Andrea Gronvall

he Diving Bell and the Butterfly fuses experimental techniques with a highly accessible and sometimes humorous narrative; it’s deeply personal yet universal in its humanism.

Animation may be the ideal medium for replicating dreams, and in this unsettling feature by Ari Folman it also proves well suited to autobiography.

Koreeda was inspired by his guilt over having neglected his own parents, and the story is remarkable for the quiet, seemingly casual way he depicts the fallout of bitterness and grief.

Director Daniel Alfredson grounds the mystery in a real sense of place: his Stockholm looks and feels like a major city where corruption lurks behind attractive facades. The reporter character is better developed than in the first movie, but most of the supporting characters from the book have been shrunk to little more than walk-ons.

Writer-directors Pete Docter and Bob Peterson present hilarious insights into bird brains and canine psychology and treat thornier human emotions deftly.

Directors Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV, brothers and native sons of Sidney, find poetry in images of the mundane.

Bar-Lev ponders myth in both senses of the word-as a web of lies, but also as a psychological construct that gives life purpose. An atheist and critical thinker, Pat Tillman had no use for either.

Compared to "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Kiki's Delivery Service," this is one of the anime master's weaker efforts.

When the interrupters do succeed, the results can be riveting.

Disappointment, inhuman work schedules, sluggish exports, and the crush of a two-day rail journey ratchet up the familial tensions, which finally explode over a holiday dinner.

Cinematographer Eduardo Serra underscores the sense of dread with a rich charcoal palette, and the outstanding CGI and 3D effects make the otherworldly threats more corporeal.

Samuel Maoz drew from his own war experiences to write and direct this searing drama, which ranks alongside "Platoon" and "No Man's Land" as an antiwar statement and recalls the claustrophobic despair of "Das Boot."

The elegiac tone here isn't set just by nostalgia for a vanished lifestyle: bereavement, lost love, and the ever present floodwaters add poignancy to the elliptical story, whose characters float in and out unbidden, and sometimes unexplained.

Isabelle Huppert gets a respite from her usual ice queen roles with this shattering psychological drama about the danger of children staying too long in the nest.

Characters occasionally address the camera, which helps disentangle the competing story lines of madness, adultery, and betrayal.

Writer-director Gotz Spielmann (Antares) avoids the clutter and manipulation of most thrillers, escalating tension almost solely through the characters' turbulent emotions.

Trained in Sanford Meisner's acting techniques, the director wrests surprisingly emotional disclosures from his subjects.

Provost and cowriter Marc Abdelnour explore the mutable boundaries between spirituality, naivete, genius, and madness, showing how the two outsiders and polar opposites cultivated a mutual understanding.

This gritty melodrama is tempered by surreal black humor.

Directed by Louie Psihoyos, this well-intentioned documentary exposes the harvesting of dolphins by Japanese fishermen, yet its theatrics suggest a cross between reality TV and "Mission: Impossible."

Michael Cera elevates deadpan to an art, starring as a slacker turned action hero in this wildly inventive comedy that's one of the most vivid and spirited adaptations of a comic book since Spider-Man--and one of the hippest since Ghost World.

Sexual politics, family dynamics, the debate over heredity versus environment, and the dubious ethics of scientific research on animals are rigorously explored in this ambitious, bittersweet work.

The movie he (Wenders) went on to make with her Tanztheater Wuppertal is more than an elegy; his meticulous use of 3D endows the performances with a corporeality and intimacy hitherto unseen in a dance film.

It loses steam once the wraiths become fully visible: they're just not scary enough.

Shani and Copti (who costars as a hipster druggie) elicit moving performances from their nonprofessional actors, who ground the somewhat breathless action in a streetwise realism.

The fulcrum of this deeply humanist work is an extended two-shot of the strike's leader, Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), as he converses with a priest (Liam Cunningham); the virtuosic sequence encapsulates the whole sorry history of a horrific civil war.

Under the harsh lights of the meticulously re-created, claustrophobic bunker, that scrutiny is relentless.

For a movie about the undead, this lacks any supernatural chills, and by the time its obligatory final showdown arrives, it seems as hollow as the terra cotta soldiers brought to life by CGI.

Inspired by anthropologist Donald Thomson's early-20th-century photographs, this collaboration between a Western filmmaker and the native people of Ramingining is an impressive achievement of ethnographic cinema.

The intersections between sleep and waking, memory, cinema, and the Internet lead to a spectacular battle of titans who spring from the mind's darkest recesses.

Director Juan José Campanella weaves together two love stories--between the victim and her husband, and the investigator and his former boss (Soledad Villamil)--and creates some masterful set pieces; his breathless chase through a packed soccer stadium is a marvel of choreography and top-notch CGI.

In the films of Swedish director Jan Troell (The Emigrants, The New Land), ordinary lives assume epic dimensions, and this drama, based on the experiences of his wife's protofeminist grandmother, doesn't sugarcoat the hardships of the early 1900s.

By the end theyve acquired a measure of self-knowledge at a cost dearer than they expected, which reminds us that what we think we know can be just the beginning of an existential journey.

Director Anne Fletcher delivers more bite and brisker pacing than she did with "27 Dresses."

Julianne Moore proves game for anything in this pitch-black true-crime reconstruction.

Screwball office comedy.

Bell presides over this insightful, often droll survey like a sweeter, buffer version of Michael Moore, trolling gyms, universities, and Congress to grill assorted experts.

It's an edifying art history lesson, but it lacks the showmanship of, for example, Peter Greenaway's "Nightwatching."

Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa switches gears from supernatural horror to poignant social satire.

The fallout decades later provides the drama in this documentary by Doug Pray (Hype!), who lets his eccentric octogenarian subject off a little too easy.

What begins as a leave-taking turns into a homecoming that reflects the mixed-race society of the modern south.

Director Peter Sollett (Raising Victor Vargas) and cinematographer Tom Richmond transform nocturnal New York into a soft-focus wonderland for their sweet but screwball courtship.

Flawless comic timing and vivid imagination power this rollicking sequel to "Jumanji."

The special effects are better and the dialogue slightly more humorous than in the first movie, but the anti-Arab subtext is repugnant.

Sam Riley is fascinating as Curtis, a hypersensitive young man hobbled by his incurable disease, and Samantha Morton is poignant as his put-upon wife.

Steve Buscemi supplies the only spark of intelligent life in this numbingly flat universe, despite the fancy gadgets, the high-speed chases, and a skyscraper collision reminiscent of the World Trade Center attacks.

Tongue-in-cheek dialogue, inventive slapstick and fight sequences, and luminous production design make this a treat.

Ryan, barely refining her "When Harry Met Sally" persona, is a dud; Annette Bening, playing the best friend who sells her out to a tabloid, is better in the scenes she doesn't share with her.

The husband learns nothing, and his monstrous behavior makes the movie relentlessly downbeat. No one, including the viewer, achieves catharsis.

"Weird but cool," as one character says -- yet the movie is also remarkably touching.

Writer-director Cary Fukunaga keeps the story lean while peppering it with realistic details.

The altitude, extreme cold, quicksand, and crushing poverty are potent dramatic elements, but of course there's no mention of China's complicity in the area's economic ills; instead writer-director Lu Chuan frames the story as a showdown between the head ranger and the leader of the poachers.

Though a bunch of the jokes are milked too thin, there are some absurdly goofy sight gags--like a hacky sack game enlisting a family pet--and a lineup of fun, silly cameos by guests from Chris Rock to Mariah Carey.

Director Alexandre Aja (Haute Tension, The Hills Have Eyes) keeps the suspense tight for most of the movie, only to fritter it away in an overblown ending.

Free of grandstanding and sentimentality, this powerful 2008 documentary follows missions to Liberia and the Congo undertaken by volunteers for Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Over too soon.

This features the usual slapstick, double entendres, and riffs on classic films, but what elevates it above a cheeky romp is the skilled CGI work, not only the wealth of tactile detail lavished on the parched townsfolk but also the painterly, sand-swept vistas they call home.

A major star in Mexico, Bichir is quietly affecting as the father, a humble striver who faces loss at every turn.

The tale of Rapunzel gets a cheeky make-over in this gorgeous Disney animation, which combines the studio's traditional hand-drawn look with the sculptural qualities of digital 3D.

Mixing horror and comedy while minimizing the gore, writer-director Paul Weitz (About a Boy) serves up a witty adventure fantasy with a tasty dollop of schadenfreude.

Disney goes meta in this witty, exuberant musical comedy whose parody and nostalgia serve a sweet and affecting romance.

Finely calibrated French neonoir.

Lurid and stylish, this 2008 Danish feature plays like a cross between "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "High Noon," with a dash of Gothic thriller.

This delightful computer animation is less twee than Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, with more action and a broader American sensibility.

Chiwetel Ejiofor (Dirty Pretty Things) is the sinister operative dispatched to retrieve the ship's psychic passenger, who as played by Summer Glau kickboxes better than Maggie Cheung and Zhang Ziyi combined.

The most gleeful movie about a single-minded kid since "A Christmas Story."

Director Max Farberbock (Aimee & Jaguar) mainly avoids graphic depictions of sexual assault, but that only increases the tension in this austere, claustrophobic drama.

The movie, to its credit, recognizes that the quest for spirituality sometimes leads to another pew.

Except for one manipulative deathbed scene, Ken Kwapis directs with sensitivity, steering the multiple story lines toward a satisfying conclusion.

May be derivative, but it's still engrossing, largely because of its appealing juvenile lead.

How can a romantic drama tailor-made for Julia Roberts from Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoir about self-actualization--shot against alluring locales in Italy, India, and Bali, and directed by the acclaimed Ryan Murphy (TV's Nip/Tuck and Glee)--go so ass-numbingly wrong?

Director David Barker creates tension by crosscutting between shots of the sun-drenched landscape and charged close-ups of the cloistered characters before delivering a bloody climax.

A murky screenplay leaves most of the humans ciphers, save for Hal Holbrook in an exquisitely calibrated performance as the avuncular desert retiree whose advice McCandless should have heeded.

The casting of Reeves in the lead role is inspired: who better than the star of "The Matrix" and its sequels, a trilogy that borrows heavily from Dick's sensibility and obsessions, to play a personality split through overindulgence in drugs and manipulation by outside forces he barely recognizes?

A welcome return to the Disney tradition of 2-D animation, this lively musical spices up Hans Christian Andersen's "The Frog Prince" by transplanting it to New Orleans in the early 20th century.

This meticulous restoration dazzles with crisp, formally rigorous black-and-white images and a complex sound mix, as its minimalist story of three families of manual laborers unfolds against a harsh, barren peninsula.

Despite the exotic locale and the photogenic moppets, that's not enough for a satisfying movie.

With her large, expressive eyes, abundant warmth, and radiant energy, Faour commands our sympathy, even through some weak dialogue and even weaker plot points.

There's more than a nod to Sergio Leone in Kapadia's rugged wide-screen landscapes, minimal dialogue, and extreme close-ups, but there's scant humor to relieve the harshness, and though he has presence Khan is no Eastwood--or even a Mifune.

The suspicion and contempt the band encounters along the way symbolize the Kurds' historical sufferings, but the movie has many comic moments courtesy of the eager bus driver, who keeps putting his foot in his mouth. The nonprofessional cast is highly persuasive under the sure hand of director Bahman Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses).

This first feature from Disney's new nature division has an encyclopedic reach and spectacular footage shot by more than two dozen crack cinematographers.

The kids are impressively plucky, but Weihenmayer comes off as an egomaniac, arguing with his team and endangering the youngsters' lives. Lucy Walker directed this cloying and manipulative 2006 documentary.

Writer-director J.J. Abrams overloads this sci-fi adventure with so many homages to his co-producer Steven Spielberg that it plays like the elder director's greatest hits, minus his characteristic scares and sense of wonder.

Director Will Gluck (Fired Up!) shows wicked comic timing and uncommon warmth in an overworked genre.

This scathing study of middle-class angst plays like a cross between Buñuel and Almodovar, but the satire never achieves liftoff despite the actors' best efforts.

This small gem about a South Central LA girl with a gift for spelling restores luster to the family genre.

The long campaign waged by the Yokotas and other families demanding Japan's diplomatic intervention forms the core of this haunting BBC digital documentary.

The tradition of Russian stage acting enriches this satisfying update of Reginald Rose's TV play "Twelve Angry Men."

This 2006 drama is refreshing not only for its gentle comic touches but for director Wang Quanan's refusal to sentimentalize China's vanishing nomadic culture: life is harsh and no one's a saint, including his outspoken heroine.

Less magic also means less fun and discovery, as Harry battles depression and a hostile press; this is the bleakest Potter installment to date, and under David Yates's choppy direction, Maggie Smith, Emma Thompson, Brendan Gleeson, and David Thewlis have little more than walk-ons.

Like many fairy tales, this handsome family film concerns a child coming to terms with his fears and the death of a parent.

This narrative feature debut by Emmanuel Carrere, based on his own novel, is deliberately open-ended, but however one interprets the outcome, the film reminds us how fragile intimacy is.

The tolerance and loopy poetry of the beloved book by Dr. Seuss have been nicely captured.

This high-powered sports melodrama benefits from its strong male leads, a sinewy narrative, and the maverick attitude of MMA. But for all the contemporary references, it's essentially a spin on the story of Cain and Abel, which may be the reason it feels timeless.

Slyly exploiting audience expectations and prejudices, Lelouch calls into question our very ways of seeing, even as he and his longtime writing partner, Pierre Uytterhoeven, craft an elegant meditation on loss and rebirth.

Amiable screwball comedy.

Based on two of his previous shorts, this lurid vision is good for a few laughs-some intended, some not.

This quirky 2004 documentary ends with the Shopsins' forced relocation after 32 years, an uprooting made all the more poignant by Eve's death during filming.

Posh meets prole in this period drama elegantly directed by Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons, Prick Up Your Ears).

There's little originality in the joy rides, first kisses, and clashes with bullies, yet this 2005 debut feature by writer-director Michael Kang captures the small triumphs of a boy becoming a man.

The ability of faith to reintegrate a damaged personality is one theme here, although the film doesn't strive for psychological realism; in its heartfelt embrace of religion as ethical path, it owes more to the bygone Yiddish drama than to psychodrama.

John Cleese, Peter Ustinov, Robert Morley, and Muppet creator Jim Henson make cameo appearances, but they're all upstaged by an uncredited Peter Falk, whose monologue on a park bench opposite Kermit the Frog is an exercise in virtuoso daffiness.

The problem is that once they do connect, their passion isn't believable.

Director Eran Riklis entertains without sermonizing, though the story clearly identifies women as the region's best chance for peace.

Like its methane-filled outhouse that explodes right on cue, this sequel to "Daddy Day Care" (2003) smells.

As in the original version, the fights are outweighed by existential angst and Buddhist introspection, but the sequence in which a blind swordsman (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) takes on an army of thieves is still gangbusters.

The physical stunts by Maggie Q as a lethal martial arts expert and Cyril Raffaelli as a Eurotrash sniper who rappels buildings are more thrilling than the over-the-top chase sequences, so contrived as to verge on self-parody.

It is only in the sequence about Berg's popular costar Philip Loeb that Aviva Kempner's documentary resonates. Loeb, an ardent union activist who was blacklisted during the McCarthy hearings, comes across as more identifiably human than the workaholic Berg, for all her fictional character's warmth and her many admirers' tributes.

This handsome period drama is a big step up for director John Curran (We Don't Live Here Anymore), who shot in China with predominantly Chinese crews. Norton and Schreiber seem too American to be English colonials, but Watts navigates a challenging transformation (in a role first played by Greta Garbo in 1934.

Paul Giamatti plays himself in a dark indie comedy that's distinguished by a sci-fi theme and surrealistic touches but ends without a payoff.

This fusty sequel lacks the narrative complexity of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and squanders both its first-rate computer graphics and its sturdy international cast.

Eva Mozes Kor, the lecturer and activist at the center of Forgiving Dr. Mengele, is most notable for her zeal in refusing to be a victim.

The behind-the-scenes access to professional kitchens, the intricacy of the desserts, the venerable traditions, and above all the camaraderie and respect the chefs extend each other reveal the craftsmen at their civilized best; think of this movie as the antidote to Gordon Ramsay.

Depardieu, a great actor who in recent years has delivered several overblown performances, is here measured and naturalistic, a sympathetic match for Ardant's icy obsessive, and Beart is suitably mysterious as a spy in the house of love.

Although their love is undeniably a blessing, I was disconcerted watching the elderly couple smile and chuckle today as they recall their daily letters and secret meetings in the midst of such wide-scale death.

Part celebrity dish, part business journalism, this illuminating 2008 documentary about the legendary Italian designer Valentino Garavani spans the tumultuous final two years of his decades-long reign as one of the most successful innovators in the fashion industry.

That rare sequel that surpasses the original.

In this heady documentary, TV footage of left-wing social critic Paul Goodman being interviewed by conservative host William F. Buckley Jr. in 1966 makes one realize how low public discourse in America has sunk since then: despite the men's political differences, their freewheeling discussion, touching on topics from education to pornography, is playful instead of rancorous.

Brian Cox does sturdy work as the minister who helps Obree combat depression, and first-time director Douglas Mackinnon gets a big assist from Obree himself, who doubled for Miller in some shots and filmed others with a camera strapped to his handlebars.

Cringe-inducing when it's not cliched, this brassy, vulgar 2008 comedy from Australia mines mental disabilities for laughs.

Engrossing and timely, this crackles with ideas about art, politics, religion, and the terrible costs of war.

How ironic that one form of beauty would be returned to battle-scarred Afghanistan by ugly Americans, but that's just what director Liz Mermin caught in her slim 2004 documentary for the BBC.

Director Yojiro Takita uses the changing seasons to echo the characters' moods; the score by Joe Hisaishi (Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle) has a suitably majestic sweep.

Lior is an irrepressible character as he works a room, doing exactly what a bar mitzvah boy should: challenging, instructing, and, in his own way, healing the world.

Techine glosses over the story’s most potent issue: France’s complicated relationship with its Jewish community.

Walks a fine line between the quotidian and the absurd, but falls short of a satisfying payoff.

The overlapping stories pulse with a tidal rhythm, the film's sensibility flowing between serious and wry, and there are memorable turns from Assi Dayan as the waitress's henpecked dad and Tzahi Grad as a cop with a nonchalant attitude toward babysitting.

Unfortunately their story ends just as it becomes most provocative.

This nuanced coming-of-age drama by Cao Hamburger exudes warmth without getting mired in nostalgia.

The final showdown, in which the critters tangle with security-rigged lawn flamingos and garden gnomes, would have made Rube Goldberg proud.

This elliptical, poetic movie is filled with yearning, humor, and warmth.

North Face also deals with actual events, offering plenty of thrills and spectacular vistas.

Films that address faith and love as eloquently as this moving 2008 documentary are rare.

Extraordinary.

As a cautionary tale about the perils of nation building, this is both creepy and provocative, but director Rodrigo Cortés blows it in the last few minutes with a rushed ending that feels like a cheat after all the escalating tension.

A macabre comedy of manners with the sting of dry ice, this 2007 ensemble piece captures the social climate of America in the late 40s, when a new anxiety and restlessness began to undermine the postwar optimism.

This uplifting documentary breaks no new ground stylistically, but the story it tells is urgent and compelling.

Rob Brown (Stop-Loss) gives a graceful, understated performance as Ernie Davis.

Directed by Djo Tunda Wa Munga, who studied filmmaking in Belgium, this is raw, sardonic, and formally complex.

Dramatization is often a questionable tactic in documentaries, but by picturing Leopold (Elie Larson) on trial like Adolf Eichmann, Peter Bate adroitly compares the colonial genocide to the Holocaust.

The incandescent Doona Bae (The Host, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance) gives a daring performance as the toy-turned-woman,

The electrifying music helps camouflage the screenplay's hyperbole.

In place of the sharply etched observational humor of the original, which featured a host of no-name actors in memorably quirky performances, we now get mostly raunch and some flaccid cameos from Smith cronies Ben Affleck and Jason Lee.

The extraordinary subject and the filmmaker's near total access make for a singular documentary.

The best portion is an animated story-within-the-story, supervised by Ben Hibon, that recalls Lotte Reiniger's filigreed shadow puppets as it sets the stage for armageddon.

The parallel between the dolphin and the disabled tourists who flock to see it borders on treacle, but Gamble's rapport with his finned costar is so touching that the movie works anyway.

A film that throbs with life while keenly noting its passing, this is an ode to the village that welcomed - and let thrive - the director's refugee parents.

Watching these endangered species evolve new approaches to hunting and shelter is fascinating, but the movie is seriously marred by a cloying screenplay and such kid-pleasing touches as shots of walruses belching and farting.

Director Paul Morrison forfeits any meaningful statement about art for a pedestrian coming-out story, based in part on Dali's unreliable, self-aggrandizing memoirs.

Thanks to a strong ensemble cast, it's poignant and funny.

The best, Shaking Tokyo, stars the versatile Teruyuki Kagawa.

This dyspeptic 2003 coming-of-age story from Italy often seems on the verge of nervous collapse, veering from giddy adolescent romps to adult shenanigans and shrill political discord.

As in many nature films, the ostensible subjects are less captivating than their scenic backdrops.

The singing dolphins opener is a giddy prelude to an imaginative romp that's helped along in the slow patches by mind-bending visuals.

Writer-director Karin Albou nicely balances intellect against spirituality but is defeated by the sex scenes, which are tinged with an Orientalist exoticism; the result is a bodice-ripper for the art-house crowd.

This sequel improves on the 2005 original about four friends.

The jokes don't all work and the topical references can be irritably hipper-than-thou, but at least director and cowriter Will Gluck (Easy A) aims high: this is patterned on the Tracy and Hepburn comedies, albeit with a lot more skin.

A lunatic cast energizes this comic fantasy.

A tired, generic crime story.

A crime wave gives the heroine a mystery to solve and provides most of the comedy, but the film is stronger in its dramatic stretches.

This carefully observed film has lots of heart.

Meticulously rendered CGI creatures--from Arthur Rackham-esque flower sprites to a troll that could have sprung from "Jurassic Park"--spike this dark adventure, shot marvelously by Caleb Deschanel.

Ella Ramangwane gives a fine performance as the young Sandra.

Like some laid-back distant cousin of Tim Burton, writer-director Goran Dukic manages to balance the ghoulishness with whimsy and melancholy, at least for a while. But the strain is obvious in the story's last third, as the filmmaker struggles toward a resolution that fits the logic of the hero's netherworld.

Stunning vistas of New Zealand's rolling countryside aren't enough to carry this lame 2006 horror spoof.

Perry benefits from the fire, heft, velocity, and lyricism of the language, but he also updates the material and makes it work onscreen, eliciting powerhouse performances from an ensemble of actresses.

The European actors (especially Sartor) give commendably realistic performances, but the film suffers from an episodic script, which contributes to the sense of anticlimax when the battle finally arrives.

George is suitably adorable, wreaking the kind of havoc that gives tykes a guilty thrill. Yet the movie concludes with the specious moral that reading is inferior to experiencing life firsthand.

Drawn to these fumbling kids, Hurt gradually opens up about his one great, tragic love (Maria Bello), but any catharsis is circumvented by his floundering costars and their risibly cornpone dialogue.

Humorous touches add warmth without being cloying, but Mullan carries the film with his intelligence and rugged intensity: images of his barrel-chested physique against the craggy shore resound on such an elemental level as to be almost spiritual.

The humor loses momentum as the cleric shuns her advances, and the action grows frenetic following the arrival of his twin brother, a macho general.

Austere and formally complex, the drama may nevertheless be Ozon's most accessible film due to the physical attractiveness and vitality of the intelligent couple.

In one slender documentary codirectors Shane King and Arne Johnson accomplish what Hollywood routinely bungles: incisively depicting the inner lives of complicated young females.

This forceful expose shows how area residents are fighting to keep their beloved Coal Mountain pristine, but filmmaker Bill Haney allots too much screen time to environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and barely any to the urban consumers in distant states whose thirst for cheap electric power is part of the problem.

Perhaps it's fitting that a movie about the early CIA be tangled and opaque, but this drama loosely based on the life of uberspook James Angleton verges on incoherence.

Endorsed by the Dalai Lama and narrated by his nephew Tenzin L. Choegyal, this delivers an impassioned plea to save Tibet's endangered culture but little new information.

The movie is notable for its perceptive take on issues facing immigrants, and atmospherically photographed by Robbie Ryan (Red Road), but its flat, static quality belies the novel's richness.

Thanks to her fearless, charismatic star, Ondi Timoner has directed one of the more hopeful movies of the year.

How Posey's neurotic, self-destructive heroine finds her way to healing is the core of this generous film, whose moral is that happiness can't begin unless you're open to its possibility.

Lessons about family loyalty, tolerance, ingenuity, and sacrifice add depth to the screenplay by Etan Cohen and directors Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath, but thankfully don't detract from the lunatic maneuvers of a delusional lemur king (Sacha Baron Cohen) and those wily spheniscidae.

The period details are so exact they're occasionally distracting, the use of gospel music at the end is questionable, and director Randall Wallace (We Were Soldiers) shows a surer hand in the track sequences than the domestic scenes. Still, there's no denying this movie has heart.

The end result is "Mission: Impossible" meets "Speed": high-tech gizmos, exotic European locales, and hair-raising stunts, many performed by Statham himself, who, when he's not shirtless, looks spiffy in Dior.

There's enough adrenaline pulsating throughout this bang-up Marvel Comics adaptation to erase 2003's Hulk from memory (Ang who?).

Authentic locations and careful attention to detail help evoke several New York boroughs in all their gritty vitality, but the screenplay about a hunky street vendor turned underground fighter is sloppy and false.

Not a movie, just one gigantic commercial for Hasbro.

Dazat coscripted, felicitously blending elements of documentary and travelogue much as he did in Himalaya. The resulting portrait sidesteps ethnography yet conveys the essence of a magnificent people.

This is a smart departure for Chan, who's been wasting his talent in mediocre comedies; the other actors don't fare as well. The plot takes forever to get rolling, and the movie is hamstrung by numerous tourism sequences.

Samson Chan's color-saturated visuals add punch to the absorbing narrative, but overall this documentary plays like slickly packaged TV fare, right down to the plugs for Nike.

In place of romance there are numerous talky espionage scenes that make the movie feel like one of those labyrinthine cold war pictures from the 60s.

Jayce Bartok--who plays Stanford's irresponsible musician brother--wrote the screenplay, whose central story of doomed young love gets lost amid the overplotting.

The movie not only indicts the country's embrace of capitalism by showing how low people will sink to make money, it also denigrates the agrarian class--once celebrated as heroic under Mao--by portraying its members as illiterate barbarians concerned only with continuing their family lines.

Engrossing biopic, throbbing with style and attitude.

Cross the cold war nostalgia of "Good Bye, Lenin!" with the larcenous high jinks of "The Producers" and you've got the gist of this zany Russian screwball comedy.

AnnaSophia Robb (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) is too subdued as the teenage heroine; one might expect more affect from a young woman fighting to overcome disability and return to competitive surfing.

Henry Hübchen is dynamic as the title character.

Improved CGI renders the animals' bodies in greater detail, but the laughs aren't as sharp.

N’dour’s concert numbers and family visits are captivating, but Vasarhelyi is so uncritical toward the singer that she inadvertently makes him look as though he’s running for sainthood.

Kurt Russell and Kris Kristofferson, both graceful and naturalistic actors, are the best things going in this formulaic drama.

A total train wreck.

Based on John Nickle's children's book, this computer-animated comedy starts slowly but builds into a rousing adventure capped with just the right measure of sweetness.

Zwick, intent on correcting the perception of Jews as passive victims, lets the action set pieces overwhelm the more intimate scenes, several of which are already diminished by stilted dialogue.

Pierre Morel's diving, spiraling camera keeps pace with Yuen Wo-ping's rapid-fire fight choreography, all smartly directed by Louis Leterrier.

Cinematographer Rodrigo Pietro grounds the ghostly encounters in grainy imagery, his unobtrusive handheld camera and deeply saturated colors best appreciated in a nightclub sequence that looks like something from Hieronymous Bosch.

Another miscalculation by sophomore director Michael Mayer.

Thanks to Gina Prince-Blythewood's treacly screenplay and plodding direction, the movie quickly congeals into a mess of sentimental cliches.

Lasse Hallstrom (Chocolat) directs a sparking screenplay by Jeffrey Hatcher (Stage Beauty) and Kimberly Simi; it starts as a frothy boudoir comedy but evolves into a masquerade by turns sweetly meditative and sharply satirical.

The original movie's lean production complemented its pell-mell fights and car chases; here, third-rate CG effects make the strained action sequences look even more improbable.

Perceptive, faith-based romantic comedy.

The melodrama form allows Tornatore to examine such current issues as human trafficking and black-market babies within a yarn that, for all its sentiment, is never less than gripping.

Director Q. Allan Brocka (Eating Out) keeps the tone downbeat for too long, but one can't fault his ambition in tackling the elusive connections between love, sex, and money.

The film would have been more satisfying if director Jan Kounen (Darshan: The Embrace) had shown more of the ferment of the times.

The movie gathers steam as these little terrors up the ante with each new gross-out recipe. Former child star Hallie Kate Eisenberg, blooming into a beautifully poised young woman, grounds the film as Benward's loyal supporter.

A more honest film would have been a greater tribute to this brave and tenacious fighter.

Light-bodied comedy.

Children won't get the references to atomic-age monster movies, but the film offers more than nostalgia: there are slyly funny performances by Seth Rogen as an omnivorous blue blob and Stephen Colbert as the U.S. president, who faces down, and then flees, an alien invasion.

Director Steve Bendelack and writer-producer Simon McBurney aim for the comedy of Chaplin, Keaton, and Tati, relying heavily on sight gags and their star's pratfalls and facial contortions, but they vititate the comic payoffs by allowing scenes to run too long.

There's a trove of movie lore in this absorbing documentary.

The screenplay is sharp and insightful, the period details ring true, and Martin is appealing as a dreamer conflicted about his homosexuality. But once the action shifts from the town to the festival, any momentum gets lost in a psychedelic haze.

Scenes of pageantry and mass prayer show that thousands respond to her charisma, but Kounen gives little insight why; aside from Amma's belief that creator and creation are one, her religious tenets remain a mystery.

It's Joan Cusack as her doting single mom who holds the film together--her sensitive turn as a flawed feminist hints at what she could do with a meatier role.

This thin premise can't sustain a feature, and the racial and gay jokes are jarring, but the child actors are cute, especially Andrew.

Eddie Murphy strikes the right balance between silliness and pathos in this screwball family comedy.

This lacks the heft of "The Insider" (1999) or the snap of "Erin Brockovich" (2000), but it's a thoughtful entry in the growing subgenre of whistle-blower dramas.

The international Asian stars gamely tackle their English-language roles, aided by superior costumes, makeup, and set design. But despite all the hothouse intrigue, the film lacks passion.

The exotic plant and animal life is enhanced by the 3D process--which makes the two-dimensional screenplay all the more disappointing. With its weighty dialogue the movie becomes depressing well before the final violent showdown.

Fresh Manhattan locations prove as photogenic as the leads, and the supporting actors--especially Tina Benko as a glacial, impeccably dressed amazon--don't miss a beat of Maggenti's snappy dialogue.

Magic vies with technology in this exuberant adventure comedy, which unfolds achronologically in a series of zany, effects-laden vignettes.

Steven Sawalich directed with invention and heart.

Many of the charms of Kate DiCamillo's best-selling children's book are lost in this British animation by Dreamworks alumni Sam Fell (Flushed Away) and Rob Stevenhagen.

Forget about a stake through the heart: sheriff Josh Hartnett discovers that decapitation is the best way to stop the bloodsuckers, who suggest feral, steroid-crazed gymnasts as they scale buildings and leap onto moving vehicles.

Frenetic and self-conscious to the point of tedium.

The beguiling creature design--from minotaur to dragon, sea serpent to one-footed dwarf--and 3D effects heighten the illusion of a storybook coming alive, while the rousing sea adventure drives home Lewis's Christian ethos better than either of the previous entries.

Director Mike Barker elicits a marvelously agile performance from Hunt, who's well matched by Tom Wilkinson as her new admirer.

Terra-cotta gnomes, the sort that decorate people's lawns, are the characters of this bizarre feature animation, which lampoons the British obsession with gardening and upholds a long tradition of cartoons pitched to tots and stoners.

This is well staged and photographed, with stirring aerial images and balletic pans and dolly shots, but the story is muddled by the arrival of a free-spirited girl and her musician pals, 60s-style longhairs battling a government conspiracy.

The lighting, production design, and character modeling are excellent, and director David Bowers (Flushed Away) references "Frankenstein," "Wall-E," "Transformers," and even Abraham and Isaac. But the TV series, primitive though it was, had a sweet innocence and joyfulness that made it more fun.

The end, a drawn-out death scene, is manipulative and, contrary to the movie's feel-good marketing, likely to upset youngsters.

Clever and unsettling.

Sitting on the shelf since 2008, when it was muscled out of the marketplace by "Cadillac Records," Sony's glossy, star-studded movie about Leonard. But it's clearly the better movie, earthier, wittier, and more intimate in its treatment of America's racial divide in the 1950s.

Likable as she is, Latifah can't overcome a tortured mistaken-identity plot, buffoonery on the ski slopes, and enough saccharine dialogue to induce shock.

Equally as offensive as the movie's smorgasbord of smut and violence is the lingering whiff of colonial-era orientalism, a Western predilection for regarding Eastern cultures as innately idle, lascivious, and irrational, and thus ripe for intervention.

With its chase scenes, shoot-outs, explosions, and special effects, this looks more like Jerry Bruckheimer product than a traditional Disney feature. But there are also some light-hearted moments, the best occurring at a UFO convention where the aliens seem more normal than the earthlings.

Features a credible and sympathetic performance from Robert Pattinson as an orphaned veterinary student who joins a traveling circus. Yet the film otherwise suffers from a lack of showmanship.

Moodysson’s meticulous attention to surfaces allows him to draw a stark contrast between the Americans’ affluence and the Asians’ poverty, but his final observation--that somehow the rich will muddle through--is hardly a bold statement.

A bright, funny family movie that gets everything right, from story to production design to cast (both human and canine).

Queen Latifah's warmth has boosted middling movies like "Beauty Shop" and "Last Holiday," but she and costar Common can't strike enough sparks to ignite this weak romantic comedy.

There's also some gallows humor about the record and newspaper industries, but overall this is a light, genial comedy about denial and self-defense.

The darker aspects of tribalism come under scrutiny here as nonconformists (unmarried men, women alone) are shown being marginalized.

Cowriters Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen (Gladiator) saddle Neeson with indigestible dialogue and preposterous situations.

This movie is too pedestrian for camp, and too scattershot for an action comedy.

Nothing much is original in this soggy tale of two German women whose friendship persists despite adversity and their own bad choices.

Director Cherie Nowlan steers the comedy to a feel-good ending.

Not even 3D can save this third entry in the Fox animation franchise about a motley crew of prehistoric creatures.

This quirky indie romance is beguiling at first but later succumbs to artifice.

My pleasure in seeing Chicago's underexposed Humboldt Park neighborhood on-screen was gradually overcome by this indie drama's cliched treatment of a dysfunctional family reunion.

Depp plays multiple versions of Sparrow, who now suffers from a split personality; his shtick is funny, but the players are all upstaged by the astonishing special effects, superior to those of earlier installments in creating a wondrous and menacing world.

Wain and Marino try to tie all this together with a framing narrative about an unfaithful husband (Paul Rudd), which turns into a clever parody of Woody Allen movies.

Reeves often displays moderate to little affect onscreen; here his reserve suits the story, as the experience of acting helps the reticent loser find himself. Vera Farmiga crackles as the feisty star of the play, while James Caan, as the hero's accomplice, proves a most charming rogue.

The travelogue sequences indicate how widely Middle Eastern cultures vary, but there are few revealing personal encounters in this well-intentioned but minor film.

Director Clark Johnson (S.W.A.T.) has a flair for action, which compensates for the flattening effect of Gabriel Beristain's cinematography.

The project is lush and seductive as a whole, though some segments are especially vibrant.

The script is overwritten and has too many themes--suicide, abuse, anti-Semitism--to support, but Nicholson does remarkable work in an unsympathetic role, helped by Lipsky's fine control of his characters.

Director Kevin Reynolds strikes a good balance between action and romance in this version of the medieval legend, but his leading man is upstaged by the supporting cast.

Strains so hard to be upbeat you can almost hear gears shifting.