Like a Welsh "Juno" or "Rushmore". That's not being dismissive, but complimentary. This film has moments of "quirkiness" but in general is humorous and genuine. Soundtrack could use some Tom Jones though.

"That's how it crumbles… cookie-wise".

Cowboys & Aliens. Simultaneously the pitch, the title and the script. Should've been a lot more fun.

Young Shirley MacLaine. Vintage Jack Lemmon. I never think of this as a Christmas/New Years movie. Maybe because it's so damn dark in that apartment.

Rich people are crazy. Then they make their staff crazy. Stylish though slow-moving "thriller" with a shockingly nightmarish finale.

Joan Rivers really is a piece of work, and she knows it. Odd that she thinks of herself as an actor, not a comedian, which is probably part of the problem.

A little like My Dinner with Andre as a road trip with a little more weed and some homosexual sub-text. Like other Reichardt films, it raises more questions than it answers making you as much a participant as a viewer. Quiet, thoughtful, beautiful and a little creepy.

A minimalist Brokeback Mountain or My Dinner With Andre as a road movie? Another thoughtful, quietly stirring film from Reichardt. The director's dog, Lucy, also appears but probably won't get her SAG card due to lack of lines.

Fassbinder's Martha is Richard Brody's DVD pick of the week. He discusses it here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2011/04/dvd-of-the-week-martha.html

Watch with "The Inside Job" and the BBC's "The Last Days of Lehman Brothers".

I'm not really a believer of conspiracies per se, but this film makes you see how the sort of collusion of greed is its own conspiracy that has destroyed entire economies. Highly effective. Fantastic interviewing style from I assume Charles Ferguson, where one after another he calls out bull shit. Particularly enjoyed the skewering of the elite academic economists. BAM! Right in the kisser.

Escape from New York + A Clockwork Orange + After Hours + Fame. There. That describes this film I think.

Insanely beautiful and imaginative, but dull as dust. Also, it could have been 30 minutes shorter and we'd be none the wiser. I think Paul Rand said it best, a perfect work of art is a balance of form and meaning; when form dominates, meaning is blunted or dull. That's what happened here - form dominated.

I wanted to love it, but Egoyan has made a flat thriller. Good performances, beautifully filmed (it is no mean feat to make Toronto look that good), great score (at times) but just no fizz… I don't know why. Too passive maybe? It just dragged when it should zagged.

Best Canadian film of the last decade at least. Villeneuve exhibits a quiet, confident revelation of a weirdly operatic / Greek Tragedy narrative that if I were to just tell you, you might laugh, or punch me in the face for being so stupid. Villenueve makes the unbelievable, believable.

Porn for Ladies. It's like Jack Donaghy's vision come to life.

As fun as Gondry is and as interesting as it is to see where his whimsical approach to film making comes from (occasionally subverting the documentary format) you're left wondering why you should care. I guess there are some universally fraught family tensions but generally it feels like this film is made for his own family and not intended for a wider audience.

Funny, awkward, creepy… understated comedy works because of the strong cast. Reminded me of a Nicole Holofcener film. Maybe it would have been better with a little less jittery hand-held camera but still surprisingly good. The world needs more John C. Reilly.

Sort of Scobby Doo + H.R. Pufnstuf + The Shining + Black Christmas (old B-movie horror flick of sorority girls being murdered while on holiday). Nope. That still doesn't describe it.

You can sum this film up with three letters. WTF. Yup. It's Cinéma-WTF. Amazing. Iconic. Whacky. Graphic. Funny. Creepy. I get it now. Japanese pop culture isn't nuts, Obayashi is nuts and he is Japanese pop culture.

Imagine Michel Gondry directed a stop-motion film with dollar store toys on colourful papier maché dioramas and the story was 1 part Monty Python, 1 part Jacques Tati and 1 part schizophrenic dementia then that might describe this. Odd, manic but moments of great humour and beauty.

A fun, light surprise of a film from the guy who made the more substantial Edge of Heaven. "Madcap goings-ons" are kept in check mostly by the likeable main character Zinos. There's no black and white moral distinctions in the film with the exception of a villainous real estate speculator but it's all good fun. I was hoping for a better blending of music + food but still good.

Finely crafted, intimate portrayal of an ambitious young woman, giving "an old man some excitement. Langella is great.

Like an American Gothic set in the Ozarks, this is an unadorned story that can be frightening, disheartening yet uplifting (well, a little anyways). Reminded me of Wendy & Lucy except it had a plot and a girl looking for her drug-dealing dad rather than a dog. In fact, there are plenty of dogs.

Incredibly beautiful melodrama. Food. Sex. Love. So Italian. Tilda Swinton is a force of nature, performing in Italian and Russian. Lovely title sequence to boot.

Wow. Just, wow. I thought I would watch this with a jaded eye but this film is pretty epic. Powerful and memorable with surprising performances. You're watching the history of film and it's weighty stuff.

Great, thoughtful, gangster film – almost strange to call it a "gangster" flick because it's a lot more than that. John Hurt, Terence Stamp and Tim Roth are all excellent. Stamp in particular is amazing.

I really like how Holofcener can turn comedy into complexity on a dime, and make awkwardness touching or hurtful. Sometimes hard to watch but worth it. It's funny how rare films are like this but still it doesn't feel like a chick-flick nor is it easily labeled. Really enjoyed it. Scott Caan played a perfect cunt perfectly.

Theatrical production full of fun stunts but sheesh, at some point the hammy acting put me to sleep. I understand this is the proto-Robin Hood but were there really vines you could swing from in 12th century England. Silk hosiery was apparently easy to get.

Beautifully filmed. Maria José was a stone cold fox. Reminded me of The Headless Woman in that the accident is just the key to a Pandora's box of all the class conflict in Spanish society. Question: are all Spanish language films about class conflict? The Rafael character is hateful in that he thinks his "lower station" justifies his blackmail. Too bad when a guy "mans up" he gets knocked down.