It's clear that Weerasethakul knows exactly what he wants to do and that he does it in his own way. And that's why his film, even if it can't be recommended to everyone, blossoms inside you the longer you allow it to.

Beautiful, poetic, mournful, at once rich and spare, Brokeback Mountain takes a daring conceit and creates of it an overwhelming work of art that should speak to anyone capable of love.

It's a melodrama, but played with rigorous and surehanded spareness, and it never panders, even as it gets a mite hysterical near the end.

The excellent news is that Yates and company took their time adding visual depth to the film -- they shot it as 3-D -- and the result feels immediate and real and not at all slathered-on.

As unpleasant as so many of its going-on are, Wake in Fright works both as an early instance of "Ozploitation" cinema and as a harsh critique of Australian colonialism and the absurdity of trying to bring so-called civilization to this vast arid wilderness.

I reckon that for everyone who's enthralled by the film there will be others who wish they'd heard about it rather than seen it.

It's as full and rich a portrait of the lives of athletes as we've seen since "Hoop Dreams."

Brimming with bittersweet wit and emotion and built with deceptively fluent craft.

It's a sports story, yes, because without baseball there's no Beane. But it's far more a tale of a man's triumph over himself and his doubters. And you don't need math to make sense of that.

It may not be the most memorable saga put on film, but as far as Miike is concerned, it doesn't have to be.

Spielberg manages to give us a Lincoln for our times, inspiringly heroic but demonstrably human.

Amir Bar-Lev shows in the absorbing, eye-opening and sometimes enraging film The Tillman Story, if there was one thing that you could count on Pat Tillman to do it was speak his mind: loudly, intelligently, and often in salty, pointed language.

Boyle, one of the premier stylists in the world fills "Slumdog" with ebullient energy and ceaseless invention.

An empathetic portrait of humanity on a house-by-house, heart-by-heart basis.

A truly powerful, masterful work.

Watching a group of kindergartners learning to crack an egg into a bowl is hardly the stuff of drama, and yet watching it, you suspect that something important is happening. And it is.

A kick to the heart, and Swank is a marvel. Any problems in the storytelling are more than balanced by her wholly committed work.

It is, in a way, the first glimpse of the cinema, right there at the dawn of humankind. And it is utterly remarkable to see.

The story told by I'm Going Home is small and perhaps not terribly universal. But there's something poignant about an artist of 90-plus years taking the effort to share his impressions of life and loss and time and art with us.

Demanding, harrowing and very, very real. You won't shake its impact easily.

Fans of European cinema will recognize in Barbara the calling cards of director Christian Petzold: the icy, quiet intensity of his muse, Nina Hoss; pretty but strangely unsettling shots of the windswept east German countryside; and subtle subversions of the thriller genre wherein the suspense is drawn from decisions made in mundane settings, such as the workplace.

Ultimately, the story can be seen as the collision of two equally uncompromising belief systems, each its own form of fundamentalism. That neither benefits from the encounter should come as no surprise to anyone with the slightest knowledge of human history.

Audacious, gorgeous and unique.

As a study of a predator, "Evil" is fascinating and enraging.

The period details are spotless, kindling memories of those days of yellow ribbons and nightly news updates on the fate of the American hostages.

A stunning film.

Almodovar loves the human flesh -- indeed, one of his films is titled "Live Flesh" -- and with the quietly subversive Talk to Her, he utilizes it not just as mere decoration but weaves with it textured themes of powerlessness, love and obsession.

Difficult to sit through, Our Daily Bread is nonetheless an important record, invaluable for those with the courage to watch it.