Ernest Hardy

Loud, chaotic and largely unfunny (veteran actors John Witherspoon and Anna Maria Horsford seem at best indifferent to the material), Friday After Next is the graceless sodomizing of a cult classic.

Although the writing and the directing are smart and purposeful, the movie takes flight on the strength of its performances.

It could have been a hoot in a bad-movie way if the laborious pacing and endless exposition had been tightened. As it is, only LaSalle's sizzling performance makes Crazy more than a by-the-numbers psycho-horror thriller.

If you're already a huge fan of any of these artists, this film will be a lovefest. For all others, it's a mild diversion at best.

A Zeitgeist potpourri, strung with late-20th-century fear and anxiety.

Xiaoshuai isn't really interested in glamorizing or even exploring the gangster lifestyle; nor is he interested in conventional dramatic arcs.

Hotel Rwanda, based on real lives and events, aims unequivocally to break your heart.

Has moments that are haunting, and it stays with you long after the lights have come back up.

A crap film that's steeped in liberal paranoia, but it's also so ludicrous that it falls under the guilty-pleasure category.

While the acting is fine and the direction accomplished, the real stars of the film are editor Baxter and cinematographer Maxime Alexandre. Forfeiting a gold star is whoever haphazardly dubbed the film, simply giving up about halfway through.

The kids absolutely win your heart, but there's something off-putting in the film's lazy juxtaposition of unexamined Negro dysfunction tropes (absent fathers, violent streets) against an idyllic Africa tended by white benevolence.

What really hamstrings Sinner, though, is the hetero narcissism beneath its enlightened posturing.

When will Hollywood learn that a genre trend can last for years if itís nurtured with decent scripts? No time soon, apparently.

The result is at once a woefully overfamiliar bashing of Hollywood superficiality and a seemingly unwitting paean to the self-absorbed enlightenment that passes among industry folk for personal growth.

There’s nothing new in the movie’s sociocultural insights, especially for those of us already interested in how identity is shaped by pop culture, but the breezy tone and obvious fun being had by the cast make Finishing the Game a slight, low-key cool cinematic essay on identity politics.

Saturated with deep, rich color and low-key visual wit, and graced with sympathetic performances.

It's both surreal -- and wholly accessible.

But what you ultimately take from the film is the awareness that this smart, self-aware, uncensored kid has been playing to a camera in his own head since well before Venditti came along.

In a sterling ensemble cast, (Elfman) just about walks off with the movie.

A mean-spirited, hyperviolent, stupid movie.

This illuminating, often rousing film fits snugly alongside the various anti-Bush/corporate/globalization documentaries that continue to pack the art houses.

Has one thing to recommend it, but even that will likely appeal to a small subset of filmgoers: the cult of Brendan Sexton III.

Tender, smart, soulful.

For anyone who wants to see wildly inventive, peerless filmmaking that's oblivious to market-place formulas, Beau Travail is an absolute must-see.

Mangold can't escape the fact that instead of someone in the throes of a genuine existential crisis, his star comes off as -- to paraphrase nurse Whoopi Goldberg -- a spoiled, lazy girl who's afraid to face life.

Painfully bereft of wit or cogent insight.

Director Tonie Marshall has taken a very simple story and laced it with potent details that make the film a rich map of her lead character's inner life.

The problem is, director Robert Lee King has a hard time sustaining the aimed-for camp tone, and while there are a few well-spaced giggles to be had, the movie sputters more than it soars for most of its 95 minutes.