VOLVER
R, 111 minutes

“Volver” means “to return,” and the recurrence of the past is the film’s major theme. In the movie’s fantastical logic, death, however inconvenient, does not bring an end to unsettled business. Restless souls can rise from the grave in search of closure, and ghosts can seem as real and as caring as sisters, daughters, and mothers.

Fantasy and reality freely mix in Pedro Almodóvar’s film, which manages to treat big themes like incest, betrayal, murder, mortality, and loneliness in a charmingly blithe, yet nonethe less serious, manner. This enchanting alchemy also translates to unforgettable details. Several still shots perfectly capture Mr. Almodóvar’s unique blend of earnestness and perverseness.

— David Grosz (November 3)

THE BRIDGE
Unrated, 93 minutes

When documentarian Eric Steel’s camera settles into a classic beauty shot looking north from Golden Gate Park toward the fabled bridge, something happens that transforms the expanse into an icon exerting a very different magnetism than the one tourists have flocked to for decades. Clearly discernible in the choppy grey tide below is a small but distinctive splash — the first of many in this harrowing, tragic, and deeply disturbing film. Using footage from cameras continuously covering the bridge itself and interviews with family members and witnesses, Mr. Steel’s “The Bridge” documents a single year in the Golden Gate Bridge’s reign as the suicide capital of the world.

— Bruce Bennett (October 27)

MARIE ANTOINETTE
PG-13, 123 minutes

By Hollywood standards, Sophia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” is well researched, its sins mainly those of omission — not that those are trivial. This is a Marie Antoinette without the necklace (that scandal is never mentioned), but who keeps her neck. The last three to four years of her life, years in which she finally achieved a certain tragic dignity, don’t feature at all, but perhaps they don’t need to. After all, we witness her refusal to abandon Louis XVI as the revolution grew, and we see the bravery with which she faced the mob that had stormed Versailles.

But for all this film’s cleverness, it would not succeed without the extraordinary, almost hypnotic, performance by Kirsten Dunst as the fabulously indulged, fabulously abused Marie Antoinette of Ms. Coppola’s vision, driven quite literally to distraction by the weird predicament in which she found herself.

— Andrew Stuttaford (October 20)

THE QUEEN
PG-13, 97 minutes

In all the decades of Queen Elizabeth II’s painstakingly dutiful, conscientious, and tenacious reign, there has only really been one brief, bizarre period, of just about a week, when there was the slightest danger that the Windsors might, like so many of their less fortunate relatives in so many less fortunate countries, be asked to pack their bags. It’s that interlude that is the focus of “The Queen.”

Watch Her Majesty carefully enough and it’s just possible to detect that the smile, the wave, the small talk, and all the rest of it are acts of will, the work of an actress, a pro, trapped in a role that will last a lifetime. Dame Helen Mirren catches this perfectly.

— A.S. (September 29)

THE DEPARTED
R, 149 mintues

Like its milieu, Irish-Catholic Boston, “The Departed” has plenty in common with the mean streets that Martin Scorsese has trod before, without the watershed setting or the whiff of Grand Guignol that complicated the mix in his last violent romp, the period piece “Gangs of New York.” For both these reasons, it’s awfully fun to watch.

The same could be said for the two informers at the center of the story, which is borrowed from the 2002 Hong Kong policier “Infernal Affairs.” Ostensible gangster Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) and ostensible police sergeant Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) are both the opposite of what they appear to be. Billy, a strung-out undercover cop, puts his life on the line cozying up to Boston’s biggest crime lord, Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Colin, the spit-and-polish young star of the special investigations unit, coolly foils every sting.

— Darrell Hartman (October 6)