Nominated for an Oscar for best documentary feature, it's deeply humane and even more deeply unsettling, in a way that most documentaries about Iraq, which tend toward the polemic, never manage.

It's an exemplary and incendiary instance of documentary filmmaking as real-world advocacy.

The halting dialogue, full of awkward pauses and restarts, seems improvised in the way that only carefully scripted material can.

You have to experience the thing to understand its simultaneous recklessness and care, its humor and sadness in the name of failure, its playful but dismal take on formulaic Hollywood endings.

Is it a great movie? Maybe not. But it is a great step forward in moviemaking. Shrug it off if that makes you feel better, but starting today you live in a post-Avatar movie world.

One of those should-I-laugh-or-cry satires.

For all the ostensible immaturity of its form, Fantastic Mr. Fox is the most grown-up thing the director has done in years.

Gorgeous and saddening, Osama makes the human-scale claim for the overthrow of governments ruled by the iron hand of religious fundamentalism far more persuasively than any of the rhetoric coming out of the White House or No. 10 Downing St.

Full of life, wit, smarts, thrills and sheer gratifying entertainment that it launches the mind on a stream of merry somersaults.

One of the purest instances of indie cinema this year. "Pure" meaning that in every aspect of filmmaking and intent this picture is peerless, so truly real, funny, poignant and sexy that it almost feels like a watershed cinematic moment.

Discreet, delicate, and cautious, Monsieur Lazhar takes you by surprise -- and that goes for both the movie and the man.

Such a treat for the eyes, ears and funny bone that you feel cheated that it clocks in at less than an hour-and-a-quarter.

It's one of those works that presents the deeds of both humans and animals and leaves you wondering which is the more civilized.

Apparently it’s the second film of a trilogy Demme intends on Young -- and the middles are always the hardest parts to get right, yeah?

Spider-Man 2 succeeds in pretty much the same way "Superman II" did -- only more so.

Van Sant has been quoted in recent media reports as being done with the type of filmmaking that these four movies represent. If that's true, then Paranoid Park is a fine summation of what he learned from making them.

Pina, so exquisitely made and filled with such powerful beauty, suggests thrilling new possibilities for the marriage of movies and dance.

Frightening stuff, and made all the more so because of how matter-of-factly by writer-director David Michôd plays it.

The performances are universally good, the 3-D is utterly gorgeous, and the nutshell history of the early days of movies is inspiring.

Exciting spectacle of a master director reining in his abilities to create a work that is etched in acid, burnished in smoke.

This edition -- clean and tight as Scott would have it -- presents a strong case for Alien as both the greatest horror film and the greatest science-fiction film ever made.

One of this year's funniest movies -- and its most inspirational sports drama -- is a documentary.

Raimi as a filmmaker is clearly having more fun than he's had in years. So will his fans.

Every profile is fascinating, but certain ones stand out.

If you're willing to do the work, Triad Election pays you in tragedy.

For much of its going, Up in the Air moves with the same refreshing pace and attitude that marked Reitman's "Thank You for Smoking" and "Juno" -- with the added frisson that the subject matter is so torn-from-the-headlines that it feels, in a good way, like reality TV.

While Tarantino's famous fight sequences are grisly, funny and genuinely entertaining, his love scenes are so tender, so fraught, you fear for the safety of your own heart.

In absorbing drama and staggering emotions, it renders an issue too often seen as black or white in heartbreaking gray.