Bill Stamets

You’re Next benefits from skilled script-keepers.

A family implodes with a biting commentary on patriarchy.

At Berkeley earns credit for documenting a distinctly articulate community.

Gripping and at times agonizing.

Director Tarsem (The Cell) reworks the 1981 Bulgarian film "Yo Ho Ho" for this stylish fantasy.

But Girl 6 isn't what we'd expect from Spike Lee: after exhorting his fans to wake up in his early efforts, he now tempts them to hang up.

As a director, Singleton shares with Furious a didactic streak. Singleton is no demagogue, but his fast-action style tends to erase the nuances of interracial dynamics.

Greene delivers a wrenching performance, and like "Smoke Signals," the film ends with a cathartic, triumphant flourish.

For the most part this is a scenic and well-scored Holocaust survival tale.

Filmmaker Todd Douglas Miller unfortunately adopts the format of prime-time docu-tainment.

Puenzo’s initial premise is more promising, though, than her sensational tone.

A naturalist comic of inarticulate manners, writer-director Andrew Bujalski attempts the ensemble styles of Robert Altman and Christopher Guest to peer into a micro-culture in Computer Chess.

Non-narrative films can be opaque in deep ways. Visitors slips into pseudo-profundity. That said, I’d see it again.

Chilean writer-director Sebastian Silva re-creates a youthful road trip with a head trip at the end in Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus, more character sketch than psychedelic sojourn.

May errs in styling this human interest saga.

Writer-director Hiroyuki Okiura, however, does not match the high expectations for story and design set by other Japanese animators.

Stylistically, this saga of survival never aims for urban neo-realism. Yet, as sentimental humanism, it shows laudable taste in dodging the usual indulgent touches and turns when lost kids find their way.

Kleine could have used Gregory’s lifelong trajectory to tell a larger story of the international avant-garde theater scene. Instead there is overmuch fuss about his coterie of dear companions.

A paean to creative impulses, this work channels the vision of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi.

Tornatore’s ideas about art, trust and intimacy are curious, even if they do not quite click.

Level Five (1996) is a poetic if occasionally opaque film essay on the 1945 Battle of Okinawa.

Observant with mannered edits, Jem Cohen’s modest story delivers a character sketch and a traveler’s essay.

Unfortunately, Volcano is also faithful to Hollywood's legendary lack of originality.

The heaving computer-generated sea swells doesn't match the conventionally animated characters. The action scenes are too antic, but directors Tim Johnson and Patrick Gilmore serve up a sweet romantic subplot.

Director Scott Derrickson and his co-writer, Paul Harris Boardman, deliver a routine procedural with unremarkable frights.

Volker Schlondorff’s talky drama...is less than persuasive.

Director Kasper Barfoed defaults to intense replays of surveillance audio recordings, frantic strokes on computer keyboards, and standard-issue chases.

The film indulges in sentimental and sensational tropes. The manipulative touches do more than dis­­­­­­tract, they irk. This story could have been retold without resorting to all the unfortunate formulas used in prime-time and cable fare.