It's hard to decide what's worse about this feral clan residing in Brighton, England: their unspecified criminal enterprises, their penchant for bloody vengeance or their twisted family dynamic.

What stays with the viewer is a sense of a man unraveling from his own mistakes and weaknesses.

There are odd comic moments, but this is a bleak, nighttime, nightmare world, where the couple seem to have about the same chance at a happy outcome as the accident victims.

Cunningham's work is about seeing and teaching us how to see, and that should be plenty for us.

The most amazing act in the Gran Circo Mexico doesn't take place in the ring - it's the grind between performances.

His affable, regular-guy shtick works well here, and he scatters the movie with such gleeful ads for his sponsors' products that, if his documentary work ever dries up, his next career choice is obvious.

Art history lessons don't get much better: Cave of Forgotten Dreams presents the world's oldest paintings captured by one of film's great visionaries.

The movie's mixture of romance and noir, its air of menace and a certain occasional playfulness suggest the filmmakers have been thinking about Polanski and Hitchcock.

Among the film's more intriguing revelations is the key role California's almond crop plays in the nation's bee industry.

Le Quattro Volte may sound like art-house tedium, but in fact it's a movie of grave beauty, serene pace and surprising humor.

If you've sworn off movies about adolescent misfits, I don't blame you, but make an exception for Terri. This modest comedy-drama declines to take the easy way out, unlike many examples of the genre.

An intense and chilling documentary.

The movie is anything but flawless. There are flourishes that seem plucked from Errol Morris' work but aren't as good, and some re-creations of past events are hokey. It's the film's content that packs a punch.

The film perhaps shines brightest when it depicts two telling relationships Nannerl has outside her family. The first is with Louis XV's 13-year-old daughter, Louise...The other relationship is with Louise's troubled brother, the dauphin.

The film takes its time detailing his mundane activities, often withholding the kind of information audiences usually expect, and it's Puiu's talent to transform it all into a highly disturbing portrait - both of an individual and a society.

We are told at the film's beginning that we are about to see a "diary of suffering," and it is that, but the effect, after four-and-a-quarter hours, is exhilarating.

The curdled Norwegian comedy-drama Happy, Happy, which dissects a pair of poisoned marriages, is sometimes heavy-handed (like its title) but has much to recommend it.

A fly-on-the-wall look at the inner workings of the famed Spanish palace of avant-garde gastronomy that closed its doors in July. If you're passionate (and open-minded) about food, you'll be fascinated.

It's impossible to listen to Francesca's parents, deadly serious about art as a higher calling, without feeling both saddened and disturbed.

A breezy account of a man whose obsession began early.

The film's subject, a whistle-blowing research scientist who played a key role in the fight to regulate tobacco, deserves to be celebrated.

Bala, by the way, means "bullet." Laura Zúñiga, the real-life beauty queen on whom the film is loosely based, was called "Miss Narco" in the Mexican press.

The documentary Hell and Back Again may be the closest most civilians ever get to the reality of the war in Afghanistan.

The film boasts an original score by Cuban pianist and composer Bebo Valdés, who was featured in "Calle 54."

A lot of what takes place in Roadie feels overly familiar, and the film could have been a wallow in pathos except for the performances, especially that of Eldard.

If nothing else, you'll surely relish the extravagant rhetoric used by Ali Mahdavi, the club's artistic director, to describe what is basically a tasteful nudie revue.

The nonprofessional cast is convincing, especially Lacej, whose Rudina registers more strongly than Nik.

The image that finally lingers is one shown repeatedly: a close-up of fingers gently pressing a piece of fish onto a handheld oblong of rice, painting it with a single brushing of sauce and laying it on a plate, after which the preparer steps back. We're left to contemplate the pristine creation and envy Jiro's lucky customers.