Eddie Cockrell

Director Bert Marcus’ Champs is the moviegoing opposite of a prize fight, a slick but not particularly stylish documentary that actually becomes more focused and energized in the late rounds.

As interesting as all this is, and as challenging and perilous it must have been to capture these images, Jirga’s elliptical approach to plot and selective use of subtitles does the finished product no favors.

Helmer Bruce David Klein's near-reverential treatment is a nice contrast to the rough-and-tumble of tour life.

The big, burly Samoan Wedding is a shrewdly written, impeccably timed and audaciously played romantic comedy.

A genuine and tangible fondness and respect for the characters and their eccentricities.

Prolific helmer Kari Skogland draws a fiery performance from vet Burstyn and a beguiling one from Christine Horne as the young Hagar. Yet the book's sheer "Giant"-like scope necessitates generational cross-cutting that's both rushed and cluttered; pic would have have been better served as a more leisurely miniseries.

Topolski and his story are so engaging that the resulting discord of voices and agendas can't drown out the voice of the little guy questioning the system.

Writer-producer Rishi S. Bhilawadikar’s too-busy script nevertheless scores legitimate points about the complexities and paradoxes of the visa application process, the resulting limbo in which many legitimately productive immigrants find themselves, and other frustrating and soul-searching issues facing ethnic communities.

The Time We Killed reps avant-garde vet Jennifer Todd Reeves' most ambitious work yet, a dense-packed feature-length black-and-white journey into a beautifully restless mind.

Will be of keen interest to fans but plays to the unwashed as cringingly pompous.

The star plays Doyle as just rough enough around the edges to warrant the character's setbacks, but not so unpleasant that the twinkle in his eye is extinguished.

Admirably idealistic but dramatically awkward.

Bids to whip homoerotic iconography into something palatable for those suspicious of the cuisine.

Intense but inscrutable tale involving a woman's gradual remembrance of a long-suppressed trauma.

Sublimely pointed in its idealistic simplicity yet willfully scruffy in presentation -- much like the enduring Young's best music.

A mildly diverting, largely inoffensive teen laffer that's long on cartoonish high school hijinks but short on dramatic concentration and crucial story details.

The film is an energetic, candy-colored romp through genre tropes that manages to take its subject matter seriously while poking fun at itself at the same time.

A little bit of Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek goes a long way. In the verbose profile documentary Zizek! there's a lot of esoteric, eccentric theories, and little context within his globetrotting life.

Calculated yet undeniably skillful melodrama.

Overly plotted erotic drama.

Ungainly titled, overlong, intermittently funny.

Though treading a firm, clear-eyed line between education and exploitation, the well-acted and technically proficient drama -- too chaste to scandalize, too dark for general audiences -- works as a mobilizing tool for its cause.

An often capriciously mixed cocktail of war film and cross-cultural family melodrama, The Water Diviner marks an ambitious if emotionally manipulative directing debut for Russell Crowe.

About as vigorous and intricate as a glossy romantic comedy can get without collapsing under the weight of its own merriment.

Anchored by a fearless, commanding lead perf by newcomer Jonas Ball as deranged assassin Mark David Chapman, The Killing of John Lennon is a harrowing, impressionistic, widescreen tour-de-force that unfolds with the propulsive urgency of a scrapbook thrown into a howling wind.

Unaffectedly hip and affably manic, Down & Out With the Dolls picks up where "Singles" left off.

It often resembles John Cassavetes' "A Woman Under the Influence," but just as often devolves into a series of bravura acting exercises strung together by an increasingly sketchy narrative theme.

Self-consciously mannered yet fitfully interesting, Around the Bend gets the most mileage it can from the eccentric, low-key charisma of Christopher Walken.

The serious subject of forced female circumcision becomes the stuff of predictable melodrama in God's Sandbox.

Fiction writer and debuting helmer Mary Kuryla is clearly after a Big Statement on abuse and strength of character, but falls short by creating a self-destructive monster in lieu of a sympathetic protagonist.

Results are solid, if stylistically unspectacular.

Playing like a moribund hybrid of "Thelma and Louise" and "The Trouble With Harry," lesbian-themed thriller Gasoline lacks sex drive.

Promising frosh helmer Felix van Groeningen exhibits a fresh eye, though his script is full of too many self-consciously Tarantino-ish verbal digressions that serve to distract from the story, and self-conscious quirks he mistakes for character development.

Predictable yet charming, The Grand Role is a crowd-pleasing dramatic comedy about love, friendship, role-playing and Jewish pride.

Another ferocious perf by Janet McTeer and an atmospheric Malaysian jungle location are nearly lost in the DV muddiness of period drama The Intended.

A cut above the average Aussie crazy-clan comedy.

Too often depends on salty, adolescent one-liners that provide shock value guffaws but grow cumulatively wearisome.

Schematically scripted tale revels in its multiple story arcs, but shows signs of battle fatigue in the later reels.

“Oftentimes these connections are neglected or rejected,” sings Lloyd early on to complete the couplet, “but every now and then the universe succeeds.” So, in its sincere and refreshingly scrappy way, does Stuck.

Handsome but dramatically static drama.

What begins as a moderately interesting set of interconnected mysteries involving race and identity soon grows eye-rollingly laborious, not to mention increasingly derivative of Christopher McQuarrie's "Usual Suspects" script.

Impeccably crafted but dramatically turgid.

A sibling survivor story of uncommon personal and political breadth.

Enough of Yancey’s ambitious narrative has made the final cut to reflect an arrestingly original spin on trendy genre tropes.

Dryly funny and benevolently shrewd.

Debuting helmer Vicente Amorim provides a determined forward movement, which, while lacking in cultural explanation, gives the saga uplift and punch.

A labored screwball comedy about disenchanted people of privilege yearning for fulfillment, pic is full of leaden hijinx directed and played with all the subtlety of a myocardial infarction.

Has the frustrating feel of a rousing, epic oater sadly compromised.

A preposterously convoluted and exasperatingly sappy saga.

Consistently silly and intermittently laugh-out-loud funny spoof.

Glacially paced, self-consciously acted and narratively risible.

"It's the ultimate Dogme movie, before the birth of Dogme," is how 79-year-old Lithuanian-born independent mainstay Jonas Mekas describes peaceful, enthralling assemblage encompassing home movie footage from last three decades of his life.

Unfortunately, Murat's decision to jump back and forth in time makes the film hard to follow for even the most committed viewer.

Aimless direction and subject's self-destructiveness add up to a long, unpleasant sit.

A quasi-docu about the formative years of the African National Congress that relies heavily on handsomely-mounted dramatic recreations to tell its story.