Mostly, though, Ondine deftly demonstrates just how far we'll reach for any promise of relief from life's hardships, in whatever form -- magic or plain dumb luck -- it arrives.

Among the invited guests are Sarah Jessica Parker and Julia Roberts. Only one fellow designer is present: Karl Lagerfeld, the German designer settled in Paris.

The beauty of Huo Ji Anqi's film transcends China's lush Hunan province to focus on the peace that comes from within.

This is a silly movie, yes. But since it works as a humorous homage for students of Hitchcock and his B-movie masterpiece, and since it works as a high-grade slasher film for the rest of the audience, there's no hating it. In fact, this is the most likable gore film in years. [04 June 1983, p.D4]

Coppola and her crew were allowed to shoot at Versailles -- family pedigree does pay dividends, apparently -- which gives the film a needed whiff of reality.

The movie kicks off with a wonderful setpiece that shows off Spielberg’s ability to tell a story primarily through visuals — is there any other filmmaker working today better at this?

Frida, the kaleidoscopic drama based on the life of the Mexican painter/feminist/icon Frida Kahlo, was directed by Julie Taymor, which is the movie's first blessing.

Yes, Pineapple Express is exceedingly crude, but it's never mean or lewd, and for all the drugs and gore in it, the movie is also strangely, unrelentingly sweet, even when its characters are bleeding to death.

Everyone in the movie is a buffoon or a dolt. No one is redeemable. The humor comes at the expense of the characters: You're always laughing at them, never with them. The Coens have never seemed this disdainful, this mocking, of their fellow man.

The movie is filled with graphic sex scenes that leave nothing to the imagination — this film would make even John Waters blush — but there’s more at work here than shock value and sensationalism.

Chungking Express is really a sly and perceptive examination of the effects of urban alienation on romance -- specifically in its scarily dense and overdeveloped setting of dazzling Hong Kong. Chungking Express meanders at times and occasionally annoys (you won't want to listen to California Dreaming ever again), but the movie is all of one mood, and it leaves you craving more. [29 Mar 1996, p.21G]

Despite its serious subject matter, North Country is a crowd-pleaser at heart.

Succeeds where so many other recent horror pictures have failed: It consistently scares you silly.

The House I Live In is a work of journalism, not propaganda: Jarecki has done his research and leaves it to you to decide what to make of it.

The movie, which is as low-key and subdued as Tewfiq himself, is something of a marvel: a precious work of minimalism that, instead of disappearing into itself the way so many small-scale comedies do, grows before your eyes into something profound and profoundly affecting.

Quartet is truly an actor's film.

Has a weird, compelling energy, fueled by a deliciously dynamic cast, a cheerfully bawdy and odd story line and a refreshing, impossible romance.

Dear Frankie is a small movie with a big soul and no easy formula for the happiness of its big-hearted characters.

Using a buzzy, unnerving score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Citizenfour makes you share the same sense of shock and paranoia as Snowden spews damning information that implicates the White House in transgressions that extend beyond our borders into other countries.

Musical Chairs is about overcoming impossible odds and never giving up and chasing your dreams – all that afterschool-special stuff - but it's also charming and upbeat, and it's stuffed with great, vibrant, insanely catchy music. No Bee Gees, though.

Thanks to a superb cast headed by the popular Brazilian actress Regina Casé, this unorthodox tale is ultimately believable.

Here is a crime drama that punches you in the gut, full on, and dares you not to blink.

A very complicated movie. It is also pretty wonderful.

One gigantic pile of cornball clichés, but there's no denying the movie works you over anyway.

It's a powerful argument for optimism.

This is more of an exercise in experiential cinema, as well as a blistering critique of a society that drives its poorest to unimaginable acts for mere survival.

There's nothing in Bounce you haven't seen before, but the movie is surprisingly unsentimental, the Paltrow factor cannot be denied.

A sweet reminder of their lost and lively world.