Downey plays off his own bad-boy image wonderfully. The writers give him great lines to work with and ditto that for his Girl Friday, Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts, whose own svelte lines cannot be improved on.

The stroke of genius is, of course, the film's hero -- the big, lovable bear that is the Chinese panda.

Witty to the point of hilarity, blood-soaked and thoroughly politically incorrect, Mother of Tears: The Third Mother follows 1970s cult classics "Suspiria" and "Inferno" to complete Argento's "Mother" trilogy.

Even a klutz could hardly make a bad movie about these compelling figures. Thankfully though, Guido Santi and Tina Mascara are superb filmmakers, fully alive in their terrific film Chris & Don: A Love Story to all the undercurrents of art, social class, sexual orientation, challenging relationships and, most especially, the touching love story at the heart of their film.

Hilarious for those on Maddin's mad wavelength and more varied than his strictly fictional features.

A biographical documentary doesn't get any better than this.

Spicing up the entire package is a screenplay by Canet and Philippe Lefebvre that bristles with wit and energy.

A winning mix of sharp comedy and touching bits that keeps the laughter -- a few tears -- flowing.

It is a sumptuously told tale of childlike wonder in the face of darkest corruption and war, mixing high comedy, surreal sequences and genuine drama viewed from a wise, jaundiced perspective.

Uplifting without a drop of sap, the tale of a boy's obsession with a glittering swimming pool and how it changes four lives offers numerous pleasures and one of the most satisfying and resonant conclusions to be seen in recent cinema.

Alternately disturbing, laceratingly satirical and affectingly poignant, the film, which he adapted from the novel, Towelhead, by Alicia Erian, is very much a companion piece to the Ball-penned "American Beauty" in its unwavering examination of the dirty little secrets and raging hypocrisies lurking just beyond all those manicured suburban lawns.

Working with non-pro actors, Hammer pulls authentic performances from the trio that are at times almost too painful to witness.

In Changeling Eastwood continues to probe uncomfortable subjects to depict the individual and even existential struggle to do what is right.

The film is superbly crafted, covering huge amounts of time, people and the zeitgeist without a moment of lapsed energy or inattention to detail.

Poetically composed, with marvelous lumps of wit and perspective, Of Times and The City is a masterwork.

This is a marvelous family story, tapping into all sorts of childhood dreams and nightmares involving Mommy, monsters and heroic youngsters. Selick's imaginative sets and puppets are in perfect pitch with Gaiman's fantasy.

A piercingly funny, twisted "whatever-happens-in-Vegas" caper.

Polished, funny and utterly charming.

Riveting, near flawless documentary.

The frequently outrageous Il Divo follows the career of one of the best-known and most tenacious figures in Italian political history in a lively, sensory-overload, cartoonlike fashion reminiscent of "Amelie" and "Moulin Rouge." The fact that it's often over-the-top goes with saying, and is part of the fun.

An edgy entertainment, the movie also remarkably has the feel-good warmth of an old-time Irish film.

Enlivened with droll wit and framed with robust sensitivity, O'Horten is an amusing and entrancing personal portrait. Succinct in its visualizations and crisp in its pacing, its deferential storytelling is in sync with its Odd subject.

Tensely action-packed and muscularly directed by Kathryn Bigelow, this tale of an elite U.S. army bomb disposal unit in Baghdad is a familiar story in new clothes, targeted at the young male demographic.

Raimi's still very much up to his old tricks, retaining that deliriously over-the-top brand of Grand Guignol horror that he had abandoned by the mid-'90s in pursuit of other genres.

Most of all, Earhart wanted to be able to fly free as a bird above the clouds, and director Nair and star Swank make her quest not only understandable but truly impressive.

This searing, stylish account of World War II heroism from Denmark's Ole Christian Madsen avoids period realism, conveying the story of two heroes of the Danish resistance as a noir thriller, complete with shadowy alleys, double-crosses galore and the requisite femme fatale.

A long but powerful true-life drama of 1970s German terrorists features masterful storytelling and bravura performances.

The decibels, energy and overall quality are high in writer-director Kari Skogland's Fifty Dead Men Walking, her supremely well-made, highly stylized, graphic tale of Northern Ireland's "Troubles" in the late 1980s.