Carina Chocano

Ultimately, Mermin's film is a profound reminder of the things that make us human. Things that don't matter much, in the scheme of things, but loom large when taken away. Things we all have in common.

Johnson has taken a well-worn, much-revised genre, adapted to what's become a clichéd setting and transcended both in the process.

Feels terminally generic and tone-deaf.

A complex, boldly experimental movie plotted like a thriller and paced like a farce, Kings and Queen is category-defying film that's as smart and emotionally resonant as it is entertaining.

The real reason to see it is its style, which sets an otherwise fairly unremarkable whodunit in a seedy, lite-Lynchian wonderland that's enjoyable to hang out in for a while.

It's a grisly but sweet ode to friendship, love and the George Romero zombie trilogy.

It's not entirely surprising that Burton's Sweeney Todd feels heavier on style than on substance -- so much that the style almost subverts the story. Still, it's a gorgeous artifact and pretty enjoyable in all.

Keanu Reeves has no peer when it comes to playing these sort of messianic roles -- he infuses them with a Zen blankness and serenity that somehow gets him through even the unlikeliest scenes with a quiet, unassuming dignity.

The actors gamely keep up their spirits, but the male characters are too one-dimensional and the female characters too bizarrely divorced from reality to be at all engaging.

As lovely as some of the footage looks and as committed as are the three lead performances, they serve only to make Rails & Ties play like an exceptionally well-acted and well-made Lifetime movie.

A familiar story set in an unfamiliar context, it's a paean to the universality of human experience, a testament to the endurance of individuality during great political and fanatical upheaval, and a reminder that even the most complex situations, identities and stories are heartbreakingly simple.

David Wain, director of "Wet Hot American Summer," brings his popular brand of surrealist yet mundane humor to the big screen with more or less dreadful results.

A stew of cheap irony, ponderous but meaningless allegory, violence and pretension, the movie is all borrowed style and calculated pandering. It does, however, get more ludicrous by the minute. So in that sense, it's good for an occasional laugh.

It says something when you come out of a film as weird and fantastical as Oldboy and feel that you've experienced something truly authentic. I just don't know what. I can't think of anything to compare it to.

A fascinating reflection of the era when it was made; but a starker indictment still of what film culture has become. In 1975, The Passenger was a night at the movies.

A fictional look at film school life, realized in that archetypal film school style. If it were being workshopped in a seminar, some criticisms might include: awkward mise-en-scène, stock characters - and did you actually repeat that reaction within 10 seconds of first using it?

What with everyone so focused on the raunchiness, it comes as a complete surprise to find that Superbad is in fact a love story.

A flat parable about the virtues of homespun conformity and the perils of defying family tradition.

As David Rakoff once wrote, "Youth isn't wasted on the young. It is perpetrated on the young." Exactly how is brilliantly captured by Andrew Bujalski in his debut feature, Funny Ha Ha.

Optimistic and humanistic to the core, Me and You and Everyone We Know is a paean to perseverance and finding ways to cope.

Lonely, bitter, insecure and clearly unstable, the women are meant to level the emotional playing field and add depth to what is, at heart, a story about the exploitation of poor nations by rich and powerful ones. But they wind up being too bitter and unstable to elicit much sympathy.

The rapport between Allen and Johansson (pretending to be father and daughter) is lively, and the variations on the same old jokes are plentiful.

Rather than come across as fantastic or dreamlike, the stories have a vivid, hyperreal quality to them.

Ejiofor brings a calm magnetism and a beatific serenity to his roles that have the effect of knocking you flat -- there's something about this guy that's messianic.

Ratner seems to have found a theme that he can relate to: A terrifying trio of angry, undomesticated women who all but run away with the movie.

The result is an insightful look at a remarkable behind-the-scenes life and slice of American and Hollywood history. Told from an outsider's perspective, it sheds light on the workings of a glamorous but often treacherous business.

A challenging film, one that I suspect can only benefit from multiple viewings. The success of its approaches varies, but its intent is unfailingly interesting.

Shot by Ashley Rowe to look like a cross between a Vermeer retrospective and a music video, Copying Beethoven is silly and misguided, if reasonably entertaining for its charming lack of self-awareness, its weakness for lines like "Loneliness is my religion!" and its transcendently beautiful music.