Denis dispenses with most of Melville's hefty Christian symbolism in favor of the story's other great theme -- repressed homoerotic desire.

Excellent performances from Jacqueline Bisset and Martha Plimpton grace this deeply touching melodrama.

The ensemble is a tight one that places the audience right in the middle of the nightmare.

Snappy and smart, the film gets surprisingly far on a fairly contrived conceit, proving that there's no energy quite like energy fueled by anger and disgust.

Steven Soderbergh's direction conjures an understated '70s vibe, striking an apparently effortless balance between grit and glamour.

Mesmerizing.

A bold, vibrant piece of filmmaking.

Medem's stupendously gorgeous puzzle movie features strong performances from its four leads.

Informative and richly illustrated documentary.

It's an excellent introduction to a man whose thoughts on war, peace and dissent have become increasingly influential in ever more confusing times.

Marrying a painterly aesthetic with a defiantly homosexual sensibility, this ironic biopic is probably the most accessible film of avant-garde British director Derek Jarman.

Populated by a great ensemble cast and oozing a grubby sort of charm.

Old family secrets and fresh entanglements snake through the intricate plot like the tendrils of a particularly poisonous strain of ivy that flourishes only in the hot-house atmosphere of tiny towns, whatever the outside temperature.

Thick with sexual intrigue and characters who only reveal themselves over time, this subtle mystery unfolds like something a kinder Neil LaBute might have cooked up earlier in his career.

A frighteningly good horror movie with enough solid scares to freeze the blood of ardent fans and newcomers alike.

The sad fact is that this comprehensive and compassionate documentary about the hottest of the "hot-button" topics - gay marriage - probably won't change one's mind

That rare film aimed at teenage girls that's still enjoyable for grownup viewers.

However intriguing from a theoretical perspective, this gorgeously shot film is first and foremost and purely sensual experience. Filled with the sights and sounds of Rio of a bygone era, the whole thing virtually pulses with excitement.

French director Helene Angel's dark but deftly handled fable about familial violence has a terrifying, fairy-tale atmosphere that's in perfect keeping with its unique point of view.

A very entertaining, hugely neurotic romantic comedy.

It's a humbling way of life, and one that, as Varda discovers in this wonderful, 80-minute essay, has survived in surprising ways.

Despite a gimmicky, underdeveloped plot, JENNIFER EIGHT is a moody, atmospheric thriller, featuring several fine performances and marking a promising major studio debut by writer-director Bruce Robinson.

This is pulp with smarts and a social conscience.

Enthralling, darkly funny, horrifying and hopeful.

An exciting dramatization of the strange events that marked the turning of the legal tide against Big Tobacco, and a particularly dark moment in the annals of CBS News.

An exhilarating, sometimes terrifying monster of a movie that, once it gets you in its clutches, won't put you down again until the closing credits start to roll.

One of the flat-out creepiest films ever released by a major American studio.

Warm, funny and often brutally honest profile of an aging divorcee and her three very different daughters.

It's a great part for a great actor and Cheadle does a magnificent job turning this living legend back into flawed, flesh-and-blood reality.

Romero isn't a subtle filmmaker -- the sociopolitical underpinnings of his DEAD films have always been brutally clear -- but LAND is alive with subtle touches.

The rogue feminism of "Thelma and Louise," mix in some of "Rock 'N' Roll High School" punk-rock energy.

A beautifully acted slice of intersecting lives defined and driven by the business of beauty.

A cut above the preposterous action spectacles that now pass for espionage films.

A sprawling, semi-biographical account of two real-life filmmakers who both found work during darkest days the German occupation.

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.

Overall, Owen and Law are more nuanced than Roberts and Portman, but Portman's dewy youth is 90 percent of Alice (the remaining 10 is an eleventh-hour twist), and Nichols uses the unkindly costumed Roberts so skillfully that her performance looks like a revelation.

This fast-paced entertainment is a surprisingly successful mix of spectacle and human-scale drama.

Though the specifics of the story may be unfamiliar to Western viewers, its broad outlines and underlying themes are universal, and Christopher Doyle's ravishing cinematography transcends language.

Simply and eloquently articulates the tangled feelings of particular New Yorkers deeply touched by an unprecedented tragedy.

Tricky thriller relies on its smoothly unrippled surface, leisurely pacing and slightly awkward performances to create a false sense of security that sets up viewers for a shock when it takes an abrupt turn into Patricia Highsmith territory.

A hoot and a half.

The almost supernatural turn which Kim's lovely film takes during its final act, however, is totally unexpected, and just one reason why Kim ranks as one of the most justly celebrated talents in contemporary Korean cinema.

Lower case Hitch, but diverting and sleek, with the climax early on. [review of original release]

If a year in the life of a university department head doesn't sound like the stuff of a riveting documentary, please allow this stirring film by husband and wife filmmakers Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson to change your mind.

Utterly enthralling even for viewers unfamiliar with the Congo's complicated political history.

Greenebaum manages to portray old-age as a condition with its own peculiar beauty and considerable grace.

In the end it all comes down to Mitchell. She turns in a truly harrowing performance that will leave you shaking.

The excuse given here that Gerron couldn't resist one last opportunity to direct, even under the most grotesque circumstances, is really no excuse at all.

A rare, unexpected treat.

Frequently funny, generally fizzy and occasionally piercingly perceptive about the price love exacts.

Bakan's arguments are buttressed by entertaining clips culled from commercials, industrial films and, appropriately, monster movies.

Unlike Woo's successful but rather disappointing "Broken Arrow", this brutal, stunningly choreographed spectacle weaves together lyrical beauty, blasphemy, sadistic cruelty and grotesque sentimentality with breathtakingly smooth assurance.

With his sure handling of this thriller's switchback plot and hairpin turns, Hideo Nakata confirms his mastery of genre material in the wake of his phenomenally successful "Ring."

Fans of innovative Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg will recognize the emergence of his unique voice in this 1970 project, the director's second feature (following the 1969 Stereo).

The excellently translated subtitles retain the wit and flavor of the brisk, at times even hardboiled, dialogue.

In a story driven by questions of loyalty and allegiance, no candidate is identified by party. It's a bipartisan nightmare from which no one escapes unscathed.

This cheeky fable rests on the slender shoulders of Etel and McGibbon, and the lovely, natural performances Boyle elicits from them are the film's real miracle.

Amiably undemanding...Exhausted though the action-cop-buddy-comedy genre is, Another Stakeout manages to be fairly entertaining.

The dialogue is repetitive ("I won't give in to the dark side of the Force!" "You will!") and significant characters from earlier films -- notably bounty hunter Boba Fett and Yoda -- are dispatched without fanfare, and the whole business has a slightly rushed, perfunctory feel at the same time that it feels oddly attenuated.

By turns enthralling, seductive and deeply disturbing.

This intimate, bittersweet romance is proof that a familiar story and the trappings of a done-to-death era can still seem fresh and engaging in the right hands.

A powerful anti-war film.

It does get K-Mart to pull handgun and assault ammunition from their shelves after two Columbine survivors show up at corporate headquarters with Moore's camera crew in tow and bullets bought for 13 cents apiece at a K-Mart store still embedded in their bodies.

This exciting, if conventional, teen thriller effectively makes its points about the dangers of the nuclear age. It features a fine performance from Lithgow as the brilliant yet troubled scientist, and writer-director Marshall Brickman does a nice job of emphasizing human values.

While far from her best work, this accessible, emotionally involving domestic drama nevertheless serves as a welcome introduction.

It's both the shortest 3 1/2 hours you'll ever spend at the movies and spectacle of such magnitude that it's hard to imagine feeling you didn't get your time and money's worth.

It highlights a still shadowy moment in the creation of Pakistan that saw the abduction of nearly 100,000 Sikh and Muslim women in both India and Pakistan.

While the target audience won't be as familiar with the voice of Gervais as with, say, Eddie Murphy, they'll no doubt love his dirty bird humor.

Both informative and intensely moving.

Non-musical scenes that move the narrative forward are staged realistically, while the lavish production numbers reflect the star-struck imagination of one-time chorine Roxie, for whom all the world ought to be a stage.

Funny without out ever making fun, Vardalos mixes elements of ethnic stand-up, Cinderella romance and Bridget Loves Bernie-style situation comedy, all grounded in something very real.

At heart an emotionally rich look at mothers and their daughters.

Craig Brewer's sweaty, feel-good story about a small-time pimp and dope dealer making one last, desperate grab at his long-deferred dream is driven by longtime supporting player Terrence Howard's subtle, go-for-broke performance as Memphis mack Djay.

A perennial favorite on college campuses since it first reached the screen at the height of the Vietnam War.

A moving look at the choices parents make on their children's behalf, and the reasons behind those choices.

Not to be missed.

A moody, beautifully acted character piece.

The terrific soundtrack, which includes the Only Ones' "Another Girl, Another Planet" and New Order's most excellent "Temptation," is heavily weighted towards the '80s, which is exactly as it should be.

A well-crafted potboiler from start to finish.

Anchored by Friel and Williams's exceptional performances, the film's power lies in its complexity. Nothing is black and white, starting with the girls' complicated relationships with their parents, which are simultaneously nurturing and fraught with psychological peril.

Despite its length, the film only starts feeling as long at the end -- or, more correctly, ends. Serious fans of the novels will be prepared for the serial codicils, but the uninitiated are likely to think the film is over several times before it actually is.

At just under 80 minutes, Gluck's film would make a perfect double bill with "Trembling Before G-d," Sandi Simcha DuBowski's acclaimed documentary about gay Orthodox Jews who, like Gluck, have found themselves caught between their love for their religious heritage and all the secular possibilities they could no longer ignore.

History has since overtaken Ponfilly's film, which now more than ever seems like but one chapter in a much larger story -- the ongoing tragedy of Afghanistan -- and a tragic tribute to all that might have been.

The reality of the situation and the nightmarish consequences they suggest, however, are frighteningly real.

Captures the way drug addiction gives structure and purpose to aimless lives, and evokes the breathtaking rapture of a fix. All this and a happy ending, too.

One of the most original films of recent memory, with an edge of black humor and punk sensibility--wickedly funny, ceaselessly inventive, and never boring.

Features a first-rate voice cast and state-of-the-art animation that's nothing short of miraculous.

This is as powerful a set of evidence as you'll ever find of why art matters, and how it can resonate far beyond museum walls and through to the most painfully marginal lives.

It's a blessedly old-fashioned, well-made and well-acted narrative.

He's (Mann) a solid historian and this film is full of fascinating facts, but he's a cultural critic at heart, and a good one at that.

Whatever the complicated truth about PTL, Tammy Faye's homespun charisma is undeniable; if only the Lord would give her the strength to say, "Get thee behind me, false eyelashes!"

This creepy and cryptic early film from director Arnaud Desplechin isn't as assured as his MY SEX LIFE... (OR HOW I GOT INTO AN ARGUMENT), but it has its own intriguing charms.

The strangest thing about writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson's unusual romantic comedy is how much of it is based on a true story.

The result is truly a family film, not a kiddie time-waster that throws the occasional sop to adults; whether you like or love it is a function of how vividly the material reflects your own childhood fantasies.

Feel-good tone notwithstanding (and creepy to boot), there are nagging riddles about the Helfgott story that the film has neither the nerve nor the sense to tackle.

But long after you've grown tired of [Flynt's] escapades, the scenes in which he and Althea support one another against the slings an arrows of outrageous fortune are touching and, ultimately, genuinely tragic.

Imagine "The Full Monty" without any of the feel-good uplift, and you'd be pretty close to capturing what this bitter -- and often bitterly funny -- film from Spain is all about.

Henry James's novel of social-climbing, forbidden love, friendship and betrayal, given a lush treatment that neglects neither the elaborate period trappings nor the story's intensely contemporary emotional underpinnings.