It's a shocking story, made all the more so by the film's final revelation, an outrageous allegation no one even bothers to deny.

Expertly captures the details and textures of the time without condescending or lapsing into cheap-shot parody.

Anyone who remembers Harrison fondly will enjoy this musical tribute, though it assumes a level of familiarity with Harrison's associates that not all viewers will have.

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.

Bogumil Godfrejow's raw cinematography and Huller's poignant, close-to-the-bone performance transform what might have been a morbid curiosity into an entirely enthralling, quietly terrifying experience.

An astonishing movie that keeps you off-balance from the first scene.

For Western viewers unfamiliar with Hong Kong gangster films, there's no better introduction.

An unabashed call to action that shines a spotlight on a problem whose intimate medical nature relegated it to the shadows.

A wonderful, sentimental western about a bad man who redeems himself.

Funny, perceptive, bawdy, tragic and philosophical, pretty much everything a viewer -- or a listener -- could ask for.

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

This loud and exhilarating documentary from director Julien Temple brings it all back in a vitriolic spray of spite, spittle and raw rock and roll that still hits like a heart attack.

Oddly, once removed from the museum setting and strung together into an hourlong feature, it's Maddin's most cohesive narrative.

Funny, eye-opening and ultimately very moving portrait by director Kirby Dick.

A smooth and efficient film about some pretty rough characters, THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY deserves its status a modern-day crime classic.

At 155 minutes, this screen adaptation of Shakespeare's most celebrated play bears scars from deep cuts in the text.

Stylized to the point of poetry.

The acting is second to none: the two leads are frighteningly good in their psychotic roles and supporting characters are also well dileneated. But there are some technical problems with the film, notably too much shadow in the frame, several highly visible microphones and the choppy editing, which jumbles the story at times.

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

Quirky, sometimes brilliant, and mostly ice-cold.

While the unfortunate epilogue strains the naturalism of what's gone on before and leaves a bit of a sour taste, this semi-improvisational comedy otherwise reaches Balzacian brilliance.

Harrowing and heartfelt, with knockout performances by a pair of fine actresses.

An exquisite piece of streamlined suspense and action that clearly demonstrates that the 24-year-old filmmaker was already in full control of his vision.

Fresh sounds like another slice of low-life, a study of an intelligent but fatally disadvantaged ghetto child's inexorable descent into criminality. But if the situations are (at first) familiar, the characters aren't; they may look like the same old junkies and dealers and whores and gangsters, but first-time director Boaz Yakin invests all of them--particularly Fresh (Sean Nelson)--with a subtle, complex life that's both painful and exhilarating.

While it stands as a distinct film in its own right, this film is still very much of a piece with "Shoah," and the subject is presented in the same haunting manner.

Diablo and director Jason Reitman never undercut Juno, whom Page brings to a fully rounded life (no pun intended) that verges on the frightening: Her vulnerable center doesn't belie her formidable exterior -- it just makes her more than a sitcom-patter machine.

Get Shorty's assortment of lowlifes and high rollers is a familiar one, but it's still deeply satisfying.

As a remake, The Fly transcends the original, taking it in new directions and exploring its underutilized potential.

Its interrogation of cross-cultural dysfunction and the colonialist legacy notwithstanding, Chocolat's foremost pleasures are visceral. Denis, even at this early stage, already seems attuned to film's power to suggest and seduce. Her debut emanates the effortless sensuality and sinewy elegance that have come to mark her movies, making it a sterling introduction to her cinema of sensation.

With the exception of a brief sequence on the Galapagos Islands, where Maturin briefly indulges in some pre-Darwinian study of its unique ecosystem, the entire film takes place aboard the ship, and Weir's greatest accomplishment may be that it never feels claustrophobic.

No guns, no violence, no nudity--just a caring story that will wet the driest eye and warm the coldest heart. Every single role is perfectly cast and perfectly played, and Horton Foote's script is a marvel of economy.

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.

An unrelentingly powerful and seamless indictment of two brutal political systems.

One of the best things the highly variable Jane Fonda has ever done.

It's a one-note satirical piece, but the pitfalls of indie filmmaking are lovingly portrayed, and DiCillo proves that he can take it as well as dish it out.

This early precursor to Sunset Boulevard and The Bad and the Beautiful was so inside that many people outside the movie business didn't catch the nuances, and it still packs a considerable comic punch.

Wholly entertaining and memorable, THEATRE OF BLOOD is ripe camp, an excellent film, and a lasting tribute to the career of one of the most important actors in the genre.

With its quiet pacing and dry-as-a-bone wit, the film strongly recalls the deadpan comedies of Jim Jarmusch or early Hal Hartley, but it gradually reveals a welcome new sensibility, one that's entirely McCarthy's own.

(Rohmer's) simple script and methods capture a sense of place and character that eludes far more conspicuously stylish directors.

Superbly scripted, the film features wonderful performances from all its major players. Equally brilliant, especially in a film that emphasizes script and character, is the cinematography by Robby Muller, perfectly capturing the notion of "America." A final factor in PARIS, TEXAS's success is the remarkably haunting score by blues musician Ry Cooder.

For once, a script perfectly suited to its director and star and one of the most lyrical children's classics ever made.

Expertly directed by veteran British helmsman Young, Wait Until Dark is an exciting, original chiller.

"All of us are by nature wild beasts. We must be like animal trainers and teach ourselves tricks alien to our bestiality." Cutting-edge Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul uses this quote from the novelist Ton Nakajima to introduce his entrancing third feature.

[Solondz's] blistering, brilliantly transgressive satire is sure to rattle even the most jaded filmgoer. It's also a remarkably compassionate profile of American life at its most desperate.

Cruelly honest and pitilessly funny, Sweetie is one of the nakedest explorations of familial love and desperation ever filmed.

Although an impressive technical achievement, the film itself is a rather overblown and overhyped affair--which, for all its expensive excess, fails to recapture the spirit of the original.

Even in this early effort the whimsical, odd world of Fellini comes dancing forth.

The sometimes self-conscious and too-earnest Fonda and the occasionally hammy Lemmon both rise beautifully to the occasion, delivering performances that are among their best.

This touching documentary is many things at once: a fascinating biography, a gorgeously shot travelogue, a provocative disquisition on the relevance of architecture and, above all, the record of a son's poignant search for a father.

It's as laceratingly entertaining as its predecessor.

With grace and cleverness, mixing romance and comedy in a genuinely delightful way.

An intense, if slightly overlong, drama. The film is well assembled, and the performances are all quite good, especially Connery and Hendry.

Marker revisited (the film) in 1993 after the fall of the Soviet Union: He trimmed an hour and added a remarkably prescient coda: "Terrorism has replaced Communism as the ultimate evil."

The film is saved by the raw power of the performances, and especially, Richard Pryor's bitterly funny observations.

Besides its exhilarating style, the well-acted film works as an effective translation of the classic Greek myth into a Brazilian romance. (Review of Original Release)

Basilio narrates his tale with such wit and wisdom that one comes away from the film wondering how much youthful potential is slowly being choked to death deep within the bowels of the earth.

Few of China's Sixth Generation filmmakers have turned to their country's explosive economic growth and its attendant upheavals with so sharp an eye and so heavy a heart as Jia Zhang-ke.

The film's look and themes also recall those of Howard Hawks. Avoiding artful, fussy compositions, Tarantino constructs much of Reservoir Dogs from simple medium-shot long takes.

As an evocation of things past, THE SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA is a remarkable and modestly enchanting film.

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.

Boorman's original script is razor sharp and very funny, and Gleeson's portrayal is nothing short of brilliant

Inventive visuals and funny bits abound, but the film's gritty look and unsentimental characterizations - Harry, Hermione and Ron are far from golden teens - ominously foreshadow the truly wicked shape of things to come.

There is much to enjoy in this movie, but just as much to yawn over. One has the feeling that this was a play that was never produced on stage but went directly to the screen from the typewriter. Since so much of it is dialogue with very little cinematic action, it just feels stagebound.

It's a great place to visit, even if you wouldn't want to live there.

The film has a gentle political edge, knocking Marxists and Christian Democrats with equal cheerfulness, and Troisi's self-deprecating humor, sly delivery, and melancholic charm are inimitable.

For all the flash and flutter, the movie overall lacks, well, HEFT.

On the downside, it's slackly edited -- comedy is, after all, all about timing and there are way too many lengthy shots of Cho waiting for her audience to respond.

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.

But overall, Jackson goes for the magic by sidestepping every error of judgment and failure of imagination that brought the ponderous 1976 remake thudding to Earth before Kong ever did. He delivers three solid hours of breathless, enchanting entertainment.

The documentary is undeniably entertaining, but it suffers from an uneven selection of clips, sloppy historical research, and, ultimately, an overabundance of riches.

Releasing one's self to the new rhythm of this film can be difficult; the story is allusive, the Island history sketchy, and the precise relationships of the family members undefined. Yet, if her suggestive presentation escapes straightforward analysis, one cannot help but be mesmerized by Dash's unique vision.

The interactions between the raspy-voiced Hurt and various shallowly cheerful Americans are genuinely charming and dynamic.

Wildly entertaining and a visual delight.

Serrau effortlessly navigates the tricky transition from ruefully comic chick flick to gritty crime picture.

Davaa and Falorni's film does suggest that camels have inner lives as rich and complicated as the human beings with whom they live in such intimate proximity. But they're also wholly camels, matted, goopy-eyed, gritty with sand and quick to knee an adorable calf in the snout when its demands become annoying.

Under the sure directorial hand of genre veteran Marshall, Destry Rides Again is a well-paced western that seamlessly combines humor, romance, suspense and action.

Maverick Chinese director Jia Zhangke examines the rapidly changing face of China as its economy edges further toward a modified form of market capitalism with yet another complex, multicharacter masterpiece.

An exceedingly beautiful film, PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK seems to aspire to be an existential thriller of some sort. At times the film seems to tread in BLACK NARCISSUS territory with its depiction of barely controlled sexual hysteria and its eccentric lyrical quality. It's all pretty overheated and underexplained but this arty, vague, and possibly supernatural movie lingers on in the memory.

An astonishing, brilliantly edited car chase--with pursuer and pursued speeding the wrong way along the LA Freeway--is one of many pleasures in this darkly stylish crime film, director William Friedkin's best effort since "The Exorcist."

By turns enthralling, seductive and deeply disturbing.

Expert chase film, breathless and modern, that sent McQueen to the top of the box office heap. Bullitt is a return to the old, tough crime movies so expertly played by Bogart and Robinson, but made modern here by great technical advances and McQueen's taciturn, antihero stance. Yates's superb direction presents a fluid, always moving camera. All the performers are top-notch.

Audriad's film articulates an uncomfortably familiar vision of a nation desperate enough to believe its own lies, where the copy is inevitably much better than the real thing and heroes are only as genuine as one needs them to be.

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

A deranged penguin is seen racing toward his certain doom amid the crags of a mountain range. It may not be "Happy Feet," but Herzog has made a penguin movie after all.

The complete absence of world leaders is a bewildering sign that the world still doesn't care much about small African countries with no exploitable resources to speak of, and a troubling indication that such atrocities can, and no doubt will, happen again.

Powerful, haunting, and at times very moving, The Last Temptation of Christ presents its account of the events and conflicts of Christ's life with a depth of dramatized feeling and motivation that renders them freshly compelling.

Often technically rough, but it's painfully compelling.

Mark Moormann's documentary tends to the worshipful, but Dowd, a charmer onscreen, was by all accounts just as appealing in real life.

Perfectly gorgeous and perfectly nasty.

Reichardt is such a canny filmmaker that one could almost believe that she intentionally leaves Wendy underwritten and a bit of a cipher, because Wendy is far more effective as a bold-faced symbol of the downtrodden than as a fully realized human character.

A subtler and less bombastic companion piece to Arthur Miller's most famous play, Salesman is an exemplar of nonfictional material shaped and illuminated by sophisticated filmmakers who have absorbed the devices of fictional storytelling.

It's sometimes hard to breath for the sheer volume of acting sucking the air out of the room, and keeping three narratives movie without muddling them all is a hugely ambitious undertaking for any director, let alone one on his second film.

Sounder is one of the truest examples of a family film ever made and a triumph for all concerned.

One of the best baseball movies ever.

A fitting finale to a decade of memorable gangster films. This slick, whirlwind-paced crime melodrama is another tour de force for James Cagney, making it a companion piece to ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES.

A superior WWII film that provides plenty of edge-of-the-seat thrills, THE TRAIN also poses a rather serious philosophical question: is the preservation of art worth a human life?

Morrison brings an amazingly sure hand to MacLachlan's prickly screenplay.

The film is an original work by a filmmaker who throughout his career has absorbed the best of what Ozu had to teach, and as such it stands as beautiful tribute from one master to another.