What makes Wolf Creek so effective is not its originality (which, let's face it, is practically non-existent), or even its amount of gore (the violence is implied more often than it's shown), but the ways in which McLean tweaks the usual formulas, so what you think is going to happen next almost never does.

There's no denying the particular political slant of Why We Fight, but Jarecki's thoughtful, nonconfrontational approach makes it absorbing viewing, regardless of whether or not you buy his arguments.

Simply too odd and unconventional to ever appeal to a broad audience, either at the multiplex or on home video.

Aside from its South African setting and flavor, there isn't a lot in Tsotsi that differs from its legion of similar Hollywood counterparts. But the movie's heart, along with Hood's refusal to sugarcoat the grim reality, wins you over no matter how many times you've seen this story told.

Running Scared is a vicious and brutal B-movie jacked up to hysterical, hallucinatory proportions -- a pulpy, violent action picture that torments the viewer as much as its characters, and I mean that as a compliment.

Really a blistering satire about spin and the manipulation of the media.

Unexpectedly funny, leisurely paced and oblivious to the demands of its genre, Inside Man has a loose, playful vibe that's at odds with its grave life-and-death scenario.

Buoyed by a superlative soundtrack, ATL plays a familiar song about growing up, but hits notes that sound brand new.

Feuerzeig presents an unyieldingly sympathetic but always fascinating portrait of an artist whose mental illness became inseparable from his art, with one often fueling the other.

Big and fast and silly, but it's never dumb, and it's certainly never boring, either. The summer movie onslaught has begun on a high note.

Lurking just beneath Water's serene, storybook surface is an unmissable, defiant passion.

It's a breezy, homespun, relaxing thing...watching this laid-back picture feels, oddly enough, like a vacation from movies.

Manages to turn an internal, solitary activity into fodder for an engaging, even exciting movie.

By giving the hero's inner plight so many dimensions, Superman Returns brings a richer, grander perspective to a seminal character without changing his essence. It's a profoundly personal take on a universal icon, made by a filmmaker who continues to improve with each movie.

Shaped just like the murder-mystery its title promises, the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? introduces us to the victim, then rounds up the suspects most likely responsible for its demise.

This is more of a thinking man's action flick -- a small, intense film made on a giant canvas that finds Mann experimenting with and pushing at the boundaries of mainstream filmmaking.

A straightforward, earnest, sentimental picture: It's all the things you'd think a Sept. 11 movie directed by Oliver Stone would never be.

Using a semi-documentary approach, Glatzer and Westmoreland circumvent the considerable potential for sentimentality inherent in their story, instead taking a frank and direct approach to kids who, while far from hardened, are nowhere near innocent, either.

One gigantic pile of cornball clichés, but there's no denying the movie works you over anyway.

Director Kevin Macdonald, an accomplished maker of documentaries making his feature-film debut, gives The Last King of Scotland the pace and crackle of a thriller, albeit a thriller with substance.

Shortbus is, first and foremost, an experiment -- an accessible, audience-friendly movie about love and sex in which the screen doesn't fade to black once the actors start taking off their clothes.

Nolan, who has become an assured, stylish filmmaker in the span of only a few films, keeps the complicated plot spinning.

The fact that you might emerge from the theater eager to give their albums a listen is a testament to how effective this lively and stirring movie about freedom of speech really is.

Although the movie doesn't exactly romanticize the period, the film still generates a twinge of pride in viewers who lived in South Florida during that time -- and lived to tell about it.

One of the amazing things about Volver is that Almodóvar once again manages to make a preposterous, overloaded plot seem sublime and organic: It's his profound empathy for his characters and their very human dilemmas and flaws that allows him to fling them into all sorts of odd places without ever losing sight of them as people.

This glitzy, infectious and unusually heartfelt musical doesn't always hang together as a satisfying narrative -- too many characters compete for too little screen time -- but its pleasures are numerous enough to override its flaws.

The movie is essentially a vehicle for Smith, but the actor more than rises to the challenge. Rarely has attaining the American Dream seemed so impossible or daunting or so intensely, profoundly satisfying.

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.