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PETER KEOUGH
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Nadine Labaki's whimsical film
Lebanese director Nadine Labaki's whimsical film about internecine slaughter has a tone problem from the very start: a group of widows engage in a goofy line dance while the voiceover narrator bewails the death toll of religious warfare.
Infinite possiblities
Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), a fifth dimensional alien, can see the infinite possibilities each moment possesses and the infinite contingencies that caused it to happen.
Lone Star man
No matter how far he strays, Richard Linklater's heart remains in Texas.
Surprisingly sweet
Though his PR campaign might suggest otherwise, Sacha Baron Cohen has actually made (with director Larry Charles) a sweet movie, not unlike Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator , if less sentimental.
Weird and motley
Apparently extinct since the 1930s, the Tasmanian Tiger resembled an uncanny assortment of mismatched parts from other animals. Daniel Nettheim's film is equally weird and motley.
Driving through the wasteland
In Nuri Bilge Ceylan's minimalist "Eastern," the Leone-esque title seems ironic, as a team of bumbling investigators spend hours driving through the Anatolian wasteland searching for the grave of a murder victim.
Audacious premises
You've got to hand it to Brit Marling when it comes to audacious premises, both in Another Earth (in which she starred and co-wrote with director Mike Cahill), and in this high concept sci-fi head-scratcher, in which she also stars and co-wrote with director Zal Batmanglij.
Tim Burton's best film since Ed Wood
By the time Dark Shadows gets to the opening credits, it is already Tim Burton's best film since Ed Wood , but then I've always had a soft spot for the Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin."
A lot of blood
There actually is a safe in Boaz Yakin's Safe , but you have to wade through a lot of blood to get there, and then more after that.
Nicholas Stoller's inventive, funny, and sometimes subversive romantic comedy won't revive that benighted genre, but it does offer hope.
Awkward first steps
Even for a hard-ass like Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), head of the ultra-secret S.H.I.E.L.D agency, getting a billionaire genius in a metal suit, a scientist with a bad temper, a cryogenically preserved WWII warrior, a Norse god, and two secret agents (how did they get in?) to play nicely together can take a while.
Camping out
For many filmgoers, their exposure to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender cinema might be limited to a midnight screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
John Cusack as Poe
If only Poe could find the solution to the mystery in his own texts! Or if the filmmakers made any use of them.
Ann Hui's aptly titled film
The most sensitive and heartbreaking depiction of old age since Korean director Lee Chang-dong's Poetry, Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui's aptly titled account of the slow decline of a beloved housekeeper doesn't involve violent crime like Lee's film, but does recreate the evanescence of everyday life with equal evocativeness.
Bob Marley remains elusive
After two-and-half hours of hagiography, talking heads, archival footage, still photos, and snatches of his songs, Bob Marley remains elusive in Kevin Macdonald's documentary.
Ridiculous commercial auditions
Daniel Martinico's minimal, elliptical style and his use of repetitions and variations almost overcome the predictability of this case study in repression and alienation.
Comedy and sleep disorders
What compels people to perform comedy?
Absurd and gut-wrenching
If Spirit of the Beehive took place in Napoleon Dynamite country, it might turn out like David Zellner's absurd and wrenching coming-of-age tale.
Back to the moors
Unlike in her harsh romances set in Britain's urban wastelands, it's nature that rules in British director Andrea Arnold's audacious adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights .
China's most famous artist
Chinese activist Ai Weiwei combines the chutzpah of Michael Moore, the antic iconoclasm of Duchamp, and the humility of Gandhi, and it's not enough.
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