Chuck Wilson

In their feature debut, co-writers/directors Juuso Laatio and Jukka Vidgren and co-writers Aleksi Puranen and Jari Olavi Rantala reach for absurdist comedy — the reindeer-blood accident, the projectile-vomit bit, the grave-robbing incident — with a touch so light that the general nuttiness comes to seem a central (and essential) component of Finnish rural life.

A Prayer Before Dawn feels scarily authentic, and may be too much for some. But there are moments of grace amid the setting’s despair.

A Quiet Place is full of fabulous, virtuoso action set pieces, but mere hours after seeing it, what I’m already flashing on the most are the ways in which each member of this family, children and adults alike, tries to carry the weight of their central burden, which isn’t fear and dread, but guilt and grief, two monsters no third act plot twist can ever quite vanquish.

The Strangers: Prey at Night, co-written by Bertino and Ben Ketai and directed by Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down) has a slow and rather grim first half, but then, in the home stretch, takes a welcome turn into the seriously silly.

Recognition (and compensation) proved elusive in Lamarr’s lifetime, but in this marvelous documentary, a brilliant woman — “I’m a very simple, complicated person” — finally gets her due.

Rose Marie was — and is — a fabulous talent, but this off-kilter documentary doesn’t completely make the case.

The film is jammed with incident and detail but there’s little flow to the storytelling.

Both a thriller and meditation on the loss of innocence, Super Dark Times is rich with the minutiae of a bygone era...but Phillips and screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski press hard against the instinct for nostalgia.

Unlocked feels like a 1970s-style conspiracy thriller, which makes it a perfect fit for the 76-year-old Apted, whose wonderfully varied career includes the James Bond flick, The World Is Not Enough.

Cox’s delivery of Churchill’s “We will fight on the beaches” D-Day speech surely ranks among the best, but it’s a problem when a narrative feature’s most powerful scenes are drawn from historical text.

The film gains power in the final third...one wishes Thompson had chosen to view the great artist's lives through the eyes of the women who loved (and tolerated) them

The need to tell a story and the desire not to collide in Live Cargo, the narratively uneven but visually exquisite debut feature from writer-director Logan Sandler.

[A] slightly uneven yet deeply affecting documentary.

Menzies should be just the spark to bring Underworld back to life, but it doesn’t happen. Screenwriter Cory Goodman (The Last Witch Hunter) isolates Marius from Selene and the other major players so that Menzies is left adrift, like a great fighter without a worthy sparring partner.

A last-minute flurry of action and a final plot twist aren't enough to redeem this busy but tedious thriller.

A bit disjointed but also vibrant and loving.

Writer-director Musa Syeed has conjured a drama rich with incident...but most of the turns of plot feel organic, ours to discover, as long as we're paying attention.

Scimé and Adkins have real chemistry, but the script is forever cutting back to quirky, talkative Katie, and any chance of exploring the complexities of a relationship between two men, one of whom is intractable, is lost.

[A] hokey but effective adaptation.

[A] superb coming-of-age drama.

In his lovely new film, Argentine director Daniel Burman mixes reality with fiction in inventive ways.

You have a movie with everything it needs save one crucial element: emotion.

The road-trip drama Who's Driving Doug is earnest but not overly sweet — a blessing for a film with built-in sentimentality traps.

The new thriller Misconduct is getting kicked to the curb by its distributor, which is too bad, because director Shintaro Shimosawa's debut feature boasts an elegant visual style and a mystery plot with so many absurd twists that the film becomes enjoyable high melodrama.

The co-directing brothers Goetz prove adept at building escape-the-bad-guy action sequences, but they continually run up against the story's Marquis-de-Sade underpinnings.

Krampus, sad to say, is a disappointment. It's alternately funny and intense (don't take the wee ones), but never enough of either to form a cohesive whole.

Led by the honorably dour Firth and the charisma-free Harington, MI-5 is convoluted and dull, though Harry's revenge against that dastardly mole is pleasingly diabolical. But it's too little too late.

An overlong but deeply felt film.

The Russian Woodpecker is very much like Fedor himself — eccentric as hell, smart as a whip, and, at the end of the day, a heartbreaker.

Despite its sci-fi hook, Movement and Location turns out to be a surprisingly resonant film about how impossible it is for most people — no matter their cosmic time zone — to carve out a life that's emotionally honest.

Thanks to Ashton's brilliant, career-defining performance, we're made to see that the only thing worse than doing evil deeds is being nice enough to feel guilty about them.

Hellions is unsettling, but in all the wrong ways.

The virus is spreading, but the filmmakers don't appear fully committed to the idea of a zombie apocalypse, so no sense of dread (or suspense) ever takes hold.

With sleek and informative onscreen graphics and thrilling slow-motion demonstrations of game technique, Top Spin packs a lot of information into its 80-minute running time, arguing that a great table tennis player is one part boxer, one part chess master.

It's all pure hokum, perfect for a Shirley MacLaine remake, but it's lovely to see Lafont carrying a film so effortlessly.

Mitchell's unwillingness to define the parameters of the specter haunting Jay leads to a finale that's muddled and confusing, and definitely not scary.

Avenged is an action-horror mash-up that's very silly, quite gruesome, and a whole lot of fun.

Ganem and her talented co-stars work hard, but Riedel's pacing is always a beat or two behind their mad energy, making for a film that's enormously appealing, but not quite addicting.

For most of its running time, Diving Normal doesn't work, and then it does, which makes it both maddening and memorable.

Sam Esmail’s first film has a visual assurance that suggests the arrival of a gifted director, but the characters he’s created are so off-putting that viewers aren’t likely to appreciate the beauty surrounding them.

Flamenco Flamenco is the most beautifully photographed film in recent memory. Come for the dance, stay for the light.

The new thriller from Spanish writer-director Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes) is visually dazzling, but the story starts off silly and ends up a confusing, maddening mess.

Imagine I'm Beautiful is a thematically ambitious character study trapped inside the limiting strictures of a crazy-roommate thriller.

[A] slow-moving yet soulful documentary.

Housebound is a tad long, and its murder mystery a bit of a muddle, but that doesn’t matter. The final third is virtuoso.

[An] uneven but intriguing found-footage horror flick.

The film's finale is wild and daring and so perfectly executed that it marks Wright as one of the film year's most audacious new voices.

The screenplay is built of small moments and minute details that gradually gain significance, as should be the case in a good character study.

This movie is only 75 minutes long, so it's too bad that Hubner rushes the finale -- too much triumph, too little emotion -- but when the grooves are this rich, all is forgiven.

The Belgian Roskam, making only his second feature film, and his first in English, displays remarkable assurance, with both the actors and the film’s very American setting. He creates an escalating sense of dread, tinged with Lehane’s brand of mordant humor.

With a deft hand, Pray juxtaposes a history of Heizer's revolutionary career as a "negative space" sculptor with an insider's view of the insanely complex planning it took to move the two-story monolith.

As Above, So Below is sometimes creepy but mostly silly, which is too bad because the film's cramped subterranean setting is inherently unnerving.

Screenwriters Andre Fabrizio and Jeremy Passmore fail to conjure a single witty line. Nor is there any finesse to be found in director Brian A. Miller’s inept staging of car chases and shoot-outs.

Writer-director Matthew Weiner, creator of the magnificent Mad Men, has made a feature film — theoretically a comedy — that's just shy of terrible.

Watching the hopelessly vapid get taken out, one by one, has never been more depressing.

Very Good Girls is a film one wants to like but can't. It just doesn't work.

When Frankie, an understudy in a small dance company, is given his chance to perform, he, and Test itself, come to life.

Hellion offers Paul his most adult screen role so far, and he's very fine, but the movie belongs to Wiggins, a newcomer whose innate gifts are a perfect echo of Paul's.

Chris Teerink's superb film documents the work of artist Sol LeWitt (1928-2007), whose legacy lies not only in past accomplishments, but in the work he left for others to complete.

[Webber's] performance is crazy good, and so emotionally charged that viewers may be forgiving of a finale overloaded with silly twists.

Watermark is a documentary filled with images both beautiful and wrenching, yet the film as a whole is a disappointment.

It Felt Like Love is brilliantly, brutally tactile.

A compelling but ultimately unsatisfying film.

Ernest & Celestine -- a contender for this year's best animated film Oscar -- is pure delight.

Dark House is one nutty horror movie, but what's crazier still is how well it works — until it doesn't.

Date and Switch isn't a gay movie. It's a zippy, happy, buddy flick.

If the onscreen serial killer isn't having fun, how can we?

Devlin's script tips its hand so early on that Devil's Due lumbers toward a woefully flat, predictable ending, and the unwelcome promise of something truly demonic — sequels.

The stark prison Sabrina and a half dozen final contestants inhabit make the torture chambers of Hostel look inviting, but to their credit (perhaps), screenwriter Robert Beaucage and director Josh Waller never sugarcoat their grim tale.

Tucci and the English-born Eve make a riveting team, and although the film's final twist undercuts all that has come before, Some Velvet Morning is provocation of the most artful kind.

[A] clever but emotionally unengaging movie.

In this entertaining documentary, the coolest kids in town sing the praises of cartoonist Gahan Wilson, whose work is a brilliant fusion of the personal and the political.

If the characterizations are perfunctory, the performances give them unexpected weight.

Despite a few manic comic episodes, writer-directors Alexandre Charlot and Franck Magnier never again capture the sense of joyous connection that can exist between child and pet.

To use a phrase from the film, The Armstrong Lie is a "myth-buster." It's wholly necessary, brilliantly executed, and a complete bummer.

A vibrant color scheme and the deliciously evil cackle of Christopher Plummer elevate this kid-friendly animated adventure from Canada.

The cell phone reception in Dracula's castle is pretty bad, but it can't be as frustrating as trying to fathom the plot of this woefully muddled horror film.

Immigrant is reportedly based on writer-director Barry Shurchin's own family history, but the story he's chosen to tell is so melodramatic and relentlessly grim that any passion he feels for the material isn't reflected onscreen.

Bridging the Gap is gorgeous and weird.

Aided by capable if unnecessary 3D effects, Petty displays a flair for staging violent action, but he's trapped inside a broad comic set-up that doesn't mesh with the story's innate meanness.

The Summit is at its most powerful when the filmmakers simply tell the tale, which gradually develops the unsettling suspense of a horror movie, with K2 cast as the implacable killer.

Although Thornton and co-writer Tom Epperson are clearly trying to get to some essential truth about the ways in which machismo hinders love, their insights are scattered and pedestrian.

Writer-director Christian Vincent and co-writer Étienne Comar, aided by Frot's quiet intensity, imbue Hortense's quest to pull off culinary miracles with an urgency that's almost absurdly compelling, and all the more entertaining for it.

Dead Before Dawn's best jokes are grounded in the warm, believable camaraderie between Casper and his friends, but Mullen is less confident with crowds. The zemon-horde attack scenes are a visual jumble.

The smash-and-crash chase scenes are numbingly dull.

From cinematographer Corey Rich's beautifully framed footage, Wampler's wife, Elizabeth, making her directorial debut, has assembled a stirring film that's part documentary, and part promotional tool.

This Is Martin Bonner isn't exciting, but it's also never dull.

Lowery isn't a Malick and he's certainly no Kazan, but he's his own man, and a filmmaker to watch.

Athale has a flair for guy-pal banter; here, the talk is funny and profane, silly and profound, often in the same breath.

It's all very predictable, very Hollywood. Storytelling cliché, it would seem, knows no borders.

[A] pitch-perfect, deeply affecting film.

There are many things absent from this found-footage horror movie, including suspense, logic, and originality.

The game of wills that ensues between the two women isn't terribly interesting, much less suspenseful, and in fact, it's not clear that director Egidio Coccimiglio and screenwriter Floyd Byars ever settled on whether they were making a thriller or a satire about food and celebrity.

Vibrant cameo performances by two of our most engaging young actors—Jesse Eisenberg and Jason Ritter—along with one film legend—Tippi Hedren—transform this modest comedy into something special.

Always amusing, if never screamingly funny.

A thriller whose storytelling ingredients are so familiar that one could watch it with the sound off and still know what's going on.

Aftershock is incompetently made and morally muddled, but since talent, morality, and Mr. Roth have never been on speaking terms, we're not exactly surprised.

Director Ryûhei Kitamura (The Midnight Meat Train) is too talented for material this retro-junky, but he and screenwriter David Cohen keep the action coming hard and fast.

There are some decent shootouts, but the movie's strongest assets are the soulful performances Danish director Kasper Barfoed, making his American debut, draws from Cusack and Akerman.

The movie is eerily photographed (by Brandon Trost), but never suspenseful or scary, and eventually, events descend into goat-sacrificing silliness.

Papa Cronenberg must be proud, but be advised: If there's a blood test in your future, book it before seeing this movie.

The plotting as a whole feels fresh, as does the emphasis on women strong enough to defend themselves.

The Story of Luke is a charming little film in need of a bit more grit.

Lotus Eaters, which McGuinness co-wrote with Brendan Grant, is maddeningly shallow—maybe that's the point—but McGuinness does have talent.

First-time director Wayne Blair and screenwriters Keith Thompson and Tony Briggs, adapting Briggs’ stage play, don’t shy away from the era’s social complexities, but they keep their eye on the ball, which in this case is the sweet pull of soul tune harmony.

Built-to-shock anthology film.

In Griggs's eyes, they're all fools. Only old Ronnie, dearly departed though he may be, is worthy of reverence.

Despite crisp photography and the director's gift for building a scene, the film doesn't click until the third act, when Mos Def's performance as Dre's protégé appears to energize everyone around him.

In the end it doesn't lead to much beyond weepy melodrama. Still, McGuigan draws committed performances from a talented cast.

This very funny, very British movie -- directed by newcomer Garth Jennings -- has sci-fi effects that are impressive yet appropriately cheesy.

Visibly uninspired, Pacino gives a perfunctory performance -- though surely he must have looked over at Farrell and been reminded of himself 30 years ago, all jacked-up and beautiful, like a stallion at the gate.

When movie clichés are presented with rigor and feeling, they can pack a fresh punch.

A surprise hit in Thailand, the film is nonetheless a reductive mess.

Filled with the kind of frank, nonsensational sensuality that eludes American filmmakers, this movie proves again that the most interesting cinema about teenage life -- gay and otherwise -- is being made far from our provincial shores.

There's not a believable moment in all of it, but for a while the film chugs along on Ryan's innate charisma. Even so, no amount of movie-star twinkle could lighten screenwriter Cheryl Edwards' bizarre character arc, which finds Jackie turning, overnight, into a callous, possibly racist, ninny.

The killer in this nasty yet taut slice-and-dice 'em horror flick is a collector of eyeballs, which he removes from his screaming victims with an efficient single swooping motion of his talon-like index finger. If that image makes you grin not cringe, then this movie's for you.

Engrossing.

Intriguing yet muddled thriller.

Eventually it all starts to feel like an extended European perfume ad: pretty but eye-rollingly pretentious.

She is known as one of the great muses, yet director Bruce Beresford, Wynter and screenwriter Marilyn Levy are never clear if this is by design or chance.

Shawn is clearly meant to have deep feelings, yet the filmmakers have saddled her -- and Blair -- with a shallow angst that bums out the whole movie.

Returning director Rob Minkoff (The Lion King) and screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost) have done a fine job of updating White's dry wit to a new age, led in no small measure by Lane, who could probably make the IRS code book sound funny.

Grounded in the easy rhythms of daily life, this charming little film shows unexpected grit in sequences set in the white household where Lindiwe works, a place so oppressive that it suddenly seems way past time for South African movie characters - and their home audience - to experience a dose or two of Hollywood-style wish fulfillment.

Audiences are destined to debate the film's final scenes, where Hanley piles on plot twists, leading to a coda that turns a creepily ambiguous story about God and the terrifying power of paternal love into something closer to an X-File.

Surprisingly smart film.

Zippy, stylish fun.

Screenwriter Vincent Molina and director Fabrice Cazaneuve are wonderfully calm about the tumult of teen life.

Refreshingly quirky comedy.

Bass isn't a gifted actor, but he retains his dignity, mostly by keeping his head down and avoiding the eyes of the idiots around him.

The dialogue and voice-over narration (by Gordon) are homily-heavy, and the staging sometimes awkward. The prison extras in particular are often left to stare blankly at the gut-wrenching action before them, with many, including Sutherland, looking awfully fit for men who've been starving for years.

Director Roger Christian (Battlefield Earth -- yes, that Battlefield Earth) and screenwriters Scott Duncan and Ned Kerwin have been influenced more by James Bond than El Mariachi–style spaghetti Westerns.

Stuck with flat material and a star more adept at responding to humor than generating it, director Stephen Herek, in a vain attempt to generate laughs, enlists Cedric the Entertainer, as a convict-turned-preacher.

Gerber has a sharp cast at hand -- All work furiously, yet the director, with his fake backdrops and stately pacing, never settles on a consistent tone. Surely the novel had more bite.

Mercifully free of excess mania, sexual innuendo and fart jokes, this sweet-natured comedy, ably directed by John Whitesell (Malibu's Most Wanted), has some nice bits of business.

For these gifted directors and their fine ensemble, the notion that every life forms into a mosaic of intimate, largely unobserved details is the story most worth telling.

Silly and pretentious would-be romance.

One almost pities the unnervingly twitchy Murphy, whose shiny makeup is dreadful, and who doesn't stand a chance alongside the focused intensity of Fanning, who commands the screen with the precision of a 30-year veteran.

Sleek, not-quite-trashy-enough melodrama.

Reynolds, working in close harmony with cinematographer Andrew Dunn (Gosford Park), brings an infectious brio and an occasional sweeping grace to the classic trappings of Dumas.

This peculiar little comedy, shot on digital video, gets points for editorial pizzazz, but earns a big zero for content.

Peterson and her longtime writing partner, John Paragon, as well as director Sam Irvin, clearly worship the Poe-inspired Roger Corman/Vincent Price films of the 1960s, so of course there’s a pit and a pendulum in that dungeon, but who’d have expected it to be so beautifully designed?

As producer, writer and star of his first movie, Ray Jahangard gets points for confidence and nerve, but at the end of the day, it must be said that not everyone is meant to work in the movies.

Has no stylistic flair and little forward momentum, yet nearly every scene contains an amusing bit of business, much of it off to the side of the main action.

Aiming to elicit a last-minute shiver from the audience, Gaghan is likely to get instead a mood-destroying giggle.

Despite a midfilm lull of his own, Eisner stages a series of nifty action sequences, nearly all of which feature a moment of surprise, as well as gruesome wit.

There’s no point slamming this fart-and-burp teen flick, since the chortles of the 11-year-old boys -- and the men with an 11-year-old's disposition -- at a recent mall screening can't be denied.

Charming, animated retelling of stories from A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books.

The only thing more boring than a vampire with moral issues about biting people in the neck is a werewolf who’d rather become fully human than howl at the moon once a month.

A debut film that's more well-intentioned than funny.

Proteus carries an air of forced-wit experimentation that never quite gets its anachronisms in order -- this 18th-century tale features a Jeep, a radio, and female court reporters with typewriters and bouffant hairdos.

What's fun is that the road to that climactic Capitol showdown is paved with one ridiculous and relentlessly edited set piece after another.

Drab and muddled romance.

The final meet felt eternal to me, but little girls may love it all, and even if they don't, they're almost sure to practice their handstands when they get home.

Unexpectedly gripping horror movie.

Bettauer means for Arthur and Joe's adventures to be a fable about empathy and hope, but her tone shifts awkwardly between silly and ponderous.

At only 84 minutes, Phone Booth's brevity turns out to be its only saving grace.

The director pulls back from the hotel, placing it against the skyline of our beautiful city, which appears to be waiting, patiently, for a more original exploration of its inhabitants.

Anemic.

The film takes on unexpected weight when Christian cops to his intense personal loneliness. That's not the stuff of high comedy, but it's brave and, in these days of rah-rah, everyone's-in-love gay media, rather refreshing.

Though engaging from beginning to end, be warned that this is also harrowing, utterly depressing stuff.

Throughout, Sullivan and Braun shine, making for a match so sexy and appealing that it's a shame Swain avoids their love life, an approach that doesn't exactly advance gay liberation -- or cinema.

Queen Latifah gets co-producer and scenarist credits for this anemic comedy, and also a supporting role that amounts to the worst performance of her career.

Clichéd though it may be, this movie was clearly made with love.

This time, Zombie doesn’t appear to have many deep thoughts, so Michael doesn’t just stab his victims, he slices and chomps them into gooey pulp — an overkill motif that actually feels false to the character and quickly becomes a depressing bore.

Inane uplift tale for teens.

Moving and vibrant Italian-language film.

Amiable but not especially funny film.

At its best, this uneven film by writer-director Dave Boyle suggests that going a bit nuts is a good thing for the rigid paterfamilias.

A film where everyone -- white, black, gay or otherwise -- is equally, lovably dumb.

Coury has made a technically polished first film, but her sense of comic timing and sexual politics is strictly borscht belt.

West delivers the emotional goods when tragedy strikes in the final reel. If 17-year-old pop star Moore isn't a skilled actress, she's at least unassuming.

The 1978 frat-house classic "Animal House," starring the late, great John Belushi, is the model for testosterone-mad comedies such as this, and while it hasn't that film's scope or finesse, Old School does have Ferrell, a man clearly in touch with his inner Belushi.

It's fine stuff, beautifully played, but there's no denying that viewers will have to be patient with this 80-minute chamber piece, the first third of which feels cold and false, only to suddenly shift into unexpectedly deep emotional territory.

Sometimes the predictability of a romantic comedy is reassuring, and sometimes it makes you want to scream, as with this witless wonder.

More problematic is "Inside Out," starring Jason Gould, who also wrote and directed, based on his own experiences as the son of Barbra Streisand and Elliott Gould.

Posey and Rudd are the real deal, so it's almost sad when Priscilla and Jack are left hanging in the final act, their issues unresolved. It's as if the filmmakers lost their nerve when it came time to write the kind of intimate, revealing conversation that can make a sex toy unnecessary.

A surprisingly smart satire around the bubble-gum band that first found life in the pages of the Archie comic book series.

Stuck for years playing young women who are the idealized object of male desire (Portman and Johansson)-- flaw-free and, in Johansson's case, barely conscious -- they come alive in The Other Boleyn Girl, as if being bound up in costumer Sandy Powell's exquisite gowns has freed them from the tighter constraints of their own beauty.

Isn't art, but as date-night fright flicks go, it's effective.

The finale goes on and on, but the movie is nicely photographed (by John Bailey) and duly empowering, and should please the vast teen-girl audience for which it's intended.

While some may bail early, those who stay to the end are likely to dwell on Zahedi's unwavering (some would say unrelenting) belief in his own artistry, as well as the film's many funny, quotable lines.

If none of it is particularly original or insightful, it's nonetheless executed with skill and economy.

A horror movie that's not horrific enough, Soul Survivors plays like a "Twilight Zone" by way of "Touched by an Angel."

A smooth little comedy deserving of more studio support than it got.

A twisted black comedy -- The accomplished ensemble meshes nicely, but the actors all look pale and exhausted, an effect that may be a byproduct of the film’s photography, which is terrible.

Only Chris Klein, as the lovesick live-in boyfriend of Becky's sister, is given anything like an active emotional arc to play, and he runs with it so beautifully that he steals the movie.

There is nothing sadder, either in real life or on the movie screen, than an unlikable idiot, and what we have with this dreadful comedy -- the longest 90 minutes of the film year -- is the sight of not one but two charm-free fools.

More amiable than laugh-out-loud funny, the film pokes along, buoyed by the motel's bright Hawaiian color scheme, and a moonlit desert finale that's awfully pretty.

Rosman and Wendkos run dry of ideas in the film's inert, overextended finale, when the "Believe in yourself" speeches grow so thick that even the Duff-devoted may start rolling their eyes.

Despite the success of these action sequences, Annaud and his ultraserious cast are so determined (admirably) to keep war from seeming romantic that we are never quite pulled into the movie.

In this lively romantic comedy from Canada, actors Wendy Crewson and Joe Cobden give off sparks -- in bed and out.

You can be sure that his victims die shirtless, and are as dumb as the hetero dimwits who fell prey to Jason or Freddy, but what you might not expect is that this queer-slanted slasher flick is actually pretty good.

Even the easily weepy may grow impatient with the snail’s pace of this melancholy romance.

Formulaic but infectiously happy comedy.

By the end of this likely cult classic (only 80 minutes long), when Evie has an amphetamine-induced meltdown during her cable-access comeback show, these divas are as recognizably human as you and me, only sluttier, and with cattier one-liners.

Amusing, beautifully drawn one-hour film.

Moves slowly and deflates completely when the over-hyped family secret turns out to be a dramatic dud. Still, it's an awfully pretty movie. Let's all summer in Maine.

Mostly, Lafferty is all about expletives and sexual innuendo of the frankest kind, some of it so raunchy (and unfunny) as to make one wonder if the parents of the film's many child actors bothered to read the script.

Judging by the stilted nature of both the dialogue and acting, that's what this film is -- a thesis project better suited to a grad-night exhibition.

Millions is an intelligent children’s film that may prove to be a guilty pleasure for adults.

As director, Scott Marshall displays an unsurprising flair for selling a joke, but also a fine sense of dramatic pacing and, even better, a gift for brevity, neither of which, it could be argued, are innate skills of his famous filmmaking family.

With a dream cast that also includes Patricia Clarkson and, in a cameo, a tattooed George Clooney, fullness of narrative may not have struck the filmmakers as key, and their film feels slight, as if it were an extended short, albeit one made by the smartest kids in class.

Antibodies is fairly riveting, thanks to Alvart's command of craft and tone. He's a director to watch.

Rich in lovingly assembled silent-film clips, as well as in intimate views of the magnificent Mole, this impassioned yet somewhat too precious fable from writer-director Davide Ferrario feels calculated to make a cineaste swoon, and yet . . . it never quite does.

Maher's filmmaking is competent -- the sets are inventive, and all the camera angles match up -- but someone should have warned her that neither she nor her young cast is experienced enough to pull off the line “The only people buying it are the faggots.”

These women are smart, funny and wonderfully real, traits that one might safely attribute to Westfeldt and Juergensen, who also wrote the screenplay.

Although, in the end, this is basically just a moss-strewn remake of his 1997 hit, "I Know What You Did Last Summer," director Jim Gillespie appears invigorated, sending his capable young cast into a series of nicely staged suspense sequences.

Generating gore-free unease through sound effects and scary faces is the specialty of director Takashi Shimizu, who helmed the original series (known in Japan as Ju-On). He creates some unsettling moments here, particularly a well-staged scene involving a body under the sheets and a man in a shower, but the evil ghost itself is a predictable, one-trick pony.

Making his directorial debut, Dunstan displays a knack for building suspense. And yet, weirdly, amidst all the requisite blood spray, one senses a reluctance on the filmmaker’s part to linger lovingly over the pierced skins and protruding entrails of the killer’s various victims.

It's the cinematic equivalent of glancing up at the sky and taking a good deep breath.

These young American members of an international group that uses the combative tactics of anti-abortionists to vilify those who’re doing business with a major products-testing company were recently labeled terrorists by the FBI and put on trial. That one can’t quite decide if these charming men are heroes or villains is a mark of Johnson’s calm.

Formulaic but refreshingly low-key weepie.

A resonance that is moving beyond all measure.

Mitchell -- gives a harrowing, beautifully conceived performance, the depth and arc of which can't be fully appreciated until the film's final scene.

This perfectly distracting, ultimately unsatisfying film feels like a James Bond flick in which the stand-in got the lead.

Director Uwe Boll (House of the Dead) pulls off a nicely staged fistfight in an open-air market at the start, but soon loses his way amid mind-glazing exposition and endless gunfire aimed at bulletproof giant lizards.

While the final revelation is laughably absurd, DeNiro and Fanning are so far inside their roles that one can't giggle for long.

For this viewer, the climactic scooter-gang rumble, heavy on plot twists and empowerment speeches, felt eternal, but for many, the happy silliness of the film's first half should carry the day.

While it isn't surprising that improv gods Short and fellow SNL vet Jan Hooks, as Glick's wife, Dixie, are brilliant, who knew that perennial onscreen good girl Elizabeth Perkins, playing here a has-been bitch-diva, could be so brittle and sexy?

In supporting roles, Ellen Barkin and Marisa Tomei are marvelously light-footed.

Insipid embarrassment.

Wisely, the filmmakers don't try to reform the real rich-bitch divas -- some cultural icons are beyond redemption.

Saving Shiloh takes place in 2005, but in its setting and sensibility, it feels like 1930s Walton's Mountain.

After a zippy first hour, the wackos wear out their welcome and the director, perversely, fails to show the big concert.

Peet and Poor make strong impressions in smaller roles, but then again, edgy and sexy is easier to make compelling than decent and nice.

The movie's saving grace is newcomer Goode, who has what they used to call smoldering good looks, and who can, not so incidentally, actually act.

Unsatisfying as crime drama but haunting as a meditation on marriage.

Although the film is a tad long, Mirkin ("Romy and Michele's High School Reunion") has managed to pull off a classy, gently funny movie in which no one throws up, a rare blessing these days.

Despite the rush to get everyone from place to place, director Frank Coraci (The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy) luxuriates in colorful visual detail and gives the locals their due.

As a calling card for the stylistic talents of a new filmmaker, writer-director Anna Chi's first feature is a success. As drama, it's a dud.

This debut feature from writer-director Shonali Bose has a powerful finale, in which the filmmaker uses imaginative camera angles and a vibrant sound design to re-create the turmoil and terror of the riots.

Promising yet problematic.

To help Prinze sail past the eventually unbearable clichés of Kevin Falls and John Gatins' script, director Mike Tollin has assembled an impressive supporting cast.

Pinned down and smelling death, the men grow into fully realized human beings, which makes for some fine performances, but doesn't exactly propel this epic, richly detailed film forward. The battle, when it finally comes, is brief, admirably non-gory and rather dull.

A little of this goes a long way.

Disappointing that the film's modern-day race sequences -- which follow quick glimpses of computer-run car factories and pit-crew practice sessions -- fail to excite the senses.

Undeniably precious, it may make some viewers fidgety, but others will find that the reflective melancholy that overcomes both director and cast (all superb) is a sweet contagion.

Director Richard Loncraine (Richard III) moves things right along, but during the final tennis match, his pacing is undone by sports-movie convention, particularly the witless color commentary offered by tennis legends John McEnroe and Chris Evert.

Zeiger's superb documentary about the Vietnam War era's GI protest movement is jammed with incident and anecdote and moves with nearly as much breathless momentum as the movement itself.

It's one of many references to the movie-wise, but a resonant one, for Glover's performance turns out to be shockingly emotional, drawn as daringly close to the bone -- within this story's limited thematic range -- as Anthony Perkins' work in Hitchcock's seminal film.

A movie with a premise and an ad campaign promising sexual outrageousness, Sleeping Dogs Lie turns out to be rather tame.

The movie's first hour is well-done, but realism and insight go out the window as soon as Samir crosses the U.S. border.

Feels like a movie made by men whose world views were shaped, primarily, by "Porky's" and "American Pie."

Yu has transferred to her superb film, the hushed awe she must have felt the day she walked into the room - and, in a sense, the mind - of this strange, singular individual.

Looks drab and doesn't take very good advantage of its New York locations, but the neurotic intensity and emotional honesty of its two leads more than make up for it.

This is a decidedly bizarre movie, nicely photographed and designed -- someone spent some money -- but built entirely around dialogue so stilted and unrevealing that it’s little wonder poor LaVorgna screams it.

First-time director Anahí Berneri, who wrote this involving, if slow-moving, film with Pablo Pérez (based on Pérez’s own diaries), doesn't shy away from the whippings, rope work and carefully calibrated humiliation that make up a good night of dungeon play. Yet A Year Without Love isn't a sex movie (so don’t expect one), but a studied examination of how one man folds jarring events into the everyday fabric of his life.

A big-screen reality show that flashes plenty of t-- and d--- but little integrity.

This is the first Broadway-sourced movie musical in umpteen years, and you should see it, because the score is gorgeous.

The British music-video director Peter Care (making his feature debut) and screenwriters Jeff Stockwell and Michael Petroni have retained much of the wry, teen-wise dialogue from the late Chris Fuhrman's cult-hit novel, while giving his story arc a fuller, more rounded shape.

To be fair, it's not solely Cage's fault that his new film, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, is lousy -- director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) deserves most of the heat for this listless dud.

The flashbacks are wittily gothic, and the present-day murder scenes have the absurdist, chain-reaction intricacy of the "Final Destination" deaths.

If Tass had found a way to include more playfulness, her film would be more endearing. Instead, she accents the easy bathos of David Parker's script, from the problems of the shrill, cliched neighbors to a finale that plays like a movie of the week.

Kirk Douglas turns 83 this very week, and surely the fact that he's pulled a rabbit out of the hat at this late date deserves a deep bow.

The true mystery, Red Lights' real thrill ride -- and what seems to interest Kahn most, despite his skill at arranging the trappings of suspense -- is marriage.

Deftly mixing the visual exuberance of “Trainspotting” with the familial pathos of “Angela’s Ashes,” the gifted van Groeningen offers gleeful depictions of drinking contests and naked bicycle races that gradually give way to a sense of moral peril for young Gunther.

Remarkably unfunny.

actor-turned-director Kevin Bacon (Sedgwick's husband) can't seem to decide if he's making a film about a loving eccentric or a sociopath.

Leitman has unearthed a terrific collection of vintage footage - yet, as if doubtful about holding our interest, she skims too quickly over the historical background.

The jewel in this well-rounded collection of gay-themed shorts is Alan Brown's "O Beautiful."

But, in the end, it may be that man against sand isn't as thrilling as it was back in the day.

Vardalos is a pleasing mix of Elaine May and Bonnie Hunt; in other words, she's not a sex kitten, but she's funny and smart.

Begins so well that it's painful to watch it degenerate into tried-and-true frat-boy humor.

There are moments that suggest the comedy that could have been.

Duff, who became a teen-set role model portraying Lizzie McGuire for Disney, has sold over four million records and toured to packed houses, yet screenwriter Sam Schreiber and director Sean McNamara, both making feature debuts, set her up to sing just one song through to completion.

If the screenwriters never satisfactorily reconcile these charming misfits with the unsettling fact that they're also bomb planters, albeit clumsy ones, they make up for it with smart, character-driven dialogue that's brought to life by an equally sharp ensemble.