Time of the Wolf is tough medicine, to be sure. Yet, the movie builds to a note of cautious optimism that is as stirring as it is unexpected.

The pleasure of La Moustache is that it doesn't feel the need to explain itself at every turn. Part absurdist comedy about the institution of marriage, part paranoid Kafkaesque fantasy, it's a minor-key reverie on the way our own lives can sometimes feel alien to us.

Superb documentary.

Although parents of small children are advised to give the film an advance look, Holes may nudge older kids toward that most ancient of after-school distractions: reading.

Not even Altman's loose-limbed shooting style can redeem Cookie’s Fortune, a bafflingly pointless farce that belongs more properly in the vaudeville halls than on the director's sporadically lustrous résumé.

King Leopold's Ghost is an often infuriating (and excruciating) film to watch, but one that gets to the root of the despair that now plagues so much of the African continent.

As sleek, clever and cocky as its anti-heroic protagonist, Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), a hard-driving lobbyist for the tobacco industry who can turn the most unpromising PR quagmire to his own advantage with a few well-turned lies posing as rational argument.

Aniston plays her depressed character with enough conviction to guarantee that practically every scene will be stolen out from under her by minor characters, among them a pricelessly funny Zooey Deschanel as a Retail Rodeo employee who vents her rage and frustration on the customers.

Intolerable Cruelty seems the kind of movie that results from two essentially erudite, anarchic talents playing down to the masses.

Leconte, as always, means to explore the gray areas between sexual espionage and love, and there remains something powerful about the fantasy of being listened to, without judgment.

This is also an acidly funny work, even if the humor is that of a man who drinks to stave off the pain and madness of sobriety. In his finest performance since "Drugstore Cowboy," Dillon plays Chinanski with funereal grandiosity.

Like this summer's other slapstick cause célèbre, "Pineapple Express," it's a comedy with as high or higher a body count as the movies it purports to be parodying, and the problem isn't the violence per se but rather the fact that neither movie ever finds a satisfactory balance between tongue-in-cheek and guts-in-hand.

None of Tracker's near-fatal missteps in execution or conception, however, prevents this superbly acted film, in the end, from becoming an engrossing study of race and history in Australia, or making the powerful indictment it intends to make.

Between them, first-time screenwriter Carl Ellsworth and director Wes Craven don't come up with a single clever way to generate suspense, and the movie's onboard atmosphere is so phony.

In this lovely film, writer-director Khientse Norbu (The Cup) shifts smoothly between a kind of Buddhist "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and depicting the bonds that form among Dondup and his companions.

Crossing the Line, like its subject, remains a fascinating and frustrating enigma -- a declassified government report still marred by redacted passages.

It's Walken who's most impressive.

Mahieux, who is superb, methodically paint Peppino as a man for whom solitude is torture.

Slow-starting but ultimately invigorating debut film by Craig Highberger.

Poignant portrait.

Deep Blue runs just shy of 90 minutes, and this pathetic landlubber of a movie critic must confess to growing restless here and there, an example of how quickly awestruck wonder can turn to apathy.

Light on visceral thrills and heavy on the quotidian rhythms of life on the force, Xavier Beauvois' police procedural owes more to "Prime Suspect" and "Hill Street Blues" than it does to any film genre.

Penn's own gifts as an actor seem, in turn, to bring out the best in Nicholson, as well as the rest of the cast.

You begin to wonder whether a story is ever going to show up. When it does, it's worth the wait for a long and well-turned set piece coordinating the heist, and two lovely flips in the plot.

Accomplished and invigorating debut feature from Colombian-born director Patricia Cardoso that took both the Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize at Sundance this year.

By all current standards it's a startlingly ingenuous film.

In his capable, yet only mildly exciting, adaptation of Charles Dickens’ third novel, Douglas McGrath (Emma) keeps reminding us that what we’re seeing is theater. This feels gratuitous.

It makes an eloquent case against the death penalty, especially when imposed on the mentally incompetent. For if one thing is clear by the time she went to the execution chamber, it's that Wuornos is barking mad, her eyes wild and vengeful, yet also, on some level, already dead.

The worthy text of Mad Hot Ballroom is undercut by the real source of its energy, the heat of competition and the pure joy of winning.

Little here will surprise cineastes but much of it will charm them.

Everyone plays their role (and the roles within their roles) to perfection, and writer-director Mamet keeps us guessing what's what and who's who right up until the final minute.

What counts here aren't the girls, but the boys--and all the sweet and clumsy ways in which they make love to one another without once shedding their clothes.

Warm, playful and inventive, this tale of an elephant with a spirit as generous as his waistline comes juiced with the genially goofy animation of the folks who brought us "Ice Age" (and, less memorably, "Robots") coupled with a respectful doffing of the cap to Geisel’s exuberantly wacky visual style.

Dazzles with rare performance footage.

Rozema seems determined to defrill the Austen trend and charge it with a fiercer sort of femininity.

Anderson and co-writer Lyn Vaus have a wonderfully light touch with dialogue both comic and sad, and Davis is the perfect mirror for the movie's gracefully shifting moods, and its soulful bossa nova score.

Gluck, an oral historian, has the magpie eye of a born collector of objects, people and ideas, a cheeky appreciation for the ironies life drops on us, and enough of an open mind to let her odyssey lead her where it may.

The entire cast is in fine form (Omari Hardwick, as Maye's maybe-suitor, pushes the sexual heat through the roof), but White's blistering performance sears the screen.

The results are charming if rarely thrilling, with outstanding performances from Joan Allen and William H. Macy.

Far too complex and provoking.

Though it's not much more than an haute-bourgeois morality play about the inadequacy of bourgeois morals, that's plenty in view of the small but terrific ensemble at Fellowes' disposal.

What he’s (Jonze) ended up with strikes me as one of the most empathic and psychologically acute of all movies about childhood -- a "Wizard of Oz" for the dysfunctional-family era.

Both visually and emotionally, a panoramic picture; Mehta wields a master's hand as she weaves together vistas of urban and pastoral India with thoughts on the nature of man as it keeps cycling out in the specifics of history.

Malkovich and Dafoe play off each other with a devilish hamminess.

Carnage is a film about the violence of living, of finding and keeping a place in the world, and though it's a work of preternaturally sophisticated philosophy from a director who's barely out of her 20s, this beautiful, bizarre movie could function quite well without its capable screenplay.

There are a couple of absurdly nonchalant song-and-dance sequences, though mostly, Michel Legrand's sumptuous music swells in anticipation of showstoppers that never happen.

Proves that it's possible for a movie to be reckless and adventurous merely by being sedate, unhurried and contemplative.

Babenco's kindly, concerned eye seeks out the humanity in even the worst of his characters, and by the time he re-creates the massacre, with shocking power and force, one has been equally captivated and appalled at the world he shows. The result is one of the richest prison movies in years.

Like "Heat," Collateral will doubtless go down in film history as the noir marvel it undoubtedly is, but I don't quite buy its characters, and I came out of the theater still wondering what it had to say. Me, I have a soft spot for that old ’60s radical.

Everything about the movie seems excessive to the material. What should have been a small, independent feature without marquee casting -- the story's protagonists, after all, are meant to be the kind of people nobody ever notices.

One of those movie equivalents of a freeway pileup -- it's a mess, at once insistently watchable and a total dead end.

Hickenlooper can't contain Bingenheimer's incredibly generous spirit -- so generous that, while obviously uncomfortable, he lets the director into his most private moments, including the scattering of his mother's ashes.

Boasts one of the most entertaining and bitterly astute screenplays I've had the pleasure of listening to in a while, with its lengthening spirals of deceit, mendacity and one-upmanship, and its elegant linguistic dances around difficult truths.

Sketches was produced for PBS's American Masters series, but it's in theaters now and deserves to be seen on the largest possible screen.

Belongs to the small rank of hip-hop films that actually have something to say -- and that say it with both style and intellectual bite.

A tedious exercise in ethical hand wringing.

A viscerally effective thriller ends up a repugnant exercise in moral relativism, delivered with the grandstanding swagger of the self-styled provocateur.

Paula Gray wrote the script (it was her UCLA senior thesis), and if there are gooey spots, there's also nicely turned, lived-in dialogue and a gentle affection for all her characters.

There’s no denying the sharpness of his (Jason Kohn) insights into a society that hasn’t so much collapsed as reconstituted itself around venality, profiteering and rage.

Compulsively watchable, with its fair share of effective sledgehammer shocks; it just isn't very good.

The movie's wistful tone leavened with breaks into farce recalls Elia Suleiman's superbly controlled "Chronicle of a Disappearance."

Jeffs' meticulous framing nicely counterpoints all the messy turmoil, and her screenplay flows with the cadences of life -- its awkward eruptions and long, hurtful silences -- but she never pulls you deep enough into her characters.

Nearly three and a half hours in length, but owing to its freedom of movement, the film feels weightless.

What makes Sunshine unique, what rewards a first viewing and lives in the mind long thereafter, is that Szabo has attempted to place Judaism and Christianity on a continuum that is both historically truthful and highly personal.

It is funny, sad and beautiful. And it's right on time.

It’s a relaxed study of greatness, of exquisite physical comedy, of how’d-he-do-that stuntwork, of a vigorous cinema artist who saw new and enduring possibilities for his medium.

The kids absolutely win your heart, but there's something off-putting in the film's lazy juxtaposition of unexamined Negro dysfunction tropes (absent fathers, violent streets) against an idyllic Africa tended by white benevolence.

Rachel Boynton's painfully timely film is actually a full-court tragedy - the sorry tale of a battle won and a war lost; of a country decimated by 500 years of colonialism and poverty; of globalization and America's losing battle to export market democracy to the developing world.

Stephen Frears has had more downs than ups of late, but I would never have thought the man responsible for "My Beautiful Laundrette" and "The Grifters" capable of stooping to pap as pappy as this unbearably chipper take on the real-life story of Laura Henderson.

Zoe is lively and an astonishing athlete, but it's Jeannie who gives this film resonance.

By not romanticizing its despairing yet humanistic outlook, The Motel presents a moment-by-moment emotional recap of almost anyone's formative years while simultaneously issuing a stinging reminder on the impossibility of fully outgrowing adolescence's uncertain searching.

Enlivened by journalist Avner Bernheimer's delicately witty script and some lively ensemble performances under the direction of Eytan Fox, the film offers a haunting portrait of a generation forced to risk their lives in the service of military goals they're far from totally committed to.

So oppressive is Peggy's world -- Year of the Dog is the best evocation I've seen of how much worse it is to be depressed in a sunny climate -- that when she finally loses control, it feels more like catharsis than madness.

It's amazing that anyone still thinks this kind of shit can fly.

Remarkable energy and wit, and is probably the most purely enjoyable entry in Kaufman's suboeuvre of literary excursions.

Less outright terrifying than under-the-skin shivery, this psychological thriller from sui generis Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa breaks nearly all the rules -- including those of narrative logic.

Sucks -- because it's a frenetic bore that insists on its audience's adoration while making no demands upon their intelligence.

Refreshingly complex teen drama.

Cast for fun, and the whimsy is enjoyable both for its parody of heavy-handed "relevant" updates of the play.

Of course, a Batman movie is nothing without a Bruce Wayne, and, by a mile, Bale is the best of a lot that has ranged from the square-jawed slapstick of Adam West to the more dedbonair stylings of Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney.

Nathan Lopez, armed with a diva's slinky cat walk and determination, is absolutely fantastic as Maximo.

A warm, conciliatory entertainment.

A reunion movie, and while it's often very funny, it has none of the self-satisfied piety or strenuous jokiness of "The Big Chill." Its mood shifts between defiant exuberance and wistful contemplation, but it's never mawkish.

Country singer and sometime actor Tim McGraw excels as the bitter, besotted ex-Panther who can't cut his kid enough slack to follow his own game plan.

Though The Cup is lovely to look at, it has none of the ceremonial rigor mortis of Scorsese's "Kundun."

Taut and well-acted, faltering only when the filmmaker loses faith in the power of his story.

Dean Parisot's direction of the funny, affectionately satirical script by David Howard and Robert Gordon is crisp and assured.

All shiny surfaces and clever moves designed to blur the lines between fantasy and reality and uncover the kinkiness that lies within us all.

Funny and light, all the more potent for seeming so effortless.

Made with local talent by a South African director, Tsotsi is lifted above the current slew of movies portraying Africa as a helpless victim of its many problems, redeemable only by sympathetic white Westerners (as in John Boorman’s sermonizing 2004 drama "In My Country," and to a lesser degree "The Constant Gardener"), by its vigorously transcendent spirit of self-help.

This delightful riff on the identity crisis of a young Jewish Argentine man deserves both the Grand Jury prize and Best Actor awards it won at last year's Berlin Film Festival.

The film is a triumph of casting: In a role that is often about the sheer steamrolling force of his character’s personality, Abishek Bachchan’s attention to detail makes Guru accessible rather than intimidating, admirable but also plausible.

Kusama leads with feminist empowerment, but her sucker punch is a sappy romance.

Atlantic City casino boss played with pointedly corrupt amusement by John Hurt, doesn't merely oversee hell but gets a real kick out of the damned.

Kline, Debbie Reynolds (as his mom) and Tom Selleck are all wonderful. But it's the always amazing Cusack, playing the baffled Emily, who steals the film in a smooth transition from wide-eyed fiancée to possibly wronged woman, a role she essays with a perfect balance of wounded-ness and comedic aplomb.

Andrucha Waddington's admirably pretentious epic of woman in nature makes the rare attempt to impart a purely visual experience

Succeeds in articulating the fluid values and constituent parts of the "culture" even as that culture's subjects are at best mildly articulate.

This unusually classical story from experimental Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai flows along, suffused in a quiet beauty flecked with sober foreboding.