Derek Elley

With very little dialogue, and even less plot, five chapter stops lend the movie a skeletal structure: "Wrath," "Silent Warrior," "Men of God," "The Holy Land" and "Hell." But any discussion of the Dark Ages conflict between paganism and Christianity is reduced to just grunts or insults.

A largely dull history lesson…stripped of any backgrounding, peopled with archetypes rather than fully-drawn characters, and features self-consciously arty direction that gets in the way of story-telling.

Balances character, grit, spectacle and visceral action in a meaty, dramatically satisfying pie that delivers on the hype and will surprise many who felt the Hong Kong helmer progressively lost his mojo during his long years stateside.

Always imaginative, often arresting, but sometimes just too clever by half.

Has all the classic faults of a picture not only directed by an actor but by an actor who is his own producer.

Though the film is never dull, and playing by the cast is spirited, it's actually a surprisingly gentle movie, with no big "Full Monty"-like finale to send auds buzzing into the street.

A dazzlingly lensed, highly stylized meditation on heroism.

Mixes a rites-of-passage story with political and sexual elements to solid but finally uninvolving results.

A polished genre piece with superior fright elements.

Despite the emotive subject matter, picture is often too sluggish dramatically, and never knits together its stock Western characters into a satisfying whole.

Chekhov has never seemed such a long haul as in this awkward adaptation of The Cherry Orchard by veteran director Michael Cacoyannis, 77, who's assembled a good roster of names but ones that are not necessarily right for their roles.

Using the familiar device of cuisine as a metaphor for national identity and personal feelings, bitter-sweet pic about a man torn between his ethnicity (Greek) and the country of his birth (Turkey) makes its points lightly and entertainingly, with only a routine third act letting down the package.

Shows a consistent inability to generate any kind of drama when characters open their mouths.

A rarefied love story, conducted with no dialogue between the principals.

A crackerjack serial-killer chiller in "Seven" mold, Tell Me Something cleverly disguises its thoroughly generic content and leaps of logic with highly honed technique and an involving approach to narrative.

A haunted-house one-trick pony.

Maintains a bankable charm and innocence even when overdrawn on the special effects side.

Gay's the way, but the way's not really gay, in the fluffy and largely entertaining Dostana.

Amounts to a giant cry of "Americans, get engaged!" wrapped in a star-heavy discourse that uses a lot of words to say nothing new.

A superbly written loony-tunes satire, played by a tony cast at the top of its game.

There’s almost none of the generous, involving humanity (and warm humor) of the previous film, nor any clear take on the personalities in the slackly structured script, largely improvised by the actors.

Though solidly crafted, with a host of well-etched performances, film is unable to establish a consistent, engaging tone.

High-octane plunge into pop gangster psychology.

A family ensembler of utter simplicity, Oliver Assayas' Summer Hours is a salutory (and belated) reminder that, as with his earlier Cold Water and Late August, Early September, some of this writer-director's best work comes in modest packages.

A portrait of a contempo British family drifting apart because of generational differences, The Mother ends up an uneasy brew of too many competing tastes and themes.

Cast of regulars blends like those in a late-on Howard Hawks' movie.

There's no shortage of disaster stories in the history of film production, but none have been recorded with such frankness, immediacy and aching sense of disappointment.

Has almost zero plot but molto mood. It will appeal to the most faithful of the director's camp-followers and no one else.

Well worth a look, despite its flaws.

A string of striking set pieces hung on a dramatically shaky clothesline.

On almost every level, there's never quite been a monster movie like The Host. Egregiously subverting its own genre while still delivering shocks at a pure genre level, and marbled with straight-faced character humor that constantly throws the viewer off balance.

Shallow Grave, a tar-black comedy that zings along on a wave of visual and scripting inventiveness.

Plays like a movie where the script went missing on the third day of shooting.

Chinese thesp Gong Li goes for a striking career makeover in Zhou Yu's Train, a sensual, slickly packaged slice of Euro-style metaphysical cinema centered on a free-thinking woman and the two men in her life.

Worthy intentions are drowned by schematic scripting and only OK direction in Silent Waters, an achingly PC drama on how Islamic fundamentalism wrecks families and oppresses women.

Wears out its welcome at 100 minutes, but could find an audience in the West as a latenight attraction at gay fests.

An interesting idea comes over only half-formed in Johnnie To's Breaking News, an effective Hong Kong crimer that partly returns to the realistic style of some of his late '90s dramas, but never properly knits its theme of media manipulation into pic's punchy thriller format.

Pic is superbly honed at both script and performance levels, with character taking precedence over action.

Money (and maybe a little bit of love) makes the world go around in Lost in Beijing, an involving, highly accessible portrait of an emotional menage a quatre in the modern-day Chinese capital.

An extremely silly, grossly scatological but often amusing picture that plays like Dumb & Dumber meets Spike Lee in London.

Amos Gitai's most satisfying pic since war drama "Kippur." Schematic set-up is given a human face by fine performances and a physical journey that's often more interesting than the characters' emotional ones, which are weakened by the Israeli auteur's tendency toward convenient doctrinaire-ism and chunks of expository dialogue.

An epic story of mismatched love shaped in the most intimate terms, the Ingmar Bergman-scripted The Best Intentions packs a sustained emotional wallop that lightens its three-hour span.

Over-long, under-written and needlessly obscure instead of genuinely atmospheric.

An ersatz "Pride and Prejudice" in all but name, Becoming Jane is a finely tooled Brit-lit costumer that, like Anne Hathaway's flawless accent as the young Austen, lacks only that final convincing 5%.

High on charm but extremely low on content, Blue Gate Crossing is a half-hour short stretched to feature length.

Brings nothing new to the table, and spends far too long making the audience think it will.

Surprisingly conventional Olde London Towne gaslight mystery, gussied up with some doctored visuals, and an eccentric performance by Johnny Depp.

Writer-helmer Gurinder Chadha assembles a gallery of broadly played stereotypes into a movie about social attitudes that's more rooted in small-screen sitcom than anything deeper.

A neat idea that doesn't quite hit the bull's-eye.

Tip-top performances, led by young British thesp Jamie Bell, and a deftly handled tone reflecting all the title teen's confused emotions make Hallam Foe a viewing delight.

A movie that keeps jumping the gate and finally unravels all over the floor.

3 Idiots takes a while to lay out its game plan but pays off emotionally in its second half.

Pic maintains a likable, breezy tone throughout but looks increasingly threadbare of real inspiration or originality as it proceeds.

Sports a lustrous performance by Cate Blanchett that gives the movie much of its final sheen but still can't keep it on the rails as the already flimsy story starts to disintegrate in the final act.

Though tastily lensed and with a convincing cast led by Cillian Murphy, essentially small-scale picture lacks the involving sweep of Loach's earlier historical-political yarn, "Land and Freedom."

Recognizably Godard with its playfulness and wordplays, but deeply human at the same time.

This least affected of their (Haases) movies is also the most dramatically and emotionally convincing.

Often enjoyable, massively uneven Brit ganglander with an almost surreal approach to the genre.

Toplining British comedian/wit Stephen Fry in a once-in-a-lifetime role as the brilliant, acerbic playwright, and mounted with a care and affection in all departments that squeezes the most from its $10 million budget, movie is a tony biopic that manages to combine an upfront portrayal of the scribe's gayness with an often moving examination of his broader emotions and artistic ideals.

A routine haunted child psychothriller gussied up with A-list casting.

Either a subtly subversive black comedy, a deeply spiritual portrait of physical rebirth or a whole lot of nothing in a self-consciously arty package, Lourdes isn't about to reveal its true colors anytime soon.

An unquestionably sincere but dramatically stillborn outing by veteran John Boorman.

Mildly amusing result, with plenty of slack in its 100 minutes, should work OK with its target audience of female Brit tweenies, who won't notice the pic's shoddy technical package, sloppy direction and the way the original films' antiestablishment tone has morphed into a celebration of dumbed-down "yoof" culture.

Simply fuzzy filmmaking of the worst sort.

A colorful, enjoyable ride most of the way but could have been even better if Beatriz Flores Silva's direction had more often risen above the functional and had not gotten a bad attack of conscience in the closing reels.

Visually detailed but emotionally dry.

Manages to pack a satisfying emotional punch.

Deeply felt but dramatically unconvincing "fictional documentary" -- inspired by the March 2006 rape and killings by U.S. troops in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad -- has almost nothing new to say about the Iraq situation and can't make up its mind about how to package its anger in an alternative cinematic form.

Though there's nothing here that hasn’t been dealt with in other Japanese movies, picture benefits considerably from its pitch-perfect performances.

Flavorsome performances by a seasoned cast, held in check by Grant's traditional but well-crafted, always cinematic direction.

Combo of some stunning animal direction (courtesy of ace trainer Thierry Le Portier) and exotic period setting somewhere in French colonial Indochina charms when the quadripeds stalk the action but creaks when the bipeds open their mouths.

Mixes humor, tragedy, tenderness and political acumen into a well-observed coming-of-age format.

Starts intriguingly but ends up thrashing around as a toothless wonder.

With its booming soundtrack of songs -- written by Laurent Marimbert and sung by Seigner herself -- and good chemistry between Le Besco and Seigner, pic at times has an operatic emotional intensity that will turn off some viewers but provide a guilty pleasure for others.

Strikes too many false notes on the dramatic side to add up to a satisfying emotional experience.

Fluff is hardly the word for Neal 'n' Nikki, a mismatched romantic comedy that makes most Bollywood twosomes look like art movies.

Boasting the same refreshing avoidance of CGI and wire work as "Warrior," slickly made production (largely by the same team) is more consciously aimed at the international market, with its Australian setting and multilingual dialogue.

The lowdown on The Low Down: charm 8, content 2.

Though it won't appeal to everyone, the concoction actually works, thanks to Huppert and Greggory's powerful negative chemistry.

Bannen and the gawky Kelly, whose screen chemistry is vital to the film's success, make a delightful pair of stumbling shysters, and Jones' script weaves a sizable tapestry of other characters to flesh out the village.

Not helped by a wooden perf from Jim Caviezel as a humanoid alien who accidentally imports a real alien to eighth-century Earth.

Handsomely shot in widescreen, mostly on actual West Bank locations, and well-played by the cast, pic lays out the issues in an accessible but rather too over-correct way, seemingly eager to please all parties at the expense of real passion.

Result is always watchable, occasionally creepy and teasingly pitched halfway between a genre riff and a genuine scarefest.

A movie for the age, and a keeper for the ages, Pride & Prejudice brings Jane Austen's best-loved novel to vivid, widescreen life, as well as making an undisputed star of 20-year-old Keira Knightley.

Utterly unsentimental but profoundly moving,The Way Home" is a tiny gem from South Korea.

Overlong and very Euro-flavored.

Engaging chemistry between leads Emmanuelle Devos and Vincent Cassel.

Immaculately shot and composed as always, and moving at Ceylan's usual measured pace, this one is slightly enlivened by more likable perfs and a trim 98-minute running time.

Basically a very conventional movie gussied up with a few jaw-dropping moments. Unlike genuinely amoral pics such as "Heathers" or "Shallow Grave," it never seems really comfortable with its characters' actions.

Super-slick street-racing pic, based on a Nipponese manga series and set in Japan, is aimed squarely at the East Asian market, which it has conquered in spades since late June release.

Picture more than delivers on the action front -- not in bang-for-your-buck spectacle but in the kind of gritty, doculike sequences that haul viewers out of their seats and alongside the main protags.

Big emotional themes come hidden in a deceptively small package in Longing, a mightily impressive feature debut by German writer-director Valeska Grisebach.

A 2½-hour demo of auteurist self-importance that's artistically bankrupt on almost every level.

Overall tone lies somewhere between Mike Leigh and Ken Loach in performances and look, with a modest tech package.

Though certainly not to everyone's tastes, this looney-tunes pic about a deranged serial killer who thinks he's helping Earth by killing off supposed aliens works on a variety of levels, from gruesome slapstick comedy through social critique to genuinely chilling Grand Guignol.

The highly directed film adopts a semi-impressionistic approach more European than British in flavor, aided by a terrific central performance by Kevin McKidd and painterly lensing by John Rhodes.

Cross Uncle Buck with Home Alone, stir in the Hulkster, and you've got Mr. Nanny, a gonzo comedy-actioner that should entertain the under-12 and couch-potato sets.

Depressingly parochial.