Ernest Hardy

Fly Away could have been stronger if its antiseptic visual style, which anchors it in old-fashioned TV movie mode, had been more adventurous in shouldering some of the weight of depicting the emotional and psychic anguish of the story.

Cloudy is smart, insightful on a host of relationship dynamics, and filled with fast-paced action.

When she unabashedly puts herself in the same category as Richard Pryor (the master of identity politics and cultural reportage), it's not just presumptuous posturing on her part. She's earned her place there.

This time around, writer-director Robert Rodriguez has stumbled badly, creating a clunky, gadget-happy film full of characters -- even returning ones -- about whom it is hard to care.

Despite the fact that you can see every plot twist a mile off, director Tim Story keeps the script by Mark Brown, Don D. Scott and Marshall Todd rollicking with a jazzy spontaneity.

Bessed with a gleamingly polished, very funny script.

As the film works toward its negative Eden ending, having illustrated just how little a life is worth, one of its most potent points is how brutally destabilizing hope can be when despair has become the norm.

As Future untangles the many ways in which our food supply has been co-opted and tainted in pursuit of a booming bottom line, you realize that beneath its tasteful façade, Garcia's documentary is actually nothing short of a pure horror film.

Volumes are said about class, assimilation, and the ways the assimilated sometimes shame and scar those who haven't shorn themselves of ethnic or racial signifiers. There is pungency in this shorthand, in these sketches that are richly evocative without saying too much or giving too little. You can't help but wish the movie had more of it.

What distinguishes this doc from much of the tedious critical prose Romero has inspired is the fan-boy and fan-girl ardor that fuels its smarts--both behind and in front of the camera.

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

Elevated by fantastic performance footage of Sa and his young protégés singing, dancing and rhythmically banging on cans, plastic bottles or anything else that can be fashioned into a drum -- and a cultural revolution.

It's the mind-blowing performance footage (and there's lots of it) that makes this a must-see film.

Despite its weighty material and some moving scenes (much of the Sudanese cast are survivors of the war), this aggressive crowd-pleaser is slighter than its subject matter deserves.

It's fair to assume that most viewers likely to see the film, whose title is the very definition of truth in advertising, already own the knowledge being sold.

A smart, quietly moving film.

It's a guy's film that doesn't just revel in testosterone, though -- it has a more purposeful agenda.

Writer-director Todd Haynes (Safe, Poison) still makes movies like a first-time filmmaker afraid he won't get another chance; he crams every idea, every image ever dreamed, onscreen.

Where the young writer-director impresses is in the unforced sketching of era details (gas lines, the tacky energy of roller-skating rinks), in the sharp psychological insight into his lead characters, and in the performances he pulls from his actors.

While all the pieces don't quite add up in the end, as memory, fantasy and delusion collide, the film succeeds again and again at pulling you to the edge of your seat and keeping you there.

By the time Leila's brow furrows in concern for the father, the film has absolutely earned its tug at your heart.

What Venus and Serena does extraordinarily well is capture the work ethic and undersung smarts of the sisters while taking viewers deep into their enviably close relationship.

By turns amusing, touching and horrifying, A Room For Romeo Brass is a film that defies expectation at every turn.

What makes The Cell worth viewing at all is the carefully sculpted imagery.

Leaves you reeling from the force of the humanity it captures and -- in its own gut-wrenching way -- honors.

Buff gels into a surprisingly moving look at the machinations of the heart.

Director Darnell Martin (I Like it Like That) races through the script's bullet points with a brisk superficiality that leaves crucial plot points underdeveloped and unresolved, and refuses to engage the dark side of Leonard Chess’ paternalism.

As exasperating as it is insightful. The film ultimately falters, though, because it's so resolutely old-fashioned.