Garden State gets it. Not since "The Graduate" has a movie nailed the beautiful terror of standing on the brink of adulthood with such satisfying precision.

Delivers a polished and well-researched look at America 's largest corporate bankruptcy with a laser-sharp focus on the personalities, practices, and fates of the top executives behind the Enron meltdown.

Brothers takes a scenario as old as Genesis – two jealous siblings spar over the affections of the same woman – and renders it fresh and immediate, by virtue of the warm, almost maternal, generosity director Susanne Bier shows her characters.

Every so often, a movie blindsides you, leaving you feeling different, enlightened, possibly even improved. Me and You and Everyone We Know is such a movie.

Three Burials is beautiful, authentic and brutally observant of human nature. With real Tex-Mex backdrops instead of the usual Monument Valley vistas and characters too complex to withstand simple white-hat/black-hat reductionism, Three Burials is a visionary portrait of the New West. This is the terrain of Eastwood and Peckinpah, saddled with the concerns of 21st-century life.

In the annals of Mediterranean island love stories, Respiro reflects the effortless charm of a film like "Il Postino," rather than the untidy manufactured romance of another "Captain Corelli's Mandolin."

Bardem plays the part with all the pent-up animal rage of a young Robert De Niro.

A brilliant little exercise. As a horror movie, it packs one genuine scare after another, right up to the moment of its inconceivably ghastly end. As a mystery, it unfolds with an almost supernatural elegance. And as a metaphor for the movies themselves, it's truly exceptional.

Resurrection is a revelation.

In the end, it's not the answer to the kitchen mystery that matters but the revelation that there's ultimately no difference between this bachelor scientist and his bachelor subject.

Reveals more about the German people through sentimental comedy than such overtly political films as "The Nasty Girl" or "The Marriage of Maria Braun."

Think of how M. Night Shyamalan redefined the ghost story (The Sixth Sense), the superhero creation myth (Unbreakable), and the alien-invasion epic (Signs)--and you may get a sense of the genius behind this fascinating new horror film.

Nearly perfect in its own cotton-candy way.

Take it from someone who can still feel the hollow rubber tang! of old dodgeball scars: It feels great to be blindsided by a little movie like this.

In his first feature, director Joshua Marston passes no judgments. He doesn't condemn drugs. He merely depicts the system that has arisen to support this illicit trade.

Conran's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a pastiche of everything from "King Kong" to "The Wizard of Oz," a movie that escalates to a breathless cliff-hanger every 20 minutes or so and reinvents itself with every reel.

Most likely chosen for its shaggy-dog looks, Winn-Dixie is actually a great deal more special than you'd expect, a fitting analogy for a film no parent should be too quick to dismiss.

Murderball asks you to put all your assumptions about quadriplegics aside and start over.

That rare kind of movie that contrasts "cultured" big-city characters with devout, "simple" folk without being condescending or judgmental of either camp.

Woody's a master wordsmith, and here he's crafted a bit of audience-friendly fare that's smart without feeling exclusionary. It's a portrait of elite society--and the hangers-on who wish to penetrate it--made in an surprisingly accessible way.

On the surface, each of these characters fits a familiar Latino stereotype--teen harlot, "el bandido" and male buffoon--yet the movie insists on giving each person dimension.

What isn't fair is the film's R rating, which makes this charming coming-of-age tale virtually inaccessible to the audience sure to cherish it most.

Lee’s use of split-screens and dynamic transitions makes the process of actively interpreting his monstrous vision a fresh and unrivaled experience.

It's the details that make Dummy such a winner. By way of comparison, consider last summer's "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," in which each actor put a heartfelt spin on his or her one-joke character (the father who believes that Windex cures everything). Well, here's an entire movie built on nuggets like that.

Although director Eytan Fox focuses on Yossi and Jagger's specific situation, he also casts a critical eye on the responsibility military service puts on all young people who are still in the process of discovering themselves.

With the careful timing and nuance of a master actor, Sharif turns a two-dimensional sketch into the film's most absorbing character.

Films like this have a way of finding their own devoted fan base, and Gypsy 83 deserves to be discovered not only by Goth and gay crowds, but by anyone who runs screaming from all things average.

Mean Girls depicts the kind of traumatic high school experience that might await spoiled rich girls who grow up in two-parent households with designer clothes and Escalades.