Talk about an international production. Such a Long Journey is directed by an Icelander, was financed with Canadian money, and is set in India and stars an Indian cast. With that kind of pedigree, it’s no surprise that the story it tells is universal.

Think back to the movie that made you fall in love with movies. Do you remembering feeling how it seemed like you had never seen a film before, how what you were seeing onscreen now seemed more real than anything you’d seen before? It’s like falling in love with a person — he or she, the object of your affection, suddenly seems more vivid than everyone else. That’s how The Color of Paradise made me feel… like I was being granted a revelation, shown a secret that few are entrusted with, of hidden perfection.

At a time when Hollywood’s idea of romance is a highly contrived ‘comedy’ starring the likes of Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock, or teen sex romps in which love is the furthest thing from the hormone-addled characters’ minds, it’s so wonderfully refreshing to find an intelligent, grown-up, genuine love story. As with the recent and similarly mature End of the Affair, mass audiences will likely decry Waking the Dead as ‘slow’ and probably even ‘boring,’ but anyone who craves a moving and involving romantic movie will love it.

Self-absorbed Generation Xers can be so, well, tedious. Doesn’t matter that I am one myself — self-absorbed Xer, that is — one of our defining qualities is that we pretty much can’t stand one another. That’s probably why Winter Sleepers — from Tom Tykwer, the writer and director of Run Lola Run — left me cold. The gaggle of young people the film revolves around just aren’t narcissistic in any kind of interesting way.

Oh, men and their midlife crises… Will we never see the end of this as suitable subject matter for comedies, tragedies, and everything in between? While middle-aged men dominate the production of film, probably not. So, is The Muse a satire on this particular brand of male insecurity, or is it more of the same-old, same-old?

My impression that there is more than mere animal intelligence behind the keen eyes of a dolphin is strengthened by a new IMAX documentary called, appropriately enough, Dolphins. IMAX films have tended to be spectacles, however entertaining: Look how big! how high! how fast! Dolphins, while undoubtedly spectacular, achieves more depth with its exploration of the underwater world of these majestic aquatic mammals and how their interactions with humans have affected them — and how they affect us.

The Scots have a dark, wry sense of humor, and perhaps only a Scottish filmmaker could have had both the audacity to attempt a black comedy about grief and the sensibility to pull it off. Best known as an actor for his award-winning performance in My Name Is Joe, Peter Mullan here he goes behind the camera in a wonderfully biting feature-film debut as writer/director. Orphans is as absurdly funny as it is heart-wrenchingly painful, and contains, in a story of apparently modest scope, some of the most poignantly real as well as some of the most bemusingly dreamy moments I think I’ve ever seen on film.