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?