Feels astonishingly fresh, filled with subtle performances and devastatingly understated images - Sautet's final shot of Davos alone in a Paris crowd is a killer.

Rossier's film leaves the dispiriting impression that democracy simply will not be tolerated in the Southern Hemisphere.

Zizek as a larger-than-life figure who manages to engage you even when you're not entirely sure what he's going on about.

Jordan and McCabe's real triumph here, however, is the tenderness with which they imbues "Kitten," and the astonishing grace with which the extraordinary Murphy pulls it off.

Cornillac is excellent as the emotionally immature Gilles, but this is Devos' show.

There is, however, considerable humor to what might have been an exceedingly grim film, and most of it comes courtesy of Mona's slippery brother, Marwan (Ashraf Barhoum).

The perky Aniston is both unflatteringly photographed and utterly unconvincing in the pivotal role of Lucinda, and overall the film has the oddly disconnected quality of '70s Euro-thrillers whose international casts spoke different languages on the set and were dubbed into conformity.

The film's Buck Rogers-style graphics are cool, but the shrilly squabbling brothers -- realistic though they may be -- are insufferable, the story's your-turn/my-turn structure is tedious, and its relentlessly reiterated message about brotherly love and cooperation is really grating.

The appealing Knightley goes in a promising young actress and comes out a star, but the faultless cast of veterans and fresh-faced newcomers imbues every character with flawed and immensely appealing humanity.

One isn't quite ready to forgive the miscasting of Gere, however, who is about as convincing a Kabbalistic scholar as Madonna.

Watts is good -- occasionally very good -- and her willingness to be filmed at unflattering angles, in pore-wallowing or with bright blue ice cream smeared on her face is admirable.

How can such awful things come out of the mouth of such a pretty girl?

South African director Mark Bamford's sweet-natured ensemble film doesn't shy away from addressing issues of racism -- both black and white.

It's a thoughtful and ultimately chilling take on a tragedy that still has the power to disturb and divide.

Fans of 50 Cent, whose own endlessly exploited past keeps him surrounded by Kevlar and bodyguards, will probably see the film for what it is -- a weak, watered roman à clef -- while admirers of Irish director Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In America) will marvel that he had anything to do with such a trite variation on the venerable "Star is Born" scenario.

A beautifully shot, wonderfully moving film.

This wild and unexpected ride should delight younger children with its bright colors and constant chaos, while adults are likely to be charmed by the witty banter, subtle one-liners and a sweet father-son relationship that highlights the need for good communication.

Viewers hoping for a brutal, pitch-black war comedy along the lines of M*A*S*H are in for a major disappointment.

However fact-based the material may be, Jordan's salt-of-the-earth characters, with their bluster and pride and rough-edged loyalty, are all too familiar, and their travails feel formulaic, right down to the life-affirming climax.

Exchanging Buddhist mantras like diet tips, they thoughtlessly destroy themselves after destroying each other.

Some four decades after the birth of the gay-rights movement, the excess and sexual abandon of gay life in the '70s seems more an aberration than an accurate picture of out-and-about gay life at the end of the 20th century.

Important, awareness-building documentary.

The fact that it was shot at the picturesque Utah resort is a huge plus and the film is so unabashedly eager to please.

This unnecessary and overlong sequel fails to recapture its predecessor's zing.

The film's greatest asset, however, is its unusually authentic use of Manhattan locations: Younger clearly knows New York much better than the topography of the human heart.

Unfortunately, that imagination flags early in the first sequel to the grisly 2004 sleeper hit, though the bang-up ending nearly makes it all worthwhile and it opens with a set piece worthy of its predecessor.

Heartfelt and often very funny.

Deeply personal film that often feels more like an artfully produced home video than a documentary.

This might be the only documentary that will appeal to punks and Mormons alike.

A thoughtful, unsparing look at a controversial subject: suicide bombing.

Visually stunning adventure. (Review of Original Release)

While most anthology films have one standout and one weak link, all three tales are short, sharp shockers -- there should be at least one for every taste.

You don't have to know an arabesque from an alligator handbag to enjoy Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine's loving documentary about the various incarnations of the Ballet Russe.

Like Doom itself, the movie is rich in backstory, but sparse in actual story.

Sometimes stumbles into the trap of excessive predictability. But its amiable (and largely fictionalized) heart tugging still makes for charming all-ages entertainment.

The willowy Danes' rich, melancholy characterization is sown in a barren field of snippy attitude and too-cool posturing, and the film's disingenuous air of bittersweet chic becomes deeply tiresome long before it's over.

Yet another variation on the theme of Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." If you've read the short story, you'll see where things are going in no time flat; if you haven't and want to be surprised, don't look it up.

This tribute to old-fashioned hard-boiled detective fiction is laced with Hollywood satire and snappy, lightning-fast dialogue.

British documentarian Peter Bate frames a mix of archival materials and re-creations with a "trial" at which Leopold listens to testimony against him from within a wood-and-glass booth, like Nazi Adolf Eichmann at Nuremberg.

This is the rare Holocaust documentary that ends on an optimistic note, and Comforty's film might even help reinforce one's faith in humankind.

Hadzihalilovic succeeds brilliantly at crafting a meaningful enigma that somehow grasps the essence of adolescence, but only grows more mysterious with each revelation.

The result is both deeply personal and maddeningly unfocused.

The cast is eclectic and talented, but their roles are two-dimensional and the is-it-or-isn't-it-satirical? tone ensures that their performances never seem properly pitched.

Ti West's affectionate homage to no-frills fright flicks keeps it simple and succeeds on its own stripped-down terms.

Director/cowriter Adrian Garcia Bogliano's self-conscious throwback to the kind of gritty black-and-white gore films that used to play drive-in theaters and urban grind houses is a short, sharp shocker that gets surprising mileage out of the oldest formula in the book of the dead.

There's little difference between this joyful holiday film and the standard-issue yuletide-miracle movie, except that the holiday isn't Christmas.

It now seems that style has completely replaced substance in Scott's films, and he leaves gaping holes in his heroine's character.

This lighthearted meditation on life, death, love and timing contains some genuinely lovely scenes, but they're buried in a shapeless jumble of cutesy-pie vignettes.

If the characters were more interesting, the long, long buildup to their night of ghostly reckoning might be suspenseful rather than tedious.

Egoyan drains the life right out of the material, and the result is a chilly, complicated thriller that's neither thrilling nor a "Through the Looking Glass" head spinner.

What should have been an important addition to popular films about women's rights winds up being the most insulting courtroom drama since "Ally McBeal" was put out of its misery.

Location shooting gives this intermittently powerful film a semidocumentary feel.

Beautifully acted, structurally sophisticated heart-tugger.

Beautifully acted and emotionally devastating.

An observant and sensitively played drama about adolescent sexuality, unrequited love and heartbreak.

Provides an exquisite representation of the emotion and pride in this microcosm mining community. (Review of Original Release)

At a little over two hours, there's a lot of Langlois to digest. But cinephiles won't mind a bit: Richard includes tons of great anecdotes and clips from classic films that wouldn't exist if Langlois hadn't saved them.

Works best as an illustration of the way conspiracy theories serve to weave threads of order, however fantastic, during moments of incomprehensible upheaval.

That the film should have the look and feel of a classic teleplay by, say, Rod Serling, is probably no accident -- the style is one more reminder of just how regrettably short of Murrow's vision we've fallen.

Though unpolished and formulaic, this tribute to the power of faith and music benefits from the contributions of musicians Tamyra Gray, a first-generation American Idol contestant who plays D.T.'s wholesome love interest; Grammy winner Kirk Franklin, who contributed six songs — three original — to the rousing soundtrack; and faith-based singers Yolanda Adams, Martha Munizzi, Fred Hammond (who also executive produced) and Delores Winans.

It's wonderfully satisfying: Collette, MacLaine and Diaz are exceptional, and the mix of humor and heartbreak is perfectly calibrated.

Pacino is a one-man three-ring circus, blustering, capering, cursing, raging and weaseling his way through this predictable morality play like a trickster Satan on speed.

You'll laugh and hate yourself for it.

Peddle captures a vital and increasingly visible community that's easily misunderstood, and his film will undoubtedly help novices further understand the complex differences separating gays, transsexuals and the transgendered.

All the paraphernalia so important to the image of the Reich, particularly the uniforms, are painstakingly rendered, bringing a heightened sense of realism to what might otherwise have been a romantic coming-of-age tale.

First-time director Mark Milgard displays enormous promise and a surprisingly sensitive touch with this beautifully rendered tragedy.

Sassone's hit-and-miss ethnic comedy is actually a retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, with the Italian neighborhood of South Yonkers, N.Y., standing in for Verona.

The title refers to a diorama at New York City's American Museum of Natural History that depicts a whale and a giant squid locked in mortal combat.

Eminently worth seeing, even if it leaves you wishing it were as consistently inventive as Aardman's first feature, "Chicken Run" (2000).

To help break the monotony, Frost relies on relentless digital effects; there are so many shots of giant golf balls whizzing toward the screen it looks like the film was meant to be projected in 3-D.

The cast is little more than the sum total of golden skin, firm flesh and blindingly white teeth, but in a film that demands them to be half-naked and soaking wet most of the time, looks trump technical acting skill every time.

It features truly monstrous bogeymen in the Reavers, cannibalistic renegades who, legend has it, went to the edge of the universe and were driven mad by the abyss.

Actor-turned-writer Dan Futterman's smart, subtle screenplay, which explores both Capote's determination to turn murder into literature and the deeply troubling questions he raised in the process.

More cheerful misogyny from writer-director Henry Jaglom.

Sweetly sentimental story of young love.

Though the story meanders, the film's look is nothing short of breathtaking.

Moore and Harrelson are very well cast.

Of all the feature films and documentaries to emerge since 9/11, few have been as bold, perceptive or as downright chilling as this thriller.

Sergio Leone's masterpiece. In Once Upon a Time in the West, Leone pulls together all the themes, characterizations, visuals, humor, and musical experiments of the three "Dollars" films and comes up with a true epic western. It is a stunning, operatic film of breadth, detail, and stature that deserves to be considered among the greatest westerns ever made. (Review of Original Release)

Suicide, child molestation, corruption, insanity and the faintest implication of incest are wound around the film's suggestion that the cure for modern-day alienation and anomie lies in embracing traditional Japanese culture, like ritual tattooing.

The juvenile gags seem aimed at moviegoers who hate the whole idea of independent/art/foreign-language films and the stuck-up eggheads who like them -- so what's the point?

Jodie Foster's fiercely intelligent performance drives this disappointing thriller, whose taut, carefully constructed first half is sadly negated by its implausible and -- worst of all -- unengaging conclusion.

Frothy, sentimental and thoroughly good-natured, Malcolm D. Lee's tale of coming-of-age at the roller disco doesn't have an original bone in its body, but it's as energetic, eager to please and endearing as a sloppy, wriggling puppy.

The soundtrack, which ranges from Johnny Cash to Serge Gainsbourg to the Wu-Tang Clan, is admirably eclectic but can't be said to pull things together.

Lars Von Trier's silly script about a group of pistol packing misfits gets better treatment than it deserves, thanks to a fine young cast and the game direction of Thomas Vinterberg.

The lighting and makeup are exceptionally harsh; all the women look shockingly rough beneath their garish makeup.

For all the bloodshed, it's fundamentally a cold, cold fable, the icy whisper that turns every happy thing to ash.

The result is 93 very long minutes' worth of admirably committed actors putting themselves through the emotional wringer to very little end.

Dark, dank and violent, filled with terrifying scenes in which exploited children are beaten, shot or starving to death. In other words, it's just as Dickens wrote.

The film's performances are uniformly strong and remarkably coherent, given the conditions under which they were delivered. The actors shot for eight hours straight in a fully lit and set-decorated house, each individually miked and followed by his or her own personal camera operator.

Despite its philosophical pretensions, the film is fairly lightweight, and its good-looking cast and sleek production values are more memorable than any of its heady themes.

Hopkins plays "Hopkins," and the buff, terribly miscast Gyllenhaal will be convincing only to viewers who've never set foot on a university campus. What makes it worth seeing, however, is the extraordinary chemistry between the atypically raw and unguarded Paltrow and Davis, a fabulously talented actress once again testing her range with a performance unlike any she's given in the past.

"Make a Wish" (2003) actually beat this film to the gay-themed slasher-picture punch with its story of lesbians on a camping trip being stalked by a killer, but writer-director Paul Etheredge-Ouzts' background in art direction serves him well — his movie wins hands-down for style and attitude.

But clichéd rapid-fire editing and cheap-looking digital-image manipulation drain away every ounce of atmosphere, and overexplanation blows what could have been a darkly ambiguous ending.

Works because of the utterly charming leads and a strong supporting cast.

The film's tone is set by a bravura opening sequence that follows a single bullet from a factory conveyer belt to its resting place in a child's skull, and by Cage's flawlessly sardonic voice-over.

Actor-turned-first-time-filmmaker Liev Schreiber tosses out most of what made Jonathan Safran Foer's too-clever-by-half debut novel so precious, rooting out the heart of Foer's story from the precocious bombast.

But the real marvel is that beneath the ghoulish in-jokes and horror-geek allusions, there's a core of the same bittersweet truth that makes the best fairy tales resonate from one generation to the next.