Wildlike is an uncommon and deeply sensitive take on this type of story.

Filled with tension, deception and bravura acting, Breach is a crackling tale of real-life espionage that doubles as a compelling psychological drama.

There’s little that’s not dispiriting about Among the Believers and its measured, direct entrée into a closed world of hopeless boys and girls memorizing the Koran, but forbidden from learning its meanings.

Although this is director Birmingham's first feature -- she has a very sure sense of what she wants out of her cast and the ability to put it on screen. Tully may go against the grain of hipness, but that proves to be very much of a blessing.

Collette is fearless in reaching deeply into her emotions, and her expressiveness as an actress comes across as completely natural because it so clearly comes from within.

At once an old-fashioned freakout and an environmental cautionary tale (mess with Mother Nature and she'll mess with you right back), the film combines two genre standbys -- lethal contagion and the undead -- and gives them a wicked, contemporary spin.

So gleefully vulgar, so eagerly offensive, it's tough not to get down on all fours and beg for more.

Novitiate sure-handedly takes us inside the world of belief with care, concern and a piercing, discerning eye.

It’s easy enough to take this brisk documentary at face value and enjoy it for the well-shot curio that it is. And Oppenheim, just 24, is a talent to watch. Still, this movie shouldn’t preclude — and, who knows, may even inspire — a more definitive documentary about this debatable slice of “heaven.”

All This Panic is a deeply felt tribute to youth but also to growing up; it’s a time capsule of a fleeting, fragile moment when angst is mixed with beauty and everything seems ripe with potential.

A tightly coiled, beautifully acted relationship study that occasionally swerves in the direction of a gangland thriller.

When this movie stumbles, it stumbles honestly and sympathetically, but, when it succeeds, it makes history sing. [11 Sep 1987]

I can't think of a current movie in which every element is in such balance: Martin seems unfettered, expansive, utterly at ease, capable of any physical feat (except possibly drinking from a wine glass without a straw). There's a tenderness to him that's magnetic. Daryl Hannah's Roxanne, an astronomer, is smart and sublimely beautiful all at once, her skin apricot-colored in this mountain sun, her face rhapsodic as she talks about muons, gluons and quarks.

Tangerines is an example of lean, unadorned old-school filmmaking where familiar style and technique combine to unexpectedly potent effect because of the great skill with which they've been employed.

Simple, powerful, made with conviction and skill, 1945 proceeds as inexorably as Sámuel and his son on their long walk into town. It's a potent messenger about a time that is gone but whose issues and difficulties are not even close to being past.

You see in Felix the deadpan anarchic streak that has made Murray a force in American comedy for decades. At the same time, the actor seems to be winking at his own reputation for off-screen mischief — the tricks, stunts and pop-up bartending gigs that have made him a kind of one-man flash mob.

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

Director Rene Laloux and his co-writer, illustrator Roland Topor, in adapting Stefan Wul's science-fiction novel Oms en Serie, have created a surreal nightmare worthy of Dali, one that is filled with seemingly magical phenomena and bizarre and dangerous flora and fauna. [09 Oct 1998, p.F18]

While it may not be formally groundbreaking, this doc is still a treat for die-hard baseball fans, who should enjoy seeing footage from games ranging from the ’60s to the ’90s.

The filmmaking maintains its discretion and unblinking restraint even in its most terrifying passage, shot with an implacable calm that renders it all the more unbearable.

This is a beautifully shot film whose visuals work well with its philosophical approach to life and relationships.

Though Penn's fierce identification with the protagonist is a key source for the film's accomplishments, Into the Wild succeeds on screen because Hirsch ("Alpha Dog," "The Lords of Dogtown") throws himself into the part without reservation, projecting an appealing openness and life force that brings a special poignancy to his fate.

The writer-director Channing Godfrey Peoples, making her feature debut, has a deft way with understatement, and here she casts an affectionate, gently ambivalent eye on the traditions and rituals that have long held sway in a small Fort Worth community.

Inevitably cursory, it’s nonetheless a fascinating introduction to the ways that core components of Americana wouldn’t be eradicated. Or silenced.

An inspired antiwar epic that recently won the Goya Award (Spain’s equivalent to an Oscar) for animated film, Vazquez’s sophomore nightmarish fairy tale culminates with frighteningly revelatory imagery signaling the pattern of destruction that has characterized human history.

With The Party, availing herself of a zinger-heavy script and an unimprovable cast, the director has made not only her most accessible picture to date, but also a shrewd demonstration of the less-is-more principle.

The brilliance of A Scanner Darkly is how it suggests, without bombast or fanfare, the ways in which the real world has come to resemble the dark world of comic books.

The story of the unsolved abductions and the man who might have become the scapegoat for a community is troubling enough. No big-screen trickery is required.