The only famous person in the film, actor Peter Coyote, is an eloquent spokesman, but he was only a visitor to Black Bear; the stars are the full-timers, and their willingness to share their rich and sometimes painful memories is captivating.

The result is a finely tuned suspense thriller, though executives who have recently laid off trained killers may experience some discomfort.

The film is marred by a lackluster narrative, failing to inspire or move us in any way, but there's no denying Bedelia's beautifully nuanced performance.

Supposedly a no-holds-barred look at the seamy heroin subculture, The Panic in Needle Park is really little more than a boring romance between two dullards intercut with close-ups of filthy needles being jabbed into scarred veins.

Witty and beautifully textured.

Sicilian-born filmmaker Emanuele Crialese takes a huge leap forward from his pretty but simplistic "Respiro" with this highly original, startlingly beautiful and emotionally resonant film.

Suspicion is so grimly powerful that its Hollywood-style happy ending has infuriated audiences for years.

Grim tale of good and evil.

For what amounts to a fairly sentimental glance backward, the film is oddly styled; Andrew Dunn (who also shot the baroque "Monkeybone") favors oblique angles and lighting worthy of an Italian horror movie.

Wickedly funny, deeply disturbing, live-action retelling of an old Czech folktale.

The result is an astonishingly complex, striking original portrait of an artist whose deeply personal art, intended for no one but God and himself, demands to be treated on its own terms.

A dark and edgy teen comedy that's also one of the most excitingly unpredictable American comedies since "Pulp Fiction."

All dressed up with no script to go, but a feverish nerve jangler nonetheless.

Parents should be warned that the novel ventures into some emotionally dark territory that could be upsetting to very young or sensitive children, and might want to consider reading and discussing the book together before seeing the film.

Serrill wisely divides his film into chapters according to year, which helps structure the story's natural repetitiveness.

One of the best of many early 1970s vampire movies inspired by Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla, Daughters of Darkness is remarkable not only for its eroticism, but for Kumel's stunning visual style, reminiscent of that of Josef von Sternberg.

Rarely has a film so ineptly directed produced so much intentional laughter.

The cast is wonderful, the soundtrack features a well-chosen array of bouncy period pop tunes, and Graeme Wood's cinematography makes the most of the stately beauty of the dish itself.

The material is inherently compelling and anchored by Washington's performance.

An exhilarating, funny and deeply sad story of growing pains that works on two levels; it's a feel-good story that quietly undermines the notion of gain without loss.

Though the storyline moves in unconvincing fits and starts, Carax gets good performances from his hip young stars.

Even more astonishing that the superb acting is the simple fact that director Gianni Amelio has managed to craft a touching tale of a father reunited with his disabled son without the slightest whiff of sentimentality.

Cute without being insipid, funny without being childish, The Muppet Movie contains enough magic to please all ages.

The voices are all well suited to the characters, and the film is a delight for children as well as adults who appreciate good animation and brisk storytelling.

Appealingly Continental in look and style, Intermezzo continually verges on soap, but is redeemed by carefully calibrated performances and Ratoff's loving direction.

Split into two sequences, this feature-length cartoon is one of Disney's finest efforts, with attention paid to every animated detail.

Well written and subtly directed, The Last American Hero concentrates on the human elements of the story without becoming overly sentimental.

Edwards's direction was smooth and neither he nor Miller ever took a stance or moralized. They just showed what it was like to be an alcoholic in the 1960s and let the audience draw its own conclusions.

What really makes Vixen work is the performance of Erica Gavin in the title role. Equally popular with both male and female viewers, Vixen is a take-charge woman who gets what she wants. She's something rare in American movies, a woman in whom strong sexuality isn't paired with evil or some other major character weakness.

The film's worth as a propaganda piece was considerable, but too many long-winded speeches about people uniting to fight the Germans date the film somewhat now.

Beautifully animated, the celebrity voice performances are terrific, and the action sequences negotiate the fine line between being physically convincing and becoming too intense for the young children.

Though it can get laborious, and produces the odd unintended chuckle, The Secret Garden is charming and sometimes chillingly authentic.

Now seen for the first time in close-up, these "boys" are well past adolescence, which makes Bennett's sympathy for poor Hector a bit easier to take.

Fun for the kids, but no Beauty and the Beast or Lion King. This child-friendly retelling of Hercules' story takes the predictable liberties with a story originally chockablock with sex, violence and generally sordid behavior. After several passes through the Disney wringer, a sanitized, blandly blond Hercules (voice of Tate Donovan) emerges, ready to enter no pantheon other than that of muscle-beach pinup boys.

Even if the screenwriters were obviously inspired by the mega-success of ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, that doesn't make this funny, rambunctious entertainment a mere rip-off. Whether dancing, singing, or hamming it up as the legendary tomboy, Day proves that she was second only to Judy Garland as the Golden-Age Hollywood Musical's consummate triple threat.

Though absurdly criticized for being too "white" to play Mariane Pearl, Jolie gives an excellent performance. She portrays Mariane as gutsy, smart, passionate and highly efficient.

There are echoes of Stephen Spielberg's "Duel," as well as "Roadgames," "The Hitcher" and "The Hills Have Eyes," but director/cowriter Mostow isn't interested in hommages: He's just looking to crank up the suspense (not the in your face action, thank heavens), bit by miserable bit, and does a very nice job of it.

Literate, but not at the expense of the cinematic, THE BODY SNATCHER is one of Lewton's greatest works and contains what is arguably Karloff's finest performance.

Zieger's thoroughly researched film is a vital reminder that beginning in the mid-'60s, a few conscience-stricken military individuals -- including dermatologist Dr. Howard Levy, sickened by cynical attempts to win Vietnamese "hearts and minds" through medical treatment, and Navy nurse Susan Schnall, who wore her uniform to a civilian antiwar demonstration -- actively and openly voiced peace sentiments.

THEM! is one of the best of a 1950s spate of monster movies rooted in nuclear paranoia.

Deneuve has never been better.

The theme--that just beyond the edge of the perfectly normal lies the truly bizarre--is realized with intelligence and visual flair.

Equal parts "Oliver Twist" and "Pinocchio," Russian director Andrei Kravchuk's fictional hearttugger exposes a troubling real-life practice in contemporary Russia: the buying and selling of abandoned children to rich foreign couples.

Rivette brings a refreshing realism to what could have been a stodgy costume drama, it's still pretty slow going.

The battle of wits is peppered with funny lines and the suspense seldom flags.

Bar-Lev also explores the freakish popular appeal of child prodigies, the family dynamics that come into play when a child's celebrity and earning capacity overshadows the adults', and the remarkably conflicted and contradictory admissions drawn from Brunelli about Marla's work.

But anyone who would be inherently interested in this kind of sendup is unlikely to be surprised by anything in this film -- overall it feels like a trifle, if an entertaining one.

But once you're good and drunk on the look, details like the tin-eared tough-guy dialogue (which sounds especially stilted issuing from flesh-and-blood mouths) don't seem so important.

Poitras boldly dispenses with the traditional documentary voice-over, but her film is filled with telling moments that are far more eloquent than any scripted narration.

The film not only stands as an important street-level document of that time, but makes a valuable contribution to the growing compilation of 9/11 storytelling.

This psychological thriller takes its time and never delivers the big shocks genre fans raised on its American cousins have come to expect. But it works up a chilly atmosphere of creeping dread, and the tension.

Director Sturla Gunnarsson crams each sequence with subtle, telling detail while avoiding "exotic India" clichés.

This gentle, slow-moving film contains some charming sequences but no new insights into the pleasures and burdens of family.

Thoughtful look at the itinerant street musicians of Paris.

At a brisk 97 minutes, the film skips over many episodes that make Hahn's book a pulse-pounding page-turner, but offers her rare perspective on both sides of civilian life during those nightmare years.

No matter how you spin Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's chronicle of headbangers on the couch, it sounds like a pitch-perfect parody in "Beyond Spinal Tap" mode. If anything, knowing it's no joke makes it harder not to giggle.

Watch it for the songs. A paean to Oklahoma's "Sooner" pioneers, it's a watchable, if hardly terrific, rendering of an innovative Broadway landmark.

Firm dates and more detailed historical background would have better served the filmmakers' purpose than their "chronological narrative relay race," which muddles an already complex situation.

This superlative film set the pattern for myriad documentary-type dramas to come.

Should have been pared down into an episode of the series.

An undeniably effective adaptation of the Shirley Jackson novel and one of the best haunted-house movies.

Youth exploitation pictures were all the rage at the time, and while this is better than some in execution and intent, it's still exactly that.

It's vivid evidence that great music and stories transcend time and place.

Phillippe has the unenviable task of trying to make O'Neill equally interesting, but an eager beaver with some unresolved family issues is no match for a poisoned soul methodically laying the groundwork for his own inevitable fall. The unfortunate imbalance makes long stretches of the film feel dull, but when Cooper is on screen it's mesmerizing.

German filmmaker Malte Ludin's gripping documentary about the father he barely knew is both an extraordinary exercise in family history and an example of what Germans call Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung: "facing the past," particularly the years of Hitler's Third Reich.

This grim black comedy from Belgium would be unbearable if it wasn't scripted with such wry humor.

An exercise in audience manipulation, with every frame designed to stagger the senses.

A modest but finely tuned look at small-town life.

Brilliant, in its own twisted way.

Heir to a long tradition of apocalyptic scare stories, the film wears its influences proudly.

Toni Collette's extraordinary performance, Alison Tilson's sensitive script and Ian Baker's sensational cinematography add up to a surprising film.

In the end, the film is both a fitting elegy for Arna and the children she tried to help and a deeply disturbing warning about what will continue to breed within the occupied territories until peace is brought to Palestine.

Matewan is beautifully shot, and there is not a weak performance in the film. Jones is a tower of dignity; Cooper is the epitome of quiet strength; and Oldham glows with the passion of a zealot, first for God, then for the union.

Martin makes his character amiable and downright lovable; Hannah shows a fire she hadn't demonstrated in previous efforts. In an era when romance seems to have taken second place to sex, it's heartwarming to see a film like ROXANNE bring back the loveliness of love.

Lee's biography of the slain civil rights leader treats Malcolm, not as a political rallying point, but as a fully rounded individual whose life defies reduction to symbolic status.

Academy Award-winning live-action-short director Andrea Arnold makes a startlingly assured debut with this low-key psychological chiller.

Eerie, surreal and a welcome respite from Disney-style animation, this French sci-fi allegory may not offer any mind-blowing insights (genocide is bad isn't exactly a new thought), but it's a trip.

Flawed but refreshingly intelligent.

But transforming full, live-action performances into quavering cartoons isn't inherently lyrical, and here it produces the jittery sense of a world dissolving into flat forms and buzzing prattle.

This stage-bound farce could easily be an American sitcom: It's all slamming doors, eavesdropping and stupid miscommunications, garnished with a heavy-handed helping of comedy of humiliation.

Berlevag's 1300 inhabitants are by nature hardy and uncomplaining, but Knut Erik Jensen's unhurried documentary reveals that there's more to them than mere stoicism.

This intelligent, oddly aloof thriller is a worthy follow-up to director Steven Soderberg's "Out of Sight."

Salles is a master storyteller, and the film's pacing is flawless.

This modest film delivers a simple but powerful message:... the real work of creating a lasting peace must be done on an personal level, one individual at a time.

Shot on reverse film, poet-turned-director Lukas Moodyson's debut feature has a grainy, immediate feel that nicely enhances the story's emotional honesty.

In the end, it's best to make peace with the film's essential and deliberate inscrutability -- something Lynch fans have learned to do since Twin Peaks -- and to simply marvel at Dern's astonishing performance, which few actresses are likely to top anytime soon.

Predictable but sometimes moving.

Shunji Iwae's film began life as an interactive online "novel" and unfolds in a series of achronological vignettes whose cumulative effect is chilling.

It's also very cleverly edited - one scene will often branching off from another in much the same way a crossword puzzle works - and features a bang-up ending that will actually leave you cheering over a word game.

A gripping action film that also illustrates the bitter disillusionment of Americans who witnessed the corruption, confusion, and moral chaos of the country's leadership during the Vietnam era.

Valuable as a fine performance of an important and delightful play, MAJOR BARBARA makes for bracingly intelligent cinema.

This hard-hitting crime film, based upon the notorious career of one-time New York City vice lord Charles "Lucky" Luciano, was a tour de force for Davis who had just battled Warner Bros. to a standstill in a contract dispute.

An uncanny and thoroughly creepy nip-yuck nightmare about plastic surgery and identity.

In the end it remains an academic exercise, though a dazzlingly ambitious one that’s well worth seeing.

Overall, the filmmakers are a little too reverent -- it would have been interesting to hear Derrida respond to criticism leveled against deconstruction as an academic methodology -- but then again, they're not entirely in control here.

Occasionally melodramatic, it's also extremely effective.

(Valli) brings an ethnographer's eye for detail to a plot that amounts to little more than the good old generation gap.

It's clever, in a "dare you to name this hommage" kind of way, but it's fundamentally heartless and coldly hollow.