Andrea Gronvall

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Steven Sawalich directed with invention and heart.

The production values are above par, but as in Carpenter's original, seeing ghosts is less scary than imagining them.

Not a movie, just one gigantic commercial for Hasbro.

With artifice as layered as the tiers of a marzipan cake, this resembles nothing so much as a stale Rock Hudson-Doris Day comedy.

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.

The humor's vulgar and the plot feeble, but this is a cut above the gross-out comedies aimed at male teens, and its heroine and her gal pals keep the high jinks amiable.

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.

Live-action stars take a backseat to CGI chipmunks in this uneven family comedy.

Tyler Perry grounds this sequel to "Why Did I Get Married?" (2007) in his trademark blend of comedy, soap opera, and down-home southern sentiment, though he lets up a little on the moral proselytizing, which aids the digestion considerably.

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

Pretentious and dull, this Uruguayan exercise in magical realism takes place during the annual carnival in Montevideo.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 video sequel to the gay comedy "Eating Out" (2004) is funnier, lighter, and faster paced.

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.