All articles by Joe Lozito

Catalina Sandino Moreno is a revelation in Joshua Marston’s harrowingly realistic tale of a 17-year-old Columbian girl who becomes a drug mule to support her family.

Like the Beethoven sonatas that populate its soundtrack, this Coen brothers tribute to film noir is beatiful, deliberate and slow. Very slow. But the care with which it’s made and the fine acting by all involved make the pace more than worth it.

Milos Forman’s latest fractured genius tale sheds zero insight on it’s subject, controversial artist Andy Kaufman. It does, however, provide Jim Carrey an opportunity to give one of the best performances of the year.

Director Jonathan Demme reminds us why "Silence of the Lambs" was so good with this return to form, an appropriately paranoid remake of the much-lauded 1962 conspiracy thriller, anchored by outstanding performances by Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep.

Writer-director P.T. (formerly Paul Thomas) Anderson’s last film "Boogie Nights" seemed like the work of a filmmaker that had spent a lot of time studying "Scorcese For Dummies." Not so, for "Magnolia."

Brave, dynamic performances and sharp dialogue highlight writer-director Nicole Holofcener’s unrelentingly incisive portrait of a mother and her two daughters.

Writer-director Sofia Coppola’s story of two disaffected Americans stranded in Tokyo (one for business, one for marital obligation) is worth seeing if only for the beautiful photography and Bill Murray’s most complete, heartfelt performance to date. The story, which is at times hysterical and insightful, is just a bonus.

This documentary chronicling Terry Gilliam’s famously ill-fated production of ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’ is a fascinating look at the tenuous nature of filmmaking and Mr. Gilliam’s own quixotic obsession with the project.

The final chapter of Peter Jackson’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ adaptation is also the best, standing not only as its own movie, but also as an exhilarating end to one of the finest trilogies ever put on film.

Mad genius Peter Jackson continues to defy expectations with an adaptation of the second chapter of J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘Rings’ trilogy which is every bit as good, and sometimes better, than the first.