Intriguing, disturbing, uplifting evocation. In fact, to watch this film is to engage in participatory art -- for better and for worse, through sickness and in health, we're drawn deeply in.

As refreshing as it is to find a movie that leaves you smiling, it's something much rarer to discover a film that makes you think about what a commitment to happiness really means.

The story may stretch credibility until it's ready to pop its seams, but Patel conveys the simple confidence of a prodigy who has learned everything important in life, except how to lie.

Hunger -- the disturbing, provocative, brilliant feature debut from British director Steve McQueen -- does for modern film what Caravaggio did to Renaissance painting.

This is where the movie excels. In the classic neo-realist tradition, it's scant in plot yet rich in mood and character, offering us a revealing hint here, a poignant glimpse there, with each revelation filtered through Michelle Williams's superbly muted performance, all the more moving for being so restrained.

An unforgettable portrayal of the unglamorous gangster life, which is often short and never sweet.

There's no redemption here. Indeed, if anything is redemptive about Katyn , it's the fact of the film itself.

Turns out to be one of the most compelling, finely orchestrated and oddly enchanting films of the year so far.

Thrilling and beautifully crafted.

At heart, though, every moviegoer can recognize a love story, no matter how unusual the context.

Funny, fascinating, utterly unclassifiable film.

An uncommonly tender and observant documentary on the phenomenon that is "A Chorus Line."

A little bit of "Crime and Punishment" and a whole lot of "The Postman Always Rings Twice," Revanche, the Austrian candidate for last year's Best Foreign Language Film, is a surprisingly unruffled tale of love, thievery, murder and revenge.

It is filmmaker Assayas who is the star here. France's most important contemporary director has created a work of almost magisterial calm.

There's something about this story, and this war, that brings out the stripped-down conceptual artist in her (Bigelow): Against blank canvases of desert sand and rubble, explosive wires are linked to nerve ends, and everything that matters depends on the twitch of a muscle or a finger on a button.

This is a lovely, quirky and not a little poignant film from Agnès Varda.

Hornby is a fine craftsman and his dialogue sparkles, though occasionally the scenes are too calculated.

Even in a season of apocalyptic films, these facts are really, really scary.

"The Hurt Locker" may be getting all the attention and awards but The Messenger is at least as good and perhaps, given its delicate handling of a sensitive subject, even better.

A simultaneously realistic and absurdist examination of police work.

One caveat: At the risk of sounding sexist, let me say A Prophet is an unreservedly male film. Female characters are few and far between, and when they do appear, they pretty much fall into either one of two categories – les mamans ou les putains.

An impressionistic work that is perfectly in tune with its subject’s hallucinatory music.

The wonder is that the film balances its many genres, from the thorns of murder to the bloom of romance to the thickets of politics, with such easy grace.

Dive into a masterpiece.

Observant and funny and thoughtful too, powered exclusively by vérité footage without a word of narration, Babies is William Blake’s Infant Joy brought to rich cinematic life.

The effect is Chaplinesque if Chaplin had the latest in gadgetry, because the entire picture is also shot in 3-D that, for once, puts all 3 of the Ds to imaginative use.

A preening terrorist for the Me generation, his primary drive was vanity and his main professional asset an absence of empathy.

They really pulled out all the stops on this one.