A fascinating and informative, if sometimes stodgy, documentary about the most secret wing of Israel's anti-espionage unit.

Amid all the hokey hill stuff, Lawrence's hard eyes and manner draw us in.

Overlong and dramatically thin.

The humor is sharp and so are the judgments, which pile on until the characters are nearly suffocated under the weight of so much disdain.

The result is a film almost too reliant on its players to push it through.

A charming coming-of-age drama.

The result is fascinating. That goes both for acting students, since we get insights into Brando’s craft, and those looking for gossip.

The already minimalist filmmaker has gone positively threadbare with Ten, a movie that feels as if there was no director on the set. For the most part, there wasn't.

Tangerine offers a warts-and-all depiction of a subculture seldom treated with respect by straight society. The movie handles it in a sincere way that’s entertaining, too.

The animated feature The Red Turtle is about as far as you can get from a typical cartoon movie musical. Except for a few tsunami crashes and howls, this lovely but tortoise-paced work from the celebrated Japanimation house Studio Ghibli is basically a silent film.

Sitting through the film is punishing work. The jittery closeups create a response that is more physical (I'm thinking nausea) than emotional, and there are no respites.

Trippy in the right way, and wholly enchanting.

Winds up feeling like a form of emotional tourism. The images recall Terrence Malick, but the film fills "atmosphere" into dry narrative holes where a story should reside.

Like a more personal, less pretentious version of Alejandro González Iñárritu's "Babel," this spiraling dissection of circumstance, choice and fate is more about thoroughness of vision than tricky storytelling.

Director Samuel Maoz's gripping you-are-there feel does for tanks what "Das Boot" did for submarines, and that chokehold only gets tighter as this taut drama about the 1982 Israeli-Lebanese war goes on.

There’s visual poetry here and haunted performances from Mezzogiorno and Timi -- who plays two roles, and is especially gripping as Dalser’s grown son.

Even after experiencing the film, what they've gone through - and how they deal with it - deliberately remains a mystery.

The beginning is awkwardly earnest, but the play matures considerably while retaining its youthful energy and enthusiasm

In this visually and emotionally severe landscape, Reichardt has created the sort of film that will inspire grad students to write passionate thesis papers - and casual moviegoers to feel as lost as her would-be settlers.

Director Lee Chang-dong's soulful, affecting film is as quiet as a tomb and has a disturbing, critical underside that's hard to shake off.

Haneke's superb cast provide beautifully measured hints at the disconnect between the ribbon's symbolism and the entire town's unspoken atrocities.

Early on, it seems that The Witch is tapping a higher metaphor for coming of age...or religious intolerance...or man's uneasy balance with nature...or something. It doesn't take long into the film's hour and a half running time, however, to break that spell.

Features some of the year's most beautiful scenery and two of its most wooden characters.

The film features plenty of elements that seem familiar from previous cinematic dystopian visions — class warfare, decrepit living, a feeling of terminal velocity — yet you can’t help but admire director Bong Joon-ho’s high-wire act.

Is it possible to enjoy the company of the world's most irritating woman? Mike Leigh's surprisingly sunny dramedy makes a pretty good case that, in fact, it is.

The movie adds nothing to the political dialogue, and the love story is mood-killingly sad. The lure of the exotic can be deceptive, it says. The moody, murky atmosphere leaves nothing clear except that mixed intentions will always yield mixed results.

It never ever falls into painting him as a victim of anything but his own hubris, neurosis and psycho-sexual issues. Never once do we hear Weiner complain about anything except how easy it is for headline writers to make fun of his name. He knows who got him into all this trouble — himself — which is also refreshing to watch.

Wiseman films it all without comment, letting the rhythm of the place tell the story.

The movie’s spell is solid, even if it doesn’t soar to the heights it could.

Avatar clears the hurdle in terms of being optical candy. Its story, though, is pure cheese.

The film is best suited for dance buffs excited by an unexpected congregation of artistic pioneers.

As full-length toy advertisements go, you really couldn’t ask for more.

Intimate and intellectual, the film — with a title taken from J.D. Salinger — focuses on the type of person you pass on the street, see in a coffee shop or sit next to on the subway who makes you wonder what life he’s led. One full of melody and muse, it turns out.

The final result somehow undersells a man whose life and death were watershed moments in the gay rights movement.

Watching Ushio Shinohara and his wife Noriko make their art, we’re reminded of how much life is inside even the most abstract of pieces.

There’s atmosphere here, but nothing else.

Filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal utilize the footage Kim and Scott Roberts had taken throughout the disaster, showing how residents suffered, survived and came together to help when official assistance let them down.

Weisz's meticulously crafted turn is certainly touching, but it lacks the immediacy of, say, Celia Johnson's in 1945's "Brief Encounter."

A thoughtful drama about guys who have a moment in the big time before returning home to an odd reflected glory.

Aiming for lightness but landing with a thud, Frances Ha is a well-meaning blunder. Director Noah Baumbach’s ode to Brooklyn twentysomething life is a flibbertigibbet fable that, like a self-absorbed flirt you meet at a party, grates on the nerves despite being easy on the eyes.

An emotionally devastating drama that isn't for the squeamish.

La Promesse believes that decency is an innate human quality that can surface from any rubble. [16 May 1997, p.47]

No one looks at the world quite like Kaurismäki, and his deadpan sentimentality is worth discovery. This is a good place to start.

Has moments of honesty, but more often the barren landscape - both outside and inside - drains the emotions out of the film.

Acclaimed director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's meditative, at times maddening expression of human mystery and barren landscapes is gorgeous to look at, intriguing to think about and, at times, hard to sit through.

The wheezy Mighty Wind can't blow out the candle of this group's first musical mockumentary, 1984's "This Is Spinal Tap."

A pensive and searching drama that explores how deep into the national psyche these murders in the Katyn forest went.

There's nothing exceptional about Jane Campion's historical biography, but it's a sufficiently lovely tale to suit romantics with a taste for intimate period dramas.

The result was remarkable, but the story of it, while true to the moment, needed — ironically — much more dynamism.

While the plot is too light to sink your teeth into, the dreamlike, David Lynch-style imagery is engrossing.

Lars von Trier's end-of-days drama Melancholia feels as if it's something from another world...but even by his standards this remote yet lovely funereal dirge is in its own orbit.

Upstream Color is weird, but it’s worth the time.

The World has a pokey pace, but it presents a uniquely powerful look at the new big kid in the global economy.

Alison Klayman's chronicle of Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei is so straightforward that one can't help wishing the subject would make his own, more complex cinematic self-portrait. But for now, Klayman has provided a valuable introduction to a man everyone should know.

Creating a hypnotically digressive travelogue, Herzog wanders from soul to soul, asking deceptively mild questions to potent effect.

This quiet drama is not for everyone. It may not even be for fans of Hungarian auteur Bela Tarr, whose spare, naturalistic films can be, well, trying. (The director has said that "Horse" will be his final film.)

This unhurried, novelistic movie is worth looking into.

Sadly suffers from more than a dollop of boredom. Like the ornate dollhouse that plays a part, "Arrietty" is lovely and well-appointed, but filled with only what you bring to it.

What Room 237 is really about is how movies inspire passion. Which is a great thing, even if it comes out in wack-job ways.

Fans of Dario Argento and Mario Bava will appreciate the references. Even for newcomers, there are minor chords to enjoy. If only there were less screaming.

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is better known for horror films; this is a movie where the horror is internalized, and hideously truthful.

Some of this wallowing goes on too long, risking our alienation from characters who are difficult to like. What saves the film is the fact that they are always easy to recognize, both as self-centered teenagers and tentatively maturing young adults.

The filmmakers' motivation couldn't be clearer: They needed to capture a way of life that may soon exist only on film and in memory.

Though it’s more testimonial exhibit than movie, “Unjust” remains a crucial document.

Certainly, the West Memphis 3 deserve more chances to detail how the justice system went nightmarishly awry. But take this as ultimately more personal journal than investigation.

His years of success aren't as gripping as Kapadia, and Senna's legend, would have us believe. He had no demons besides fame, and no hurdles besides a recklessness that went with the territory.

It's strange to call a film with so much nudity and simulated sex "old-fashioned," but The Sessions nicely bridges that gulf.

Your mileage may vary — along with patience. Despite all the talk of the Shimmer, Annihilation sputters.

If you're looking for an incisive portrait of self-generated stardom, you won't do better than this.

A feast for the eyes. But not, alas, for the ears.

Not a particularly exceptional movie in form, but as a thorough record it is extraordinary.

Rafferty keeps the structure so blandly standard, the title is nearly the most intriguing element of the whole film.

Scott Thomas breathes more emotion into Juliette's affectless, haunted demeanor than most actors do with pages of dialogue.

Both director and cast exhibit the dedication of those who truly believe in the message at hand. But with so much earnestness onscreen, the message occasionally gets in the way of the movie itself.

While Sigman conveys a credible state of tense disbelief throughout, it's increasingly frustrating to watch Laura so passively accept her dire fate.

Though diligently paced and sharp to look at, the mysteries inside Mother are, finally, bloodless.

Enough Said doesn’t have the intimacy of Holofcener’s “Walking and Talking” or “Lovely & Amazing,” but it still cuts close the bone. Often so close we have to smile in self-defense.

Airplane loses its buoyancy. Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker, who share both writing and directorial credits, become so desperate for laughs that the jokes descend to a much cruder level. And Airplane does an abrupt nosedive, turning a hopelessly flat movie, sparked only by the occasional appearances of Lloyd Bridges as an easily rattled air traffic controller whose nerves are such he depends on booze and pills to keep himself going on the job.

Miserable individuals do tend to make for interesting subject matter, and this would be far more of a dry biography without its willfully eccentric lead. Plus, if the crankiness gets to you, tune it out and focus on the music. That's what Clapton did.

This beautifully observed drama creates an intimate feel and gently observed moments of connection and angst. Then things move forward with almost too heavy of a heart.

If you're going to make a movie about men talking, shouldn't they have something important to say?

The film itself is a bit on the talking-head side, evoking none of the passion and anguish that are the music's trademarks.

A quiet, oddly serene movie with a curious soul.

In Bahman Ghobadi's heart-tugger about Kurdish orphans, those wide eyes are too often used as a manipulative device.

McDonagh indulges in too many '90s affectations, from blaring chapter titles to philosophizing gangsters. But he captures his misty setting's insular atmosphere beautifully.

Saulnier accomplishes something rare here. He has an ability to convey depth of feeling and ominousness without tricks or even musical cues.

This exquisitely acted, genuinely creepy minimalist drama does spin its wheels a bit before a cool conclusion. But the movie has a spark of creativity not seen in “Chappie” or “Eva,” two of the recent robots-among-us flicks.

The screenplay is chock-full of political and social observation tarnished by uneven ­acting and editing. The clumsy humor doesn't translate well.

Though Argento and Aattou lack the searing chemistry needed, the social politics are consistently intriguing, and everything - not to mention everyone -looks absolutely stunning.

The scenery is stunning and the story compelling, but some viewers will find it easier to admire Tracks than to engage with this meditative tale of Robyn Davidson (played beautifully by Mia Wasikowska).

But while this terrific cast gets to strut and preen, it's difficult to make an emotional connection with most of them.

Fascinating and, when you see Afghan versions of Simon Cowell and Co. reacting to tryouts, a reminder of how fame and the thirst for it is the same in any language.

The overly broad martial-arts comedy Kung Fu Hustle was obviously made with skill and affection for its many cinematic sources, yet I found the tone, timing and emotional involvement off by just enough to irritate rather than enchant.

An extraordinary morsel of a movie, and yes, you'll want sushi afterward. But it won't taste like Jiro's.

It’s fun to see Bateman channel his inner prick. But the gaslighting husband/cruel high school tormentor subplot is so underwritten that it feels tacked on.

It’s rare when a psychological drama gets us into a character’s head without tricks or a voiceover. This drama from Alex Ross Perry burrows so deep that it’s scary.

Cute, mostly well-mannered and just a bit off-center.

Director Andrew Dosunmu’s film is big-hearted and rich, frequently using slow motion to underscore an artful intimacy.