Jami Bernard

The information here isn't necessarily new, but it is packaged in an acid-tongued way along with powerhouse visuals that drive home the filmmaker's nakedly political views.

The darkest, most thrilling entry yet in the movie franchise.

It's like a walking tour inside the head of a deeply troubled, deeply talented young man, where most of the systems have already shut down.

This is a sophisticated and unsettling documentary marred only by a voice-over taken from the writings of Jamaica Kincaid.

The crime isn't that the movie's message is amoral, but that it goes totally unexamined, as if the recess bell rang too early.

Delightful and moving - although fanciful.

The movie pulls off the trick of blurring the distinctions between romantic and platonic attractions across the generations.

It won't cure the ills of the world, but it doesn't need to. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie is adorable in its own spongy way.

While it's not quite as satisfying as Chabrol's underappreciated "Merci pour le chocolat" (2000), it's still nasty fun at the expense of the upper middle class.

As documentaries go, Watermarks is nothing special. But the women who inhabit it are sensational.

There are so many balls in the air in the cheerfully violent Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, you'll want to wear a helmet for fear they'll all come crashing down.

Sometimes veers off into preciosity. But it offers something rare in the bond between Andrew and Sam.

A perversely enjoyable entry in that new genre, the biopic of the tawdry TV personality.

A darkly brilliant sci-fi movie about emotions so deep, the story could be taking place within the chambers of the heart instead of an arid space station. At the same time, it is a coldly theoretical piece that could leave viewers unengaged.

Grueling and bleak, but not unintelligent...although it's hardly groundbreaking just because everyone's face gets pulpy.

It's a triumph of the human spirit that so many people in deadly jobs are able, nevertheless, to marry and have a few happy moments despite lives of hellish labor. Glawogger's intrepid camera finds both the shame and the grace in it.

Rock School celebrates music, family, hard work and, yes, Paul Green. Best of all, it shows the flexibility of children to learn and adapt -- even when their teacher is nuts.

Sharp, erotic performances are the mainstay of Olivier Assayas' unnerving Demonlover, a visually stylish movie that equates and fuses high-stakes corporate negotiations with the video-game mentality.

An amusing and unusually compassionate look at today's corporate culture.

Aside from conspiracy theories, Kasparov's undoing inspires a fascinating discourse on genius, competition, humanity and the ghost in the machine.

Viard plays one of the most intriguing female characters in recent film from either side of the Atlantic.

Blood, grotesquerie and humor mix equally in the first two, but the full combo makes a savory witches' brew for Asian-cinema cultists (or Halloween lovers in need of a gore fix).

It's hard to imagine anyone other than Keaton pulling this off.

Nearly scrapes the bottom of the cracker barrel in search of suspense, now that the humans accept the polite mouse as one of their own.

This movie is for select tastes. It's not the fusillade of porn that wears you down, but the melancholy of watching an unremarkable man glide down the tubes as if on a water slide.

The weak story and bland hero are no match for the increasingly exciting visuals, while the score by Steve Jablonsky should be on exhibit in the Hall of Lead.

Concludes in a shower of ashes, which is fitting because this movie is a billowing bonfire of ugly human behavior. Rarely have there been so many characters in need of timeouts, cold showers or house arrests.

A brilliant example of the genre -- with romantic subplots to boot.