This is not a typical Iranian production. Simultaneously deeply allegorical and concretely physical, this striking film is not a typical production, period.

The result is an exquisitely calibrated hypermodern comedy of manners. A quiet but devastating ensemble piece, both acerbic and sweet, "Friends" blends empathy and a great sense of comic timing with the richness of Holofcener's trademark take-no-prisoners observations.

But most important, for the adventurous moviegoer, it's more than apparent throughout this inventive, hypnotic and queasily funny portrayal of socioeconomic chaos that this director is a talent to watch.

A fearless movie about a fearful subject, an unusually empathetic and quite funny film that deals with death and dying in the most offbeat and casually life-affirming way. Exceptionally smart, playful and perceptive, Look Both Ways confronts things that people would rather avoid.

A powerful documentary that uncovers half-forgotten history, history that is still relevant but not in ways you might be expecting.

These kinds of merciless conditions lead to a culture that is stoic about life and death and a story that will surprise you by its willingness to embrace that unsentimental natural world.

Dreamy and creepy, tender and terrifying, Somersault is a frank and visceral film that at the same time exudes an unexpected innocence.

As beautiful as it is harrowing.

Both acidly funny and very moving.

Pollack does give a substantial chunk of screen time to Milton Wexler, Gehry's longtime analyst, who proves to be a winning, charismatic presence.

The film acutely captures the topsy-turvy uncertainty of life during wartime, where there's Burger King and land mines and Pizza Hut and snipers.

A pointed and nicely observed screenplay that guides us on an often funny journey through familiar terrain made fresh by their off-center sensibility and three fine performances.

Crossing the Bridge does more than offer a wide variety of entertaining and intoxicating Turkish music. It also uses music to paint a portrait of a vibrant, cosmopolitan city and provide a window into a rich and varied national culture.

An exhilarating story of loyalty and perseverance, The Heart of the Game succeeds as both inspiration and social commentary.

What's rare to see, and what ultimately makes Nacho Libre so enjoyable, is the story of an underdog who's allowed to remain a humble clown all the way to becoming a hero.

Has a return-to-innocence sweetness that recalls some of the work of another of its executive producers - Steven Spielberg. Kids may grow up too fast today to embrace the film's familiar message of the virtues of an unhurried adolescence, but it's nice to be reminded of the possibility.

Claude Chabrol makes his particular kind of unnerving, deliciously amoral thrillers look easy. Once you've made as many of them as he has, they probably are.

What My Country, My Country does best is show us that while both the Americans and the Iraqis care about the country's future, their cultural backgrounds and world views inevitably make them seem alien to each other.

The result is a surprisingly satisfying film, true to Bukowski and itself, a work that manages to make the man and his profane world more palatable without compromising on who he was and what he stood for.

An impassioned piece of activist filmmaking that's as persuasive and entertaining as it is disturbing.

A documentary about transsexuals from the Philippines working as caregivers in Israel sounds highly specialized in its appeal, but Heymann brings to Paper Dolls not only an engaging poignancy and depth but also a powerful universality.

The plot, naturally, is silly and not exactly bound by logic. But it's Judge's gimlet-eyed knack for nightmarish extrapolation that makes Idiocracy a cathartic delight.

Man Push Cart, largely the work of newcomers and near-newcomers, is a remarkably disciplined, subtle film that avoids striking a "triumph of the human spirit" note or any other cliché.

This thoughtful, sensitive film, perhaps the most emotionally wrenching of all the Iraq documentaries, could have been made after any war.

Zaillian (an Oscar winner for his "Schindler's List" screenplay) has given us an intricate, subtly rewarding narrative whose uncompromising nature and undeniable moral seriousness make it far from business as usual, even in the ever-decreasing world of quality Hollywood filmmaking.

It's rare for young actors to exude as much charisma and charm as Gainsbourg and García Bernal.

Captures the energy and exuberance of a young nation in the throes of optimism and works it into a foreboding frenzy.

In "A Guide," passion and imagination go a long way in transforming seemingly conventional material and characters.

49 Up is more than a deeply satisfying movie; it's a reminder of the wonder contained in ordinary lives.

Black Gold moves at an inexorable pace, painstakingly building a case until suddenly it looms very large and casts an even longer shadow.

This film is smart, funny and, thanks in no small part to David Geddes' cinematography, it occasionally approaches the poetic.

The Prestige does more than focus on magicians. It is so in love with the romance, wonder and ability to fool of stage illusion that it becomes something of a magic trick in and of itself

A type of American independent we don't see often enough.

In its subtlety, complexity and dexterity, Requiem is a notably original work.

With his corrosive brand of take-no-prisoners humor that scalds on contact, Cohen is the most intentionally provocative comedian since Lenny Bruce and early Richard Pryor, with a difference. For unlike those predecessors, there is a mean-spiritedness, an every-man-for-himself coldness about his humor. The one kind of laughter you won't find in Borat is that which acknowledges shared humanity. Instead, there is that pitiless staple of reality TV, watching others humiliate themselves for our viewing pleasure.

An intimate drama that views the deterioration of a relationship from the inside out. Moving from summer through fall and concluding in winter, it's minimalist cinema that turns on subtle emotion rather than narrative and demands the audience's full attention.

Impressive as is Wilson's output and oeuvre, it's the fully-engaged, aesthetically driven life that fascinates. And Otto-Bernstein's movie is a portrait of an artist at his most essential, in every sense.

Both a beautiful film and a disturbing one, and the connection between those two characteristics makes it the most disquieting of documentaries.

The film offers rousing adventures that kids will love and witty humor that adults can appreciate.

Volver is just as funny as "What Have I Done," but it's also more sanguine and complex. Its humor is brighter and loopier, more a function of the characters' indomitable spirit than of their terminal despair.

No film with as many elements as Happy Feet is successful with all of them, and the romantic-emotional elements of this story feel overly familiar. But the music and dancing are fresh and new, and this strong an ecological message has not been seen since Hayao Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke."

If Linklater regards the fake culture that has replaced real places with horror, he has nothing but respect and affection for his characters, and the movie is rescued from nihilism by his humanistic view.

What is interesting is not how little sense Déjà Vu makes but how little that matters. If you want your films to add up logically, you're welcome to take your calculator somewhere else. But if you do, you will be missing out on some first-class genre fun.

It's taken a dozen years for Eric Roth's smart, thoughtful, psychologically complicated script to reach the screen under Robert De Niro's careful and methodical direction, and it is easy to see why.

Behind the Mask is original and weirdly delicious, and executed with gory aplomb.

Quinn discovers an unexpectedly funny, trenchant fish-out-of-water-eye-view of American life.

It is astonishing to realize that the highly confident Tears of the Black Tiger marks the directorial debut of Sasanatieng, after having written two movies hugely successful in Thailand, yet in truth he belongs to a long line of first-rate filmmakers who understand the wisdom of taking big chances the first time at bat.

Bamako is an attack on globalization that is endlessly cogent, confrontational -- and, best of all, as captivating as it is illuminating.

Much of the credit for the movie succeeding goes to Thornton. In his able hands, Farmer is not so much someone who simply has faith in what he is doing but a man who believes with incontrovertible knowledge of what can be accomplished.

Fortunately, director Michael Apted and his team understand the challenges of this kind of story and have met them with intelligence and energy.

A transcendent, transporting experience, a trance movie that casts a major league spell by going deeply into a monastic world that lives largely without words.

Scurlock does well to counter the more dire aspects of the film with a razor-sharp sense of humor.

A charming, character-driven film that conveys enormous feeling for its people

A writer's thriller. True, it's cleanly and efficiently directed, and it showcases some crackerjack acting, but the reason it's a real pleasure to watch is that a writer's sensibility is the foundation everything is built on.

After the Wedding would never pretend to have any answers, but in hands this skilled the act of exploration itself couldn't be more illuminating, or more dramatic.

As epic as its two-hours-and-25-minute running time indicates, Black Book is as subversive as it is traditional, both enamored of conventional notions of heroism and frankly contemptuous of them.

A fascinating exercise in genre reinvention, a showcase for two radically different approaches to homage.

The result is an unexpectedly satisfying fantasia of reality and imagination, a meditation on the nature of lies and deception, on how we come to embrace not the truth but what it suits us to believe.

A spellbinding, intelligent thriller that takes its time to get where it's going but is well worth the trip.

The finely crafted Alice Neel is at once tribute, investigative journalism and messy family drama.

Jindabyne's strength and power come from a number of factors: its origin, its current landscape and the unusual way its writer-director, Ray Lawrence, has chosen to work.

Like any good sequel, this film takes what is familiar with the original's concept -- in this case, an internecine struggle for supremacy -- and deepens it.

Steeped in shrewdness about the often contradictory workings of human nature, Poison Friends is gratifying in the best tradition of French cinema.

Nonprofessional actors Boidin and Leroux deliver intense performances which shoulder the emotional weight of the film.

Beautiful, spacey, trans-oceanic odyssey.

Ten Canoes is nonetheless audacious and impressive, but challenging work, requiring steadfast concentration.

It's clear that an exceptional body of work is coming out of this country at this particular time and place. It's not necessary to categorize these films to enjoy them, it's just necessary to go.

As compelling as the music and concert footage is, it is the vitality of the performers as characters that enables the movie to transcend the music documentary genre.

Despite the grim Cold War environment, Schlöndorff blends, mostly successfully, goofiness and melodrama into the overall social realist tone.

A slick and efficient piece of action entertainment, fast moving with energetic stunt work and nice thriller moves.

What it offers isn't really a nostalgic look at a "more innocent time" so much as a saucy wink at a casually vicious time that is constantly being sold to us as innocent.

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.

Blame It on Fidel is the thoroughly engaging, clear-eyed and charming story of a little girl grappling with the domestic fallout of tumultuous political times.

2 Days in Paris is pure Julie Delpy, figuratively and otherwise. Since first becoming known to American audiences in the early '90s, she's revealed herself to be an artist of sundry and unexpected talents, with a distinctive voice and point of view.

Edgy and provocative but with a weakness for sensationalistic footage.

Thankfully for audiences, 11th Hour is not without hope. The filmmakers save the most exhilarating portion for last when they ask what's being done about the problems.

Obsession creates its own fascination, and never more so than in King of Kong, a sprightly new documentary that's as compulsively watchable as the vintage video game it focuses on is addictive.

Expertly realized and gunmetal slick, Eastern Promises whirs along with perfect efficiency, but doesn't stir much in the way of visceral horror despite its penchant for treating the human body like a chicken carcass on a block. (Squeamishness, yes.)

A surprisingly vast and involving topic.

A brooding meditation on the unnerving power and terrible cost of emotional and political masquerades, the Chinese-language Lust, Caution gets under your skin with its examination of what qualifies as love and what does not.

A smart and suspenseful legal thriller that comes completely alive on-screen.

The India of the movie is more an idea than a reality...Exotic, spiritual and, according to Peter Whitman (Adrien Brody), "spicy"-smelling, it's a magical mystery place where wayward foreigners can go to get their souls back on track.

Control keeps you riveted in ways that "24 Hour Party People" doesn't, primarily because of the investment of craft and conviction by all concerned.

Dan offers the most pleasing kind of unforced charm as it uses a terrific plot device to examine the conflicts between family and romance as well as the joy and pain of being in love.

It is the gift of Terror's Advocate, Barbet Schroeder's riveting new documentary, to simply present Vergès as is, to say "here is the man" and let things speak for themselves. Do they ever.

The film is a rigorously thorough biography and an impassioned accolade. Temple spends as much time on Strummer's life before and after the Clash as he does charting the band's powerful musical and political influence.

An enormously emotional and spirit-raising documentary.

Enchanted is as good as its name.

A challenging film, one that I suspect can only benefit from multiple viewings. The success of its approaches varies, but its intent is unfailingly interesting.

Campy, shameless and sophisticated, Lichtenstein's debut is gutsy and original, and it makes "Juno" look positively tame by comparison.

One of the dark pleasures of "Margot" is watching Kidman and Leigh inhabit these two roles with a fierce passion.

Gregg Araki's delirious Smiley Face is an unabashed valentine to Anna Faris, an opportunity for the actress to show that she can carry a movie composed of often hilarious nonstop misadventures.

An enchanting tale of friendship and evolvingrelationships, The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep" engagingly grafts coming-of-age movie chestnuts onto Scottish folklore.

Music may be Honeydripper's most indelible element and Sayles and longtime collaborator, composer Mason Daring, seamlessly incorporate several original songs alongside the soundtrack's period tunes.

It's not entirely surprising that Burton's Sweeney Todd feels heavier on style than on substance -- so much that the style almost subverts the story. Still, it's a gorgeous artifact and pretty enjoyable in all.

Smart and genial satire.

For this longtime U2 fan, the U2 3D experience wasn't quite sensual enough, but to quote another Bono lyric, others may find it "even better than the real thing."

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