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.

The film isn't very good. The Million Dollar Hotel is an uneasy melding of Hollywood shtick and art-house sensibilities.

The tedium of the situation is felt by the audience, but too often in the wrong way: We don't empathize so much as suffer through the movie.

It's almost foolish to review Hannah Montana: The Movie as anything other than the latest cog in a cultural phenomenon/mass-marketing juggernaut. The film itself certainly doesn't aspire to anything more.

Mr. 3000, which starts out promisingly, squanders Mac's natural gift of salty gruffness by shoehorning him into a dull, heartwarming cinematic lesson on humility and the joys of teamwork.

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

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.

Show Me Love has the pulse of teen life down-pat, shaming its many sleek and glossy American counterparts at every turn.

It's a small film whose power is derived from its stripped-down scale.

It's a wit-free homage to Hitchcock and M. Night Shyamalan that, for all its slick presentation, never comes close to hitting the mark of its forebears.

A heartfelt documentary.

Flawed at its very core.

A sleeper that's well worth hunting down. Its rewards sneak up on you, but then linger long afterwards.

Deceptively rambling, shrewdly ragtag documentary.

Manipulative, feel-good drivel wrapped around a cloying performance by Kevin Spacey.

This look at the assorted struggles of modern hetero coupledom gives off a distinctly moldy aroma.

Stylish, beautifully shot film.

Disappointingly dumb.

It’s amusing, but it also eventually becomes tedious, like a comedy sketch that milks a good joke just a little too long.

A taut mess -- beautiful, gory, tedious and puzzling.

The film's power lies in the fact that the façade is crumbling on the actress even as she clings to it. That this is not a pathetic sight is due to the grit that we glimpse through the cracks. It's Barbie, becoming human.

Doesn't live up to its genre-crossing, parodic ambitions.

The jokes fly so furiously that it'd be impossible for a single weak performance (Graham) to unravel this very funny film.

Neshat employs dialogue that is often didactic, but that weakness is forgiven in the face of stellar acting from the ensemble and gorgeously composed and shot images.

There's a shrewd satiric method to LaBute's madness, and a payoff in comedic gold.

The story of what happens when everything dies but love. It's a simple story, artfully told.

Though the psychological layering and thematic ambition of the screenplay do not quite result in the depth intended, Hideaway's unsentimental performances will hook you.

Though the film is generally weak, treading very familiar ground, those dashes of insight and humor - along with Griffiths' performance - pull you into the film.

Like "Run Lola Run," Drift circles back on itself to present a trio of possible outcomes, but it's R.T. Lee's sterling performance that rivets.

Hopefully, the next time around, Chadha's imagination will be in the service of not just excellent casting and directing, but a script to match those other cinematic components.

An appallingly crude film, with dialogue lifted off bumper stickers, characters stitched together from shorthand clichés (the brassy black drag queen; the fiery little Latin number) and a plot that's on cruise control from the opening credits.

Chabria lacks the effervescent touch, in both his clichéd, logic-challenged writing and his leaden direction, to make you care. Though the film is crammed with music -- the soundtrack is stellar -- the production numbers fall completely flat, leaving you to pine for the over-caffeinated touch of Baz Luhrmann.

The opening moments of -- are some of the funniest --the rest of the movie beats you over the head with jokes, and though funny in parts, it's never this smart again.

But for all its bleakness, Nightmare is a film that demands to be seen. In unflinching terms, it captures the hellish existence endured by the many so that the few may wallow in privilege.

Famed animator Bill Plympton's legendarily skewed aesthetic and worldview are in top form here, bringing life to a script that plays like "Carrie" on a wicked acid trip.

Held together by strong writing, insightful direction, and a stunning turn by newcomer Rodriguez, who is not only a gorgeous young woman but a fiercely charismatic screen presence.

Lazily directed by Charles Stone III (the man behind Budweiser's "Whassup?!" campaign) from a leaden script by Matthew Cirulnick and novelist Thulani Davis.

Hamlet, like its title character, is a mopey, dopey thing that you just want to scream at: Do something!

Stays with you, though, not because of its political content, but because of the unexpected emotional punch that's thrown near the end.

McTeer's performance -- one of the best you'll see this year -- makes you realize anew how rare it is to see a female character this complex in American film.

Results in moments of real beauty that make you grateful Chappelle chose an aesthete for directing chores. And yet, in terms of content, the film doesn't quite reach the bar set by its historic predecessor (Wattstax).

It's a testimony to Tammy Faye's own integrity and enormous charisma that the film holds our attention as tightly as it does, and doesn't become an insufferable exercise in weak filmmaking.

Hardwick doesn't have the chops yet to give the movie the caffeinated zip that it needs to really fly. There are too many dull, flat stretches…(however) the soundtrack kicks ass.

Blanchett projects a wounded dignity that anchors her character even when the film slips into silly hokum; she's never less than fantastic, and as such manages to keep the film on course.

A stunningly lethargic, uninvolving piece of crap.

An especially compassionate look at human frailty that also never loses sight of the inherent ridiculousness of "the human condition." Jesus' Son is one of this summer's best movies.

Composed of artfully used split-screen, lots of hand-held camera, and expertly honed dialogue, the film floats on currents of sadness and understated humor. It also makes Loic's existential ache almost palpable.

The film soars when the camera is trained on its young subjects in action.

Derivative, cliché-ridden and old hat.

A feel-good, heartwarming film that all but drowns in saccharine.

Heartfelt but insipid drama, the naiveté quickly becomes exasperating.

In many respects a stock item, filled with talking heads, archival film and photographs and vintage concert footage, but what gives the film newfound ache is the copious amount of time it spends on the streets with ordinary citizens (including fledgling young musicians) and the incidentals it captures.

Writer-director Kirk Jones has the movie roll over, fetch and chase its own tail in order to make you love it.

The no-frills documentary also makes it clear that Newcombe is the real deal -- both supremely gifted and organically nuts.

Reiner, in very broad strokes, works in issues of poverty, thwarted dreams and family obligation, and almost pulls it off, thanks to Anthony Edwards, Aidan Quinn, Rebecca De Mornay, Penelope Ann Miller and John Mahoney, who impart humor and humanity to thinly sketched characters.

The film, executive-produced by Guillermo del Toro, hinges on a first-rate performance by Basinger, who imbues Della with a fire that makes the film's basic thesis -- both the domestic sphere and the larger world are dangerous places for women -- seem something more than boilerplate.

For those seeking even a little adventurousness in their filmgoing experiences, the movie will wear thin very quickly.

Has its own sense of logic and integrity that demand a kind of begrudged respect.

Parker and Stone have created a movie that will doubtlessly infuriate and offend -- and amuse to no end.

Though the film covers familiar queer-cinema ground, Latter Days' finely observed truths about the painful costs of being yourself make even the contrivance of its happy ending forgivable.

Too long by about 20 minutes, the film drags a bit, but the acting--fine throughout--carries the whole thing.

What makes High Art remarkable is Cholodenko's refusal to put her characters or story through a filter, her unblinking willingness to dive right in.

Bessed with a gleamingly polished, very funny script.

A provocative, timely script full of gasp-inducing lines and scenes.

But Walking, which is well-acted and fast-moving, takes a tumble from which it never fully recovers once Josh's diary is found, and the rest of the film is spent tending to spilled secrets and their collateral damage.

Offers no perverse philosophical conundrums and no eye-popping visuals. It's a dull, lifeless bore.

The humor is, at best, thudding. At its worst, it's breathtakingly stupid and offensive.

The film taps the same spiritual thirst and anxiety that has made cultural phenomena of "The Da Vinci Code" and the "Left Behind" series. And it’s just as cheesy.

While the film is slight, predictable, and familiar, it's great popcorn fare.

While the acting is top-notch, the real star of the film is the script.

Slow and depressing, but ultimately haunting film.

If it registers at all, it'll likely be more because of the fuckability of Morris Chestnut -- a star waiting for a worthy film -- than any insights or memorable moments from the movie itself.

Mildly amusing, both charming and diverting, it plays like a La La Land home movie.

Infuriating on almost every conceivable level.

What's meant to be a colorblind story, plays up age-old stereotypes.

The best parts of the movie occur during the outtakes, which are genuinely funny. The movie proper is insufferable.

A diabolically enjoyable documentary on unearned self-esteem.

The filmmakers deftly capture the boys' depression and triumphs, but something of the American character -- the generosity and the arrogance -- as well.

It’s a rousing celebration.

Filled with great archival footage from throughout Hancock's five-decade career, and with elder-statesman words of wisdom from the man himself, Possibilities celebrates an impulse that's too rare in modern music: the love behind the labor of creation.

15 Minutes is simply a bad movie.

A very odd cinematic creature.

It's a mildly enjoyable romp.

Hamstrung by a script that is too often smug, obvious and self-important.

Despite Menkin's clear belief that he's crafted a rousing true-life drama, his film plays like a cliché-ridden, painfully self-conscious Hollywood melodrama about a noble person with disabilities.

Reyes' fast-paced tale soars on the pedigree of its cast, all of whom are clearly having a ball -- Both poignant and wickedly amusing, Empire sets high standards for a subgenre that's rarely had any.

You root for the kids, who are utterly captivating, but Green is another story. His shtick -- a combo of insufferable stage-parent and unbearable rock geek -- is exhausting.

Drags on far too long.

Rung with numb inarticulateness.

An unassuming little film that packs a huge emotional and artistic punch.

Stranded in superficiality, the film is a lifestyle commercial.

The film staggers under its own didacticism. Too often we're told of men who were professionals back home and are here reduced to driving cabs, waiting tables or vending ice cream.

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.

It doesn't help that the level of acting in the film brings nothing but accidental humor to the mix.

It is -- in mood, execution, and shameless sentimentality -- a Bette Midler movie with an Irish accent.

More than once, while watching the film, I thought: The camera should really just turn away from those grating teen brats and follow the mom (Holly Hunter).

What the film suffers from most, though, are its own low aspirations: stroking the libidos and funny bones of brain-dead 12-year-old boys immersed in the shallow end of hip-hop.

A well-chewed gumbo of every lawyer flick you’ve ever seen.

Slick, polished to perfection, derivative and stripped of any of the real quirks or idiosyncrasies that make a romantic comedy fly.

In this truly retro horror flick, the heroes and heroines don't just quip over the action (though they do get off some funny lines); they're knee-deep in it, and scared sh------.

The film won't likely change any minds, but there's a taut political essay beneath the blatant campaigning.

By the time the movie ends, having traversed numerous plot twists and character revelations, the viewer is emotionally drained in a bittersweet sort of way.

What director Aviva Kempner has done is shine a light into the past and recover a classic American hero, one with all the integrity, decency and largeness of spirit that we have been taught makes up the American character.

The Cave of the Yellow Dog has an abundance of gentle humor, much of it provided by an adorably scruffy toddler, but there's also impressive strength and wisdom in the family's uncomplaining, shoulder-to-the-wheel approach to the world.

Lost its chance to be anything but an endurance test for the viewer.

It's a dud. To be fair, the source material (to which the film is unfortunately faithful) is itself a wan assemblage of creaky one-liners, overly familiar gay ghetto types and sitcom-inspired shenanigans.

There's really only one reason to see Party Monster, and that's Seth Green's scene-stealing performance as former (and somewhat reluctant) New York club kid James St. James, the boy who would be queen.

The film is very theatrical and admittedly "staged," but always purposefully.

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

The film needs strong characters and snappy dialogue to carry it through. It has neither.

Beautifully shot, full of lush, vibrant colors and expertly wrought sets...a club-kid's frothy date flick.

Slight but enjoyable documentary.

What's fresh for these people is, frankly, old news for anyone who has seen even one or two documentaries on similar subject matter.

It's fine acting of - and chemistry - between Paxton, Margulies and Mark Wahlberg that gives this film (written by Jim McGlynn, directed by Jack Green) its kick.

No one ever turns into a real character, and none of the scenes have either dramatic or comedic resonance.

Victor Vargas has the look and feel of a neo-realist masterpiece, yet captures New York with a burnished authenticity not seen since the glory days of ’70s American cinema.

An often gorgeous, dizzying assault of ideas and visual flourishes...it's just not very good.

As Bomb snakes its way toward tragedy, it grates rather than entices. The actors come off more as poseurs than as characters, and the film's political and cultural insights are superficial and old hat.

None of Tracker's near-fatal missteps in execution or conception, however, prevents this superbly acted film, in the end, from becoming an engrossing study of race and history in Australia, or making the powerful indictment it intends to make.

MTV, comic books and gangster flicks are all in Lola's cinematic family tree; it's a heady, breathless ride.

Writer/director David Mamet, who's built a career in both theater and film by being a hyper-manly sort of writer, has crafted a film that is laugh out loud funny and dinner-conversation smart.

Pandering and tired, Down to Earth lurches from one dead gag to the other, in search of both comedic rhythm and a dramatic pulse. It finds neither.

One of the best films of the year. Queer in every sense of the word, it's poignant, laugh-out-loud funny and thoroughly provocative.

As the characters mix and mingle, pouring out their tales of woe online and fumbling real-life connections, Weintrob leaves no cliché unturned in getting to root causes of behavior.

A determinedly old-fashioned boxing/coming-of-age film, only perfunctorily hitting its marks.

Poignant, funny, and proof of Basquiat's magic.

It's Tobey Maguire, doing fine, subtle work, who holds it all together -- he puts a human touch to what is otherwise expertly wrought hokum.

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

A gorgeous dreamscape of a movie...one of the most exhilarating experiences of pure cinema that will be offered this year.

This hypersleek film is surprisingly lax for its first half... The ending is dumb.

A constant video rental for a community that aches to see itself as banal and generic.

In keeping with the film’s giddy superficiality, what’s revealed is a series of sexy poses passed off as character depth. All the backstabbing, shifting alliances and dark motives are held together by adolescent, innuendo-laden dialogue and thick Sapphic overtones.

Though Neshoba is standard-issue in terms of craftsmanship, the tools used to tell the tale (newsreels, family photos, crime scene and autopsy photos) are masterfully employed.

Leigh and his solid cast make sure that inside jokes translate to a broad audience, and that their rendering of the back-stage drama is smart, engrossing and often very funny.

A little too familiar to be wholly satisfying. What makes it worthwhile is Julia Jay Pierrepont III's direction.

Well-meaning but mediocre.

It has to be noted that the use of music in this film is the worse in recent memory: maudlin, syrupy, and overwrought.

The actors do what they can with direction, from Gil Cates Jr., that calls for yelling, flailing and rapid-fire delivery of stale bons mots, but none of the film is as funny or clever as Cates and screenwriters Ron Marasco and Michael Goorjian (adapting Edgar Allan Poe's short story) seem to think.

The film gets an "A" for effort, but doesn't have the courage to really get as bloody, messy and dirty as its subject matter inherently is.

A highly recommended treat.

Utterly captivating.

Pandering, stiffly acted and brimming with awkward (if progressive) political posturing, Rock's films attempt to filter old Hollywood formula through a hip-hop sensibility.

But if you go in knowing this, the payoff is considerable - the film delivers on its feel-good promise.

One of the funniest, shrewdest, smartest movies in recent memory.

The Animal is tailor-made for last-resort Friday-night rentals.

The film is beautifully shot and filled with fine performances.

The execution is actually worse than the premise. Nonstop racial, sexual and cultural stereotypes parade across the screen with little wit or real humor to guide them.

It's little more than a loose assemblage of Hollywood action movie formulas: "Dirty Harry" and assorted cop/buddy flicks are the clear models for the movie.

Intelligent, moving film.

Intentionally blurs fiction and reality.

Dazzles with rare performance footage.

The movie starts to drag near the end and feels longer than its 90 minutes - but that's cool. It's a love letter to the faithful in the first place.

Smith has crammed the film with enough genuinely funny moments and insightful bits to make it well worth seeing.

Although the film disappoints in the final stretch (both the villain and his motive turn out to be very lame), it confidently thrills for most of its nearly two-hour length.

Horribly slapdash affair.

Quite unintentionally, director Luis Llosa and screenwriters Hans Bauer, Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. have crafted a howler; Anaconda, meant to be a nail-biting thriller, is a laugh-out-loud comedy.

Albaladejo turns his film into a banal, mildly entertaining trifle of affirmation, eliciting a shrug more than any real emotion.

Buried beneath Silent Hill’s hyper-stylized stupidity (the film looks like a collaboration between David Fincher, Trent Reznor and music video director Mark Romanek) is the hollow effort to bottle something of the zeitgeist unease surrounding religious fundamentalism.

Though sprung from the mind of a woman, the film plays like a hetero male fantasy of tortured love.

A dark, biting comedy-- funny, smart and full of unpredictable twist and turns.

Too slow-moving and too understated in much of its humor.

The audience for this film would be those people who like their cinematic fare pre-digested and painfully familiar.

It's hollow, forced and false.

Lukewarm melodrama disappoints.

Less would have been more, and this film is sabotaged by its maker's unchecked pretension.

Exchanges overheard in bars, crisp dialogue between characters and a wistful tone underscore both modern isolation and the age-old need for connection.

A smart, seamless commentary on race, class and the expectations (or lack of) that are often attached to them. Kennedy is helped greatly by deep currents of heart and humor that pull you into the unfolding tale, and to the edge of your seat as the countdown to opening night begins.

A melancholy valentine to broken hearts and lost innocence.

One of the most haunting, viciously honest coming-of-age films in recent memory.

Animation fans, no matter their stylistic preference (computer-generated, claymation, old-school hand-drawn), will find much to sate their appetites in this collection of award-winning and critically acclaimed work. There’s not a dud in the bunch.

Far from the worst film this summer, but it also doesn't rate strong enough to be a future video rental.

For a film purporting to tell it like it is for black gay men, race is the most poorly handled aspect in Punk's equation; it's almost as if it had no relevance. That might have flown if its most telling moment didn't suggest otherwise.

In the end, Butterfly is an infuriating film because it's so very contrived, so annoyingly phony.

In the end, solid acting, stellar special-effects, and well-wrought tension make the film a worthy date flick or matinee outing.

It's a very funny film, one of the most enjoyable of the summer.

That tragedy looms heavily in Behind the Sun only makes its life-affirming moments -- resonate more deeply and powerfully in a film that is one of the year's best.

A movie that’s full of sound, fury and unintentional camp -- and is still bafflingly inert.

Preposterous and tedious, Sonny is spiked with unintentional laughter that, unfortunately, occurs too infrequently to make the film even a guilty pleasure.

The corniness and predictability feel, if not quite fresh, then not so groaningly stale.

Simultaneously hilarious and deeply informative thanks to the vibrant personalities at its center.

Merkin tries too hard for stylistic flourishes (as the hyper set-designed, claustrophobically seedy hotel underscores) and winds up almost sinking the noir-ish tale he’s telling.

The script is painfully underbaked, and director Bille Woodruff (Honey) continues to raise a question: How can someone from a music-video background have absolutely no sense of rhythm, timing or pacing?

There are also strong flickers here of a film that might have been.

The obvious, cliché-ridden visual style of this probe into the life, work and legacy of Carlos Castaneda ends up working very much against its subject.

A good, though unremarkable, film.

Fails because it takes itself both too seriously and not seriously enough.

Dark, wickedly funny tale.

Nunez is a master at rendering emotionally complex, ordinary folk into the kind of unassuming heroes that don't much appear in American films anymore.

Tough and relentless, dazzlingly researched and crafted. At its core is compassion for those who are angry, violent and uneducated.

This schizophrenic mess zigzags all over the place, trying to figure out whether it's a dysfunctional-family drama, a slapstick comedy or an angst-ridden coming-of-age movie.

Though a little long, the film takes us right inside both the creative impulse and the margins of American life. Its triumph is to show those two things as being deeply, wonderfully connected.

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.

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

It's Walken who's most impressive.

Like a lot of recent queer-themed cinema that aspires to be politically charged, Maple Palm takes a hot-button issue (here, it's homophobic U.S. immigration policies) and reduces it to dry sloganeering and shameless emotional manipulation of the audience.

It limps, not gallops, across the screen for what seems an interminable stretch of time and leaves the viewer with precious little to show for the experience.

The film offers an impressive melding of quietly radical images and ideas with, yes, an old-fashioned, crowd-pleasing holiday tearjerker.

Tragic, funny and deadpan dark, it's easily one of the best films of the year...It's the brutally unsentimental, intelligent, unflinching heart at the film's core that makes it a marvel.

Where "American Beauty" was smug and obvious in its dissection of suburban life, Judy Berlin is hilarious, heartbreaking and -- in its graciousness -- unlike any American film we've seen in a long time.

Dorian Blues is full of similarly rigged moments, but there are genuine chuckles, and a palpably heartfelt final scene between Dorian and his mom ends the tale on a powerful note.

There's no real story and that would be fine, if Rogers and screenwriter Adam Herz could keep from pretending otherwise.

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

It's potentially strong material, but the film is so determined not to demonize the conservatives that it winds up being an inadvertent profile in the banality of bigotry.

To watch Sevigny's Lana slowly thaw to Brandon is to see the transformative, heartbreaking power of romance in a way that Hollywood is rarely able to capture anymore.

Writer-director Niki Caro, who adapted the screenplay from the novel, has crafted a script replete with both crowd-pleasing touches and subtle but powerful insights into all the characters.

Morris seduces us into stepping into Leuchter's world of delusion and ego.

Singleton has neither the emotional nor intellectual depth to do justice to his thesis. He is too in awe of the stereotypical hood lifestyles and macho posturings that he's trying to critique.

It's a mean-spirited exercise in stilted outrageousness.

King Leopold's Ghost is an often infuriating (and excruciating) film to watch, but one that gets to the root of the despair that now plagues so much of the African continent.

Quickly reveals itself to be a hyper-stylized flick (lots of odd angles and studied production design in the service of flashbacks and dream sequences), but the glossy sum effect is that of a film student straining for a weightiness he can't pull off.

Obvious in its observations, predictable in its conclusions, and a little dull in the telling.

The tragic ending they tack on to the film reinforces the same fear-mongering notion of cause and effect that gives the Church its power to abuse and exploit, and the film winds up muffling its own powerful protest.

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.

Although character arcs are a little too abruptly truncated as the story moves, Natali never fumbles the big picture.

The Painting is a sleekly crafted quilt of moldy racial insight and feel-good kumbaya-isms set against the backdrop of the civil rights era. The acting is competent, TV-movie-of-the-week quality (network, not cable), while every single character is a type you've seen a million times before.

Those who hang in for the long haul are rewarded with a sexy, moving love story.

The road to moviegoing hell is paved with well-intentioned queer cinema, and Hate Crime is a red stone on that path.

The film's energy is primarily due to the rich storytelling skills of the musicians, who trot out anecdotes and memories filled with humor and wry philosophizing.

[Ritchie] cranks up the laughs and tension with equal aplomb, throwing wrenches in the plot so that the audience has no idea what to expect next -- and that's part of the film's thrill.

It's smart, funny and insightful and it's quite easy to see what attracted the stars to it.

Like the melancholy remininces of an old relative who lived through an exciting, even harrowing time, but no longer possesses the mental faculties to really flesh out the tale they're spinning.

In a film that quickly reveals itself to be a love letter to Wu, some of the best moments have nothing to do with that legendary hip-hop collective: Sage Francis taunting the unruly, increasingly tense crowd with his cerebral, political performance-art hip-hop; Redman playfully admonishing his young son to be good and then giving the boy a kiss when the paternal command wounds.

Moodysson's movie, one part mash note and three parts scathing piss-taker, is hugely compassionate toward the well-meaning fools in his tale, but he doesn't suffer their nonsense gladly; his film is, in large part, about grown-ups needing to grow up.

A Man Apart isn't awful, but it is almost reflexively rote, evoking countless other outlaw-cop films that are smarter, tighter and more fun.

More predictable than its makers seem aware, its emotional hooks much too dull to pull us in.

The drama is unintentionally humorous, the humor incredibly labored and the acting rarely better than one might find in a Chi Chi LaRue XXX production.

Director Christopher J. Scott hits all the technical marks with his look at the history and current status of snowboarding, yet he doesn’t find a strong enough hook to pull in any except the already converted.

Just about the only good thing you can say about Spike Lee's pointless, didactic The 25th Hour is that it's filled with strong performances, albeit of stock characters.

Remains short on charm, purpose or laughs.

It's a pleasant surprise to note how good Scream 3 really is.

The film only rarely harnesses the power of the anachronistic, funk-driven, beat-heavy rap music that swells its soundtrack. Even the intricately choreographed crowd dance scenes, filled with frenzied movement, are more often stillborn than stimulating.