Derek Elley

Shows a rather arrogant disdain for its audience in between occasional flashes of flair.

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.

For all its digressions and occasional flat moments, Iwai's movie is a remarkable, acutely involving one, working on an emotional level that can only really be expressed through music -- a strong component in all of Iwai's pics.

Script is sometimes confusingly structured, and in its second half doesn't move as smoothly from scene to scene as in Kim's best pics.

One of the world's great cities comes vibrantly alive through its music and musical denizens in Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul.

Davaa's strong visual sense, engaging cast and respect for basic film grammar make this slim exercise in managed reality go the distance.

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

Gorgeously mounted, but butt-numbingly slow.

Some general viewers may feel let down by the relatively scant action.

A 10-course treat for the eyes and ears.

Very Korean in its emotional content, while also preserving a quizzical distance that is quite French, picture is one of his lightest and most easily digestible metaphysical meals to date.

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

The movie plays like a career summation in which the 68-year-old writer-director has simply run out new ideas.

An overlong stygian comedy that badly needs a transfusion of genuine inspiration.

Tendency to go for art rather than action, and a leisurely pace that isn't bolstered by much dialogue or food for thought.

Pic is the eclectic Taiwanese helmer’s most accessible work since the 1986 “The Terrorizer” but is flawed by hit-and-miss scripting and performances.

A slow, empty, over-mannered snoozer that shows Taiwanese helmer Hou Hsiao-hsien asleep at the wheel.

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

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.

The film's persistent skimming from one vantage point to another, with no dominant dramatic line until midway through, will unsettle audiences expecting a more regular construction and something on which to hook their emotions over the long term.

A cracking slice of old-fashioned, widescreen entertainment.

Mixed Indian and Western cast --turn the true story of a case that changed British law into an old-style melodrama (in the best sense) complete with a feel-good ending.

Easy on the eye and effortlessly entertaining across almost 2½ hours.

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.

A charming relationships comedy about food, gourmet cooking and emotionally chilling out. Anchored by a career-best performance from German thesp Martina Gedeck.

Mainland helmer Wang Quanan and his regular lead actress, Yu Nan, tread on largely familiar ground in Tuya's Marriage.

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.

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.

Simply fuzzy filmmaking of the worst sort.

A tightly constructed "dramatic thriller" in which the tension comes as much from what the characters are thinking as from what they end up doing, Jerichow again confirms writer-helmer Christian Petzold ("Yella," "The State I Am In") as a world-class talent who remains underappreciated beyond Germany.

Film's rarity value and still-hot subject matter make this required viewing.

Takes the simplest of stories and weaves a seductive, extremely moving portrait of a young woman’s unshakable love.

Largely thanks to Verbeek's performance, full of physical grace notes and small details, she manages to involve the audience, even though her character is more a movie creation than one based in real psychology. Rea, largely giving his usual mumbling Oirish perf, proves a selfless support, and provides an anchor to the movie.

But there's little sense of a longer dramatic arc stretching across the characters: Rozema can't seem to hold a single tone for more than a few minutes, and she has too many other axes to grind besides just getting the story up on the screen.

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.

Moves like an express train across almost 2½ hours without any sense of rush and with strong, empathetic characters etched en route.

The chills and spills keep comin' to agreeable effect in Brit-made scarefest The Descent.

It's a very small pic but engagingly played by a fine cast.

Strongly cast, long-limbed yarn contains some of Ratnam's best stuff in its first half but script weaknesses mar the later going and film's overall impact.

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.

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

A kaleidoscopic but engrossing study of the shifting sands of friendship among a group of Parisians, "Late August, Early September" reps a major advance by writer-director Olivier Assayas in warmth and maturity of observation.

A fairly conventional heartwarmer, lifted by likable performances, good-looking production values and (for movie buffs) a story centered on an outdoor cinema in rural China.

Contains some brilliant invention between duller stretches.

This is upscale French entertainment at its best.

Claire Denis comes up with her emotionally richest pic to date in Nenette and Boni, a multilayered look at unformed teen emotions and the mysterious, almost invisible ties that bind siblings.

Maverick director Wong Kar-wai manages to pour old wine into new jars with Happy Together, a fizzy chamber yarn about two gay Hong Kongers in Argentina that's as slim as a bamboo flute but is his most linear and mature work for some time.

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.

A quietly subversive my-sister-is-turning-into-a-werewolf movie that doesn't wimp out at the end.

Laden with gritty action, but with an emotional undertow that carries the drama even through its weaker moments, picture reps a strong comeback by Hong Kong helmer-producer Peter Chan.

Manages to pack a satisfying emotional punch.

The pic often plays like a Cliffs Notes version of a longer movie: Pacing and continuity aren't choppy, but there's enough material here for a full-length drama that would go deeper into the characters and their backgrounds. Eklavya is good as it is, but lacks tragic heft.

The temptation of artists to fiddle with their earlier works brings predictably mixed results in Ashes of Time: Redux.

Though McDonald and Gleeson pair off well as the unlikely fellow travelers, and have some funny moments of physical shtick, the picture mostly springs to life when either Caffrey, as Grogan, or the excellent Doyle, as French, are onscreen.

Works as both an adaptation and a movie in its own right

A small picture with a big heart.

An intellectual-cum-sexual teaser whose twist is apparent far too early on.

A long-limbed story that is utterly simple in structure, but decorated with enough character interplay and side plots to keep the movie ticking over to a powerful finale.

Engaging, highly accessible movie that marks a slick feature debut by helmer Jeong Jae-eun.

East meets West meets East again, with palate-tingling results, in The Good the Bad the Weird, a kimchi Western that draws shamelessly on its spaghetti forebears but remains utterly, bracingly Korean.

Strongly recalls Hong Kong kung-fu movies of the late '60s and '70s, with physical grit, over-the-top heroics and inventive fight choreography providing the entertainment.

Talky, repetitive and largely covering the same ground with no new thoughts, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is a major let-down.

Poetic, bawdy, contemplative, often side-wrenchingly funny and finally quite touching, this tale about a nerdy garbage man whose life is changed by an egocentric hobo philosopher is flawed only by its length.

A smoothly made period romancer that's elevated by strong playing from its whole cast, led by John Turturro and Emily Watson as the starstruck lovers.

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.

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

Has buckets to spare of that rarest screen commodity — genuine, engaging charm.

An often remarkable, often infuriating lateral spin on genre material that desperately needs another sesh at the editing table.

A handsome although dramatically muddled Noodle Western.

A funny, touching, off-the-wall relationer that's one of the freshest helming debuts in world cinema this year.

Shaky handheld lensing, terrific cutting and uplifting music build to a grandstand finish in which the main characters are bound tightly into the physical drama. It ain't subtle, but it packs a punch at a simple emotional level.

Technically, pic is top-drawer, with restless, fluid cutting by Trevor Waite that adds to the unstarchy look, and a copious musical score by Adrian Johnston that gives a separate "sound" to the many locations (a folksy drone for Marygreen, High Baroque music for academic Christminster, and so on).

South Korean cinema finally gets its first full-blown political satire with The President's Last Bang, a virtuoso slice of sustained black humor.

Shines like a freshly minted coin in Oliver Parker's adaptation.

All of the promise that was evident in Scottish helmer David Mackenzie's flawed freshman feature, "The Last Great Wilderness" (2002), is richly achieved in his second pic, Young Adam, a resonant, beautifully modulated relationships drama.

Though Ritchie’s screenplay scores a 10 for sheer complexity and cleverness, it rates much lower down the scale for comprehensibility and audience involvement.

Though it doesn't quite match recent classics like "Kabhi khushi kabhie gham" in sheer technique and production sheen, in-depth star casting and thorough entertainment values make this a must-see for Bollywatchers.

Feature debut by Yank duo Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe isn't so far from their engrossing docus on Terry Gilliam's filmic adventures, "The Hamster Factor" (1996) and "Lost in La Mancha" (2001), except here the madness and exploitation is part of the music scene.

A man whose name has become a byword for pure evil gets a disarming makeover in The Goebbels Experiment. Far from being the horror show expected from its title, Lutz Hachmeister's cool, almost anti-dramatic docu paints a portrait of an insecure manic-depressive solely through extracts from Joseph Goebbels' own voluminous diaries.

A curate's egg of a movie that starts intriguingly but becomes increasingly frustrating.

An often grippingly staged mountain movie that's good but not great.

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

As in many of Laverty's scripts, problems of overall tone and character development aren't solved by Loach's easygoing direction, though when it works, "Eric" has many incidental pleasures.

Slickly packaged, unashamedly exploitative popcorn movie.

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.

Slick, grisly and determinedly umbral, German cop thriller Tattoo is a largely effective "Se7en" wannabe that gradually develops its own character after an over-derivative start.

Mediocre, dramatically flat picture.

Film traverses Buzz's career with reasonable depth, helped by good-quality trailers from several pics. However, one suspects there are a lot more stories Buzz could tell in a more rigorous format.

An involving family drama about a young boy's dreams and personal loss, Hard Goodbyes: My Father brings a light touch -- and a full measure of unaffected charm -- to potentially downbeat material.

A sprightly, enjoyable comedy-drama from veteran Agust Gudmundsson that's buoyed by a raft of excellent distaff performances.

It manages to suspend disbelief without over-taxing the viewer's patience, and boasts at least one terrific performance, by actress Yeom Jeong-ah as a scary stepmom.

An easygoing kitchen-sink comedy with an unsettling final act.

An often intriguing, sometimes hypnotic work, but one that quickly starts to unravel in the final hour as it becomes clear there’s not much beneath the emperor’s clothes.

Japanese helmer Hirokazu Kore-eda’s ongoing interest in love, loss and souls in limbo is stretched way too thin in Air Doll, a beautifully lensed (by Taiwanese ace Mark Lee) and charmingly played (by South Korean icon Bae Du-na) modern fairy tale about an inflatable doll who takes on a life of her own. Recut to a trim 90 minutes, this fragile yarn would work perfectly and have a chance of an afterlife as a specialty item. In its present form, pic may not get much farther than the fest netherworld.

A shake 'n' bake Brit teen-spy actioner, without a smidgeon of originality, humor or involving characterization, Stormbreaker is a high-profile bust.

There's a fable-like quality to this first feature by documaker Ra'anan Alexandrowicz that packs just as much punch as a more "serious," didactic movie while entertaining the viewer at the same time.

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

With a commanding performance by Sun Haiying as the unbending, ornery father, and a glammed-down Joan Chen remarkable as the boy's devoted mom, pic serves up solid dramatic values instead of being yet another panorama of social and political changes in China during the late 20th century.