Freaks is a wild ride, but it's not the monster-trip some say it is. It is macabre and disturbing, but Browning chose to humanize the deformed characters at the movie's shadowy center, not to demonize them.

If there are to be gangster pictures, let them be like The Public Enemy, hard-boiled and vindictive almost to the point of burlesque.

A substantial film of unexpected emotional force. And when at a certain point it seems to slip the bonds of this world and take a leap of faith into an almost mythological dimension, it breathlessly takes us along for that memorable ride.

What happens to Charley, the film posits, the bad and the good, is not so much the fault of specific individuals but of the indifferent dead ends built into America's despairing culture of the underclass. Your heart goes out to this striving, yearning young man, and that's a tribute to the fine filmmaking on display.

The result is a wonderfully humorous take on a seldom-broached subject.

For Huppert, most celebrated for her uncompromising severity in films like "Elle" and "The Piano Teacher," the movie is an opportunity to cut gloriously loose; no less than Claire herself, she seems to be enjoying her holiday.

Even Hansen-Løve’s characteristically light, unassuming touch feels like a playful rejoinder to the weight of the Bergman mystique, a refusal to let him dictate the terms of the argument.

In its gently atmospheric camerawork and nicely underplayed moments between Mike and Chris, Resolution manages to keep its eerier moments surprising and its emotional life arresting.

Aida’s Secrets movingly embodies the traumas that, at war’s end and long after, are inseparable from liberation.

Whatever you think of “Barbie,” the mere existence of this smart, funny, conceptually playful, sartorially dazzling comic fantasy speaks to the irreverent wit and meta-critical sensibility of its director.

It's not the kind of work that wins awards, but without Cruise's intensity almost willing our interest in Spielberg's unrelentingly dark world, Minority Report wouldn't have nearly as much life as it does.

Zagar, judiciously adapting the book with Daniel Kitrosser, submerges the audience into their world from the outset, presenting a fluid stream of bittersweet and vivid episodes from the family’s life that gradually build into something profound.

The screenwriter, Nicole Taylor, and the director, Tom Harper, compose their story in clean, stirring melodic lines that they return to again and again, treating Rose-Lynn’s many setbacks — as well as her small, crucial steps toward growth and self-discovery — like subtle variations on a refrain.

In some ways, it reminded me of the final "Seinfeld" episode. As much as I laughed throughout, I kept wondering what was with all the emotional lessons.

[An] excellent documentary.

For those who do enjoy being smacked around by the ocean, for those who thrill to the romance and hype of extreme surfing and dig the outsider aspect of this rarefied culture or at least its marketed cool, this film will likely be their ticket to ride a board by proxy.

There’s something oddly appealing in witnessing this dutiful, besieged parent make do with nothing to offer but himself, wherever that takes him.

Boy & the World is a brightly colored, often charming film that juxtaposes simple, hand-drawn animation with kaleidoscopic computer-generated patterns.

Directors Bryan Carberry and Clay Tweel stick with this story long enough to emotionally deepen the proceedings and show us how the struggle changes lives in profound ways no one could have anticipated.

The cast’s rumble and spark are draw enough, but there’s also Chris Menges’ textured urban cinematography and Rosso’s empathetic direction, like neorealism rewired and amplified.

Room 237 becomes not a film about "The Shining" or even a film about film. Rather, it is an examination of the nature of obsession, about how we are capable of convincing ourselves — and possibly others — that just about anything might be true.

The Eternal Daughter is haunting, as all the best ghost stories are. The best love stories too.

The film’s Lynchian surrealism and time-jumping adventurousness, although occasionally hobbled by narrative digressions, are lifted up by the two leads.

The most frankly sensual movie in memory. Winner of five Cesars, the French Oscar, including best picture and best actress for its luminous star, Marina Hands, it has found the soul of the celebrated D.H. Lawrence novel.

Here, it seems to be saying, was an extraordinary human being who, by offering the gift of his time and attention, couldn’t help but profoundly affect those he met. To watch this movie is to encounter him anew — not in the flesh, but in nearly every other way that matters.

The sly achievement of The Forty-Year-Old Version is to turn a critical eye on the very idea of success (by whose standards?), and to ponder exactly what level of compromise is acceptable to secure it.

His endless string of demeaning apartment-doorway interactions with a convincing cross-section of hungry customers is darkly funny, even if it never snowballs into the “After Hours”-type obstacle course one might hope.

In stripping genre ornamentation away to get to what brings people together in stark, lonely, and in this case, mighty cold circumstances, Finnish filmmaker Juho Kuosmanen (“The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki”) has achieved something genuinely unlikely, and quietly renewing about what a love story can be.

The better one knows Stanton’s life and his movies, the more the long silences and gently meandering rhythms of Lucky resonate.

While 7 Prisoners doesn’t pack many surprises, it is remarkably well drawn, featuring gripping performances and a vividly squalid setting.

Assayas displays an intimate, informal style and a sharp sense of proportion that allows him to have some fun, score some points and then wrap it all up before overstaying his welcome. Irma Vep is as effortless as a shrug and boasts a film buff’s dream cast.

Both sweet-natured and sharply pointed, a film whose poignant, emotional effects and subtle acting sneak up on you.

Unusual in both its subject matter and its approach, this film guides us on a pair of intertwined paths American movies rarely venture down.

The civil rights arguments and the activism are handled in remarkably objective fashion, though it is no mystery where the directors' sentiments lie.

An exceptionally adroit adaptation of a play to the screen. As a film, it flows beautifully under Randa Haines' direction and has considerable humor as well as dramatic intensity. It is a classic love story--romantic, passionate, involving vibrant characters.

Writer-director Peter Strickland...uses atmosphere as others would use plot, and knows how to provoke comic shudders. But he tends to repeat himself, and he doesn't quite find a satisfying denouement for the inventive premise.

Despite its seriousness, the film is also among the funniest sports movies ever made. [01 Feb 2009, p.E4]

Bold, acutely observant and universal in its wide-ranging concerns and implications.

Where most movies lie, Lorenzo's Oil tells the truth and pays the price. In a genre rife with romantic sentimentality, this film won't trifle with its integrity and ends up not artificially uplifting but heart-rending and exhausting. Based on a true story, it shows how dreadfully hard you have to fight to make a difference, and how grueling it can be to save even a single human life.

The word “visionary” gets tossed around too much, but there’s really no better way to describe the spectacularly bleak animated science-fiction film Mad God or its creator, Phil Tippett.

The atmospheric heft of Il Futuro is invariably more bracing than oppressive, and in the complexly stoic Martelli and masterfully craggy, haunted Hauer, an alluringly opaque pas de deux of loss and uncertainty is wonderfully realized.

The trouble with describing a story this complex and digressive is that it's hard to keep it from sounding complicated and hard-to-follow. But for a movie about movies, it's surprisingly humanistic, cheerful and true to life.

Couldn't be more unlikely, more unfashionable -- or more compelling.

Concerned with fathers and sons, expectations and dreams, ideals and reality, this completely engrossing film gets more involving as it goes on.

The camera work is meticulous and exquisite in its expression, creating a sense of tense foreboding throughout, linking characters and images with a creepy omniscience.

Firecrackers isn’t just a confident feature debut from Mozaffari, but a daring one, the kind of fast and furious feminine filmmaking that heralds the arrival of several exciting new talents.

Crosby’s spirit remains vital, and he’s determined to fly that freak flag into that good night.

it’s an unexpectedly unnerving film that’s at least as terrifying as it is beautiful.

By turns lyrical, impressionistic and profound, the documentary The Pearl Button requires patience but offers stirring rewards.

Disturbing, unnerving and wire-to-wire involving, Deep Water is the story of a dream that got so wildly out of hand that it ensnared the dreamer in an intricate trap of his own devising.

The result, unusual in a documentary involving the police and the public, is a film that does not advocate for anything but the truth, one that aims to show what happens on both sides of an issue rather than coming down in favor of one or the other.

A gritty, deceptively low-key, no-fuss, no-frills movie of consistent originality and surprise in which suspense arises straight up from the heroine's evolving character.

Doug Nichol’s documentary California Typewriter is a rich, thoughtful, meticulously crafted tapestry about the evolution of the beloved writing machine for purists, history buffs, collectors and others fighting to preserve or re-embrace analog life.

Partly drawn from Zlotowski’s own personal experience, Other People’s Children sneaks up on you, with a depth and complexity of feeling that throws those glossy, idyllic opening moments into bittersweet relief.

Eklöf doesn’t seem to care if you like her film or her characters — including the protagonist — and it’s this boldness that keeps you watching.

Nyoni, working in English and the local language of Nyanja, has an unforced way of dealing with themes like exploitation, oppression and superstition, showing how easy it can be for nonsense to pass itself off as sense.

Stewart does exactly what Valentine describes as Jo-Ann's great gift — she becomes the character, completing disappearing inside Valentine. It makes the interplay between Binoche, a master of that sort of disappearing act as well, and Stewart mesmerizing to watch.

A remarkable feat of imagination, a magical tale with a genuinely sinister edge.

Jezebel is a reminder that in everyday human stories is proof that the world is wide, and that in going behind the doors that movies rarely open, there are even more worlds worth discovering.

Its conclusion, and its well-earned message, are more positive and hopeful than even its participants likely ever imagined they would be.

Perhaps it’s best to appreciate Demon not for what it implies but for what it simply and unmistakably is: A bravura testament to a talent silenced far too soon.

This wild, vicarious ride through youthful adventure is absolutely worth taking, for your own nostalgia and for the reminder that the kids are indeed alright.

Working with cinematographers Giorgos Arvanitis and Andreas Sinanos and composer Eleni Karaindrou, whose beautiful and stirring score greatly reinforces the film's impact, Angelopoulos has created another masterpiece, one that recalls such classics as Bergman's Wild Strawberries and Kurosawa's Ikiru (To Live). [28 May 1999, p.F6]

Harrill is awfully good at ambivalence, at teasing out the feelings of people who are uncertain what they want and in no hurry to talk about it — a condition that afflicts more characters than we often see in American movies, independent or otherwise.

She may have a terrible co-star inside trying to upstage her, but with humor, strength and messy honesty, Blair makes a memorable case for why her show must go on.

Even as it borrows a few beats and riffs from the coming-of-age drama (and from Sotomayor’s own childhood), Too Late to Die Young is marked by a fascinating open-endedness, a strange and intriguing reticence as to who and what it’s really about.

Nothing is rushed, everything is given its appropriate time and place. When we watch Hansen-Løve's films, we're not only experiencing a life unfolding before us, we're also realizing what a great privilege it is to be able to do that.

As ambitious, honest and subversive as any American movie since "Election."

Great use of an eerie Southern California landscape and some fine, naturalistic acting emphasizes how the ordinary can sometimes seem threatening — and vice-versa.

There's plenty of tawdry glamour, exploitation and grime on offer in this tale of awakening, and through it all, the sisters' bond is its own abracadabra.

Sweetgrass is an unexpectedly intoxicating documentary, unexpected because it blends high artistic standards with the grueling reality of one of the toughest, most exhausting of work environments.

It has a cumulative power, as Trobisch focuses on the small details, looking closely at a woman who doesn’t want to be defined by the thoughtlessly inhumane thing someone else chose to do.

The children’s stories alone would have been compelling, but illustrating them in this medium adds even more depth, nuance and emotion.

It’s a puckish film with a wistful quality, a gently comic end-of-the-line adventure about doing what you love, the passage of time and the things that might have been.

We may have seen it all before, but when it's done up like this, experiencing it all over again is a pleasure. [16 June 1999, Calendar, p.F-1]

In only his second feature, Frammartino has found a fresh and ravishingly poetic and beautiful way to explore the relationship between the spirit, man and nature.

Biting and vicious, a styptic pencil on the battered face of "civilized divorce." It's also thoughtful, laceratingly funny, and bravely true to its own black-and-blue comic vision. [8 Dec 1989]

West has a lot on his mind with this film; and he’s ultimately less interested in explaining everything happening onscreen than in free-associating about the complicated, lifelong relationship between children and their parents. But Gaffigan’s everyman presence and seeker’s soul make him a great vessel for big ideas.

The Last of the Unjust, like Lanzmann himself at his advanced age, is ungainly but powerful.

Whatever else it may be — a wrecked, towering monument to its own incompletion, a howl of rage at the industry that Welles helped build and forever define — The Other Side of the Wind increasingly comes to resemble a shattered cinematic hall of mirrors.

What Arnold manages to make tangibly cinematic in Cow is the soulful spirituality of these animals, their beauty and their emotions. It is as moving as it is devastating, and although this film requires patience and fortitude, it rewards with a singular and perspective-shifting cinematic experience.

The result is involving, engrossing cinema -- more thrilling, in fact, than Howard's "The Da Vinci Code" -- filmmaking of a type rarely seen anymore and sorely missed.

This is the best class of poetic realism, the kind you can believe in without a trace of hesitation.

For Hetherington, the front line was not just a set of coordinates in a bloody battle, but a space where true artists operated, and Junger's film goes a long way toward celebrating that mind set, but also recognizing how treacherous it can be.

Even viewers who know nothing about soccer can enjoy how Rocha captures the beauty of a communal event through editing and shot selection alone.

By acknowledging what isn't known about drinking water, but what should be illuminated about the mechanism behind it, What Lies Upstream proves an exemplary piece of advocacy filmmaking. Outrage is a given, but more urgently, you're left wanting to learn more.

Mulligan's performance is too specific and too wrenching to be reduced to a mere generational statement. This is her most fully formed role since her performance in another early '60s piece, the British coming-of-age drama "An Education," and in some ways it feels like a rejoinder, perhaps even a corrective.

As savagely satirical as it is gorgeously surreal, The Great Buddha+ is something else again — an outrageous, poignant punk Taiwanese black comedy marking the feature arrival of fresh filmmaking talent Huang Hsin-Yao.

A look at the intertwined lives of a father and his three live-at-home daughters, this is more than anything a personal-scaled film, funny, emotional and compassionate toward the human comedy, Taiwan-style.

It is one of the simplest of Bunuel's films but is also among his most powerful and subtle. [17 Sep 1995, p.6]

A documentary with the pace of a thriller, a story of motors and machines that is beyond compelling because of the intensely human story it tells.

The Piano Teacher will surely be too strong for some audiences and is best left to those who like films that take big risks and get away with them.

It’s all a very believable, close-quarters theater of exhaustion and pain, with moments of lightness and warmth that only add to the difficulty of Mickey’s predicament, and all of it captured in alluring fixed images of depth and color by cinematographer Conor Murphy.

Though it has its charms, Monsters, Inc. does not measure up. As a childhood entertainment it is certainly fine, but Pixar's celebrated lure for adults is largely absent.

Time Bandits may be Gilliam’s most consistently entertaining movie, but it still displays his flaws as much as his strengths. It’s visually imaginative — on a smallish budget — filled with invention, but also rambling and all over the (literal) map.

With its long takes and deliberate pacing, Beyond the Hills is demanding but always engrossing, even during its repetitive middle section.

The film’s conclusion leans too closely to the melodramatic. But Kurosawa’s assured direction is enough to make Wife of a Spy an enrapturing, stylish wartime period piece.

The film puts a brave, much-adored face on a disease that has touched so many families.