Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

Philip Ridley is back to theatrical movie-making after nearly fifteen years. In Heartless, he's come up with something so strange and frightening, marvelous and moving, apocalyptic and chilling -- and perhaps undecipherable (but you probably won't mind) -- that all I can say is: See it. (I’ve just seen it for a second time, and, yes, it’s still undecipherable, though I may be getting closer.) The man who made the cult movie The Reflecting Skin (sadly not on DVD) and who wrote The Krays (also not on DVD) is an artist, and I don't think that it's so much that he won't compromise his vision, as it is that he can't. Just as well, too -- when one’s visions are this original.

Reviewer: Steve Dollar 
Rating (out of 5): *****

Today's news that Dogtooth (perfectly timed with the DVD release) has been nominated for an Academy Award in the best foreign film category is stunning. While it's gratifying to know that one of 2010's most outré critical favorites somehow slipped into what typically is the mushiest of Oscar competitions, it's even more fun to imagine the reactions of more middlebrow Academy voters to this perverse family drama. I expect a whole lot of “what...the...?” reactions.

The second feature from Greek director Giorgos Lanthimosis set in a studiously blank ex-urban home where three children - actually, fully grown college-age adults - spend their days competing in absurd challenges like: Who can inhale ether and not pass out the longest? For their dedication and achievement, the kids are rewarded with colorful stickers they can apply to the headboards of their beds. T

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): ***½

Alex Cox's Straight to Hell Returns, which showed in some theaters in 2010, is along the same lines as Apocalypse Now Redux, but on a different scale. It's the same as Straight to Hell (1987), but Cox did a little editing and added some more blood. When the movie opened in 1987, viewers may have expected something along the lines of Cox's previous original but more straightforward features, Repo Man (1984) and Sid and Nancy (1986). Instead they were treated with a deliberately weird, nonsensical modern-day Western; most people turned up their noses, or ignored it altogether.

Reviewer: James Van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****½

I'm going to go even farther than my usual don't-spoil-the-movie commandment by saying damn little about the "plot" of Catfish, the one-of-a-kind documentary from first-time/full-length moviemakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost and starring Shulman's immensely photogenic and charismatic photographer brother Yaniv (also known as Nev).

I knew nothing about this movie when I attended a press preview, along with a full-house audience, a few weeks prior to the theatrical debut of the film. I suspected it might be a documentary, though I also wondered whether it might not be faux or mock. After a few minutes of watching, it certainly seemed real enough. And yet, in our prankish internet age, including this year's I'm Still Here, who knows? So I was prepared to go with it either way -- doc or narrative. But so quickly did I get wrapped up in this tale of a filmmaker and his friend who begin to follow the love life of the filmmaker's brother as it blossoms and evolves over the Internet that I soon did not care a whit whether the movie was real or fake. Either way, it was excellent -- and in my book that's what matters.