As with many Iranian films, reality and fiction collide (the lead actor really is a pizza deliveryman), and the moral of the story is a surprisingly blunt critique of the growing inequality of wealth in the slowly Westernizing nation.

You can't help getting emotionally involved, and as the central outrage -- a case of judicial negligence that would seem unbelievable in a work of fiction -- plays out, you feel the pain and anger that Bagby's family and friends experienced. Then the story takes a final, horrible twist that's almost too much to endure.

A hilarious, touching, profound and inspiring film about art and dreams and self-belief and the goggle-eyed hope that you can will a miracle into reality through sheer effort and desire.

The Trip doesn't really go anywhere you didn't see it heading, but it's worth the journey.

Much has been made about the fact that the world's most popular fictional children are growing up and straight into that horror-filled no man's land of the human life span, puberty.

At once spare and dense, chilly and thrilling, literate and visceral, it feeds in gray areas, teasing ambiguities and conundrums out of shadows and making strengths of inconclusiveness and uncertainty.

Credit the great Bruno Ganz with creating a vivid Hitler: furious, unsteady, crushed and frankly cracking up.

Social critique isn't the main concern of director James Ponsoldt ("Smashed"). What he does is take us inside an unexpected, but not unrealistic, high school relationship and provide a splendid stage for two young and very promising actors.

It's one of the great horror films of recent years -- and a welcome antidote to the in-your-face sonic assaults that all too often pass for genre fare.

A mental workout of the most invigorating sort.

As numbing as the drumbeat of downbeat documentaries can be, as hard as it is to even be shocked at the depravities committed in our name, a film like this remains important, both as an indictment of the present day and as a warning to future generations that the ends don't always justify the means.

It's exhausting, impressionistic, and ultimately hollow, extraordinarily well-acted but not nearly as relevant as "The Social Network."

It may, finally, be the best and last word on the man, his music and his myth that we ever get on film -- an estimable achievement in itself.

The film verges on hagiography as one interviewee after another testifies to Dominique's positive influence on his nation, but in this case the cynical notion that there must be another side to the story is easy to tamp down.

Kaurismäki is a master of expressive stillness for whom inaction often speaks louder than words, and the performances he elicits are perfectly pitched, including young Miguel's.

The notions of sacrifice, patriotism, race and self-identity are compellingly questioned, and the battle sequences are realized with stirring intensity.

My Summer of Love, with its lush, sunlit landscapes, may occupy the opposite end of the visual spectrum, but it reinforces the sense that this director knows his way around the range of human emotion as well.

Though you get caught up in the criminal element (you really want these people to get away with it), you're also fascinated by who to trust. It's an unusual dance between the awkward and plain that becomes romantic and thrilling -- a subtly impressive feat to say the least.

The film is funny, odd and real. [18 Sept 1987, p.E18]

It's not a happy film, but it feels true.

Political machinations, emotional revelations, and a few well-choreographed fight scenes ensue, but Hou focuses less on the satisfactions of plot and action than on crafting, if not quite bringing to life, his auteurist vision of the past (both historical and cinematic).

Doesn't give off the same happy feel of the Indian arranged-marriage movie "Monsoon Wedding." Rather, it poses hard questions and leaves them unanswered.

The pace of this Oscar nominee may be a bit contemplative for audiences seeking "Yojimbo"-style action, but it's surely a more realistic and moving look at life in 19th-century Japan.

The pressure cooker atmosphere builds for almost too long, but when the resolution finally occurs, the sense of relief is that much more palpable.

An all-hell-breaks-loose, panicky fever of a story, all of it drenched in grainy, color-saturated cinematography.

With its wide-open setting and taciturn, macho characters, it's a film that earns the right to use the "Once Upon a Time" title that Sergio Leone made so perversely famous.

Stranger by the Lake is one of those vacations that’s all right while it’s happening, but the allure dissipates once you’ve gone back to your regular routine.

Despite dancing between a story and a story within a story, something seems simple and effortless about Ten Canoes. Director Rolf de Heer and his all-Yolngu cast offer a take on tribal life that's warm, funny and powerfully alive.