Black Swan
Natalie Portman steals the show in Darren Aronofsky's mesmerizing ballet thriller.
Blue Valentine
Director Derek Cianfrance's romance is about the great mystery that love isn't.
À nos amours (To Our Loves)
Maurice Pialat's 1980s classic delves intelligently into teenage female sexuality.
Somewhere
Sophia Coppola uses Coppola's sleeping pill style to get at the contours of celebrity.
The importance of clubbing
Why a college film club? For "Eraserhead," "Persona," "Alice" and, of course, supermasochism.
Wanda
Barbara Loden's one feature has Warhol-style resonance 40 years later.
Fretting over Werner
Germany's iconoclastic Werner Herzog, now 68, continues marching to his own drummer.
High and Low
Akira Kurosawa's Hitchcock-influenced thriller is a convulsive ride.
Nothing to Envy
In bleak and dark North Korea, Barbara Demick digs in to find a love story.
Ghost World
Central to Terry Zwigoff's charmer are Delta blues, Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi.
On film
In her first column, film critic Lauren Jurgensen reflects on her earliest loves.
In a Strange Room
Damon Galgut's "In a Strange Room" has the power to hypnotize even geography.