Still a mystery: Harlan’s own sense of guilt. But there’s plenty to go around.

Though it’s divided into three chapters--“Voices,” “Recollections” and “Innocence”--the film takes a largely free-form look at a dying community that’s more reminiscent of Frederick Wiseman’s nonfiction case studies than the usual sociopolitical hand-wringing.

Thankfully, the actor-director prepares this potential recipe for hokeyness with all-natural ingredients, casting four of the feistiest biddies he could find, who are all the more endearing for being unadorned.

Every so often, you get the gift of watching an under-the-radar actor bloom into a critical-mass phenomenon before your bloodshot eyes: Franka Potente in "Run Lola Run," or Christoph Waltz in "Inglourious Basterds." Add Noomi Rapace to the list; what she does with the title character of this Swedish thriller-cum-pop-lit-adaptation will spawn cults of swooning Rapacephiles stat.

When Stiller indulges in moments of unfulfilled rage, this has real desperation.

Almost as an afterthought to the ringingly true performances--and Marco Bellocchio’s unusually approachable direction--comes a deft analysis of fascism, likened to lovesickness, insanity and a gust of orchestral strings. It’s all of that and more, not to mention a lousy matchmaker.

For those of us who find somber superhero movies faintly ridiculous, Kick-Ass is a one-film justice league.

The running time may make you blanch, but Connie Field’s seven-part documentary about the history and eventual dissolution of South African apartheid is well worth the commitment.

The filmmaker’s irreverent directness with his subjects makes for a savagely funny and bluntly insightful portrait of those who live with disfigurement.

At its best, this pomo oater gets within chaw-spitting distance of action-flick greatness; at its worst, the movie is simply unadulterated guns-and-guts fun.

What emerges is an illuminating, though terribly dismaying, portrait of the War on Terror’s lasting effects. Whether one retreats or steps out defiantly, there is no sanctuary.

Sol Tryon’s dark, irrepressibly hilarious fable offers highbrow absurdism and low-budget filmmaking at their most clever and outlandish.

By movie’s end, you see flocks of umbrella-adorned commuters in a different light; and what’s often viewed as Japanese humility becomes a doorway to something huge and eternal. Bring the kids.

A truly impressive portrait of self-destructive, smooth-talking alpha males, and a testament to an actor who waltzes across that Peter Pan–syndrome tightrope with the greatest of sleaze.

The tone this time out is primarily comic.

Neither Reilly nor Tomei have ever seemed so effortlessly funny, and whoever thought to cast one of Judd Apatow's regulars as a dysfunctional, disturbed manchild should be dubbed a genius.

With tinkling thriller music and dramatic voiceover narration, this modest but engrossing first-person documentary comes on like a true crime caper.

It's easy to think of comics, especially time-tested ones like Rivers, as mechanical laugh-generators. Stern and Sundberg allow her to reveal the deep-rooted humanity of those ever-present quips, and the effect is humbling.

Director Luca Guadagnino is having so much fun setting up the Kubrickian chill (even Barry Lyndon's Marisa Berenson is on hand) that when Emma and the much younger Antonio finally come together in warming Sanremo, their tryst almost sneaks up on you.

It’s a trial run that puts many of his peers’ masterpieces to shame.

Alternating between stunning fixed takes and quick you-are-there camera movements, Bill and Turner Ross's portrait of their tiny Ohio hmetown (the title is its zip code) weaves a hypnotic tapestry out of everyday banalities.

Stripped to a minimum of editorializing (but, like "The Hurt Locker," flush with sympathy), this Afghanistan-shot war documentary takes its cues from the unblinking style of cinema verité.

Watching the first hour of I Was Born, But… (unspooling with a bright, new piano score by Donald Sosin) might remind you of a subdued “Our Gang” skit, and not unpleasantly.

The Law is everything that this season’s lackluster blockbusters are not: a damn good time.

Inception, though, is no "Avatar"--instead, it’s the movie that many wanted "Avatar" to be. In a roaringly fast first hour, we’re introduced to a new technology that allows for the bodily invasion of another person’s dreamworld.

The man himself stares into Davis's lens, both confident and scared; for these moments alone, the movie is key.

Walker integrates stranger-on-the-street testimony to further her general vibe of ignorance, thus pinpointing the true target of an agitated doc--our own blithe apathy.

Director Christian Carion (Merry Christmas) establishes a low-key yet threatening atmosphere right from the start, and gets terrific performances from Kusturica and Canet.