Eddie Cockrell

Arresting and fascinating.

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.

Sixty years after World War II, descendants of a prominent Nazi responsible for implementing Hitler's policies in Slovakia reignite debate over their heritage in emotional docu 2 or 3 Things I Know About Him.

"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.

Picture raises pithy questions sure to provoke animated discussions pro and con. Credit Davenport for a mostly unbiased presentation that presents her own disenchantment in a balanced manner.

A sibling survivor story of uncommon personal and political breadth.

Links narrative fiction filmmaking to avant-garde with vision and authority.

The writer discovers a people physically and psychologically worn down by decades of dictatorship, sanctions, war and occupation.

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

Stands reasonably well on its own as an urgent, updated genre meditation on nurture vs. nature.

Picture's cliched underlying story of restless youth plays as too naive for an older audience and too provocative for teens.

“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.

Admirably idealistic but dramatically awkward.

The film overstays its welcome by punctuating his story with ill-advised dramatic fantasy sequences that are meant to illustrate the anguish of a gay man in mid-century America, but come across as heavy-handed and mean-spirited.

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.

Explores another courageous, little-known chapter in the saga of resistance and heroics during World War II.

A cut above the average Aussie crazy-clan comedy.

It doesn't make for involving drama, unless the audience is already invested in the subjects' fortunes. Thus, 49 Up will have more appeal for long-time followers than newcomers.

A natural crowd-pleaser.

Washington reveals himself to be a filmmaker with a clean, uncluttered storytelling style. Too often, overtly inspirational material such as this can become strident or mawkish.

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

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.

Results are solid, if stylistically unspectacular.

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.

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.

Helmer Douglas Mackinnon does what he can to make the most of emotional bullet points and gloss over the lack of connective tissue.

Overly plotted erotic drama.

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