Songwriter Jack Johnson's collection of laid-back, sunshine pop tunes unobtrusively support the sweet and surprisingly touching story line, rather than the other way around.

Acclaimed cinematographer Jan De Bont's directing debut is a mindless, implausible, and thoroughly gripping adventure movie.

Nevertheless, The Santa Clause is a charming, if mild, fantasy, distinguished by a gentle directorial touch that strikes a deft balance between dramatic and fantastic elements.

WAYNE: "No way, Professor; we just needed a story so we could string a lot of gags together without it getting too boring."

A bracing cover of Ian Tyson's "Four Strong Winds," performed by no fewer than seven acoustic guitars, rounds out the set, but be sure to stick around for the credits.

Eight magnificent sled dogs must fend for themselves amid Antarctica's frozen wastes in this top-notch survival adventure that will reduce the coldest heart to a puddle of warm slush.

Provocative, deeply unsettling mockumentary.

The film is a shattering experience fueled by Jentsch's electrifying performance.

It's a fascinating film, simultaneously enthralling, infuriating and guaranteed to make viewers ask how such a perversion of the political process could be taking place in America.

The film's title refers both to tiny, fish-shaped vials of liquid heroin and the small fry flitting around the edges of the urban drug scene.

Besides its exhilarating style, the well-acted film works as an effective translation of the classic Greek myth into a Brazilian romance. (Review of Original Release)

What's suspenseful - and so troubling - is seeing exactly how far the "progressives" of GCS are willing to go to put a decidedly unpopular candidate back into office, regardless of what it will mean for the future of the country and for Bolivian democracy itself.

Forget haunted houses and the mountains of the moon: There's no better environment to show off the wonder of the immersive IMAX 3-D experience than the deep blue sea.

The movie is a genteel, witty soap opera designed to make everyone feel the better for having not only seen it, but having had a bit of fun.

While touching on subjects as serious and diverse as capital punishment, the devaluation of women in Iran and the true Islamic concept of forgiveness, this powerful melodrama from the Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi is anything but a message movie.

Harrowing, psychologically astute drama.

Beautifully shot in rich colors by Franz Lustig, it's possibly Wenders' most accessible film to date, and among his most emotionally satisfying.

So laugh all you want at the proud haircutters of Beauty Without Borders - but don't underestimate what a basic cut and color can mean for a country's future.

If your idea of fun involves zombies, monstrous physical transformations and alien slugs bent on world domination, look no further than James Gunn's gleeful homage to all things gross and horrible actually makes good on the "horror comedy" label by being both flat-out creepy and darkly funny.

A gorgeous feature that's both passing strange and undeniably beautiful.

The casual listener is easily put off, but by the end of the film, even a newcomer can see the magic that made fans of Kurt Cobain and Sonic Youth and led the estimable Yo La Tengo, Pearl Jam and Wilco to cover Johnston's remarkable body of work.

Mohammad Rasoulof's heartfelt and darkly comic second feature proves beyond any doubt that Iranian film is still alive and well, despite waning Western interest in one of the world's richest contemporary cinemas.

For a film that feels so breezy on the surface, it's a surprisingly complex character study.

A fascinating film that also benefits greatly from the stunning scenery of the Tibetan plateau and from a quicksand scene that will leave you gasping.

Driven by Edward Norton's and Evan Rachel Wood's riveting performances, writer-director David Jacobson's tense drama samples bits of cinematic Americana from sources as diverse as "Shane," "Badlands" and "Taxi Driver."

It's very funny, and the little woodland critters that make up the cast are a kiddie-pleasing bunch.

Aside from its frank consideration of preteen sexuality, the most daring thing about Cuesta's extraordinary film is its willingness to put honest, intelligent dialogue in the mouths of kids.

It's the one movie so far this summer that demands to be seen on the big screen.

Baer asks all the right questions.

Animal lovers and museum-goers alike are sure to enjoy this curiously delightful hour-long documentary.

You'll feel lucky for such a comprehensive introduction to Turkish music.

It's also very cleverly edited - one scene will often branching off from another in much the same way a crossword puzzle works - and features a bang-up ending that will actually leave you cheering over a word game.

The accolades are typically gushing - Bono likens Cohen to Byron and Shelley.

Casually paced and filled with telling detail, Yamada's delicate drama with swordplay (there's not much, but what there is packs an emotional wallop) transcends its specific setting in its depiction of Katagiri's internal struggle.

Questions the efficacy and, above all, the humanity of what even steadfast Bush supporters like Tony Blair have condemned.

Poking fun at its American mythos, but never descending into camp comedy, this sequel makes for a wonderful time.

Kang's marvelously assured feature debut is a subtle adaptation of Ed Lin's acclaimed novel "Waylaid."

Miike's goofy, gallant, action-packed fantasy deserves to become a classic family film.

Director Laurent Cantet's fourth feature abandons the contentious French workplaces of "Human Resources" and "Time Out" for sunnier climes, but this Haitian idyll is an equally excoriating look at labor and exploitation.

The film rests entirely on Poupaud's shoulders, and he rises to the demands of a complex, deeply unsympathetic role.

Patrice Chereau's portrait of a marriage en crise is an excoriating look at the deep unhappiness that can fester within the most respectable-seeming of households.

The overriding themes of the film are never broadly stated but are subtly revealed, and the horror and reality of war are quietly played out on both the human and panoramic levels with disturbing effect.

Features more than enough thrilling wirework, slow and agonizing deaths, and blood-spattered faces to please even the most discriminating fans of the genre.

Poitras boldly dispenses with the traditional documentary voice-over, but her film is filled with telling moments that are far more eloquent than any scripted narration.

Svankmajer has crafted his finest live-action feature to date.

The film's opening dedication to Pasolini acknowledges Arslan's debt to Neorealism, but the gritty, documentary style is offset by a charming bit of chalkboard animation that helps lighten the mood considerably.

Film works best as a soberly witty commentary on the workplace and makes an interesting companion piece to "Mondays in the Sun."

It's carefully researched, and it's crucial to fully understanding the Iraqi/American enterprise.

Maggie Gyllenhaal cements her reputation as a gifted, if somewhat aloof, actress in Laurie Collyer's sad character piece.

The real surprise here is Lewis, who seems to have finally hit on a role that balances her usual flakiness with smarts and an offbeat poignancy, and she delivers the strongest work of her adult career.

The fact that Pastor Fischer would probably consider the film an accurate portrayal of her mission may be the most terrifying thing of all.

Without relying on dialogue, and once again making good but sparing use of Yo La Tengo's toasty guitar soundtrack, Reichardt proves herself a filmmaker with a masterful sense of the expressive purity of the passing moment.

Bernal continues to demonstrate an impressive range; the character requires the normally laid-back actor to be a wild ball of energy, and he's more than up to the challenge. His performance is hilarious, heartfelt and more than a little creepy, which could also be said about the movie itself.

The result is hypnotic.

Mirren, who's played her share of queens in the past, is hypnotic.

Don't be put off: Hernandez's exquisite romance works on an emotional, as well as intellectual, level.

Mock's film leaves us with a sense of gratitude and relief that so thoughtful an artist as Kushner continues to work among us, capturing and reacting to the world as he buzzes through it.

If you've never given much thought to the lives affected each time you choose one brand of coffee over another, allow this handsomely mounted documentary from British filmmakers Marc and Nick Francis to serve as a bracing, double-shot of reality.

A nonstop cavalcade of Roth-style animation starring Rat Fink, vintage footage, artfully animated black-and-white film, and fanciful "interviews" with beautifully preserved cars of the era.

As the film makes pointedly clear, ALS is what is considered an "orphan disease," meaning drug companies aren't willing to devote their resources to finding a cure because they feel too small a percentage of the population suffer from it to make an effective drug profitable.

The most infuriating revelation in Amy Berg's powerful documentary is the lengths to which current Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney and other church officials went to protect Father O'Grady and themselves, even though it meant knowingly delivering countless other children into a child molester's hands.

The film's prestige is a doozy, both dazzling and preposterous, but if you're watching closely -- as Cutter advises in the film's first few minutes -- it's flawlessly set up.

Nelson's film eschews sensationalism, and knowing how the story ends in no way diminishes its visceral impact.

Bogumil Godfrejow's raw cinematography and Huller's poignant, close-to-the-bone performance transform what might have been a morbid curiosity into an entirely enthralling, quietly terrifying experience.

In capturing the compelling battle between a boy and his abusive stepfather, director Michael Caton-Jones cannily avoids obvious sentimentality, opting to let a rather brutal story tell itself.

This tart but fluffy paean to good sense and clean linen is a bracing reminder that the reason the English think they're so clever is that they are -- some of them, at any rate.

The freedom to answer Hamlet's nagging question over whether to be or not for oneself is explored in this thoughtful and thought provoking documentary about the Swiss organization EXIT AMD.

While it's unlikely that her film will sway former fans who swore off the band for political reasons, that seems beside the point.

The film avoids theorizing about why the bridge should exert such a hold over the imaginations of suicides all over the world, but Steel's dramatic cinematography, particularly the distorted telephoto shots that make the bridge loom even larger than it already does in life, provide one answer.

Christensen simultaneously avoids all the cliches that might have been heaped upon her beautifully rendered characters and roots their travails in everything that makes for a good soap: tragedy, tears, sexual tension, misplaced letters and a slightly sardonic voice-over that teases the plot lines like the old-fashioned, "tune in tomorrow" narrator of yesteryear.

Davaa's second fable of animals and the people who love them mixes aspects of ethnographic filmmaking with heart-grabbing story lines that wouldn't be too far out of place in a 1950s live-action Disney feature.

Neil Armfield's film hits hard because it sensitively shows how life on drugs can never be about anything else, and how the real horror of addiction is not what users do to themselves, but what they do to each other out of loneliness and despair.

The line separating "fan" from "fanatic" has never seemed as thin or as permeable as it does in this harrowing, and at times surprisingly humorous, case study from actress-turned-director Emmanuelle Bercot.

The film's sweetness derives primarily from the relationship between Ashmol and his unusual sister, and draws much of its richness from the unfamiliar and fascinating world of opal prospecting.

Novice filmmakers Arin Crumley and Susan Buice's charming homemade movie is a surprisingly successful experiment in collaborative creativity that sprang from a larger artistic project: their own real-life relationship.

Barbarously beautiful and gut-wrenchingly (literally) violent, it's a mesmerizing vision of the past refracted through the dark obsessions of the present.

Murphy is a revelation as James, and what American Idol castoff Hudson lacks in technical acting craft she makes up for in raw energy and a voice that could melt the rhinestones off a beauty queen. To complain that Beyonce pales by comparison is to fault her for nailing the essence of the infinitely malleable Deena.

Writer-director Daniel Burman's dryly humorous, poker-faced comedic style is once again in full play in this funny and touching film about a young Argentine man and his aging father, both of whom happen to be lawyers.

This is sentimentality of the best kind, a touching display of male bonding amid terror and aching loneliness worthy of Howard Hawks at his finest.

Carries an important and timely reminder about the fate of torture victims, so deftly wrapped within a touching and beautifully acted melodrama that the result is the furthest thing from a didactic message movie.

It's a lavish entertainment that revels in lurid colors and yet more lurid emotions.

The film unfolds with all the heart-stopping suspense of a true-crime expose that sheds light on the twisted policies of Kim Jong-il's strange and secretive nation.

Skrovan swears that during two years of filming, Nader's only demand was, "Make sure you talk to people who oppose me."

Bolstered by a beautifully shaded performance by Karanovic as a woman attempting to escape the torments of her past while securing a future for her daughter, Zbanic's film begs a pretty complex question: Is a love story possible in the aftermath of torture and genocide? The answer appears to be a tentative yes, both on the levels of the film and filmmaking, but it isn't easy.

Groning's approach gives the viewer a rare chance to really listen to what water sounds like when it drips from a tin bowl, or the watch what patterns raindrops make when they fall on a shallow puddle -- purely sensual, cinematic experiences. In such moments we sense the point of view of a patient, sensitive filmmaker.

Boon's film is both funny and heartbreaking, a supremely confident mix of political satire, free-floating paranoia, fractured family dynamics and the kind of comedy that regularly reconfigures itself into tragedy.

At times funny, but mostly tragic, Scurlock's film is important viewing for any who owns a credit card without realizing that it's a wallet time bomb.

A funny and touching adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winner Jhumpa Lahiri's novel about two generations of Bengali-Americans attempting to reconcile the world of their collective past with that of their individual futures.

Director Alan Rudolph and producer Robert Altman combine forces to create a quiet, intelligent film about Dorothy Parker.

The vicious clamor the film occasioned in the U.K. is simply the measure of how volatile a subject the relationship between England and Ireland remains more than eight decades after the film's events, and the thinking viewer can hardly help but see parallels between the Irish insurgency and all subsequent guerrilla conflicts.

The material is well served by director Roman Polanski, who knows well how to instill a subtle, claustrophobic sense of dread in an audience and has put together a rather elegant potboiler.

Poignant and sometimes downright hilarious, much of the film unfolds in the small area outside the arena -- an "offside" penalty box for women who just won't behave.

The film flows like a sinister and unsettling piece of music, from gripping overture to the tightly orchestrated movements to the unforgettable coda.

With a third-act twist that outdoes that initial revelation, the film turns out to be a thoughtful exploration of paternity and responsibility. Much of the film's success lies in Bier's sensitive direction, but credit is also due to the fine cast, particularly Mikkelsen.

While Rachel's story is fiction, many of its incidents are rooted in historical events carefully researched by Soeteman and the film's briskly staged action and stunning reversals of fortune ensure that its two and a half hours fly by.

Academy Award-winning live-action-short director Andrea Arnold makes a startlingly assured debut with this low-key psychological chiller.

Vibrant, funny and tragic documentary.

[A] bold and brilliant rendering of Henry James' masterpiece.

Testosterone-driven entertainment with a moral, sleekly directed by James Foley.

An offbeat and in some ways, more daring variation on vampirism

Grand Canyon successfully recreates the random, haphazard ways in which individual lives intersect, and captures the sense of menace and disintegration that permeate contemporary urban life.

The performances are uniformly strong, with Gere offering some of his best work - though it pales in comparison with Gossett's tour de force as the tough, principled Sgt. Foley.

There is plenty to amuse and delight here, including fine performances from Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Modine, and Dean Stockwell.

A mesmerizing odyssey through the mind of a uniquely talented performer, as well as through one of the gorier chapters of modern history.

With a screenplay from first-time screenwriter E. Max Frye and superior performances from his principal cast, Demme has created a unique and likable film.

Francis Ford Coppola's lavish version of Bram Stoker's classic novel is a visual cornucopia, overstuffed with images of both beauty and grotesque horror.

A first-rate production full of nonstop action and inventive special effects but what truly makes Robocop spellbinding is a superior script.

What fills the screen is not heightened melodrama, but a series of stark, sometimes painfully poignant vignettes that reflect the oppressive stasis of their lives.

It may sound as if first-time director White is having his fun at the expense of introverted, asocial people who prefer the company of cats and dogs and gravitate toward animal-rights activism because the very idea of dealing with human problems requires an empathy they can't muster. But empathy is exactly what makes the film work.

Arguably the best adaptation of a Stephen King novel.

It's as laceratingly entertaining as its predecessor.

A sad and sometimes funny tale of Alzheimer's, love and loss.

Lawrence delves deep into the moral dilemma at the heart of Carver's deceptively simple tale. By deliberately making the young woman in the river aboriginal, the film also opens up yet another dimension in the reaction to the men's inaction: Would they have acted any differently had the murder victim been white?

A courageous and serious film that explores the limits of the mythic American virtues of persistence, inventiveness, and rugged individualism.

Ambitious, stylish, and ideologically confused, The Year of Living Dangerously falters in its attempts to succeed simultaneously as thriller, romance, and political tract, while also encompassing director Peter Weir's penchant for half-baked mysticism. Still, it's a gripping film.

An excellent crime drama in the style of Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and Dashiell Hammett.

Truly frightening and visually unique, this messy, challenging film is anchored by Tim Robbins' remarkable performance.

Spike Lee's newest is really a surprisingly vivid dramatic study of an aspiring actress in moonlighting hell.

Lopsided comedy turned tearjerker, saved by excellent performances.

You may end up wishing for a little less show and a lot more substance.

Three Belgian clowns wrote and directed this sly, winsome tale of one woman's quest for her destiny in the polar seas after an absurd but life-altering accident reveals the emptiness of her mundane, middle-class life.

Harrowing and heartfelt, with knockout performances by a pair of fine actresses.

Tsai finds great beauty in streets of Kuala Lumpur particularly at night, making this gorgeous film one that should be seen on a large screen in the total darkness of a theater.

Audacious, hypnotic and utterly breathtaking.

Together Cates and Hammond take a thrill-a-minute trip through the San Francisco underworld and along the way develop one of the 1980s' more interesting cinematic buddy pairings.

The Man with Two Brains, which never ceases to amuse, is at its best when most outrageous.

Focusing strictly on stripped-down performances of great music and the charming chemistry between the two leads, it's a perfectly realized yet unassuming movie that deserves to find a big audience.

Director Tony Scott's stylistic flourishes haven't been put to such creepily seductive use since The Hunger.

Unforgettably, Bastard out of Carolina makes a bold statement about a little girl's grace under inordinate pressure.

With very little dialogue and lingering shots of the landscape -- always a very important visual trope in Dumont's deep-psyche explorations -- the film is nevertheless tighter and, clocking in at under 90 minutes, relatively brief.

Smart, stylish, and cynical about the values of its time, this movie aspires to be The Graduate for its generation and it comes pretty close.

The Unbelievable Truth captivates with its committedly off-center vision of suburban angst.

A charming, if often-seen, tale, paced with alacrity by Wilder from the adaptation of Taylor's hit play. [Review of re-release]

For the most part, the "Rocky" pictures have been outstanding entertainments, beautifully crafted and executed, and Rocky V is an important and worthwhile addition to the series.

Zeffirelli's production is neither high art nor lowbrow pandering, but something in between.

Director and co-screenwriter Oliver Stone pulls off an amazing filmmaking feat with JFK, transforming the dry minutiae of every John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory of the past three decades into riveting screen material.

Butch Cassidy's winking awareness of its own cinematic nature (from the opening "silent movie" train robbery to the famous closing freeze frame) and witty banter give the story a degree of charm and exuberance.

It's a high-energy blast.

British actor Timothy Spall gives a shattering performance as Albert Pierrepoint.

While Parenthood crosses the border into schmaltz a number of times, the movie runs the gamut of realistic emotions, and one scene or another is bound to hit home with the parents who see the film.

As Jim, Bale delivers a stunning performance; he appears in virtually every frame and truly seems to grow over the course of the film from a coddled rich child to a calculating, almost feral creature who will ally himself with whoever wields the most power in a given situation.

Wonderfully droll, Cannes Camera d'Or winner.

It's sometimes wrenching to watch, but it's too gripping to turn away from.

Remarkable and evenhanded film.

Director Gillian Armstrong's feminist spin on classic material retains the moving humanity of Louisa May Alcott's novel while reworking it with welcome freshness.

A heartfelt sleeper from screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and director Guy Ferland.

Gibson is truly frightening as the cop about to go into orbit, and Glover is a standout as the down-to-earth lawman with very much to lose.

A film whose "TV movie" feel is at once incredibly appropriate and a notable drawback, Broadcast News is nevertheless worthy adult entertainment.

Big is a winning, charming film, primarily because Hanks makes it work. He is extraordinarily convincing as an adolescent who suddenly finds himself dealing with a new, adult body, responsibilities, and a romantic relationship, while simultaneously trying to survive vicious corporate infighting.

Rude, rough, tasteless, but often hilarious.

Danny Boyle's effective psychological thriller.

Whether you conclude that this project is a brilliant hoax that exposes how the rapid transition from communism to a free market economy has created an ad addicted, consumer-mad culture in the Czech Republic, or simply a cruel joke, one thing is undeniable. It's a fascinating account.

Controversial filmmaker John Waters finally hits his commercial stride in this film, parlaying his keen social observation and great compassion for society's outsiders into a colorful and engaging comedy full of dancing, music and heartfelt nostalgia.

Labyrinth packs enough surprises to captivate an audience of children and provides enough wisecracking to keep adults laughing.

Inspired lunacy, Pee-wee's big adventure is one of the most inventive films in recent memory. This clever and wholly original work incorporates a wide variety of cinematic tools with a fresh and unique sense of style.

Director Wolfgang Petersen combines the elements into a charming film that is excellent for children and won't put any adults to sleep, either.

Although the film plays a little too heavily on this patriotic theme, its simple boy-and-his-horse story is beautifully effective.

Allen has done better than this, but The Purple Rose of Cairo is a sweet little film and an interesting diversion for his legion of followers.

Though absurdly criticized for being too "white" to play Mariane Pearl, Jolie gives an excellent performance. She portrays Mariane as gutsy, smart, passionate and highly efficient.

A clever, ingeniously animated film filled with many shining moments.

To better capture the extremity of Dengler's ordeal, Bale once again underwent the kind of dramatic weight loss that shocked audiences of "The Machinist," but he's downright plump next to the emaciated Davies, who looks like Charles Manson in the end stages of a hunger strike.

Unexpectedly touching -- odd-couple buddy comedy.

An uncanny and thoroughly creepy nip-yuck nightmare about plastic surgery and identity.

Unexpectedly poignant documentary.

The anger that fuels Ferguson's film is felt in nearly every frame.

It's the rare action picture whose adrenaline-driven thrills neither overshadow the characters nor degenerate into cartoonish preposterousness.

Teenage angst and adolescent agony are the stuff of sharp, observant comedy this quirky, wonderfully dry first fiction feature from documentary filmmaker Jeffrey Blitz (Spellbound).

The theme song, a wonderful Portuguese version of Bread's soft-rock classic "Everything I Own," is by Dinah, a long-forgotten Brazilian singing sensation of the 1970s who deserves to be better remembered.

The one film to see on this most crucial subject.

Like "Air Guitar Nation," the stranger-than-fiction cast of characters is fascinating, and their high-stakes machinations are nothing short of mind-boggling.

Zombie delivers a scary horror movie immediately recognizable as his own -- something that will come as a welcome relief to fans who've diligently sat through seven "Halloween" sequels in hopes of one day reliving the original's terrifying magic.

The nerve-racking wait at the Contention hotel is no longer the film's centerpiece, but the deeper characterization gives Bale an opportunity to once again sink his teeth into a complex role, and offers a reminder as to why the notoriously difficult Crowe is sometimes worth the trouble.

The cumulative evidence that genocide could not have occurred without the cooperation of the German army is overwhelming.

An icily seductive parable about family, power, unconventional justice and the perils of answered prayers.

Wood is excellent, but this is a career highlight for Douglas. His depiction of the manic Charlie stays surprisingly grounded and prevents the story from being a naive celebration of mental illness as a kind of freedom that it so easily could have become.

This gripping documentary sheds light on the frightening totality of Hitler's vision for a Germanic Europe, and the extent to which he and his Nazi thugs were no better than common thieves.

Flawed but refreshingly intelligent.

It's a bit like a Chinese "Splendor In The Grass."

Does find a spot closer to the middle than most.

Through the hard-won experiences of these families, Karslake shows that Scripture and homosexuality are not mutually exclusive, and with the help of a number of academics and theologians, shows how the Bible has been misread, particularly during the 20th century.

Bar-Lev also explores the freakish popular appeal of child prodigies, the family dynamics that come into play when a child's celebrity and earning capacity overshadows the adults', and the remarkably conflicted and contradictory admissions drawn from Brunelli about Marla's work.

Filmmaker AJ Schnack's hauntingly beautiful film is a bold and successful attempt to recover the human being who disappeared under the heavy mantle of "face and voice of a lost generation," and whose life has been increasingly overshadowed by his sensational early death in 1994.

Taut, powerfully acted political thriller.

Allen Loeb's first produced screenplay is an unvarnished treatment of death and its aftermath that's unusual for a Hollywood film.

The true star of this nerve-racking family crime drama, shot with a minimum of fuss by Ron Fortunato, is playwright and first-time screenwriter Kelly Masterson's deft script, which carefully develops each fatally flawed character and tells their stories in achronological flashbacks that seamlessly fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Schroeder's film is a fascinating character study in contradictions and in the end Verges remains loathsome, oddly charismatic and willfully enigmatic.

More than any previous film on the subject, Braun's documentary offers an answer to a common question, perfectly phrased and answered by Cheadle himself: "What can I do? More than nothing. A lot more than nothing."

Amazingly, many of Jack's and Ina's letters survived and -- read aloud by Dutch actors Jeroen Krabbe and Ellen Ten Damme -- serve as the thematic thread that runs through Ohayon's film.

Fast paced and engagingly acted.

This melancholy mediation on aging and desire hangs on an exquisite performance from Penelope Cruz.

What Guttentag and Sturman gain in dramatic immediacy, however, they lose when it comes to historical context, and the chance to offer insight into why such things occur in the first place -- and continue to happen today -- is lost.

The French-language voice cast is first-rate, although the film will also be released in the U.S. in an English-language version featuring Sean Penn, Iggy Pop and Gena Rowlands in addition to Deneuve and Mastroianni.

Tim Burton's grand guignol fantasy transforms Stephen Sondheim's 1979 musical-theater piece into a cheerfully gothic morality tale.

What one interviewee calls a "fog of ambiguity" surrounding what was and wasn't officially authorized shielded superior officers and key members of the Department of Defense -- namely Donald Rumsfeld.

A brisk dramatic comedy that combines melodrama, humor and social critique in equal measure.

A remote, Israeli desert town is the setting for this droll, endearing comedy about an accidental cultural exchange that very quietly says some very important things about contemporary Arab-Israeli relations.

Techine's unwillingness to soften his characters reflects a rare honesty about human nature that's rarely seen in movies, particularly movies about fatal illnesses, and his film is an engaging and particularly French character study.

Twenty years ago, Li's film might have served as a warning; today, it rues a dehumanizing economic system run rampant that leaves one sad slave wife to muse, "It's easy to die. It's living that's hard."

Raises important questions that resonate far beyond the subject at hand: What is the meaning of accomplishment, and how do you define triumph?

It's an unexpectedly powerful little film that manages to say a lot of what, despite all the talk on the subject, isn't being said in the national debate on immigration.

The result is a bittersweet trifle one can conceivably fall in love with, and Honore's best film so far.

Never the most optimistic of poets, Sokurov does suggest the possibility of dialogue on the individual level, and the hope that by asking difficult questions of one another, these mortal enemies can find answers and reach an understanding everyone can live with.

There's a hilarious performance of a "de-fascisized" version of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," and the soundtrack prominently features an Italian version of the crypto-fascist girl-group classic "I Will Follow Him," a joke Kenneth Anger first made in "Scorpio Rising" that's still funny today.

The lovely Audrey Tautou and sad-eyed Gad Elmaleh are perfectly cast as a gold digger and the poor sap who loves her, but the real star of Pierre Salvadori's larky, Lubitsch-esque farce is France's impossibly chic Cote d'Azure.

It's a richly textured, psychologically acute film that takes an unblinking look at the tattered life of the returning soldier, and it's boosted by two powerful performances from Phillippe and the increasingly impressive Tatum, a former underwear model who has somehow turned into a fine actor.

This small, sweet drama from Chinese director Wang Quang An is picturesque, romantic and unexpectedly droll tale of life in one the world's most remote regions.

Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro's powerful documentary takes a microcosmic look at the war and its devastation by focusing on a single casualty.

A sharp, superbly acted character-driven comedic drama.