This bruising, harrowing movie would be impossible to sit through without at least a hint of light at the end of its astonishingly dark tunnel.

Although Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is unmistakably a fawning love letter to an amazing performer, its subject proves to be her sharpest, bluntest critic.

Ultimately too slight for its own good: It's a genial little doodle, light on plot and heavy on quotable, pithy observations.

The movie's scientific content is so fascinating that it almost feels like a bonus that Kinsey himself is such an intriguing figure.

Often grim, but never nihilistic: Even at its darkest, Dizdar gives the movie an optimistic bounce. The movie is often shockingly funny, too.

Director Claudel makes you wait until film's end to discover why, exactly, Juliette committed her unspeakable crime, and it's the only disappointing aspect of the movie -- the only time I've Loved You So Long traipses into melodrama. But the rest of this utterly absorbing picture never strikes a false note.

An ambitious, powerful, somber picture, but it never quite moves you the way it should.

Its playful approach to chronology and voice-over narration serves to amplify its themes instead of coming off as a show-off trick.

That song (Jefferson Airplane's Somebody to Love), which becomes a sort of mantra to the movie, is the key to understanding what the Coens are after: When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies, you better find somebody to love.

With a light, sometimes hilarious touch, Look at Me deflates the pretensions and self-obsessed nature of a group of wealthy Parisian literati, but its observations about the effects of fame and success and our natural desire to fan them as high as they can go, apply to anyone within range of reality-TV culture.

The Visitor is a small movie, but its emotions could not be writ any larger.

The movie's utter lack of predictability helps to keep you engaged, even if some of the plot turns are a bit baffling, and the unusual depth and complexity of the characters -- the eponymous heroine in particular -- give the picture its unusual, scalding power. You've never met a mother quite like this one.

It's a fantastic special effect because it doesn't look like a special effect: The movie sells the illusion that the suit could maybe, possibly, exist.

Control Room may not seem all that compelling 10 years down the road. But right now, at this very moment, it is essential, imperative viewing.

What ultimately makes Drive so compelling is its characters - sketches given dimension and heft by a superb cast.

If I hadn't seen the original, I might have gone ga-ga over Reeves' version. But even with the shock of novelty gone, the film still draws you into its chilly, demonic heart.

I Am Love is a bold and thrilling masterpiece -- the introduction of a major talent to the world's stage.

On one level, Searching for Sugar Man is a testament to how music - or painting or literature or any form of art - can take on a life far greater than its creator intended when it happens to connect with the right people at the right time.

Movies like Monsters, Inc. literally make you feel like a kid again, marveling at the joyously inventive sights before you, and that's a feat that should not be taken lightly.

Those rigorously moral and humanistic underpinnings give 28 Weeks Later a kind of power that 100 Saws and Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes could never achieve.

What ensues is a love story ringed by barbed wire and etched in blood with the jagged neck of a broken beer bottle.

Swinton single-handedly carries The Deep End past its nagging ambiguities.

It's a dry, mundane title. It's also the only thing about the film that doesn't blow your mind right out of its comfortable, I've-seen-all-this-before rut.

Often, the movie leaves you wishing Briski had found a way to document more of her subjects' day-to-day lives.

The result is an unwieldy but still compelling look at the plight of immigrants wrapped in a thriller about black-market organ transplants.

It's a small victory, but Punch-Drunk Love knows how to reap epic delight from the most precious of details.

After the Wedding ends up feeling far weightier than it first appears, with its plot contrivances and unlikely coincidences generating such a messy range of emotions, they end up feeling a lot like real life.

This is not the sort of movie you can just leave behind in the theater. And like any true finale to a trilogy, the picture doesn't work nearly as well if you haven't seen the previous two installments: It's not designed to stand alone, and it pays off all that has come before with an exuberant, thrilling high.