Derek Elley

Kang remains a superb technician, but somewhere the movie forgot to pack any genuine emotion along with its ordnance and K rations.

The film offers a frequently obscure but (for fans) always watchable look at history, memory and -- in the most rarefied sense -- love.

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

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

A charming but overextended yarn about some prairie tykes who mistake a table-tennis ball for a glowing pearl from the gods.

Borderline grungy but highly entertaining comedy-drama.

Well-groomed, upscale, three-hankie entertainment for the “Masterpiece Theater” crowd.

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.

An easy-to-digest slice of literate entertainment for upscale and older audiences that lacks a significant emotional undertow to make it a truly involving -- rather than simply voyeuristic -- experience.

Taken as a film about muddling along, "Woman" never bores the viewer with indecisive filmmaking. Basically, it's an elegant jeu, played and constructed with an almost Gallic lightness heightened by Jeong Yong-jin's bursts of music, all bouncy piano and pizzicato.

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

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.

The Dark Hours surmounts some of the problems of its weak dialogue through a commanding performance by lead Kate Greenhouse and some grisly, genre-style violence.

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

Well worth a look, despite its flaws.

Attempts to meld reality and artifice but to uninspiring results.

Admirably non-judgmental docu about life in "the least visited, known, understood country in the world," per Brit director Daniel Gordon, brings a refreshing balance to the usual blind vilification of the country.

Like a passable bottle of champagne, Cheri fizzes and slides down quite easily but lacks real body and doesn't really hit the spot.

Playful and sporty, with just a small twist of the knife, The Cat's Meow is good, uncomplicated fun.

Small but delightful tale about a dyed-in-the-wool spieler who develops a soft spot for a blind girl dumped in his care.

Despite its sudsy storyline, this second tour through the punk-infested Rio slums could attract more mature arthouse auds, drawn by character rather than the minutiae of guns 'n' drugs, though it's unlikely to match "God's" muscular $7.5 million U.S. take.

Escalating blend of black humor and grisly goings-on in the wilds of Hungary fully delivers in its latter half.

As a series of action set pieces, the movie is frequently gripping and always highly watchable. However, when the movie strays into weirder territory --- where, one feels, Jeunet's heart really lies --- there's a growing feeling of inadequacy.

Four years after Frantic, Roman Polanski approaches rock bottom with Bitter Moon, a phony slice of huis clos drama between two couples aboard a Euro ocean liner. Strong playing by topliner Peter Coyote can't compensate for a script that's all over the map and a tone that veers from outre comedy to erotic game-playing.

Too slim to make much impression outside fests, this nevertheless reps another solid outing by former art director Huo Jianqi.

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

From its opening shots, Butterfly Kiss exudes a confidence and distinctive feel that promises something rather special. Unlike its characters, the pic knows where it's going.

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.

Political realities are a powerful bonus to, rather than the only reason for, Private, an emotionally gripping drama.

Full of charming moments, but swinging hither and thither between mainstream entertainment and an over-cooked anti-racist tract.

What gives Quitting its freshness is its setting in a country that often denies it has such problems and the decision to anchor the film strongly within the Chinese family fabric.

Its soul rests in Skarsgard's performance, a powerful mixture of buttoned-down anger and personal disappointment that combines the filmmaker's self-questioning with the real-life character's conflict.

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

Overplays its slim hand by a good two reels.

Though Chan wins his usual stripes for death-defying... the movie ends on a dramatically unsatisfying note.

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

An astonishing improvement on the original version. With 27 minutes excised, pic emerges from its mind-numbing undergrowth as a memorable -- if still highly specialized -- exercise in personal, '70s-style American filmmaking, with a cohesive feel and rhythm that marks Gallo as a distinctive indie talent.

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.

Too often caught between trying to be a sweeping period drama and intimate love story at the same time, with a script that's never fully satisfying on either count.

Too much caution and too little lust squeeze much of the dramatic juice out of Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, a 2½--hour period drama that's a long haul for relatively few returns.

Despite a name cast, with Dillon playing an insurance crook, pic is holed by a plot-heavy script that's unsatisfying at a character level and plays like a cut-down version of a much longer, more ambitious saga.

Pleasant rather than rollicking entertainment.

The plucky music student who overcomes adversity is a staple subgenre of mainland cinema and, though Chen Kaige directs with greater slickness and more finesse and humor, there's still little to differentiate Together from any other state-studio pic.

Low on drama and originality, and high on deja vu, sophomore outing by writer-director Li Yang ("Blind Shaft," 2003).

The iconic '30s song "Gloomy Sunday" gets a distinctive celluloid setting in this well-played, cleverly scripted pic in which music and character are inextricably combined.

This well-played, often very sparky dramedy about the shenanigans in a northern brass band composed of miners threatened with pit closure gets a bad attack of social realism in the latter stages that rocks the crowded craft.

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.

Several large leaps of faith take some of the dramatic steam out of Unveiled, an otherwise well-acted and accessible lesbian drama that also flirts with issues like loss of identity and anti-Muslim tensions.

Picture lets loose an experienced cast of vets on a well-honed script that has broad appeal.

A solid slice of entertainment without reaching the psychological depths promised by the subject matter.

A martial arts fantasy in modern dress, but set in an unidentified country and era, The Princess Blade is a tough toasted sandwich with a soft filling.

Ip Man will be manna for those who like their kung fu straight and wireless, their villains Japanese and their heroes unconflicted Chinese patriots.

Visceral and sweat-drenched, but also attaining a genuinely epic stature in its final reels.

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

Picture generally stays afloat on the strength of its characters but sometimes threatens to sink under its overlong running time and vignettish structure.

Stripped of "Royale's" humor, elegance and reinvented old-school stylishness, Quantum has little left except its plot, which is rudimentary and slightly barmy, in the line of the Roger Moore pics of the '70s and '80s.

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.

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.

A potentially gripping legal thriller about what happens when Western Europe attempts to solve Central European problems ends up as dull entertainment in Storm.

An often compelling drama, marbled with dry humor and flecked with the supernatural, that provides food for thought but doesn't quite reach the brass ring.

Easy on the eye but light on originality.

Western audiences familiar with "Blood Simple" will get a kick out of the reinventions.

Cool it may be, but scary (or even mildly shudder-inducing) it ain’t, even in 3-D.

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.

A London drag queen and a bunch of Midlands working stiffs find common ground and, uh, mutual respect in Kinky Boots, a slick, cross-tracks Britcom whose stride is hampered by its desire not to offend.

An utterly charming retro romancer set against a background of '70s movie going. Full of lovely touches and well-etched performances, and flawed only by a bland male lead.

Classy production values and a textured lead performance by Darshan Jariwala are undercut by a lack of real drama in Gandhi My Father.

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

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.

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

Solidly crafted, strongly cast pic doesn't hit a thoroughgoing comic tone.

A handsome chunk of widescreen entertainment that's as nimble as its rakish hero.

The seductive, sensory prose of Patrick Suskind's bestseller, "Perfume," reaches the screen with loads of visual panache but only intermittent magic.

Sverak's sheer technical finesse, and ability to spin on a dime between comedy and tragedy, the personal and the historical, makes Dark Blue World succeed where other similarly themed movies, from "Battle of Britain" to "The Blue Max," seem heavy-handed by comparison.

An often genuinely funny mockumentary.