Janice Page

It winds up being predictably charmless and forgettable, even as a travelogue or iPod download.

Writer-director Im Sang Soo's coolly stylized political satire doesn't provide a lot of answers, unfortunately, but it does show how the future of a nation might turn on a few drunken insults thrown around at a high-level dinner party.

With more character development this might have been an eerie thriller; with better payoffs, it could have been a thinking man's monster movie.

Ultimately, this film is only scary if you're afraid of artfully self-conscious, grainy cinematography.

None of these characters provides more than a smattering of laughs, but Def is the one guy we might like to see more of, if only because his role is small and better executed than it deserves.

The real problem with The Astronaut Farmer is that it has no spark.

Keep your big-budget horror movie expectations locked away in a separate crawl space, because this grainy feature debut from writer-director Ti West demands that you buy into the silliness, and the cheese.

For a certain kind of moviegoer, Saints and Soldiers provides above-average nostalgia. Others, more hardened, might call it child's play.

May not be as dramatic as Roman Polanski's ''The Pianist,'' but its compassionate spirit soars every bit as high.

Tamblyn's surprisingly measured performance commands attention.

Would have benefited from putting a wider lens on the man and his detractors.

Redmon's film is a welcome reminder that everything comes from somewhere and responsible people should at least pause to examine the label. For one thing, that's how bigger and better documentaries get made.

Choppy, cheesy historical war epic really has only a couple of things going for it, and its biggest asset remains the heroic popular legend that inspired its making.

The film's unhurried pace is actually one of its strengths. Entirely appropriately, the tale unfolds like a lazy summer afternoon and concludes with the crisp clarity of a fall dawn. That's not just a farm movie, that's life.

As rich and literary a work as you might expect.

Lively and beautiful filmmaking. It may leave you scratching your head, but it shouldn't leave you cold.

Comes up short when things get serious, resorting to cliches and a whole lot of hooey about "moral fiber."

Even when its wires are showing, the movie's soul is always evident.

Coming and going through the wall's checkpoints is a tiresome and undignified process that makes US airport security look like a cocktail reception.

Fails to drum up much excitement.

Roughly translated, Touchez pas au Grisbi means ''don't touch the loot.'' But in literal terms, this film version of Albert Simonin's blockbuster really couldn't care less who ends up with the cash.

The film means to provoke a closer look at the faces of good and evil. It questions whether we really live in a world that can be divided neatly into black hats and white hats.

Ultimately, Jordan's vision is so murky that Ned Kelly remains as foreign to us as wombat stew.

Unabashed Fidel worship.

You buy "fair - trade" coffee; you assume you're being socially responsible. But now, along comes Black Gold to tell you that all fair-trade coffee is not created equal, and that Ethiopia, the "birthplace of coffee" and home of some of the world's best beans, may be getting the least fair shake of all.

As funny as it is sharp.

What's unique about this documentary is that it grips history with both hands, shakes it, examines it, and exits with the entire wrinkled contents bravely in tow.

When the big twist is revealed at the end of The Life Before Her Eyes, you might think the only way to appreciate its cleverness is to see the film again. I did that. It didn't help.

This is just humble, heartwarming storytelling with good acting and lush visuals.

An invitation to see something a little less pretty, and potentially more enduring.

Doesn't deliver on a lot of fronts. But then again it gives us full-on Faithfull, who manages to bare herself completely without ever actually getting undressed.

Hits far more marks than it misses. And no work has brought viewers deeper inside the psychology of war. [06 Apr 2007, p.D10]

Come on. You want to know if it's funny. And the answer is: kind of.

Maybe the redemptions offered are simplistic in the context of this place, but they make for a dramatic (if heavily foreshadowed) conclusion.

Serves up enough action and passion to stay afloat, but at the end of the day it's just not the perfect ride those earlier films were.

For all the controversy surrounding Buffalo Soldiers, you'd think the film would at least be interesting.

A movie that entertains and enlightens without being preachy - in fact, most of its beliefs are strenuously ambiguous; that’s a key part of the joke.

If there's one image that sums up the filmmaking style of Takashi Miike, it's the close-up of a bubbling hot pot on the family dinner table.

It’s cute and clever to a point -- especially if you don’t know much about the film’s premise going in -- but then the cleverness runs on like the one-note punch line of an interminable “Saturday Night Live’’ sketch, sponsored by Audi.

If ''Sean" was about conviction and revolution, Following Sean is about ambivalence and resignation. In either case it's pretty easy for a funny-provocative kid to stand out.

The best thing about Saint John of Las Vegas is that it makes you really appreciate guys like David Lynch and Joel and Ethan Coen.

It's not that What a Girl Wants is dreadful; it's merely slapdash, wildly inconsistent in tone and style, and mind-numbingly predictable in character and plot.

One of the most compelling films the Holocaust has yet produced.

To those filmgoers who wouldn't know Rat Fink from Barton Fink, this reviewer's advice is: Pass. The latest counterculture tribute by Mann, director of 1988's "Comic Book Confidential" and 1999's "Grass," is as proudly silly as it is informative, and it can't help that a critical amount of brand coolness gets lost in the translation.

These children are indeed the faces of war. It's just harder to recognize them because they're the ones someone cared enough to save.

Intimidated by the words "avant-garde film"? Then hand yourself over, without reservation, to the skills of documentarian Martina Kudlacek and her astonishingly accessible primer, In the Mirror of Maya Deren.

No sophisticated dance, but it moves about with an open heart. And hey, it's at least as funny as that Greek thing.

While obviously not a unique or uniquely satisfying experience, the film still does the job in a pinch, and looks cool doing it.

It's fair to say that a meaner documentary might have packed more punch. But it's hard to imagine Michael Moore turning out anything that feels as pleasantly nourishing.