The movie's mimicry of reality TV clichés is eerie, from the use of re-creations and supplemental footage (especially the experimental video Dawn and Jeff made together for a high school art project) to the smarmy commentary.

Beautifully shot on location in Kenya and filled with touching, almost magical moments, Link's film has been nominated for the 2002 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film.

You come away from the film wishing her the best, but fearing the worst.

Meng's film, which uses a fairly sophisticated flashback structure to reveal the secrets of Ah Na's past in China, touches on a number of very serious subjects: the business of illegal immigration, the exploitation of "aliens" and the treatment of people with AIDS in China. But it's also filled with touches of humor.

A torrid and surprisingly cinematic chamber piece.

Adapted from J.G. Ballard's cult novel, a dispassionate exegesis of warped desire, Cronenberg's movie is suitably cold, cold, cold: proof positive that movies about sex aren't always sexy movies, at least by conventional standards.

Fictional but frighteningly realistic.

A tragicomic Holocaust fable that's by turns silly, triumphant and achingly sad.

Bizarre, utterly original and truly indescribable comedy...You just have to see it for yourself.

The movie more than compensates for its biographical deficiencies with thrilling footage of a recent reunion concert which finds the Funk Brothers still in top form.

No one can quite capture that decay -- the guilty conscience that can freeze the blood of even the most reputable of France's bourgeois families -- better than Chabrol, and this the master at his best.

Both Hesses and a surprisingly large number of their very talented cast and crew are graduates of Brigham Young University's film program: Could BYU one day join the esteemed ranks of USC and NYU?

Like his intrepid hero, theater-turned-film director Ekachai Uekrongtham never misses an opportunity to brighten an otherwise ordinary palette with just a bit more color.

It's a fascinating, infuriating story, and despite the fact that Greenstreet occasionally wanders off subject it's a brave and highly commendable effort that's chock-full of chilling moments.

Cleverly mixes footage from various recording sessions and interviews with live performances in Amsterdam and New York City's Carnegie Hall.

Ultimately, however, the look, sound and feel of this macabre comedy fail to support any coherent theme...Much is denigrated, but little affirmed.

The unrelenting tempo is bolstered by Rodriguez's camera work and editing: nearly every frame seems to have been shot with a careening, handheld camera, and they're cut together in a skillful, fluid fashion that enhances the tension and pace of the 80-minute chase.

A murder mystery wrapped in an experimental portrait of life in a rural Hungarian town, writer-director Gyorgy Palfi's engrossing feature debut is a breathtaking feat of filmmaking.

Though it includes a couple of sword fights, Yamada's epic domestic drama could easily be called an anti-samurai film. But its aim is less to subvert the genre's conventions than to deepen them, extending its parameters to include the minutia and rhythms of everyday life.

For all its crime-story elements, this richly colored, beautifully shot film is really a story of the friendship between Singer and the kid he calls ZigZag, a relationship made all the more poignant by the fact that Singer is very sick.

Serious stuff indeed, but the film is also rich with humor -- most of it courtesy of the always-excellent Greene -- and ends with an act of vandalism as shocking as it is exhilarating.

While this extraordinary, 90-minute film -- culled from over 10 hours of footage -- offers few revelations about Hitler's private life, it provides a fascinating glimpse into the psychology of a follower who remained blindly obedient until the bitter end.

Though the ballets themselves are beautifully shot, they lean heavily in the direction of gimmicky and prop-heavy pieces; they're visually interesting but, by and large, they're not great dance.

You won't see anything quite like it from any other filmmaker working today.

Béart and Berling are both superb, while Huppert -- imperious as a woman who turns her world into a moral prison to prove a point -- is magnificent.

All three actresses are simply dazzling, particularly Balk, who's finally been given a part worthy of her considerable talents.

Their downward spiral is like a slow-motion highway pileup: You might think you don't want to watch, but you can't tear your eyes away.

It may be long, but it's not boring -- how could it be when jack o' lanterns float lazily overhead in the dining hall, and the venerable Maggie Smith turns into a cat?

Hoch's considerable skill speaks to an extraordinary empathy and a willingness to understand where even the toughest customer is coming from.

The film works best when it doesn't try so hard, when Salles simply allows his excellent actors and his beautiful images to work their magic.

This sleek and cleverly assembled film is a brutally honest portrait of an obsessive personality, a woman whose mania for control over her weight and the world around her fed her demons and fueled her art.

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.

General audiences will regret the absence of titles identifying various clips and interviewees, but Fellini fans will want to eat the whole thing up with a spoon.

Deneuve has never been better.

Dracula fans will appreciate the witty ways in which Maddin has drawn Stoker's troubling racism and xenophobia to the fore, while making the most of the sexual ambivalence that helps make the story endlessly fascinating.

The audacious finale, which plays out in a wholly symbolic realm, will leave even the most adventurous moviegoers scratching their heads. See it with a friend; you'll appreciate the second opinion.

Both farcical and deeply troubling, it unfolds with the kind of breathless, minute-by-minute immediacy that only eyewitness reportage can bring.

Hauntingly beautiful documentary.

Dark, cynical, but deliciously funny, Heathers is a fascinating look not just at high school but at the way we look at high school.

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

Slickly entertaining documentary.

Richly imagined and resolutely unpredictable, this dark and profoundly optimistic paean to passion -- for glass, for horses, for the thrill of the moment after a coin is flipped but before it falls -- is held together by Gillian Armstrong's solid direction and by strong, if occasionally strident, performances from Fiennes and newcomer Blanchett.

Fatih Akin's surprisingly grisly feature spills more blood than both of Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" films combined, which is strange when you consider that it's a love story.

Blends and recycles elements of scores of crime and road movies, from "Bonnie and Clyde" to "Badlands" but it does so with enough energy and verve to create something entirely fresh and infectiously entertaining.

It's a great achievement, quiet enough to allow room for her excellent supporting cast -- but strong enough to be felt over James Horner's omnipresent, typically overbearing score.

Punjabi weddings are notorious for their lavishness, and Nair's intoxicating soap opera revels in the sights and sounds of this clamorous family ritual.

Most mystifying, however, is the bizarre hero-worship surrounding the fingure of Kim Jong Il, a nationwide personality cult that makes Joe Stalin and Chairman Mao look like D-list celebrities.

Part documentary, part one-woman quick-change show and part sociological investigation, this is enthralling theater with a purpose.

As subversively clever as it is unsubtle.

The results are mildly comical and occasionally poignant. HEART AND SOULS was Downey's first film after his Oscar-nominated performance in CHAPLIN, but he refrains, thankfully, from pulling a star turn. Instead, HEART AND SOULS remains largely an ensemble effort, with skilled performances by all five of the lead actors.

Taut psychological thriller.

The most popular film in Indian history.

Engaging, high-spirited tale.

The wonderfully drawn characters and their soap-opera entanglements are dryly amusing and well played.

The accents are thick and the soundtrack noisy, but even as the screen explodes in chaos, Greenglass maintains a solid grip on the story.

Highlights how far we've fallen.

Like "Lone Star," this group portrait mourns a rapidly vanishing American landscape while acknowledging that the past, free of corporate homogeneity though it may have been, is never the unspoiled paradise it appears in retrospect.

By the time it's over, this deeply unsettling tale of romantic obsession strays far from the usual course of teen flicks and into some very dark territory.

A beautifully acted, intensely felt story.

Witherspoon turns in yet another stellar, nuanced comic performance.

Kechiche's film is bursting with life: Shot entirely on location using surprisingly long takes, all of it feels surprising authentic, even as these young kids attempt to spout dialogue that's nearly 300 years old.

Depp's tight, guarded performance is almost painful to watch, and Newell seems to have reined in the flamboyant Pacino, whose portrait of the mobster as a grumpy old woman may be his best work in years.

Bielinsky's feature debut is a smart, enormously entertaining thriller whose preposterous conclusion in no way diminishes the fun of getting there.

Despite the exotic locale, this is a coming-of-age tale that should be familiar to anyone raised on the tales of Jack London or Robert Louis Stevenson.

Rests on three excellent performances, of which the most difficult is Stephen Rea's.

Never less than gripping.

After a positively thrilling first half, Brazilian director Andrucha Waddington's follow-up to his acclaimed 2000 debut "Me You Them" badly stumbles over an unfortunate casting strategy.

Thoroughly heartfelt. But though Trachtman alludes to the impact that Lior's special needs and local fame has had on his family, she seems uninterested in exploring the larger history of beliefs and traditions concerning mentally challenged people and their closeness to God.

The Carter and Spotnitz's credit, such weighty concerns aren't the stuff of most mainstream genre movies. But they're also not sufficiently gripping to transform a middling thriller into something truly provocative or haunting.

Homey but not especially interesting trips down the Ellis and Cheney family lanes.

Once again brushing aside critical drubbings and public indifference, determined independent auteur Henry Jaglom follows up the abysmal "Let's Go Shopping" with something far better: an old-school Hollywood cautionary tale about -- what else? -- Hollywood.

Owen Wilson single-handedly hauls this amiable, middle-of-the-road comedy out of sheer mediocrity.

The result is an imperfect but genuinely moving film.

Scruffy, loosely structured and piercingly perceptive about the ways in which technology that supposedly brings people together actually keeps them apart.

The "cute" kids are insufferable, but leads Ali Khan and Mukerji radiate the unabashed star quality that's all but gone from American movies -- poverty and desperation haven't looked so glamorous since the glory days of Joan Crawford.

While not exactly in the same league as the visually dazzling "Excalibur" and saddled with cheap looking CGI effects, this Anglo-Italian co-production has quite a bit of fun finding a direct path from the fall of Rome to the birth of Arthurian legend.

Based on the story of Milarepa (1043 - 1123), who renounced the violence and vengeance of his early life to become a revered Tibetan Buddhist saint, lama Neten Chokling's directing debut ends on a frustrating spiritual cliffhanger.

But for all the profane language and sexual frankness, Soderbergh's film is no more cynical or world-weary than its inspirations, and in the end, it feels like a clever trick wrapped around a hollow center.

Most significant and contrary to the Mormon Church's ongoing position, the film depicts Young as present when the plot is hatched to slaughter the emigrants. Needless to say, this workmanlike but unflinching film won't be playing in Utah anytime soon.

Says many things at once without much perspective or clarity.

Mayer knows how to tug at the heartstrings, and his admirably restrained cast keeps the family drama from becoming too sugary.

Does so many things right that it's a shame to see it sink into horror-movie cliches.

Shamelessly manipulative and heavyhanded, it may be an endurance test for those not absolutely entranced by large aquatic mammals.

Rae's 80-minute film isn't able to answer every question or flesh out important details of these events, and she spends more time on Trudell's artistic endeavors than on his direct political action.

Impassioned, unwieldy and padded with celebrity interviews.

The leads acquit themselves fairly well, but the biggest winner is Selleck, whose low-key charm and gift for light comedy are put to good use here.

Cynical, misanthropic and embittered.

Surprisingly enough, puberty-stricken J.D. and Chowder actually sound like real teenagers, but the cartoony look will probably alienate real-life kids that age, and the man-eating house might be downright terrifying to younger kids.

A little like a leisurely surf through YouTube.

Intelligent but incomplete-feeling documentary.

An oddly lifeless affair, though Gretchen Mol's sunny performance almost hauls it out of its doldrums.

Funny moments can be found throughout, but it's mostly silly and scattered.

This remake of Jerry Lewis's 1963 Jekyll and Hyde comedy is slackly directed and overloaded with flatulence jokes.

Where the hero of Maupin's novel learns some valuable lessons about love and faith, the film strikes a darker, even angry tone that's far more understandable and, in the end, far more convincing.

Just when the film seems to be getting bogged down in "before I made it big" anecdotes -- around the time she and Andy Dick, who was once dismissed from a food-service gig, spend a day operating a mobile lunch stand -- Gurwitch wisely broadens her focus, interviewing ordinary victims of corporate "right-sizing," plant closings.

The result is a little bit nutty and pretty entertaining in a thoroughly unconvincing way. And watch out for that 11th-hour twist -- it's a head snapper.

While Travolta and Gandolfini have the beefy, closed-off look of post-WWII era cops, they never FEEL: They look like actors playing dress up. Leto overcomes his delicate good looks to embody Fernandez's feral, faintly exotic charm, but Hayek is a standard-issue femme fatale, damaged on the inside but flawless on the surface.

On its own low-bar terms, it delivers the goods: pole-dancing, gut-chomping and Jenna J.