to the eponymous structure, a claustrophobic device that follows a pair of best friends over the course of a 22-year period, but only on many versions of July 15th.

Well cast and undeniably attuned to the nuances of human behavior, Amigo nevertheless suffers from simple dramatic shorthand.

For everything that Mozart's Sister imagines, it leaves much more up to imagination.

A four-and-a-half hour period piece littered with interconnected events spread across many years, it moves forward with fits of intrigue, interspersed with casual developments that deaden its momentum and call into question its monumental running time.

Despite its meandering plot, Bellflower presents its doom-laden vision as an astonishingly distinctive state of mind, arguing that the end of one self-made world always marks the start of a new one.

Santana was cast prior to making her gender transition and had never acted before. Her personal experience brings such legitimacy that she would probably succeed in the role even if she sucked at line reading. Fortunately, she doesn't.

It's hard to believe that The Devil's Double doesn't intend to be a put-on. Despite a real-life basis of its plot, Lee Tamahori's fierce depiction of hedonistic Saddaam Hussein spawn Uday Hussein relegates the character to a farcical cartoon.

It's a pretty experiment with no apparent results, but plenty of marketability.

Unquestionably stands above the market standard for middlebrow comedies, but it repeatedly approaches greatness and stands down, beholden to forces quite possibly beyond the directors' control.

Steve James's The Interrupters runs long, but earns its heft.

As the portrait of a relationship meltdown involving two eccentric creative types prone to self-doubt, July's sophomore feature bears a strong resemblance to husband Mike Mills's upcoming "Beginners," although July's version of the story has a more experimental edge.

Only Boyle's unstoppable tendency to mouth off sustains the routine plot, but McDonagh pushes the limits of what he can make Gleeson say without making the crude nature of his asides overwhelm their comic potential.

An impressive feat that relies on distraction rather than fancy effects, it's easy to get swept up and forget that it's a very sweaty retread that's been done many times before.

Sarah's need to save her brother provides the initial raison d'être, but with the mystery is resolved early on Sarah's Key turns into a flimsy meditation on grief.

By favoring mood over plot, "Myth" explores what it feels like to transition into youth adulthood and face harsher truths.

The reason to care about Life, Above All doesn't stem from its bleeding-heart plot...The reason to care is newcomer Khomotso Manyaka, who nimbly shoulders a role that places her front and center in nearly every scene.

While indisputably beautiful and affecting in parts, "Snow Flower" is dominated by tame dramatic ingredients that never fully gel.

Barker's screenplay demonstrates a conviction that its genre can command great importance, allowing it to transcend the easy shocks associated with the exploitation movie experience and create an entirely fresh rhythm.

Even as it makes the facile Palin-for-president case, fence-sitters will find themselves non-plussed and existing Palin haters won't budge.