All in all, this phenomenal film illustrates Alexis de Tocqueville's observation that "The people get the government they deserve." In both meanings of the word, Il Divo is sensational.

There's whimsy and raunchy humor here, but also an underlying sense of darkness and despair.

There is honest sentiment in the arc of this story, aided by the chemistry between Gottsagen and LaBeouf, and by the warm mood of the film.

Charming is such an overused, film critic-y designation, but The Way Home is that, and more.

Almodóvar has made a powerfully moving film about men who think they want to lose themselves in their women, then are startled to realize that they're the ones who have been comatose.

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.

The film gracefully telescopes a lot of information in its brief running time.

Floats before your eyes like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The surprise is that, fitted together, these pieces make a completed picture.

Things get a little tricky by the end, but it's the sort of trickery that's immensely satisfying.

Sly, sophisticated and surprising.

Marwencol is about Hogancamp and his miniature alter-ego, about his photographs and his creative process. But it is also, on a deeper level, about how we process our experiences - good and bad, violent and mysterious - and how we try to build safe places in our lives.

A taut, tricky thriller.

It's complicated. And it's fascinating.

A crushingly sad, beautiful film.

Director Manoel de Oliveira's minimalist, incomparably moving I'm Going Home ranks with John Huston's "The Dead" as one of the great works by a director at his twilight.

Gripping, powerful, heart-breaking.

Kore-eda, deploying a Western pop score by the Japanese indie-rock band Quruli, just lets these kids be kids.

Simply put, it's terrific.

Disturbingly good. The writing and the performances are such that as things go from bad (sad motel-room affairs) to worse (a 4-year-old gone missing), the film's characters get inside your skin, your soul. It's enough to make you want to cry.

The mosaic of cases and caseworkers is like a season of "The Wire" distilled into two hours.

Insightful, funny-sad memoir of divorce, intellectual style and emotional rebirth.

Whatever number it is chronologically on the P&P parade, Wright's film ranks first in verve. Quite simply, it is the essential P&P.

If Munich raises disturbing issues about Jewish-Arab relations, past and present - and how can it not? - it is also an absolutely riveting tale of the hunt and the hunted.

Moviegoers of a certain age may feel as though they are watching a lost Bertolucci film.

13 Tzameti is cut from the same cloth as the humans-hunted-for-sport classic "The Most Dangerous Game" - and from that early talkie's many subsequent remakes and rip-offs, including John Woo's "Hard Target."

Splendid, smile-inducing fun.

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 kind of deadpan soap opera - but one that, despite its high melodrama and wicked humor, delivers a real emotional wallop.