David Chute

It makes the regeneration of an overweight and complacent commercial format look easy.

Ethnically barbed hijinks ought to ensue, but jinks of any sort are in short supply, due to drowsy pacing and a string of distracting staging mistakes that suffocate just about every gag.

The film has been skillfully realized as a commercial entertainment on a huge scale, and it is often surprisingly beautiful.

There’s nothing easier to like than a tear-jerking, action-packed melodrama that knows no shame. But a minimal amount of skill and sensitivity are required.

Dedh Ishqiya ends on a note of sadder-but-wiser resignation that recalls its predecessor, but its high romantic cultural allusions convey a deeper sense of what’s at stake.

It’s a tale that was once thrilling, but the thrills seem to have evaporated.

As a narrative, “Evangelion 3.0″ may make you feel your brain is turning into goat cheese. As a showcase for pure visual ingenuity and splendor, though, it rocks.

At their best, the lush yet punchy musical numbers that Acharya stages for Dhoom: 3 reach giddy heights of pop romanticism.

The Whoopee Cushion hijinks here are punctuated with incongruous outbursts of bloody violence.

If it was more consistent, Bullett Raja would qualify as a solid piece of genre craftsmanship for director and co-writer Tigmanshu Dhulia (“Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster”), with action scenes that are crisply framed and edited for clarity.

The film is a triumph of casting: In a role that is often about the sheer steamrolling force of his character’s personality, Abishek Bachchan’s attention to detail makes Guru accessible rather than intimidating, admirable but also plausible.

The film is so single-mindedly determined to be light and comfortable, to not raise a sweat, that it forgoes even the mildest surprises. The only things that get heavy here are the viewer's eyelids.

The buildup is so compelling in this "Chinese Western" by He Ping (Swordsman in Double Flag Town) that its thunderous anticlimax of an ending can almost be forgiven. Almost.

As a director of melodramatic peak moments, Karan Johar has no peer: He stages a chance encounter on a New York street between an adulterous husband and the two women in his life with the slow-motion virtuosity of a soap-opera De Palma.

This sophomoric stuff is pure self-indulgence, a drone to accompany the admittedly eye-popping sound-and-light show. Oshii looks like yet another director who has gone off the deep end, believing too absolutely his own good reviews.

The complex narrative counterpoint is anchored by a rock-solid performance by one of the world's great actors, the Beijing theater veteran Hu Jun.

Now this is more like it: Flirtatious repartee between glamorous stars in travel-poster international locations; a gratifyingly simple plot with puzzles and sleight-of-hand surprises; and, at regular intervals, outbursts of gaudy, energetic dancing infectiously exploding.

This shaggy-dog sequel is ultimately satisfying for the most low-tech of reasons: The competitive bond between the two central characters.

In the end, Curse also looks alarmingly like a dry run for the opening and closing ceremonies Zhang has been hired to direct for the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008.

The only real-life situations the movie evokes vividly are the circumstances of its own production: underrehearsed actors in hastily staged scenes speaking page after page of awkward expository dialogue.

While it comes on like a flag-waver, it actually delivers something more nuanced. Its underlying skepticism about the Korean War seems to have jibed with the current national mood: The picture was, deservedly, a huge hit.

Ghobadi's genius seems supercharged rather than weighed down by his higher calling, and his imagery is so boilingly alive that we come away from it feeling exhilarated rather than depressed.

Jodhaa Akbar is clear and solid and absorbing, but not quite exhilarating.

The film's snazzy new automated animation style falls short: The supposedly human face of our metal-plated robocop's partner -- the inevitable curvy female in a leather jump suit -- is an inexpressive, glossy doll mask, untouched by human hands.

Exceedingly dry and precise and slow-paced comedy.

As it's been done, with this ingratiating cast, a retro peach-and-turquoise color scheme that makes every shot look like a 1986 fashion layout, and a brace of insanely catchy Vishal Dadlani dance numbers, the movie isn't half bad.

Hitches some of the most irresistible conventions of Hindi movie melodrama to an earnest agenda of social protest.

The Incredibles creates so seamless a mood of exhilaration that we resent being pulled out of it.