Derek Elley

There's not much magic left in Kenneth Branagh's The Magic Flute. Relocating the 1791 opera to WWI and adopting a hard-edged approach that worked for "Hamlet," Branagh has wrought a "Flute" for high-end aficionados only. Lavishly mounted and well sung, but thin on charm and spontaneity, pic is likely to hit a bum note at general wickets.

Loaded with unashamedly sophomoric humor, but fired with a kind of early Richard Lester-esque elan that doesn’t run out of gas, A Fistful of Fingers shows more wit and invention than most of its no-budget Brit saddlemates.

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

A thinly scripted mood piece centered on an estranged fortysomething among vacationing friends in Italy, Unrelated doesn’t carry the viewer along with its protag’s emotional problems.

A marked strength of the movie is that it does succeed in making the unlikely central love affair believable within its own universe.

The picture sports a strong lead cast but is diminished by TV-style helming and production qualities.

As in "Divine," there's an uneven quality to Suleiman's often surreal ideas, but in general there are way more hits than misses this time round, some of them laugh-out-loud.

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.

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.

One of the most highly crafted pics in recent memory, and certainly the most original in vision of the 23 features competing at Cannes this year, Songs From the Second Floor rapidly wears out its welcome after the first few reels to finish up as a perplexing objet d'art.

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.

Has a script that plays more like a period romancer studded with occasional Wilde-isms and gets uneven treatment from a mixed Anglo-American cast.

A sustained genre parody that's equally funny but (maybe in deference to the genre) much more pumped up.

Despite engaging performances from a cast led by Matthew Rhys and Kate Ashfield and pro direction by first-timer Richard Janes, yarn about art grifters lacks real snap, which ultimately stems from the so-so script and lack of real coin.

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

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.

Though the script never makes a convincing case for the lads as '90s Robin Hoods, it's restlessly inventive, with a pleasant, rather than rib-cracking, humor and likable touch of naivete.

Though unrecognizable, Amitabh Bachchan is the star of -- and the only reason to go see -- Paa.

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.

A sprightly acted, warm and often extremely funny ensemble comedy.

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

Fourth feature by Mainland helmer Lou Ye ("Suzhou River," "Purple Butterfly") shoots for metaphysical drama but ends up saying very little beneath all the poetic voiceovers, sexual encounters and political seasoning.

Borderline grungy but highly entertaining comedy-drama.

By-the-numbers item, in which five American college students literally get wasted while tripping out on magic mushrooms in rural Ireland, is OK vid fodder with few real scares and not an ounce of originality.

A handsome although dramatically muddled Noodle Western.

Some fine individual perfs by the tony cast, plus fine period detail and costumes, make the time pass fairly agreeably, but Tea With Mussolini suffers from a fatal lack of focus and emotional center, reducing potentially involving material to a succession of individual scenes.

An involving, often kinetic 2½-hour ride for auds who can accept their entertainment overboiled as well as just hardboiled.

Basic joke wears off after five minutes, and many bystanders will start to head out of town. But genre/Asian buffs prepared to ride shotgun for two hours will be rewarded with some classy action sequences and densely accoutred widescreen lensing.

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

An extremely silly but effective enough romp for family audiences.

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.

Pic is an obvious but highly accessible entertainment that manages to josh its subjects without being condescending to either Eastern or Western auds.

Bright and sassy, The Full Monty is a treat.

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

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

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

Rarely has a veteran filmmaker rejuvenated his career to such startling effect as John Boorman with The General, a fresh-off-the-slab biopic of maverick Irish crime lord Martin Cahill that both challenges and entertains the audience at a variety of levels, as well as reviving the vitality of the helmer's earliest, mid-'60s pics.

A full-bore zombie romp that more than delivers the genre goods.

Result is far more accessible than Jia's previous two pictures, with moments of genuine emotion by the real-life interviewees.

A star-loaded, Gotham-set relationships movie that's generally good but works better in bits than as a whole.

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

Standout performance is by Nolte who, in the final 20 minutes, draws on a deep reservoir of playing broken romantic heroes to portray Binh's father. The subtle, resonant scenes between the two men are worth the price of admission.

This slyly humorous, cleverly constructed comedy-drama wends its way through different takes on similar time frames to a warm, inclusive ending.

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

Chockfull of ideas and with an irreverence that irresistibly recalls late '60s American cinema, thesp John Turturro's third outing in the helmer's chair, Romance & Cigarettes, alternately shines and sputters.

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

Well cast, engagingly played and directed with a stylistic pedal to the metal, Human Traffic is a lot of energy adding up to very little.

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.

Sumptuous pic version, which evokes the original show while working as a movie in its own right, is lit by a radiant, vocally lustrous perf by teenaged Emmy Rossum.

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

The rare ability to make intelligent, entertaining cinema from hot-button current issues is beautifully illustrated by Lemon Tree.

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

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

Superbly cast drama… that looks to be a solid upscale attraction wherever the special chemistry of good writing and performances is appreciated.

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.

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

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.

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.

Key casting is aces, led by a deglammed Kim, forcefully low-key as the mother who seems capable of anything to protect her son.

Neither pure masala musical nor pure masala meller, Lagaan is an involving, easily digestible hunk of pure entertainment that could be the trigger for Bollywood's long-awaited crossover to non-ethnic markets.

A treat, a delicious blend of perversity, playfulness and deadly passion concealed beneath the tranquil, moneyed surface of the Swiss bougeoisie.

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.

Scripters Robert Lee King and Lamar Damon leave no national cliche or double entendre unturned in this good-looking but relentlessly lowbrow outing which plays like "Clueless Does South Fork" with a side order of garlic.

All mish-mash.

Has some fine individual moments but fails to cohere into a grander, more substantial statement on the themes it aspires to tackle.

A sublime, witty, gritty and transcendental movie reflecting one man's life journey.

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 mildly entertaining but dramatically messy kidpic.

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.

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.

Largely thanks to the snappy editing, short scenes and a strong cast led by a matronly Deveuve and Amalric's enjoyable perf as the black sheep of the family, A Christmas Tale never devolves into a tedious two-and-a-half hours of self-examination. But it also never goes very far, either.

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.

Delightful comedy of manners.

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

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

An ace performance by 26-year-old Julia Jentsch ("The Edukators," "Snowland"), as the quietly determined Munich student who was beheaded for distributing counter-propaganda leaflets in 1943, gives pic a focused dramatic power.

Like a collapsing star, Sunshine initially burns brightly but finally implodes into a dramatic black hole.

A no-holds-barred, thoroughly generic follow-up to the medical horror-chiller that wowed German wickets in 2000.

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

Boal's script stirs a little of everything into the pot, which boils down into seven setpieces divided by brief intervals of camaraderie/conflict among the three protags.

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.

Film plays as a quirky Brit riff on everything from U.S. slasher pics to revenge oaters but without Meadows' usual psychological complexity.

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

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

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.

Despite its merits, is neither an art movie nor an out-and-out, propulsive actioner like "Shiri."

Overall, Wong’s movie doesn’t leave as big a wash behind it as the more ambitious “Days” and his “Mean Streets”-like debut, “As Tears Go By,” but it’s an enjoyable cruise.

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

A generally entertaining but rather old-fashioned romantic comedy.

Slight but sleek, Flirt is still fun.

Attempts to meld reality and artifice but to uninspiring results.

Ultimately, this is a striking-looking film -- consciously recalling the paintings of Edward Hopper in its architectural use of space -- which, like its protag, is a little short on real feeling.

Second time round, Bridget is still fat, funny and endearing -- but "all a bit, um, familiar, actually."

A sexy, good-looking political bodice-ripper with an almost flawless cast at the top of its game.

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

A slowly inspiring saga of blood, sweat and horse dung, played with conviction.

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

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.