Jarmusch manages to imbue banality with surprising beauty and humor.

What gradually comes into focus is a terrifying, appalling, infuriating cycle of exploitation and corruption.

A smart, marvelously drawn account of the bravery of homing pigeons during World War II.

Tells Yuri's story with the same bravado and stylishness as Scorsese at his finest, with bigger-than-life characters and situations splashing across the screen in breathtaking scale.

An engrossing, well-crafted story of a grave injustice avenged, hitting all the right notes of sympathy, outrage and, finally, relief.

The beauty of Nine Lives is that its occasionally overlapping stories feel entirely unforced; Garcia's is a filmmaking style of rare lyricism, compassion and discretion.

An engrossing piece of social history, a lively, astonishingly well-documented excavation of that period.

Rich, sweet, densely layered and deeply satisfying. A film that might have been a dry exercise in earnest nonfiction filmmaking becomes a soaring, artistically complex testament to survival, character and hope.

From its sepia-toned palette to the Motown hits that drive its terrific soundtrack, Glory Road is utterly authentic. But most astonishing is an unrecognizable Jon Voight as Adolph Rupp.

Although the dogs have surely been Disney-fied to some extent, the sequences of them trying to survive are magnificent and deeply moving. Bring the Kleenex, and hug your pups when you get home.

Like all the Dardennes' films, L'Enfant is a vivid, Dickensian report from the most dispossessed precincts of society. But the film concludes on an optimistic note, at least for the Dardennes. It's still the worst of times, the filmmakers seem to suggest, but we're still capable of humanity, if not hope.

A killer concert film, an ecstatic testament to the joys of fandom and a tribute to the democratizing potential of moviemaking technology.

Though Watt's emphasis on coincidence and fate seems strained at times, Look Both Ways is rich in dreamy summer atmosphere and deadpan wit.

Somersault faces the difficulty of representing a girl's unspoken desires and anxieties, a challenge Shortland rises to with terrific skill and aplomb.

A charming, if limited, romantic comedy that examines post-collegiate angst with easy, unself-conscious humor.

Combines nonstop action with an absorbing story to become a classic on par with "Hoosiers" and "Hoop Dreams."

Clerks II finds Smith up to the profane, raunchy, profoundly humanist mischief of which he alone is the master. This is a lewd, lascivious, exhilaratingly life-affirming celebration of misfits and the misfits who love them.

Nearly every scene rings with its own ragged truth, which becomes increasingly painful as Dan's addiction becomes more unmanageable and as he refuses to confront the untenable politics of his own behavior.

Visually dazzling, epic in its sweep and deeply romantic in its sensibility, The House of Sand is one of those films whose images and ideas linger long after the lights come on, having been burned into the viewer's consciousness.

The film looks great on the screen, and Hamer has commissioned a terrific musical score from Kristin Asbjornsen, who has set a few of Bukowski's poems to haunting, jazzy music.

The three leads deliver funny, convincing performances in a film that wears both youthful callowness and intellectual sophistication lightly. Mutual Appreciation is the kind of movie whose dialogue mostly hews to the rhythms of "like, you know, whatever" but then occasionally throws in a word such as "puissance." And, like, it totally works.

Stands as a valuable chronicle of a brief and snarling musical movement.

This is an exceptionally assured debut, and Montiel exhibits rare care with editing and sound design. His real forte, though, is casting, to which a brief scene featuring Downey and the incandescent Rosario Dawson powerfully attests.

Crackles right along, stopping only long enough for Scorsese's signature bursts of explosive violence. Those brawls feel a bit rote, but what's different here is a newfound playful humor.

Beautifully shot and edited with swift efficiency, Black Gold joins a cadre of recent films that shine a welcome light on how the stuff we buy gets to us and, more to the point, how the price of that stuff often has little to do with its real cost.

Bale and Jackman inject their reliable charisma into two otherwise very cold fish. Okay, I'll say it: If you see only one magic-at-the-turn-of-the-century movie this year, make it this one.

Block, an experienced documentarian, does an outstanding job walking the knife-edge between personal and self-absorbed.

A vivid, poetic evocation of life in post-invasion Iraq that works both as impressionistic collage and candid portraiture.