Take Out is a sweet-and-sour look at the immigrant experience.

Part meticulous character study, part hyperrealist drama, Trapero’s film is as interested in documenting how such an institution functions on a day-to-day basis as he is in presenting the joys and pains of female cohabitation in such a confined space.

Deliberate camp (to paraphrase Susan Sontag) is never as successful as pure, or naive, camp.

The first-person recollections of Nanking’s survivors are as uncommonly wrenching as their captors were brutally thorough.

Schrader can’t seem to choose a proper outcome, and the lack of a higher morality is weird, especially from a filmmaker who managed hints of spirituality in a movie about Bob Crane. Still, if you suffered through Schrader’s Exorcist prequel Dominion, you’ll know he’s somewhat back on track.

A brilliantly staged early scare signals that the safety rails are off and, despite an unexpected, last-minute swerve into the supernatural realm, the edge-of-the-seat tension is sustained to the very last second.

The portrait that emerges is refreshingly clear-eyed yet highly insular.

This meditation on loneliness and the definition of family is a lot less bloody—though no less fascinating—than its predecessor.

A fun-sapped maelstrom without meaning, 300 simply pummels you with endless loops of battle-porn. While you couldn’t classify the movie as entertainment, it might have a long, prosperous future as a Clockwork Orange–style Ludovico Technique.

The first hour is an absolute hoot, as the constant replaying of scenes lends a zany comic edge to Makoto’s otherwise banal social life. The animation is vibrantly coloured, the action fluid, the editing masterly and the voicework just on the right side of brash. It’s a shame, then, that the final third rejects the light touch of the preceding section to descend into drab moralising and a furious tying up of loose plot ends.

Following exiled Iraqi writer Sinan Antoon as he returns home to gauge feeling on Hussein and the devastating effects of sanctions, the endless conflicts and now the terrible carnage, the film grants brief access to the lives and opinions of those always on the harsh end of geopolitical manoeuvres.

Wong Kar-Wai's second feature is a brilliant dream of Hong Kong life in 1960.

Though he's too ubiquitous now to dupe real authoritarians, his film nevertheless proffers plenty of cheek - even if most of its gross-out gags come signposted.

Andersen makes humorous hay out of the stark home designs of Richard Neutra — only suitable, it seems, for drug dealers.

They don’t make many like this any more; Roger Corman would be proud.

The dialogue-free story makes for an accessible blast, although it's tricky to gauge individual personalities.

There’s a quiet fury to Johnny Guitar, best embodied by Mercedes McCambridge’s vicious Emma, who wants to drive Vienna out of town. It’s a film that climaxes with a gunfight between two women, while the men hide behind tree stumps.

A paranoid police procedural, a perverse parable about the corrupting elements of power, and a candidate for the greatest predated Patriot Act movie ever, Elio Petri's stunning thriller makes no attempt to hide the culprit behind the film's grisly murder.

The best style has a purpose to it, and Russian Ark, in its hypnotic, endless swirl, gets at a deep truth of the post-Soviet psyche, haunted by its legacy of czarist rule and Stalin-era sacrifice. The film is a sad home for ghosts.

Ambitious, profoundly articulate, and despite its avoidance of sentimentality and sermonising, very compassionate.

Gallo and Dalle are sublimely tragic figures; the scene in which Shane stalks around Notre Dame like Frankenstein unleashed is a pitch-perfect encapsulation of the way the film plays with and deepens movie-monster archetypes.

It's unfailingly lively entertainment that doesn't stint on (earned) feeling. Ideas about fear of the unknown, industrial corruption, and the splendours of polymorphity are all taken in stride. The balance tilts towards action and gags, and does them gloriously.

Beautifully directed, unsentimental and darkly funny.

Roeg's debut as a director is a virtuoso juggling act which manipulates its visual and verbal imagery so cunningly that the borderline between reality and fantasy is gradually eliminated.

The final KO of a brilliant cinematic one-two punch, Leos Carax’s follow-up to his gobsmacking feature debut, Boy Meets Girl (1984), proved this enfant terrible was no one-hit wonder. Boy still meets girl, in the form of feral Denis Levant and gorgeous Juliette Binoche, but this sophomore outing’s real romantic coupling is an artist swooning head over heels for his medium.

It's a great package: salutary, short (74 minutes) and sweet.

Lee's satire on American TV is an intriguing failure.

It's enormously intelligent stuff, witty, poignant and thoroughly engrossing, and ends with one of the sharpest, funniest deconstructions of film form ever shot. Absolutely wonderful.

The lovely substance is in the wit, the nuances, the rhythms, and Ceylan's own very fine colour camerawork.

Superbly imagined and visually sumptuous, it's let down only by Hisaishi's sub-Miklos Rosza score.

There's more than a hint of amateur theatricals about it, with Tilda and pals dressing up in wigs to stage the court scenes in her back garden, totally gratuitous female nudity, and a yawning gap between intention and result.

A potent and moving depiction of contemporary survival.

The denouement isn't very surprising or enlightening, but at its best this works as both a critique of Japan's pop culture system and an effective woman-in-peril psycho-thriller.

Stunningly acted and superbly shot (by Haskell Wexler), it is written, with Sayles' customary ear for vivid phrasing and telling details, as a meditation on man's desire to divorce himself not only from Nature but from his own true nature, imbuing the film with the intensity and rigour of an allegorical fable. And the ending truly makes you think about what you've just seen.

A characteristically elegant, eloquent and idiosyncratic meditation on the relationships between personal and political histories, and between life and art.

Dire Disney effort, with competent sfx, inspired by the '60s TV series.

The trouble is that all of these characters are more interesting when things are going badly for them than when the tide has turned, and Carroll's determination to make the final reel an extended bout of audience tummy tickling is disappointingly conventional.

The snowman's a bland shuffling blob (from Jim Henson's Creature Shop) with two expressions, an all-purpose smile and a vague look of resignation.

In this 'movie-isation' of the justly top-rated Nickelodeon TV cartoon, the producers have left the formula intact, changing little beyond extending the running time, fleshing out the animation (unobtrusively), inserting an 'Indiana Jones' pre-movie sequence, and giving the Pickles family a new member (baby Dylan).

There are striking images here (especially in the scenes outside Salt Lake City), Martin gives a very likeable performance, and individual scenes display intelligence and wit. But it doesn't hang together very well, jump-cutting between slightly portentous artiness and light comedy, and never really adding up to very much at all.

Ironically, the very slickness of the film and the attention grabbing 'sensitivity' of Hans Zimmer's score at times become intrusive. Essential viewing, none the less.

It's by some way the best of the killer doll series, and as stylish and witty a horror movie as you could want.

Shot on actual locations in just nine days by Levin, a former documentarist, and improvised within a detailed scene-by-scene outline, this is a perplexing mix of truth and falsity, spontaneity and cliché.

Hauntingly sad, the film elegantly deranges the viewer's sense of time: this seemingly unchanging world is in fact riven by off-screen incidents - which change everything.

A film of alarming intensity.

It's a long time since Towne matched the calibre of his screenplays for Chinatown and The Last Detail, but he's still a solid bet for three-dimensional characters; as a director, his third effort has a fluidity and coherence lacking in Personal Best and Tequila Sunrise.

Modest, but immensely engaging.

The animation has little depth of field (galloping horses hover inches above the ground), the colours are watery, and there's not much Englishness in the settings. The characters, too, are unimaginative, with only bad boy Ruber (voiced by Oldman) providing any originality (his song and dance number is the one highlight).

As Wilde, descending from would-be-doting husband and father to follower of his own 'nature', and finally ruined and disgraced martyr on the tree of English hypocrisy, Fry is utterly convincing.

Challenging, witty, adventurous and utterly singular.

John Barry's score, with its reiterated 'autistic kid' theme, would have sounded corny to Ivor Novello, though it's in keeping with the general principle of patronising the audience.

This spin-off from the TV series featuring the large purple felt dinosaur of awesome good nature is emetically wholesome. The screenplay doesn't stray much from the series' 'listen, sing, and rush off to the next thing' formula.

Characteristically, Kiarostami's Palme d'Or winner is low on narrative drive, slowly but steadily revealing more and more information, visual and verbal, until we are totally caught up in his protagonist's psychological and ethical dilemma.

Immensely inventive and entertaining, the film may not have the enigmatic elegance or emotional resonance of Barton Fink or Fargo, but it's still a prime example of the Coens' effortless brand of stylistic and storytelling brilliance.

There are few traces of irony, intended fun, or Casanova-style exoticism here: the director may intened a feminist Visconti, but he ends up with a Zalman King Red Shoe Diary crossed with a Dick Lester Dumas adaptation.

This isn't a sequel, it's a remake. Some ingredients have been substituted, but it's the same recipe of R & B and comic overkill. As before, the best thing is the music: Aretha Franklin, Sam Moore, James Brown. The rest is stale, cynical and hamfisted.

Excellent support from Davidtz, Goodman, and Joy, as Hobbes' brother, though as the plot twists take precedence over character, much of the film's nuance trickles away and, along with it, the tension.

Sadly, it collapses dizzily amid a baroque shower of bejewelled costumes, Kenneth Anger style colour overload, mock fairytale purple prose, and pixillated anti-naturalistic performances. Finally pretty tedious.

Bluth has rediscovered the ingredients of quality mainstream animation: depth and movement are more in evidence, and the action sequences are expertly staged, notably a harrowing train crash.

This documentary, shocking and enlightening, succeeds in contextualising, and thus humanising, misunderstood sexual deviancy.

Despite a vaguely interesting premise - something like a chaos theory of police karma, the two partners precipitating their own downfall via a series of triggered repercussions - this never rises above the functional.

The movie's on stronger ground with the rudiments of survivalism, in particular the long central battle with the bear, so exciting it makes everything afterwards seem anti-climactic. Hopkins keeps his hamminess in check, and Baldwin finds layers of insidious charm, frailty and menace.

There are odd, rather contrived fantasy scenes here which sit uneasily with the generally downbeat naturalism of the rest of the film; and since the script seems determined to tease rather than inform, it's a little hard in the end to fathom exactly what director and co-writer Denis is really getting at. The performances, however, are good, and the music appealing.

Part satire and part confessional memoir, the film is stronger on period flavour and Sonny's inner demons than on the humanity of some of the other characters.

Harry Dean Stanton provides some much needed humour, but the film's celebratory attitude towards a dangerously wild love that defies logic and convention lacks depth and genuine insights.

Sachs allowed his actors to develop situations and dialogue through improvisation, giving the film a meandering, naturalistic feel. When plot does assert itself, in the abrupt closing scenes, the effect is truly disconcerting.

Jackson bears the weight of the film in a constrained, introverted role (terrorised, pertinacious, innocent passion squandered), but a grand resolution and some melodramatic twists and set-pieces undercut the hard-nosed tone.

Few people can be so big-hearted as to tolerate Ed's agonising brand of pedantic humour.

Lee's tough decision to include photos of the victims' smashed-up bodies was probably correct, but adding 'soulful' music to some of the interviews was more questionable.

Played as broad, noisy black farce, the film is about the deception of politics and heroism, dog-eat-dog morals and the propensity for violence, but one can't help thinking that behind the sometimes sensational apocalyptic imagery, there's less here than meets the eye.

Besides the implausibilities, the direction has two fatal flaws: it's both tediously slow and hugely narcissistic as the camera focuses repeatedly on Depp's bandana'd head and rippling torso.

Writers Ganz and Mandell (Parenthood, City Slickers) go pleasingly light on the syrup and sentimentality.

Teen nihilism of the cheapest kind, it's as pretentious as Jean-Luc Godard, as tacky as one of those Z grade turkeys by Ted V Miklas, and at least twice as boring as that sounds.

A delightfully nonchalant movie, complete with some nice satirical barbs aimed at contemporary French film culture, and fine performances throughout.

This is rubbish: an incoherent James Bond-ish yarn distinguished only by its formal decadence and the presence of basketball's Dennis Rodman.

Made on a shoestring by a bunch of film school graduates (director and co-writer Croghan was 23 at the time), this sweet, brisk campus comedy has a refreshingly current feel. For once, you believe the actors are the age they're playing. The romantic musical chairs are routine, but Croghan has a light touch, and a shrewd eye for the rules of attraction. It's too unassuming to be brattily obnoxious.

The script seems to lose interest in its latter stages and Witcher never evinces a depth of insight such that you sit up and take notice.

Mottola's dysfunctional family comedy is a bit arch, but sometimes sharp. Indie cinema and Neil Simon intersect on the corner of pathos and farce.

This talky would-be satire can find neither an appropriate tone nor a realised human drama to communicate the ideas. But there are some sharp lines and good scenes.

There aren't many films which tackle the generation gap between middle-aged kids and their old folks with such unsentimental comic acuity - and Reynolds essays her best role in three decades with delectable good grace and charm.

An adept turn from Murphy as San Francisco hostage negotiator Scott Roper knits together a functional assembly of stock cop-movie elements. This is probably the closest to a genuine dramatic part Murphy's ever played, and his snappy patter is persuasively integrated into Roper's daily routine.

No amount of emotional ballast in the film can make up for the tedium and repetition inevitable when a murder is shown and then dissected in two separate court hearings.

Director Cohen keeps the vehicle cruising in fourth gear, hoping the audience won't get too impatient with the familiar scenery. Big, efficient, mindless entertainment.

The ironies of the piece, adapted by Arthur Miller from his own 1953 play on the perils of McCarthyism, are savage and well served by a top-notch cast perfectly attuned to the poetry of the dialogue and the parable's fiery passions. Hytner holds the action together with solid, unflashy, well-paced direction, ensuring that this is no mere period piece but a compelling, pertinent account of human fear, frailty and cold ambition.

Valiantly hypocritical, uninflected movie.

Rather deliberately paced, and mired in archaic and abstruse puns, the film is perhaps more interesting than enjoyable. Still, Leconte's customary zest and mordant humour are there, lurking behind the claustrophobic production design and free-spirited camerawork.

The set plays are transparently simple, the execution sloppy and the ending signposted days in advance. Visually, it's a mess: the attempts to blend 2- and 3-D animation with live-action and computer-generated images produce scenes that are fuzzier than the storyline.

The intense heist sequences show a command of thriller dynamics that's right up there with the best of them, but director Gray is equally convincing on the character front, eliciting funny, grounded performances from the four women (Latifah notably refuses to caricature her lesbian role).

Disgracing itself only with McConaughey's over-extended bit as a psychotic trucker, the film delivers more or less comfortably on what you'd expect, then sits down for a rest.

Though Lee's deft expertise keeps things pacy and (mostly) plausible, the material can't avoid a certain predictability and, in the end, a preachy sentimentality.

Buscemi's semi- autobiographical first feature as writer/director is a beautifully low-key, disarmingly perceptive blue-collar character-study, reminiscent of vintage Cassavetes in its sociological and emotional authenticity.

The various strands of plot are interwoven with phenomenal mastery, and Yang's images are as effortlessly precise as ever. It's his sharpest funny/sad vision of city life yet.

Although this slick Seagal action pic won't convert die-hard detractors, aficionados will note that he's both gained weight and lightened up.

The result is not so much complexity as a mildly entertaining collection of rather superficial short stories; or perhaps it's best described as an elementary elaboration of a greater number of subsidiary characters than usual, inside a piece of pulp fiction. Smoothly constructed, for such a busy piece of work, and Hatcher's ascent to stardom continues.

As a thriller, the film tries to camouflage its lack of suspense with profligate and repetitive gunplay and a deafening barrage of noise (Ry Cooder's score is a plus, however). There's too much voice-over, and not enough for arch-nemesis Walken to do. but at least Willis has the hard-boiled hero down. An honourable failure.

As Amy, Anna Paquin proves again what an expressive, soulful actress she is, and Daniels' madcap dad is a winning study in hippy ingenuity and indefatigability.

A bland, so-so romantic comedy without the charm to see it through.

A detailed, smartly observed chronicle about growing up, even if the girls' friendship crosses ethnic and class boundaries a little too easily, and the improv framework sometimes makes the plot a bit sticky.