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.