Almodovar, who in the past has made dark comedy out of jealousy and infidelity and even rape and suicide, here casts a less absurdist, more empathetic eye on his characters. The world they navigate is still full of bizarre coincidences and random cruelties, but the filmmaker's stance is a little less distant, the laughter degrees warmer and the emotions correspondingly magnified.

Kinnear's performance has to be one of the most sympathetic acts of decency one actor has ever extended to another. Crane always wanted to be a real, respectable movie actor. Channeled through Kinnear, he finally gets his wish.

Tense, hilarious and totally serendipitous.

Loud, trashy, implausible and exciting, The Fast and the Furious may not have much of a brain, but it's definitely got a pulse.

Horror fans will celebrate Stake Land, and future horror-film directors should go to school on it. The flame is still burning -- and it keeps the undead away, at least for a while.

Lord of War skims along like a dance routine. Political morality doesn't usually get such fleet choreography in the movies.

There were half a dozen occasions, maybe more, when I roared out loud with laughter. This just may be a filmmaker with great things in him; this one's pretty damn good.

This little knockout of a movie, written and directed by Robert Duvall -- who also plays the title character, a roving Texas evangelist -- can strike you in the same way that Bible stories did when you first encountered them as a child.

So full of winning performances and so disarmingly uncynical in its affection for its characters, it manages to leave you with a Texas-size grin on your face anyway.

It’s a crisp and often hilarious female-centric social satire loaded with delicious talent from the TV-comedy pool.

This tale of filial love and family baggage is Wes Anderson's most heartfelt feature film yet. Its companion short, "Hotel Chevalier," is darn near perfect.

Airy and enchanting, this romantic comedy works overtime to sprinkle moonlight and stardust over itself.

A lean, disturbing and beautifully photographed thriller from writer, director and actor Rafi Pitts, who was born in Tehran, educated in Britain and did his filmmaking apprenticeship in France, working for Jean-Luc Godard and Leos Carax.

Frozen River isn't cinematically ambitious or formally adventurous, but it's built around powerful and nuanced performances by Leo, Upham and Charlie McDermott.

It's a profoundly moving story of -- yes! -- the human spirit rising above horrible circumstances, and simultaneously a work of nostalgia for the gentlemen's war that marked the end, or the beginning of the end, of Christian Europe's world domination.

The good news about Spider-Man 3 is that it's more of the same -- except better.

The sharpest, most authentic portrait of Hollywood life made in the last several years. (As a movie about contemporary Los Angeles, it's approximately 617 percent better than the monumentally bogus "Shopgirl.")

Bourdieu's cast is terrific throughout. Any fellow academic brats out there will especially appreciate Jacques Bonnaffé, one of the greatest French comic actors, in an imperious turn as the severe, guru-like professor.

García, previously the director of "Mother and Child," "Passengers" and numerous TV episodes (and the son of Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez), never feels entirely comfortable with the period or location, but for all its limitations Albert Nobbs has a puzzling undertow, and gets more involving the longer you stick with it.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is absinthe in movie form, a white chocolate space egg of a picture that has a giddy hallucinatory quality in some places and an overcalculated glossiness in others. But for better or worse, it's fascinating.

If the narrative of Pariah is predictable and its delivery system rather after-school special, the characters and setting are unforgettable and Lee's coming-of-age story feels both true and moving.

As Margaret Brown’s quietly devastating documentary The Great Invisible makes clear, the oil companies and the resource-guzzling, planet-poisoning economy they drive are too big to fail, and our entire consumerist culture of ever-cheaper goods and 24/7 convenience is bigger still.

The latest from Woody Allen is an enjoyable trifle -- but Tracey Ullman and Elaine May walk off with the picture.

Streep isn't playing Julia Child here, but something both more elusive and more truthful -- she's playing our IDEA of Julia Child.

A barrel of laughs, this ain't. But it's a fearless high-wire act, grim and witty, confrontational and self-mocking. Its message may be dire, but Bamako is a feat of intellectual and cinematic daring that will leave your brain buzzing.

I enjoyed this movie more thoroughly, and more liberated from frustration and ambivalence, than anything Godard has made in at least 20 years. It provided me with an interpretive frame that may even lead me back to another crack at “Notre Musique” (2004) and “For Ever Mozart” (1996) and most of all the extraordinary 1988-1998 video documentary series “Histoire(s) du cinéma.”

Weaver obviously relishes playing this feral, sarcastic new Ripley, and her pleasure is infectious.

Everything we learn about Stevens and Christina and Goodwin by the end of the film comes from their actions, not their words. That lends Source Code an elusive, almost arty shimmer beneath its glossy, action-movie surface.