It’s a quiet, slow burn but one that stays with you.

It's never dull though, and the familiar characters and stock motivations are convincingly put across. And there's always Xu, who's turned to acupuncture to suppress his empathy, as you wait for the inevitable moment when suppressing it won't be enough.

The film could have been improved if it had been less aggressively limp. But the post-adolescent, pre-adult moodiness is spot on: Everyone's favorite author is a bitter recluse, and the soundtrack heaves with the suicide sounds of Joy Division. Trier's intent is to reproduce a sweet, hazy vision of the agony of youth. Ever so elliptically, he succeeds.

Those flight sequences — first suspenseful, then euphoric — take you back to the classic “Dumbo” as much as they do to classic Burton.

More popular today than during his lifetime (his music even made it into a Volkswagen commercial), Drake once complained, "Everybody tells me I'm great, but I'm broke. Why?"

The director-producer, Nicole Opper, has known Avery's Brooklyn family for years, which no doubt accounts for the film's intimacy.

Writer-director Antonio Campos, making excellent use of the queasy rhythms of a percussive musical score, keeps piling up the dread as we wonder just how dangerous Simon can be to the women who keep taking pity on him.

I was pleased by the forthright defense in Friendly Persuasion of Iranian cinema's use of children.

Feels like an homage to the early work of Wes Anderson with its plinky soundtrack, solipsistic banter and emphasis on uniforms.

Profoundly disturbing, blood-chilling suspenser.

Doesn't quite reach the heights - though it does plumb the depths - of its hugely popular predecessor. But it will have an enormous, appreciative audience doubled over with belly-busting laughs.

Has a desolate air, but Eyre, a Native American raised by white parents, manages to infuse the rocky path to sibling reconciliation with flashes of warmth and gentle humor.

An intensity of purpose and a patient, suspenseful directing style make the B-movie Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning superior to most of the big-budget action films I've seen lately.

Honestly, it's still pretty hard to resist as a guilty pleasure: A fluffy date-night movie that wrung a tear or two from more than one hardened male critic's eyes, chick flick or no.

Stewart's intense, courageous performance as a 16-year-old New Orleans prostitute is really something special.

A rare film offering from Mongolia, is an unusual, captivating and crowd-pleasing semi-documentary about an extended family of camel herders -- and two of their flock.

Excellent performances in an entertaining if less than totally plausible story.

Comes as close as any film to explaining what the deal is with women and shopping.

Genuinely scary, exquisitely shot -- and very well-acted.

The film looks like it cost 10 cents, but a lot of the jokes are gold. Hollywood, take notice of writer-director James Westby.

Brazilian director Anna Muylaert’s deft, funny film is set in São Paulo, but the class distinctions shown have no borders.

Darker and grimmer Act 2, though, by a hair, makes a meatier movie because characters aren’t as silly — the first flick was practically a pageant — and they are actually propelling toward a satisfying conclusion.

House is a spooky fairy tale mixed with martial arts, slow motion, black-and-white flashbacks — even a little upskirt action. A demonic white cat and a people-eating piano add spice. Movies as original as this one don’t come along very often, so grab it while you can.

Has an awful title, a bland hero and a predictable story - but it also has a nice blast of English atmosphere.

Gore and supernatural comeuppances ensue in a haunted-house flick that mostly eschews jump scares for more satisfying psychological and erotic twists.

Eva Green...Gaspingly beautiful, wouldn't you say?

Funny — sometimes brutally — and surprisingly touching, it works whether you’ve seen the source material or not, though there are plentiful shout-outs to die-hard fans.

Basically, this tale of a pregnant waitress looking for a way out of an unhappy marriage is a funny and touching riff on Martin Scorsese's "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," not to mention its better-known sitcom spinoff, "Alice."