Stands apart from the trite conventions of most coming-of-age drama chiefly through the originality of Pool's approach and the honesty and conviction of Karine Vanasse's portrait of Hanna.

For those dazed and dazzled by surf anarchists Noll and Clark, Hamilton comes off as the sport's technocrat, but he boldly goes where no surfer has gone before.

Emotionally engaging and unhampered by dialogue, Boy & the World will appeal to children with its deceptively simple story and its visual splendor.

A heartbreaking story of true love.

Irma Vep is over before you know it, which is both a tribute to the talents of Assayas - he draws you in completely, his film never lags - and a bummer. You want to follow these people around a little longer, see what happens to their movie (although we do get to see something that happens, and it's weird and dazzling) and what becomes of them all. This a film about thievery - the character of Irma Vep is a jewel thief, the director is stealing from the past - and in its own very cool, very brash way, Irma Vep steals its audience's heart. [13 June 1997, p.10]

First-time filmmaker Kolirin paces his can-we-all-just-get-along? parable as if it were a silent comedy, which for long stretches it is. This movie about musicians has no soundtrack. Its musical moments are few, but potent.

An extraordinary work in three movements about the Sasakis, a seemingly ordinary family. In this unpredictable work, the clan implodes, explodes, and glues itself back together.

If that sounds highbrow and pretentious, it's not. The neat trick of Tristram Shandy is that the whole thing comes off as a lark.

Urgent and stunning movie.

A fresh, striking and rewarding piece of work.

The story of Donald Crowhurst is not one of remarkable courage or remarkable endurance. But it is remarkable.

On a deeper level, the Dardennes' film offers a portrait of a fragile yet determined woman set on making a home for herself in the world, even as that world unravels before her eyes.

Hugely affecting - and reflective and witty.

A macabre mystery for children and a cautionary tale for their folks, Coraline is a yarn - twisty, knotty, taut - about a perennially bored girl whose parents are too preoccupied with work to pay her much mind.

At once a shocking, baroque freak-out and a finely tuned, brilliantly paced surrealist black comedy.

Although Angelopoulos' film is not for all viewers, it rewards the patient moviegoer with an incomparable emotional journey. [09 Jul 1999, p.04]

Family. Can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em. Little Miss Sunshine, a stormy quasi-comedy destined to polarize audiences, is a perfect specimen of this unsentimental attitude.

Quiet, finely etched and beautifully acted by Dina Korzun and the wise-beyond-his-years Artiom Strelnikov.

Frost/Nixon is not the epic gladiatorial face-off, the ricocheting verbal shoot-out that writer Morgan and filmmaker Howard imagined.

A sort of full-course Father of the Bride, Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman is tender without being mushy, sweet without being syrupy - and surprising in ways that can only make you smile. [17 Aug 1994, p.E01]

Exhilarating and tragic.

A squirmingly strange and brutal study of sexual power, masochism and mother-daughter madness.

"Shrek" is a scintilla funnier, "Toy Story 2" a hair's breadth more poignant, but "MI" is every bit as imaginative and lovable as these other contemporary animation classics.

Based on reports of a real 2005 incident, it is a film that asks its viewer to consider the nature of good and evil, love and trust - and trust that turns into something like blind faith.

Sweet-natured but overdone, over-long film.

A little gem that's everything a fine independent film used to be.

An epic docudrama - electric and raw.

Rees tells Alike's story in vignettes that are sometimes slapstick, sometimes heartbreaking, always tender.

Bringing a wily, slow-burn energy and a southern accent to the role of Lyle, Dennis Hopper adds just the right touch of warped malevolence to Dahl's film. [29 Apr 1994, p.5]

British screen stalwarts Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton appear as locals - he twitchy and reticent, she chatty and full of cheer, both with their hearts in the right place.

A gut-punch of a drama.

A work that demands patience, and it will easily exasperate some moviegoers.

Stern and Sundberg, best known for their Darfur documentary "The Devil Came on Horseback," did not shrink from the atrocities in Sudan; nor do they shrink from the fame-hungry excesses here.

Chunhyang is a movie — and a heroine — for all times.

With its knowing take on men, messed-up romance and music, is like one long, hook-filled pop song for the eyes.

Brian Cox is especially good, and slippery, as Menenius, a Roman senator.

Gritty, suspenseful and almost poetic in its depiction of an unforgiving town, A Most Violent Year is just shy of being great.

It is not to everyone's taste. But if you like the lush film operas of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Douglas Sirk, or Luchino Visconti, this one's for you.

Compared to "Ray," which takes Ray Charles' unique life story and manages to make it feel like a cliche, Kinsey is total sophistication and nuance.

When Dizdar hits, he hits big.

A profound and deeply moving exploration of facing death with dignity.

Glazer has a daring sense of story structure that ratchets up the suspense, and his sense for sardonic black comedy is unerring.

Not just a great sports movie, Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 captures a pivotal moment in recent history.

For actresses of a certain age, Jarmusch's film amounts to a full-employment act...Best are Stone, transparent in her desire, and Conroy, completely opaque.

His pictures cover familiar territory. Yet Nichols is blessed with a talent for telling stories from fresh, surprising perspectives.

Scorsese’s adaptation is overlong and at times insufferably self-indulgent, but contains sublime moments of transcendent beauty and a wealth of beautiful performances.

This is a picture of quiet observation, contained emotion, the hush before the cathartic scream.

In the film, the music, beginning with a muted a cappella ballad, is from Eastwood himself.

It's a gently provocative film diary about tobacco and its mixed legacy.

While its careful pace and seemingly opaque story may not satisfy every moviegoer's appetite, the film's final scene is soaringly, transparently moving.

Brilliant, blistering account of the many ways fame deforms a star, his family and his fans.

Plays like an exalted episode of "Miami Vice" or a stealth version of "Shane."

The Fighter is funny, ferocious, sad, sweet, pulpy, and violent. Sometimes, all in the same minute.

"You have to be like a poet," Jodorowsky says at one point. "Your movie must be just as you think of it. . . . The movie has to be just like I dream it." What an extraordinary dream it could have been.

The country goes unnamed, the warring factions aren't always clear, but the nightmarish exploitation of children is made specific in the most vivid, visceral ways.

It's indescribable fun.

Half a century after its release, Godzilla couldn't be more current.

At first glance Walter isn't a guy you want to spend two hours with. But by the end of the film, you don't want to see him go. Jenkins is like that: He sneaks up on you and steals your heart with light-fingered skill.

Green Room is just as accomplished a film, with the writer/director doing everything right: the cast, the music, the editing, the way he leads you one way and then clobbers you (and some of his ill-fated characters) when you (and they) are least expecting it.

Until a final conflict that more resembles a monster-truck jam than a superhero showdown, Iron Man is solid gold.

It's strong stuff.

This story of two very old souls who suck on O negative Popsicles is, in many ways, more about the life-sustaining force of music than any hankering for blood.

Selma may be flawed, even spurious at points. But in its larger portrait of a man of dignity, purpose, and courage, and in Oyelowo's performance as that man, the film rings true.

At a certain point in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, you expect Caesar to say, "Et tu, Koba?" Maybe a bit obvious, but it would have shown some wit.

Apart from Connery, the star of the film is Mamet's deadpan script, which obviously inspired one of the movie's baldest old-movie tributes.

The movie may be the meditation of an old man, but rarely has a supreme artist's twilight been so richly illuminating. Faithless makes other films on the same subject seem clueless.

A powerful and moving contribution to the cinema of the Holocaust.

Nolte, reinforced by the bleak discretion of Schrader's direction and a wonderful supporting cast, makes the most of the opportunity.

Riveting and heartstoppingly fine documentary.

Much as I was moved by the film, I have one reservation and one warning. The framing device of the older Pi recounting his story to the author (which worked so well in Martel's novel) is intrusive and significantly detracts from the story.

It's a heartbreaker of a coming-of-age tale, even if there's a string of exsanguinated corpses to be accounted for.

Fences is also very much an actors' movie, with breathtaking performances from Washington and his costars, including Davis, Stephen Henderson, Jovan Adepo, Russell Hornsby, and Mykelti Williamson.

There are no good guys in Miss Bala, just bad guys of different stripes.

Burshtein keeps the camera tight on the faces of her actors in a way that succeeds at making visible the invisible heat between the characters. The film's chaste eroticism and the community's deep respect for Shira's emotional and spiritual growth keep the audience in thrall.

Julian Temple, the British music-documentary director who helmed the 2000 Pistols' flick "The Filth and the Fury," has done such cinematic justice to the punk humanist born John Graham Mellor, who died of a congenital heart defect in 2002.

It's pretty much impossible not to love Sing Street's young hero as he stumbles around Dublin, dumbstruck and smitten, at turns clueless and confident.

On a Paris rooftop about an hour into this 2-hour film, the tone shifts and the atmosphere lightens into giddy farce.

Zodiac is a reproach both to those dedicated to unscrambling "The Da Vinci Code" and to those hooked on forensic crime shows where all the evidence leads to a tidy conclusion. That Zodiac's manhunt is inconclusive makes it all the more haunting.

A feverishly imaginative Freudian vampire film from Guy Maddin, is like a silent-movie serial by Louis Feuillade or an improbable collaboration between writer Oscar Wilde and photographer Man Ray.

Wild and woolly, the movie is a breathtaking head trip that hails from a long tradition of backstage melodramas: "42nd Street," "A Star Is Born," "All About Eve," and, yes, that kitschy '90s relic, "Showgirls."

Creepy and compelling and beautifully shot, The Devil's Backbone is a tale of the supernatural that feels completely natural. Its realness is what makes it so scary.

The first date that James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus embark on in Enough Said - has to be one of the great getting-to-know-you encounters in movie history.

Holds the audience captive and unusually vulnerable to psycho- and viscero-terror.

With Insomnia, his third feature, Nolan, 32, has proven himself a precocious master of the thriller, unsettling the audience with a brief image of blood seeping through fabric.

This is very much Anderson's film. The publication of the novel made Wharton's reputation. The release of The House of Mirth should do the same for Anderson.

Control doesn't claim to know the reasons Curtis killed himself. The act of suicide poses the question why, but rarely answers it, leaving the living to wonder, and to grieve. And there's certainly grief to be had in Control, but also joy. Really.

A "small" movie. But in its keenly observed examination of strangers who become intimates - and of family members who remain, in part, strangers - it has big things to say.

In theme and technique, it pushes the boundaries of animation and opens up new and imaginative possibilities.

Despite all its roiling melodrama, Head-On has its moments of sharply observed humor.

Remains rooted in the real world, which makes its story all the more satisfying -- and chilling.

For everyone who has ever asked, "What on earth do they see in each other?"

You go to a Daniels movie not to be entertained, but edified. While not everyone goes to the movies for self-improvement, you will leave this one having witnessed phenomenal acting.

This beautiful, unfolding film is an antidote to the high-velocity, maximum-volume world most of us find ourselves immersed in, offering a glimpse into a rigorously spiritual alternative. Its calmness, its reflection, is full of allure.

The scene when she's (Blanchette) babysitting Ginger's boys and takes them to a diner - and confides about her electric shock treatments ("Edison's medicine"), her breakdowns, about the side effects of Prozac and Lithium . . .. it's genius.

Goes somewhere the first "Hellboy" never ventured: into the Realms of Tedium.

A movie as generous, stingy, and biting - and memorable - as its six main characters.

Betrayal is at the heart of this story, but also dreams of liberty and a life where all people are treated with respect.

It shows how the energy, and innocence, of children can be found - and fostered - in even the bleakest spots on earth.