A surprisingly satisfying combination of bawdy sexual humor, genuine emotion and a plot with mechanics so excessive that Almodóvar himself calls it "a screwball drama."

Starring Brad Pitt in top movie star form, it's a film that's impressive and surprising.

With its hefty running time, the film builds an unexpected emotional resonance, though never exactly sympathy, as over the years Ceausescu seems to drift further and further into his fantasy vision of himself, making the film like a loop that repeats endlessly in his head.

It is a rare thing to witness the creative process. But in the excellent new documentary Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters, filmmaker Ben Shapiro gives us fly-on-the-wall access over a 10-year period to an acclaimed artist as he envisions, designs and executes his surreal commentary on small-town American life in the form of an epic photo installation, "Beneath the Roses."

With Resurrection, Bi delivers something uncommonly rich, boldly conceiving his latest as a salute to the history of film. Still, his focus remains on people — whether they be in his stories or watching in the theater.

You can't have Rushmore without Max, and though Anderson obviously planned it this way, the kid is finally too off-putting to tolerate.

For all its S&M specificity — down to earth and sometimes comical — the movie holds its beveled mirrors up to the role-play, ritual and compromise in all love relationships.

This is a lyrical ode to the glories of summer and the collaborative joys of filmmaking, suffused with the hope that we will never be deprived of either for long.

Film has always been especially effective it portraying what it can feel like, what it can mean to be in love, and My Golden Days is right up there with the best of them.

The impact of its finish has been dissipated by too much meandering along the way.

Endearing, sumptuous 1935 adaptation of Dickens' sweeping epic set against the French Revolution. [15 Oct 2006, p.E10]

This is a director's film, and Ostlund knows precisely the effects he is after. This filmmaker is in control at each and every moment, and does he ever know what he is doing.

In its lived-in quality and gathering churn, Good One is a dream of an indie, from the craft in every frame to the humor, epiphanies and mysteries that gird its portraiture.

It has the irresistible freshness of a recipe that many have tried to copy and none have matched: a barbed, sprawling, scintillating vision of a society happily in thrall to its taste buds.

The triumph of Diane is that the movie, no less than its heroine, refuses to be diminished. What looks at first like a solid, well-carpentered exercise in downbeat indie realism ends up, by dint of its unexpected tonal and temporal leaps and sudden formal ruptures, in less easily definable territory.

One of the best films to open so far this year, but greeting each new work from a favored director as if it were equally brilliant can't be good for anyone, the director included.

No one in this movie has a complete understanding of what’s going on, but Wandel proves that a sensitive enough camera can provide a fuller picture than most.

With a witty and efficient script by director Sean Baker and co-writer Chris Bergoch, Tangerine peels back the curtain on a fascinating Los Angeles microculture.

Electrifying… As writer, director and editor, [Soderbergh’s] control is mesmerizing. It's also more than a little creepy; as though Soderbergh were drawing us, a step at a time, into a warm pool where intimate secrets flowed back and forth as simply as currents of water. [4 Aug 1989, Calendar, p.6-1]

A story that won't go away, won't leave you alone, won't let you feel at ease. Intensely dramatic, filled with elevated heroism, crass self-interest and blatant stupidity, it's a paradigmatic narrative of our tendentious, turbulent times.

Larson has done exceptional work before... but the way she has taken the deepest of dives into this complex, difficult material is little short of astonishing. The reality and preternatural commitment she brings to Ma is piercingly honest from start to finish, as scaldingly emotional a performance as anyone could wish for.

It’s the rare film that decades later can seem as timely as it was the day it came out. The searing documentary The Murder of Fred Hampton is such a film.

One of the reasons An Elephant Sitting Still is so absorbing is that it has the advantage of duration, a willingness to linger in moments of silence and stillness. Paradoxically, as a result, it moves far more swiftly than you might expect.

It’s a celebration of talent, yes, but also of the commitment, the sacrifice, the sheer tenacity required to pull off the illusion of effortlessness.

Triet’s movie is a monument to the ambiguous and unknown, a labyrinth of half-glimpsed causes and vague, sinister effects.

Rising to crescendos of emotion usually reached only by tenors and sopranos, these characters are the beneficiaries of the luminous writing of the novel and screenplay as well as the expert performances of the actors, especially Scott Thomas.

The year’s most succinctly perfect film, Fallen Leaves aims to do for us what companionship does for its couple: make this treacherous life a bit more bearable.

Nebraska offers something deeper and more mature, the ability to make us care about its characters and their story on a different level than Payne has given us before.