The filmmakers succeed brilliantly in weaving these stories together, taking time to explore depth of character and relationships. The suspense builds throughout as everyone involved becomes lost in a place they don't understand with people they don't know if they can trust.

Comparisons to "Hotel Rwanda" make sense up to a point - both feature heroes who have the scales removed from their eyes - but "Fire" is no tearjerker, and here the story of Chamusso's conversion serves mainly as prologue to the main plot, a history-tinted cat-and-mouse policier in which he will attempt to finish the job he was wrongly accused of starting.

While Saw III provides a decent number of new twists, psychological as well as torture-wise, it necessarily lacks the originality of its predecessors.

Under Ceylan's dull direction and the equally leaden editing, technical contributions are lackluster and straight-forward. Similar to the script, they only serve to distend an undernourished central story.

As convincing as the manipulated footage of the President's death in Chicago in October 2007 is, the movie itself cannot be more unconvincing in its approach.

The film penetrates the myth and mythos surrounding Wilson, making his works more accessible and open to those of us who sometimes puzzle over the methods and meanings in his cerebral, psychologically complex expressionism. The film should engender an art house following in sophisticated urban venues before its HBO broadcast.

Herzog's strangely beautiful film has marvelous music and hypnotic imagery. A documentary for stoners and people who are that way naturally, it is a cautionary tale for wishful thinkers.

In the revisionist Marie Antoinette, writer-director Sofia Coppola and actress Kirsten Dunst take a remote and no doubt misunderstood historical figure, the controversial and often despised Queen of France at the time of the French Revolution, and brings her into sharp focus as a living, breathing human being with flaws, foibles, passions, intelligence and warm affections.

Too outlandish to be fully convincing, this adaptation of the best-selling memoir sacrifices subtlety for broad laughs.

Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers does a most difficult and brave thing and does it brilliantly. It is a movie about a concept. Not just any concept but the shop-worn and often wrong-headed idea of "heroism."

A thoroughly uninspiring drama that ultimately buckles under Michael Mayer's weighty direction.

Audiences might enjoy this cinematic sleight of hand, but the key characters are such single-minded, calculating individuals that the real magic would be to find any heart in this tale.

Carnal, crazy and, most amazingly, heartwarming love story.

Through interviews with Jonestown survivors and rare footage of Jones himself, this sober documentary presents an unforgettable historical portrait.

While "Exorcism" focused on a murder-trial battle between the priest and a prosecutor, Schmid's film beautifully details the behavior, events and socio-religious pressures that lead to the decision to perform such an extreme ritual.

Demonstrating a mastery of the medium that belies his status as a first-time feature filmmaker, writer-director Ali Selim has crafted in Sweet Land a tale of pure Americana that speaks both to the immigrant experience and the nature of love.

Levinson diverts his film into a political thriller with its own conspiracy theory, an improbable romance and a curious subplot that feels like an anti-smoking ad. Little wonder his bewildered star, Robin Williams, looks confused much of the time.

The film's saving grace are its fast pacing and generous doses of humor, the latter of which is mostly provided by Robert Patrick's sly delivery of the many wisecracks doled out by his villainous character.

With an immediacy and intimacy that news reports can't provide, this deeply affecting documentary explores the pedophile crisis that has shaken the edifice of the Catholic Church.

Aiming for wacky and heartwarming, the film is, at its sporadic best, a mildly diverting coming-of-age story. At its worst, it feels forced.

Infamous gives you the unique opportunity to see how two sets of filmmakers can take exactly the same story, make extremely tough though different choices in emphasis and tone and achieve brilliant movies.

The richness of the characters and themes in Nearing Grace inspire director Rick Rosenthal and his cast to create a film with terrific emotional energy and larkish humor.

A fascinating documentary with a high entertainment quotient thanks to the fact that the film's surviving subjects prove to be some of the most articulate, not to mention wittiest, octogenarians around.

A misconceived washout of a darkly gothic story of madness, addiction and child abuse made all the more unpleasant by Gilliam's trademark intense visual style.

A lame and disappointing affair.

Fails to find the genuine drama in its story of love and intrigue.

A ferociously entertaining film.

Providing richness of detail and metaphor, elegantly blueprinted themes and impressive mastery of a constantly shifting tone, Little Children does just that. It is a deeply satisfying film.