THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
***½
USA
In revising the cult-friendly allure of Jesse James and his death through existential malaise, ruthless skull-obliterating and a moody-muddy palette, Andrew Dominik is openly riffing on the likes of Terrence Malick, Sam Peckinpah and Robert Altman. On the one hand, this is commendable, but on the other hand, if he wasn't calling on such forbidding connotations, his own film could much more comfortably be categorised as a success. This way its shortcomings are all the more conspicuous: the unproductive book-on-tape voiceover; the polite, generic score; the role of women restricted to voiceless housewifery; the conspicuous abundance of rippling wheat fields; the turgid, squinting wisdom-dispensing. The movie is as infatuated with itself as it is with Jesse James and Robert Ford.
   As Jesse James Brad Pitt hogs most of the monologues and top billing, but it's Casey Affleck as Bob Ford who delivers the depth, gives the movie oxygen and some murky, arresting humanity. Effacing any trace of ego, he's as subtle and natural when his voice shivers as the star-struck teenager, when it catches as the put-upon youngest brother and when it rips as the charred national pariah. A thing of unassuming beauty, his performance counterpoints the movie's mannered lyricism and pushes it onto a human plane.
wr/dir: Andrew Dominik
ph: Roger Deakins
cast: Casey Affleck, Brad Pitt, Sam Rockwell, Mary-Louise Parker, Sam Shepard, Jeremy Renner, Garret Dillahunt, Paul Schneider, Ted Levine, James Carville, Zooey Deschanel, Nick Cave

ATONEMENT
***
UK/France
In the sections where director Joe Wright keeps his showboating tendencies in check his adaptation of Ian McEwan's absorbing if overtly mannered WWII meta-morality-tale flows elegantly. But beyond the first third Wright rarely remembers to restrain himself or his unfortunate tendency to squeeze out poignancy and advertise subtext. That, and the central romance comes off lop-sided. McAvoy is adequate but Knightley, looking morbidly skeletal, is too strained by her practiced if admittedly polished elocution to give off much warmth.
dir: Joe Wright
cast: James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Saiorse Ronan, Romola Garai, Vanessa Redgrave, Harriet Walter, Brenda Blethyn, Juno Temple, Benedict Cumberbatch, Alfie Allen, Felix von Simson, Charlie von Simson

BEAUFORT
**½
Israel
In May 2000 Israel was forced to evacuate its mountaintop fortress in Southern Lebanon and, if you were to believe Israel's official Academy Award submission for the year, the soldiers that still remained were exclusively the most photogenic men in the country.
   Like all credible anti-war filmmakers, Joseph Cedar avoids pointing fingers and taking sides and focuses instead on the frail, weary humanity of his soldiers. The script he has co-written with Ron Leshem and adapted from his own novel is moderately sober, all them pretty men in the cast are solid performers and the sets - which, for obvious reasons, had to be custom-built - are detailed and scream big budget. And therein lies the problem. The grit feels manufactured. The picture is glazed in a Hollywood sheen that is polished, eminently exportable and ideally suited to a video clip. And when it comes to earnest drama, it only takes away from the immediacy.
dir: Joseph Cedar
cast: Oshri Cohen, Itay Tiran, Eli Eltonyo, Itay Turgeman, Ohad Knoller, Arthur Faradjev, Gal Friedman, Danny Zahavi, Daniel Bruk

BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD
*½
USA
An offensively grandstanding, fatalistic mediocrity where two morbidly maladjusted brothers - who, between them, have acted on every self-destructive impulse known to Paul Haggis - decide to rob their Mom and Dad's jewellery store. The plot jumps back and forth in time, but don't panic, intertitles and a drum roll announce every flashback for your convenience. This snazzy stylistic tic - one of many embraced by the once-brilliant Sidney Lumet - fits beautifully within the film's overarching principle of exposition-hysteria-then-more-exposition.
   Self-loathing-heroin-abusing-Father-hating-yuppie-embezzling older brother Philip Seymour Hoffman opines in one of several strained monologues: "I don't add up." So, do take note, when he says and does things without a coherent motive, it's not because he's six stereotypes crudely stitched together. It's because he's so mind-bendingly real, man.
   Ethan Hawke spends the film jittering uncontrollably - lest you shift your attention to a cast mate - as the younger brother, who would make an infinitely more convincing junkie, though you never see him injecting anything conspicuous.
   Albert Finney plays a father guilty of never expressing emotion, with the gusto of an Oscar-hungry father more likely to have traumatised his children into inertia through expressing his emotion too much. (In his defence, it's easy to see how his scenery-chewing genes could lead to a chronically jittery Ethan Hawke). Marisa Tomei spends half her screen-time topless (and the other half - awkward), playing a plot device to ratchet up the melodrama. The supporting cast also includes ghetto stereotypes, the ever dependable Rosemary Harris (who gives the film's single grounded performance in its single grounded scene), a shrill ex-wife who repeats roughly three lines of dialogue incessantly and at the same pitch, as well as a little girl to remind Hawke and the audience by phone: "But Dad! You promised to pay for my excursion to see The Lion King!"
dir: Sidney Lumet
wr: Kelly Masterson
cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, Marisa Tomei, Rosemary Harris, Aleksa Palladino, Michael Shannon, Amy Ryan, Brian F. O'Byrne, Blaine Horton

BLIND MOUNTAIN
****
China
Wholesome university graduate Huang Lu is cheerily toiling her way through rural China, working for a distributor of medical instruments in order to pay off her family's debts. One morning she wakes up to discover she has been sold into marriage to an uncouth, uneducated peasant and is to feed the pigs, bear children and have no further say in the matter.
   In his gracefully gut-wrenching verité suspense drama, Li Yang tracks Huang's harrowing escape attempts in a low-key, unfussy style traditionally suited to dusty odes to faintly exotic country life. In pretending he isn't doing it on purpose, he draws out your disgust and outrage with beguiling mastery (which is why a certain cathartic third-act incident has been repeatedly greeted with rabid applause at festival screenings around the world). He's essentially playing dumb, taking the perspective of an ambivalent observer allowing ugly things to take place against pretty scenery and seeing nothing unusual in the matter - which, he implies, is a common enough attitude in rural China where bride trafficking remains widespread.
wr/dir: Li Yang
ed: Li Yang, Mary Stephen
cast: Huang Lu

BREATH
**½
South Korea
Ever since he turned meditative, Kim Ki-duk has been teetering down a fine line between poignant and cutesy. In this love story between a lonely housewife and a killer on death row, you are to determine at your own discretion whether Kim's characters are quirky-melancholic people, or quirky-melancholic caricatures of morbidly maladjusted people. They're endearing - to a point - but they don't resonate.
wr/dir: Kim Ki-duk
cast: Chang Chen, Ha Jung-woo, Kim Ki-duk, Park Ji-a

CARGO 200
***
Russia
A moody Soviet slasher flick with a strange notion of social conscience. Set in 1984, it's woven around an impotent police chief with party membership who kidnaps a teenager and devises increasingly sadistic ways to humiliate and torture her.
   Whatever points director Alexei Balabanov wants to make about the corruption and zombie-like depersonalisation of USSR on the cusp of the perestroika are undermined by his ambivalent attitude towards the victim. He treats her and her horrific degradation as just a plot point.
   The story is reportedly 'based on real events' - which is part of what makes it such compulsive viewing - though Balabanov appears to have taken considerable poetic licence.
wr/dir: Alexei Balabanov
ph: Alexander Simonov
cast: Alexey Serebryakov, Leonid Gromov, Yuri Stepanov, Agniya Kuznetsova, Alexei Poluyan, Natalya Akimova, Valentina Andryukova, Leonid Bicevin

CLUBLAND
**½
Australia
An Aussie variation (with a seasoned Brit in the lead) on those dysfunctional family quirkfests that bag multimillion-dollar distribution deals at Sundance. Brenda Blethyn plays a failed stand-up comedian, who grows uncomfortably overprotective of her son when he starts getting laid. It's cloying and derivative, but fortunately watchable thanks entirely to an ensemble's worth of intelligent, natural performers (aside from one conspicuous exception).
   Out of consideration for fat Americans in the mid-West, they're referring to the movie as "Introducing the Dwights" in certain territories.
dir: Cherie Nowlan
cast: Brenda Blethyn, Khan Chittenden, Emma Booth, Katie Wall, Frankie J. Holden, Emma Booth, Rebecca Gibney, Richard Wilson

CONTROL
**½
UK/USA
As far as biopics of troubled musicians go, this one, detailing the personal more than the creative life of Joy Division's Ian Curtis, is a watchable one, though it's deeply flawed. Director Anton Corbijn and writer Matt Greenhalgh - predictably - want to present Curtis (played by Sam Riley) as a misunderstood genius, yet they give him the dialogue of an angsty teenager. And, with his emotional range limited between skinny brooding hipster and skinny misty-eyed hipster, Riley doesn't contribute any further layers. Within this context, even his lyrics sound whiny. You're bound to feel sympathy for a man driven to suicide at the age of 23 by epilepsy and mistakes he made as a teen, but you can do that from reading a newspaper article. The Ian Curtis who mopes and hazes his way through Corbijn's film doesn't warrant feature length nor Samantha Morton as his wife (doing her best with a dog of a role).
   It has to be noted though that while Corbijn fails to grasp the complexity of Curtis' character, he does capture the beauty and impact of his music.
dir: Anton Corbijn
cast: Sam Riley, Samantha Morton, Alexandra Maria Lara, Joe Anderson, Toby Kebbell, Craig Parkinson, James Anthony Pearson, Harry Treadaway, Andrew Sheridan, Robert Shelly

THE DARJEELING LIMITED
**½
USA
Various quirky misadventures befall Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman and Adrien Brody playing depressed brothers on a quirky spiritual quest aboard a quirky, lumbering locomotive traversing the cleanest parts of India. It's ironic that moving out of an oppressively art directed studio has resulted in Wes Anderson's first thoroughly airless picture. The trouble isn't in the rigid visual composition, cutesy humour or self-consciously hipster soundtrack so much as it is in the hollowness of the protagonists. Their crises feel cursory. They only serve to accentuate the artifice of the whole venture. Anjelica Huston pops up towards the end to breathe some life into the story, but it's too little too late.
dir: Wes Anderson
wr: Jason Schwartzman, Roman Coppola, Wes Anderson
cast: Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Amara Karan, Waris Ahluwalia, Anjelica Huston, Irfan Khan, Wallace Wolodarsky, Bill Murray, Natalie Portman

DEATH PROOF
***
USA
Tarantino's Cannes-endorsed half of the quickly buried Grindhouse double-bill is technically set in the present day, while he works hard to convince you it was filmed in the early 1970s. He puts in plenty of blips and scratches, colour drop-outs, 'missing reels' and brazen, extended close-ups of comely women's asses wiggling in hot pants.
   Tarantino piled on roughly 20 minutes worth of footage from the cutting room floor to transform his half-movie into a stand-alone feature. It's essentially two hardcore action sequences pitting a homicidal stunt driver against said comely women, padded out with about an hour's worth of a high-school-girl's conception of sassy Sex-and-the-City talk. Since there's no plot or character to speak of, it would appear that the talky segments were put in for purposes of tawdry atmosphere and iconic posturing - except that the dialogue is inane in a very flavourless way, and there is nothing iconic about the ladies dishing it out. Few of them muster up much screen presence and several of them - particularly stunt-woman-turned-bad-actress Zoe Bell - are plain grating. So once the long-awaited reel comes about where they fall into mortal danger, the movie's tension is compromised by the realisation that their death would mean their forever shutting up.
   That said, none of them get to do much acting or speaking during the chases, joy rides, dismemberments and head-on collisions. These are thrilling in the best empty-visceral Tarantino fashion.
wr/dir/ph: Quentin Tarantino
cast: Kurt Russell, Zoe Bell, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Sydney Poitier, Tracie Thoms, Rose McGowan, Jordan Ladd, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth

EASTERN PROMISES
***
USA
On the level of campy fun, David Cronenberg's blood-and-entrail-
laden foray into murky Russian mafia transactions in London's underworld works perfectly well. Except then you're asked to accept for human-like characters the sadistic brutes who, for commercial purposes, spik to each odder in hevily akcented Inglish and kan even temporarily survive being stabbed through the heart. Not to mention the dead teenage mother, who reads out [again, in Slavic-inflected English] voiceover pages and pages of seemple-Rrrussian-girl dreams and expositori backstory from her diary (all to the accompaniment of the world's whiniest violin). On this level of projected human drama, the whole thing amounts to one dumb joke.
   (And is a single one of the actors genuinely Russian?)
dir: David Cronenberg
cast: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Sinead Cusack, Jerzy Skolimowski, Donald Sumpter

ENCHANTED
***½
USA
Yet another animated Disney princess' courtship by Prince Charming is interrupted - only this time she's magically transported to a New York City sewer in the shape of Amy Adams. The script is only half-there, but on its own G-rated terms, the finished product is shockingly enjoyable in large part because of Adams' immobilising charm and conviction.
dir: Kevin Lima
cast: Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, Susan Sarandon, Timothy Spall, Idina Menzel, Rachel Covey

FORBIDDEN LIES
***½
Australia
Comfortably the most compelling Australian picture of the season, Anna Broinowski’s documentary inspects the case of author Norma Khouri, who sold her Jordanian-honour-killing exposé ‘Forbidden Love’ as an autobiographical piece until a pair of diligent Aussie reporters discovered she was in fact an American con-artist wanted by the FBI. In the beguiling, confounding, continually shape-shifting Khouri, Broinowski stumbled upon a goldmine – the woman is compulsive viewing on her own, so all the cutesy flash montages and chapter sub-headings that Broinowski piles on tend to distract from the story more than they jazz it up. And though it’s a polished and expensive-looking piece of work, there is nothing inherently cinematic about the way it's been put together. But with such a dazzling, twist-ladden, larger-than-life tale, it’s enough that you’re able to follow the multiple lies-within-lies-within-lies (not to mention that you’re given the opportunity to watch Khouri in interview) and Broinowski ought to be praised for that.
dir: Anna Broinowski

4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS
*****
Romania
Unfolding across a few hours not long before the decline of Causescu's Romania, Cristian Mungiu's wrenching tale of two university students going about an illegal abortion may be the two most vividly horrific hours you'll ever spend in a cinema. It's as much an urban tragedy as it is a snapshot of a tattered, festering society, written, directed and performed with miraculous insight and subtlety. It's not only one of the great films of the decade, but one of the great films, period. It's also the first instalment in a series of Romanian films, ironically titled Tales of the Golden Age. (And it gives me a very warm feeling to watch an obscure Eastern European country experience a New Wave of its own.)
wr/dir: Cristian Mungiu
ph: Oleg Mutu
ed: Dana Bunescu
cast: Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov, Alexandru Protocean, Luminita Gheorgiou, Adi Carauleanu, Liliana Mocanu, Tania Popa, Teo Corban, Cerasela Iosifescu, Doru Ana, Eugenia Bosanceanu, Ioan Sabdaru, Cristina Buburuz, Marioara Sterian

LA FRANCE
**
France
In Serge Bozon's aggressively eccentric WWI fairytale, Sylvie Testud dresses up as a boy and while searching for her husband's regiment latches onto a band of deserters who wax poetic about Atlantis and break into kitschy pop tunes, retrieving makeshift instruments from thin air. Bozon's chief goal seems to be to expose the fragility behind the valour and machismo of the warfront soldier and he goes about it in admirably unconventional ways. But for such a brash experiment, it's an oddly limp film. Since no screen time is wasted on character development, it's a shame how little the key ideas are allowed to advance. And much of the dialogue sounds as though it's meant to be infinitely richer and more poetic than is the case.
dir: Serge Bozon
cast: Sylvie Testud, Pascal Greggory, François Negret, Laurent Talon, Pierre Leon, Benjamin Esdraffo, Guillaume Verdier, Guillaume Depardieu

GONE BABY GONE
****
USA
The old joke that Ben Affleck won an Oscar for typing Matt Damon's screenplay ought to be laid to rest now that he has not only directed but coaxed terrific tension and moral quandary out of this story of an abducted toddler and the baby-faced ghetto private eye hired to help track her down. The latter is played by Affleck's little brother, similarly displaying unsuspected depth in his second-most startling lead performance of 2007. The sordid, coke-rimmed squalor he inhabits borders on the grotesque and the deeper we delve into it, the more gnawingly our notions of Right and Wrong (particularly if we happen to be raised on American TV) are questioned.
   After a wrenching first two acts, the third takes a rushed and melodramatic detour and comes on as somewhat implausible. However, it brings forth the core dilemma of the piece, which is hefty and provocative, yet so tactfully presented and with such complexity that it sparks off an urgent meditation on prickly but vitally important issues without patronising you with any kind of bias.
dir: Ben Affleck
wr: Aaron Stockard, Ben Affleck
cast: Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman, Amy Ryan, John Ashton, Amy Madigan, Titus Welliver, Michael K. Williams, Edi Gathegi, Jill Quigg

HAIRSPRAY
***
USA
What makes Adam Shankman's screen-to-stage-to-screen-musical transfer more likable than most others is that it embraces the corn with an unfashionably open spirit and that it aspires to the bounce and sparkle of the musicals from Hollywood's golden age. John Travolta has never been more charming and human-like than he is as Edna Turnblad, James Marsden nails Corny Collins with terrific (and unexpected) showmanship and Amanda Bynes, over-tanned though she is, isn't remotely grating (while, as Tracy Turnblad, much-hyped debutante Nikky Blonsky often is). It's a shame then that Michelle Pfeiffer is forced to scowl and gyrate her way around an immobile forehead and that Christopher Walken isn't quite accepted for the gift that he is to any musical.
dir: Adam Shankman
cast: John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nikky Blonsky, Christopher Walken, Queen Latifah, Amanda Bynes, James Marsden, Brittany Snow, Zac Efron, Elijah Kelley, Allison Janney, Taylor Parks, Paul Dooley, Jerry Stiller

HOT FUZZ
***½
UK
What Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and their note-perfect cast did to suburban London with "Shaun of the Dead", they do to the sleepy country town with their second feature - only instead of zombie attacks, here you get sadistic serial killings. It's a thoroughly straight-faced (though thoroughly nutty) send-up of both the buddy cop action genre and the English countryside murder mystery. At least one of the several climactic showdowns is in itself a little masterpiece of surreal comedy.
dir: Edgar Wright
wr: Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright
cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton, Paddy Considine, Olivia Colman, Bill Bailey, Steve Coogan, Bill Nighy, Kevin Eldon, Martin Freeman, Edward Woodward, Anne Reid, Cate Blanchett

I'M NOT THERE
***½
USA
In gravely simplistic terms: Marcus Carl Franklin is plucky pre-teen Dylan; Ben Whishaw is early 20s art-wank Dylan; Heath Ledger is womanising matinee idol Dylan; Cate Blanchett is mid-life-crisis-filtered-through-Fellini's-8½ Dylan; Christian Bale is solemn, tortured, born-again Dylan; and Richard Gere may or may not be aging, increasingly benign outlaw Dylan.
   It's a tricky conceit - too murky and underdeveloped to be branded a success but too much of a blast to be dismissed as a failure. Even the sections that don't really work - which is most of them - are absorbing.
dir: Todd Haynes
wr: Todd Haynes, Oren Moverman
ph: Edward Lachman
ed: Jay Rabinowitz
cast: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Bruce Greenwood, David Cross, Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, Kris Kristofferson

IN MEMORY OF MYSELF
**½
Italy
A sombre, magisterially crafted mood piece about a Jesuit novice experiencing doubts just as he's about to be ordained. The actors' brooding - and there is a hefty amount of it - appears to be motivated roughly as often by self-importance as it is by something more substantial.
dir: Saverio Costanzo
cast: Christo Jivkov, Filippo Timi, Marco Baliani, André Hennicke, Fausto Russo Alesi

INTO THE WILD
****
USA
The story of straight-A law school graduate Christopher McCandless, who donated his $20,000+ scholarship to charity and disappeared without warning into the harsh American landscape to pursue the fantasy of every undergrad who ever read Walden, treads the spiritual-pathological territory that Werner Herzog has long laid claim to. Sean Penn is no Herzog. He puts in too many helicopter shots, too many redundant transcripts from McCandless' diary, too much slow motion - key scenes that are meant to resonate spiritually come off instead looking like credit card ads. More annoyingly, Penn glorifies the mystic-romantic appeal of McCandless' adventure where it would have been much more honest and productive to focus on the dangerous naïveté, the misguided arrogance and emotional instability.
   It's a morbidly flawed film. But it has a hypnotic power. It's built on a constant stream of thought-provoking, transcendentally beautiful passages and performances that obliterate all the minor and major shortcomings of Penn's writing and direction. The images, lensed by the great Eric Gautier, avoid the always-tempting postcard aesthetic and carry a forceful, primal beauty. Several deeply intelligent actors invest their crudely stitched-up cameos with a disarming, burnt but tortuously subsisting humanity. They render the mystic posturing insignificant and shape the canvas for the searing tragedy of the real McCandless to come through with tremendous force. You carry it with you.
wr/dir: Sean Penn
ph: Eric Gautier
cast: Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Jena Malone, Catherine Keener, Brian Dierker, Hal Holbrook, Vince Vaughn, Kristen Stewart

JELLYFISH
**½
Israel
Yet another hipster, quirky-sad dramedy about a disparate bunch of quirky-sad non-characters going through quirky-sad crises to arrive at trite, quirky-sad epiphanies. Basically a bunch of cloying, spiritless student films strung together and stretched out to just-barely feature length.
dir: Shira Geffen, Etgar Keret
cast: Sarah Adler, Tsipor Aizen, Bruria Albek, Ilanit Ben-Yaakov, Assi Dayan, Ma-nenita De Latorre, Miri Fabian, Shosha Goren, Tzahi Grad, Johnathan Gurfinkel

A JIHAD FOR LOVE
***
USA/UK/France/Germany/Australia
First-time director Parvez Sharma tries to cram in as many testimonials from persecuted Muslim gays from as many countries as an 80-minute running time permits. So his documentary very quickly becomes reductive and repetitive. Though, of course, with such a gripping subject, it isn't uninteresting.
dir: Parvez Sharma

JOSHUA
***
USA
A hesitantly arty variation on the devil-child formula, with the two leads investing their roles with more complexity than the script does.
dir: George Ratliff
cast: Sam Rockwell, Vera Farmiga, Jacob Kogan, Celia Weston, Dallas Roberts

JUNO
***½
USA
A cutesy-quirky, aggressively self-satisfied then aggressively heartwarming indie elevated to the realm of the bearable and even genuinely affecting, mostly by an ensemble of exceedingly clever, committed actors. Ellen Page plays the caustic but inwardly fragile teen impregnated by a dork and deciding to donate her bundle to a yuppie couple with half-hidden issues.
   There are blips - more, distorting oversights and misjudgments - both in the writing and direction: no one - and certainly not a 16-year-old - says things like "You're acting shockingly cavalier!"; no one's been put off abortion by 20 seconds' worth of clicking pens etc. The soundtrack is stuffed with lite-indie chick-rock, and several costuming and set design choices feel transported from a Wes Anderson movie onto a habitat that is unnatural to them.
   But the quirks which are jarring to begin with are pushed to the background in the second act and fade entirely by the third. Most of what's implausible about the plotting is gotten out of the way early, so that the situations and conversations start feeling more and more organic.
   Even in the earlier, sketchier sections however, Page demonstrates an uncanny gift for selling unspeakable dialogue as her own words and building from mostly snarky scraps a sensitive, human-like portrait of a scarred, guarded premature adult. And the supporting actors are wonderfully subdued.
dir: Jason Reitman
wr: Diablo Cody
cast: Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, J.K. Simmons, Allison Janney, Olivia Thirlby, Rainn Wilson, Lucas MacFadden

KNOCKED UP
****
USA
There is a pink elephant at the centre of this frathouse-friendly contemporary screwball of sorts: why is the intelligent, radiant Katherine Heigl prepared to potentially sacrifice a blossoming career and a bright future for an unwanted child with bonghead Seth Rogen? Writer-director Judd Apatow dodges the issue with some awkwardness, but otherwise he doesn't strike a false note both in terms of nutty sex comedy and in terms of grounding the picture in the realm of palatable human relationships. The actors - from the deceptively clever leads right down to the incidental, perfectly pitched cameos - are roundly excellent, and the dialogue is tight, natural and frequently very very funny.
wr/dir: Judd Apatow
cast: Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Leslie Mann, Paul Rudd, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Jason Segel, Martin Starr, Allan Tudyk, Kristen Wiig, Harold Ramis

LARS AND THE REAL GIRL
**½
USA
Small-town introvert Ryan Gosling falls in love with a sex doll, introduces her to the community as Bianca his partner and the community plays along to the point that Bianca gets her hair styled, is invited to do charity work and even has the ambulance at ready disposal. The premise isn't played for cutesy quirk so much as soppy romance. A bunch of talented actors scramble to pitch their performance at some level of honesty, but to little avail. The film's inner reality is so sketchy, it's unlikely that the writer or director ever had a handle on it either.
dir: Craig Gillespie
wr: Nancy Oliver
cast: Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, Kelli Garner, Patricia Clarkson, Nancy Beatty

MADONNAS
***
Germany/Switzerland/Belgium
A raw, relentless verité account of an unstable Sandra Hüller's handling of many many movie children. Writer-director Maria Speth doesn't seem to understand that some of the faux-doco conventions and mannerisms she adopts here are becoming as transparent as things like a crack addict with a heart of gold or a tinkly piano on the soundtrack. But Hüller has a gift for obliterating any surrounding hint of artifice in the kind of role that would go to Maggie Gyllenhaal in an American remake. The children too are uncannily, uncomfortably convincing.
wr/dir: Maria Speth
cast: Sandra Hüller, Luisa Sappelt, Susanne Lothar, Coleman Swinton, Peter Moltzen, Jérémie Segard, Olivier Gourmet

THE MAN FROM LONDON
**
France/Germany/Hungary
Béla Tarr's adaptation of a Georges Simenon novella has something to do with a switchman at a ghostly French port, a killing he witnesses and some money he may or may not have scored from it. It's shot on location in noirish high-contrast black-and-white and Tilda Swinton pops up occasionally, dubbed (poorly) in Hungarian. You may very well go in expecting atmosphere and intrigue - of which there's plenty. But brace yourself for a crushing realisation all the same, when around the 20-minute mark it becomes all too apparent that nothing as of yet has really happened and nothing as of now is ever going to happen. And it's difficult beyond this point to look at the picture as anything other than a self-parody.
   But then (!) - as if the funereal score in combination with the glacial pace wasn't suffocating enough - finally the actors start speaking. And speaking really. Really. Slo-owl-ly. And this is when the picture morphs from self-parody into one very nasty joke.
dir: Béla Tarr
cast: Miroslav Krobot, Tilda Swinton, Ági Szirtes, János Derzsi, Erika Bók, Gyula Pauer, István Lénárt

MICHAEL CLAYTON
***
USA
In a style unfashionable in Hollywood since the 1970s but experiencing a resurgence of late, this thriller mixes strands of character study, political intrigue and questioning of corporate ethics with equal - and commendable - tenacity. It's flawed on a couple of levels - George Clooney's lead performance, although solid and photogenic, doesn't hint at layers that warrant the many pensive, protracted silent close-ups; and the flashback as a framing device is not only redundant but takes away from the tension build-up in the third act. But the majority duels and conversations are absorbing, and writer-director Tony Gilroy finds the perfect note to wrap things up on.
wr/dir: Tony Gilroy
cast: George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack, Sean Cullen, Michael O'Keefe

THE MOURNING FOREST
**
Japan/France
Naomi Kawase blends two film festival staples: the glacial pace that symbolises the unwieldy vastness of life; and the unlikely inter-generational connection formed between two grieving, alienated (and wooden) strangers. She also hopes that you'll mistake alternately serene and eerie vegetation for alternately serene and eerie filmmaking.
wr/dir: Naomi Kawase
cast: Machiko Ono, Kanako Masuda

MY FRIEND AND HIS WIFE
**
South Korea
What begins as a gentle romantic comedy with a curious focus on the corporeal (i.e. an exemplary relaxed attitude to the depiction of sex, nudity, birth and various viscous substances) is derailed by a grave tragedy round the 40-minute mark, after which much of the screen-time is devoted to characters staring grimly/vacantly just past the edge of the frame and blurting out pregnant, vaguely contemplative-sounding musings on matters of life and death. From a silly but likable rom-com it devolves into a silly, malnourished melodrama.
wr/dir: Shin Dong-il
cast: Hong So-hee, Park Hee-soon, Jang Hyeong-seong

MY KID COULD PAINT THAT
****
USA
You may have heard of 4-year-old Marla Olmstead and her strikingly sophisticated abstract paintings; and you may have heard the general consensus that their sophistication owes a lot to her cowardly father's secret input and/or tyranny. Accordingly, in your mind you may have formed your own ghastly portrait of a maniacal parent, and then here comes Amir Bar-Lev to present the lovely, twinkling Mark and Laura Olmstead, who, by all accounts, are determined to ensure a happy and wholesome state of mind for their two adorable children. And then you get a nasty feeling.
   As Bar-Lev's layered, piercing documentary unfolds, and damning evidence builds up against the Olmsteads, you find yourself suppressing your better judgment, and scouring for unlikely clues to vindicate them lovely Olmsteads. As Bar-Lev catches himself doing the same, torn as he is between his common humanity and his pursuit of truth (not to mention, 'documentary gold') he brings up some pesky points regarding the editorial slants and agendas that shape the reportage that so often poses as objective fact.
Working off the implication that reportage (including documentaries and news reports), like art, is subjective, he examines in great detail the role of the artist in relation to his/her work, both in terms of his/her self-aggrandising perspective as well as his/her status in the eyes of the public.
   Furthermore (and in line with his sole original motive), in terms of pure artistry and virtuosity, he ponders what it is exactly about Marla's technically irrational paintings that makes them beautiful and moving and worth thousands of dollars. And as he watches the same paintings' gushing devotees decamp and start denouncing once their child-prodigy tag is undermined, he comes across some uncomfortable revelations about the corrupting human dependence on neat, (more often than not) projected narratives.
dir: Amir Bar-Lev

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
*****
USA
The Coen Brothers adapt a Cormac McCarthy novel ostensibly concerning a bunch of disparate men directly and indirectly involved in a drug deal gone bad in the cavernous plains near the Texan border. The Coens are as invested in constructing their immaculately nerve-wracking suspense setpieces as they are in capturing in cinematic terms the parched, unsettling poetry of McCarthy's prose and worldview. From coolly tracking the protagonists' cat-and-mouse game, the picture - at first imperceptibly - moves on to exhuming the roots of their morbid resignation, and not a false note is struck along the way by either the Coens or their extraordinary cast.
wr/dir/ed: Joel and Ethan Coen
ph: Roger Deakins
sound: Craig Berkey
cast: Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald, Garret Dillahunt, Tess Harper, Barry Corbin, Stephen Root, Rodger Boyce, Beth Grant, Gene Jones, Kathy Lamkin

AN OLD MISTRESS
****
France/Italy
When you consider Catherine Breillat's preferred mode of archness and formalism, the period melodrama seems like not only a natural arena but almost an extension of her personality. Though it's less confrontational and explicit than in her previous films, her fascination with transgression and sexuality is no less trenchant when framed against a society built on outwardly strict and rigorous codes and conventions. Her observations lose none of their relevance or pointed precision for being fluffed up in starched collars and ballgowns. They do in the meantime gain a depth and resonance for being defined against a field of absorbing, volatile and complex emotions.
   Fu'ad Ait Aattou plays a notorious libertine reflecting on his ten-year affair affair with tempestuous kept-woman Asia Argento on the eve of his commitment to a pretty, accommodating young lady with a title. Argento lacks the maturity the role demands but has the brazenness to compensate. Aattou is equipped with enormous, highly photogenic lips to distract from his vacant, vacant eyes. Claude Sarraute and Yolande Moreau are both delightful as veteran socialites.
wr/dir: Catherine Breillat
cast: Asia Argento, Fu'ad Ait Aattou, Roxane Mesquida, Claude Sarraute, Yolande Moreau, Michael Lonsdale, Anne Parillaud

PLANET TERROR
***
USA
After Grindhouse bombed at the US box office, several international distributors sliced it in two, released Tarantino's half in theatres and sent Rodriguez's straight to DVD. Unlike Tarantino, Rodriguez recognises his limitations. While nothing here matches the charge and dexterity of Death Proof's climactic car chase, it's overall the happier experience.
dir: Robert Rodriguez
cast: Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton, Jeff Fahey, Michael Biehn, Rebel Rodriguez, Bruce Willis, Naveen Andrews, Nicky Katt

RATATOUILLE
***½
USA
A warm, vibrant Pixar concoction concerning a gourmet rat who refashions a Parisian kitchen. It works best in the bits where there's no dialogue. In its weaker patches it suffers from the contemporary compulsion to make every cartoon hero sound like a snarky teenage girl.
wr/dir: Brad Bird
cast: Patton Oswalt, Ian Holm, Lou Romano, Brian Dennehy, Peter Sohn, Peter O'Toole, Brad Garrett, Janeane Garofalo, Will Arnett

SAVAGE GRACE
***
USA
A confounding account of the sensational real-life murder of unstable socialite Barbara Baekeland by her that-much-more-unstable son. With elegance and absolute - as well as, to an extent, blinding - commitment, Tom Kalin (whose first film since the staggering Swoon [1992] this is) directs Howard A. Rodman's haphazard, incomplete draft of a promising script. The characters, although rendered vivid by a uniformly solid cast, are left underdeveloped, and much of their unorthodox behaviour in the third act is shocking for all the wrong reasons. The picture is always absorbing and often dazzling (as pictures tend to be every time they provide the malleably fierce and destitute Julianne Moore with a juicy role), so much so that - despite the unpleasant subject matter and the trying 15-year wait for a second Tom Kalin picture - it leaves you wishing that Kalin and Rodman took some extra time in pre-production to prod into the motives and causes behind their characters' dodgy neuroses, rather than focus on the kinky effects.
dir: Tom Kalin
wr: Howard A. Rodman
cast: Julianne Moore, Stephen Dillane, Eddie Redmayne, Simón Andreu, Elena Anaya, Barney Clark, Hugh Dancy, Abel Folk, Anne Reid, Brendan Price

SHOTGUN STORIES
**½
USA
A leisurely, mournful, mannered meditation on a small-town Arkansas family feud with a rapidly escalating body count. For eschewing the obvious punchy approach and attempting instead something more personal and contemplative, writer-director Jeff Nichols is to be commended. But there are too many false, derivative notes both in his script and his handling of the actors. Perhaps his second movie might turn out more sincere and authentic if he manages to step out of the shadow of co-producer - and evident mentor - David Gordon Green.
wr/dir: Jeff Nichols
cast: Michael Shannon, Douglas Ligon, Barlow Jacobs, Natalie Canerday, Glenda Pannell, Lynnsee Provence, Michael Abbott Jr.

SICKO
***
USA
As is sometimes the case with Michael Moore joints, in this litany on the [patently paltry] American health care system, it's difficult to swallow the syrup in his voiceover, his rehearsed disbelief, his fetish for maudlin and/or cartoonish scoring and his compulsion to hammer home a point long after you get it, you really truly get it.
   But each point he raises and then underlines repeatedly is so thoroughly urgent and sobering that you're forced to cut him some slack. Plus, he's trying so hard to give off the impression that he's trying hard to take in the issue from the maximum of viable perspectives.
dir: Michael Moore

THE SIMPSONS MOVIE
*****
USA
[Comparatively] cheaply, cleverly and beautifully animated for the big screen, the quirks, manics and insecurities of Homer, Marge and their 2.5 children are blown up against an epic plot, wherein Homer half-inadvertently brings on the destruction of the town of Springfield and his family, and must then put concentrated thought and effort into their recovery. From the point that Ralph Wiggum pops into the 20th-Century-Fox logo to sings along, to the Squeaky-Voiced Teen's closing-credits homily on the value of four years of film school, the barrage of genuinely witty gags - be they visual, verbal, nasal, political, observational, self-referential: all hits, no misses - doesn't relent, though it allows for feature-length character arcs for each of the principals and a representation of family (American, nuclear, or otherwise) as alert, considerate and absorbing as any contemporary one.
dir: David Silverman
wr: Matt Groening, Sam Simon, James L. Brooks, Al Jean, Ian Maxtone-Graham, George Meyer, David Mirkin, Mike Reiss, Mike Scully, Matt Selman, John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti
voices of: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Pamela Hayden

STRANGE CULTURE
***
USA
And a suitably strange, thought-provoking picture. In an occasionally muddled but nevertheless absorbing mix of documentary and fiction, Lynn Hershman-Leeson investigates the Kafkaesque case of Steve Kurt, who was arrested for bio-terrorism under the most peculiar circumstances.
dir: Lynn Hershman-Leeson

SUNSHINE
****
UK
The Sun is dying. The last team of astronauts sent to resuscitate it disappeared without a trace seven years earlier. So it's now up to Cillian Murphy and a cast that brings memories of a Benetton-ad to save humanity.
   On paper it sounds like a daunting thing to sit through, but the plot exposition, along with the less intriguing performers, is disposed of early on and what follows is uncommonly enthralling sci-fi. It's both mildly philosophical in accordance with current zen-sci-fi trends as well as unnervingly tense in that more enduring slasher-sci-fi tradition. On top of this it boasts a high-strung, fatalistic emotionalism that is difficult - and probably pretty pointless - to resist. The soaring anguish of the strings on the soundtrack is an easy enough weapon in itself, but it's that much more stirring matched as it is to awe-inspiring imagery.
dir: Danny Boyle
wr: Alex Garland
ph: Alwin H. Kuchler
m: John Murphy, Karl Hyde, Rick Smith
pd: Mark Tildesley
cast: Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, Cliff Curtis, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, Troy Garity, Mark Strong

SUPERBAD
***½
USA
Maybe because Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg wrote the script while still in high school, this teen comedy - yet another one about a bunch of scruffy hornbags seeking to lose their virginity before prom night - feels authentic. The drinking, the vomiting, the awkward sexuality, the fixation on genitalia, the burden of virginity - everything seems lifted from lived experience, not market research. And the three leads - two of whom are genuinely high-school-aged - are switched-on and note-perfect.
dir: Greg Mottola
wr: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg
cast: Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Seth Rogen, Bill Hader, Martha MacIsaac, Emma Stone, Aviva

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET
***½
USA
The wit, tension and soaring tragedy of Stephen Sondheim's musical can withstand even Tim Burton's rigid efforts to turn it into a cartoon. The irritating technical quirks, like a silly whirlwind tour of 19th-century CGI-London, are easy to overlook, but it takes concentrated goodwill to get past the miscasting.
   When Johnny Depp - looking Botoxed throughout - drones "I will have venn-geance", you want to punch him and his ego that insisted singing lessons would reduce the performance (of a character defined by operatic bloodlust). Helena Bonham Carter fares a little better if only because she pitches her performance according to her (thin) vocals and reinvents Mrs. Lovett as a desiccated, fragile ghoul with a stunted passion (in contrast to Depp's stunting passionlessness).
   All the same, enough of Sondheim's melancholy and savagery survives the transition to make even this muted adaptation intensely compelling. Although in butchered form, the morbid yearning and warped genius of the songs comes through.
dir: Tim Burton
cast: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Edward Sanders, Jamie Campbell Bower, Jayne Wisener, Sacha Baron Cohen, Laura Michelle Kelly

2 DAYS IN PARIS
***
France/Germany
Julie Delpy seems to be apologising for French mentality and customs in this meet-my-quirky-foreign-parents comedy, which gets grating - particularly in the opening sections, riddled as they are with clammy voiceover, unwieldy banter and forced jokes. But she builds up an easy, absorbing rhythm with her actors, so that by the end even the homilies and stereotypes are easy to swallow.
wr/dir/ed: Julie Delpy
cast: Julie Delpy, Adam Goldberg, Marie Pillet, Albert Delpy, Aleksia Landeau, Daniel Brühl, Adan Jodorowsky, Alexandre Nahon

THE WITNESSES
****
France
The earnest-complacent AIDS drama hit its peak (in terms of circulation more than quality) during the early-to-mid 90s and gradually began losing exposure thereafter, so much so that it has been nearing extinction as of late (bad news to people with a social conscience, though good news to lovers of complex drama). In a sense André Téchiné is being unfashionable in daring to tackle the issue at this point in time - particularly in opting for an approach of historical documenting rather than hysterical pseudo-topicality. But a more graceful and articulate insight into the shock and panic of the abrupt outbreak of the disease in the 1980s doesn't exist on celluloid. With customary wisdom he peoples his picture with tangible, vibrant characters rather than shrill demographics. Through them you experience the paralysing terror of AIDS rather than just hear about it.
   The fretting orchestral score by Fred Chichin and Philippe Sarde is quite openly derivative of Philip Glass' work and it works wonderfully well. Setting up a brisk pace in tandem with the shrewd, sensible cutting, it keeps you that much more involved in the proceedings, and builds on the story's urgent, forceful impact while maintaining its intimacy.
dir: André Téchiné
wr: André Téchiné, Laurent Guyot, Viviane Zingg
ph: Julien Hirsch
ed: Martine Giordano
m: Fred Chichin, Philippe Sarde
cast: Michel Blanc, Emmanuelle Béart, Sami Bouajila, Julie Depardieu, Johan Libéreau, Constance Dollé, Lorenzo Balducci, Alain Cauchi

YEAR OF THE DOG
***
USA
An off-centre, admirably committed portrayal of a near-middle-aged woman, whose most poignant relationship in life is with her dog - and the dog dies prematurely. Though he's constantly treading on the edge of hollow quirk and cutesiness, writer-director Mike White very rarely crosses it, and he's served with uniformly note-perfect performances from his fine cast.
wr/dir: Mike White
cast: Molly Shannon, Peter Sarsgaard, Laura Dern, Josh Pais, Regina King, Thomas McCarthy, John C. Reilly

YELLA
**½
Germany
An obtuse metaphysical thriller that puts an attractive young accountant played by Nina Hoss in increasingly dubious circumstances that fail to compromise her icy veneer. The few outbursts of plot are imaginatively handled and carefully placed within the greater focus on faintly off-kilter mundaneness. And Hoss' conviction helps to make the picture intriguing for the most part. But in the end it's too clinical and arbitrary - or maybe just too much smarter than its audience - to pack any kind of a punch.
dir: Christian Petzold
cast: Nina Hoss, David Striesow, Hinnerk Schönemann, Burghart Klaussner, Barbara Auer, Christian Redl

YOU, THE LIVING
***½
Sweden
Roy Andersson delivers another bunch of nutty, surrealist vignettes - less cohesive in tone than in his moody, terrific previous film, though hardly less delightful - wherein he infuses with absurdist humour and a joyous, irrepressible spirit the lives of an otherwise bleak bunch of people.
wr/dir: Roy Andersson
cast: Håkan Angser, Eric Bäckman, Patrik Anders Edgren, Björn Englund, Lennart Eriksson, Pär Fredriksson, Elisabeth Helander, Gunnar Ivarsson, Leif Larsson, Jessika Lundberg, Jessica Nilsson, Jörgen Nohall, Waldemar Nowak, Olle Olson, Kemal Sener, Jan Wikbladh

YOUR MOMMY KILLS ANIMALS
***
USA
A distressing look into the Animal Liberation Movement, whose actions have placed them at the top of the FBI's list of national terrorist threats (that's right, above Al-Qaeda), mirroring as they often do the very behaviour of the animal-abusers they're fighting against. Director Curt Johnson takes on too much when he brings in the SHAC7 trials and the issues they raise regarding free speech (a topic worth feature length on its own), though his refusal to plonk people into neat hero/villain boxes is commendable.
dir: Curt Johnson

ZODIAC
***½
USA
David Fincher returns to the serial killer genre with this look into the as-yet unsolved Zodiac murders in California in the late 60s. He drops the moody, upstart showiness that had heretofore marked his films and delivers instead the kind of sombre, reserved, detail-driven suspenser that Sidney Lumet is committed to.
   It's very much a movie-movie: Jake Gyllenhaal plays the handsomest and most clean-cut of dishevelled, bookish true-crime nerds; the killings and near-killings wouldn't look out of place in any sadistic slasher flick; none of the victims and near-victims are permitted a personality; women exist only for purposes of exposition; and every location is glazed in a Technicolor sheen (though, astonishingly, celluloid never came into it).
   And within the realm of its movie-movie-ness, it's tense, compelling and thoroughly satisfying in the way that every efficient studio picture ought to be. The actors help, certainly, as does the script by James Vanderbilt, who throws hooks at you at a finely judged rhythm and avoids the traditionally clunky dialogue that haunts the genre. And though neither Vanderbilt nor Fincher adequately pursue the fascinating strand they open up about mankind's compulsive need for closure above factually supportable justice, they do at least touch on it, and within the realm of movie-movieness, that's enough to be commended.
dir: David Fincher
wr: James Vanderbilt
ph: Harris Savides
cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Robert Downey Jr., Brian Cox, Chloë Sevigny, Elias Koteas, Dermot Mulroney, Donal Logue, Clea DuVall, Philip Baker Hall, John Carroll Lynch

ZOO
**
USA
An admirably compassionate but awkward look into zoophilia, sparked by the notiorious case of Kenneth Pynan (though he's only ever referred to as Mr. Hands in the movie), who bled to death after being anally penetrated by a horse. Director Robinson Devor understands the sadness, the eerieness and the tragedy of a 'zoosexual's state of mind, but he refuses to acknowledge its bizarreness and its morbid fascination. He has accordingly chosen to photograph the film with artsy, grief-stricken, heavily pregnant lyricism that very quickly becomes exhausting.
dir: Robinson Devor

YET TO SEE:

AMERICAN GANGSTER (Scott);
ANGEL (Ozon);
BAND'S VISIT, THE (Kolirin);
BEFORE I FORGET (Nolot);
BEYOND THE FORREST (Hauzenberger);
CHICAGO 10 (Morgen);
CHOP SHOP (Bahrani);
COUNTERFEITERS, THE (Ruzowitzky);
DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT (Loktev);
ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD (Herzog);
FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON (Hou);
GARAGE (Abrahamson);
KING OF KONG: A FISTFUL OF QUARTERS, THE (Gordon);
LAKE OF FIRE (Kaye);
LOVE SONGS (Honoré);
MANDA BALA (Kohn);
MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES (Baichwal);
MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS (Wong);
MY ENEMY'S ENEMY (MacDonald);
RESCUE DAWN (Herzog);
ROCKET SCIENCE (Blitz);
ROMANCE OF ASTREA AND CELADON, THE (Rohmer);
STUCK (Gordon);
SUN ALSO RISES, THE (Jiang);
TRAP, THE (Golubovic);
UP THE YANGTZE (Yung);
WE OWN THE NIGHT (Gray)

TOP 10 TO SEE
ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD*
UP THE YANGTZE*
THE BAND'S VISIT*
BEFORE I FORGET
THE TRAP
WE OWN THE NIGHT
CHOP SHOP
RESCUE DAWN
CHICAGO 10

Film:
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
No Country for Old Men
The Simpsons Movie
The Secret of the Grain
Into the Wild

Director:
Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days)
Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men)
André Téchiné (The Witnesses)
Abdellatif Kachiche (The Secret of the Grain)
Ang Lee (Lust, Caution)

Performance:
Anamaria Marinca (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days)
Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James)
Ellen Page (Juno)
Tony Leung (Lust, Caution)
Juliette Binoche (Flight of the Red Balloon)

Supp. Performance:
Vlad Ivanov (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days)
Laura Vasiliu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days)
Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)
Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild)
Catherine Keener (Into the Wild)

Ensemble:
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
The Secret of the Grain
Juno
Into the Wild
No Country for Old Men

Script:
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
No Country for Old Men
The Simpsons Movie
The Witnesses
An Old Mistress

Cinematography:
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
Into the Wild
No Country for Old Men
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
There Will Be Blood