Jeannette Catsoulis

Idolized in some quarters and reviled in others, Mr. Korine, now 37, may be a bit long in the tooth for the enfant terrible act.

The Spanish writer and director Nacho Vigalondo has audacity to spare. Constructing a looping, economical plot and directing like a fire marshal in a flaming building, he conjures urgency and disorientation from the thinnest of air.

The writer and director, Joby Harold, claims to have been inspired to write the film while suffering from a particularly painful kidney stone. Watching it may be for some a comparable experience.

Softened by some sweet, low-key moments between Vince and a fellow acting student (a very good Emily Mortimer) and by Mr. Garcia’s embodiment of disappointed middle age.

Hounddog is never more than a sluggish dawdle from shack to swimmin' hole and back again.

The movie's good intentions are consistently undermined by its simplistic notion of redemption, and its inspirational thrust is diluted by an epilogue that suggests the program still has a ways to go in the life-altering department.

Inert yet strangely compelling film.

Sluggish, stylized and frequently washed in a bilious green tint, The Missing Person is yet oddly irresistible.

On one level, a stereotypical mash of Greek cruelty, queer poetry slams and rabid activist rhetoric. But beneath the tired crudeness and college-romp clichés, the movie is gently perceptive about the malleable nature of sexuality and the barriers we construct to hide our confusion.

With a peephole-riddled set and a flashback-heavy screenplay, Black Christmas smothers terror beneath a blanket of unnecessary information, revealing too much and teasing too little.

Custom designed for its smirking star (who is also an executive producer), this tasteless train wreck asks only that she preen and prance on cue.

A minimalist setup delivers maximum fright in Frozen, a nifty little chiller that balances its cold terrain with an unexpectedly warm heart.

A limp urban comedy not nearly as whimsical as its title.

Strongly acted and beautifully photographed (by Virgil Mirano), Spoken Word is a quietly resonant family drama about the tug of old habits and the difficulties of escaping the past.

In images veering from literal to cryptic to surreal, the movie presents a society where the weak are exploited and the vulnerable unprotected.

A stunningly witless revival of the infamous British film series about a girls’ boarding school.

This is screenwriting by numbers. Unlike, say, Ken Loach’s marvelous “Bread and Roses,” Under the Same Moon is too busy sanctifying its protagonists and prodding our tear ducts to say anything remotely novel about immigration policies or their helpless victims.

His well-rehearsed rhetoric is shockingly persuasive, and since the majority of his premises are verifiable, any weakness in his argument lies in inferences so terrifying that reasonable listeners may find themselves taking his advice and stocking up on organic seeds. (Those with no access to land can, postapocalypse, use them as currency.)

A pensive valentine to literacy programs and childhood idealism left in the ashes of broken families and an economically bifurcated society.

Sweet, generous and tonally sure, Patrik, Age 1.5 has a nostalgic feel, and not just because of a soundtrack skewed toward last-millennium tunes and a hyperreal suburban setting lifted straight from "Pleasantville."

Ten years in the making, Hats Off is a documentary tribute to the 93-year-old actress Mimi Weddell, one of those people for whom the word “individual” seems especially apt.

Despite excellent stunt work and a too-brief appearance by Orlando Jones as an unflappable cop, the movie -- unlike Mr. Douglas’s hairdo -- never rises above mediocrity.

Portrayed entirely without sentiment, everyone here is equally abject, from the crushed victim of a human stampede to the starving baby playing in its own feces. The mood of scrambling desperation can be exhausting, but the filmmaking is never less than exhilarating.

Keir Moreano’s muted yet moving record of his father's experience as a volunteer doctor in Vietnam, documents a journey that's substantially more philosophical than medical.

Embracing outraged victimhood the way Angelina Jolie embraces a close-up, Ms. Basinger, doing double duty here as an executive producer, appears oblivious to the script's idiocies.

You may not believe it's possible to bore people to death with a film about risking your life, but The Wildest Dream comes shockingly close.

As tadpoles morph into frogs, and fears are conquered, The Girl delivers a satisfying, sun-dappled fable about the kindness of strangers and the cruelty of peers.

Directed by Hilla Medalia with exactly the right balance of musical theater and personal drama, After the Storm presents a touching affirmation of the healing power of right-brain stimulation.

All the more disappointing, then, when what has been a celebration of last-ditch passion slides abruptly into a cautionary tale. Until that point the movie's refreshingly unbiased tone allows us to make our own moral judgments, teasing us with the possibility that, occasionally, the scarlet woman can escape unbranded. I, for one, was rooting for her.

Offering neither balance nor solutions (a segment on the overuse of medications like Ritalin is especially powerful, but especially in need of counterargument), The War on Kids questions what kind of citizens we are producing.

Remarkable as much for its speculative restraint as for its philosophical reach.

Assembled without frills or fuss, A Man Named Pearl is as much a portrait of a small Southern town as of an unassuming black folk artist.

Anyone looking for some idiosyncratic, visually stimulating entertainment this week could do worse than Where Is Where?, an intriguing narrative experiment by the Finnish artist and filmmaker Eija-Liisa Ahtila.

A slick and absorbing drama.

A warning to parents everywhere about the dangers of indulging irrational behavior, Opal Dream is a sickly sweet tale of deep dysfunction masquerading as family solidarity.

Splinterheads gains traction from an eclectic cast that knows how to work a line.

Educates without lecturing and engages without effort.

An enigmatic and utterly compelling story of incinerated art, unbridled egos and exotic plants.

An effervescent comedy coasting on the charisma of its stars.

Reveling in the vivid Bangkok locations, Geoff Boyle’s photography is crisp and bright, and Dion Lam’s action choreography unusually witty.

Though the film's final, disturbing image forces race to the forefront and belatedly raises wider issues of persecution, its most controversial suggestion is not that Jesus might have been black but that he might have been a really terrible actor.

Well-intentioned but philosophically timid, For My Father wants to meditate on the moral reshuffling that can accompany imminent death. But the director, Dror Zahavi, is ill served by a screenplay (by Ido Dror and Jonatan Dror) too attracted to coincidence and too repelled by the existential brink.

Remarkable patchwork of unremarkable lives.

If you can resist the urge to run for the exit, you may leave the theater feeling a lot more hopeful than when you went in.

Like a feature-length version of the television sitcom “My Name Is Earl,” only Canadian -- and not funny.

A limp sci-fi comedy with fewer laughs than a meeting of Abductees Anonymous.

Unlike Michael Knowles's similarly plotted and vastly superior "Room 314," The Trouble With Romance is visually stagnant and tonally bewildered.

Your enjoyment of Paper Heart will hinge almost entirely on your receptiveness to Ms. Yi and the extreme iteration of social awkwardness she represents.

Vividly impressionistic and delightfully curious.

A devilishly entertaining curveball thrown at unsuspecting family audiences.

Purports to be a documentary about the American public school system. In reality, however, it’s a bludgeoning rant against a single state — New Jersey — which it presents as a closed loop of Mercedes-owning administrators, obstructive teachers’ unions and corrupt school boards.

Stylistically stunning and completely nuts, Ping Pong is nevertheless perceptive about male social hierarchies and the benefits of knowing your place.

A forest of talking heads and pointing fingers, The Empire in Africa is a noble but failed attempt to explicate the tragedy of the 11-year civil war in Sierra Leone.

Say what you like about "America's Next Top Model," any single episode of Tyra Banks's campy confection offers more insight into objectification and disposability than this film in its entirety.

Adam Hootnick’s Unsettled makes the political personal, drawing a scattershot yet intimate picture of a nation divided.

The filmmakers work tirelessly to parallel their undersea world with the larger universe, offering genteel reminders of our mutual dependence.

Pretentious and inane.

Sincere performances elevate an underdeveloped script and awkward filmmaking in The Dry Land, a coming-home drama as inexpressive as its traumatized lead.

Relies less on the novelty of its premise than on the positioning of solid actors in minor roles (including Melissa Leo and Martin Donovan as the tortured parents of a murdered child) and the intelligence of its star.

Requiem is a moving study of a tortured young woman more at peace with medieval ritual than with modern medicine.

Though buoyed by Anthony Marinelli’s moody score and Denis Maloney’s gutsy cinematography, Self-Medicated suffers from severe dramatic droop.

A mawkish drama hobbled by a thoroughly unpleasant and uncharismatic lead performance.

Flaunting elements of "Phantom of the Opera" and "The Island of Lost Souls," the movie, with its haunting, claustrophobic environment, allows the living and the merely lifelike to interact with an eerie beauty.

Radiating a distinctly retro vibe, this throwaway thriller from the German director Christian Alvart tosses a bone to Renée Zellweger, who chews it to a nub as Emily Jenkins, a harried social worker.

An unruly mash-up of terrific anecdotes and terrible teeth, grainy film and garish memories, Who Killed Nancy? cares less about investigating a death than about vindicating an accused killer.

A movie of stark contrasts and zigzagging motives, Beauty in Trouble moves from the golden serenity of a Tuscan villa to the powdery chaos of a Czech garage without sacrificing thematic confidence or nuanced performances.

Muting adult concerns — like the jackboots of fascism and the ubiquity of male violence — with marshmallow clouds and subtly shifting light, Mr. Miyazaki smooshes fantasy and history into a pastel-pretty yarn as irresistible as his feminism.

A Rubik’s Cube of shifting sexual orientation and elaborate sex fantasies, “Sloppy Seconds” gathers all the accouterments of soft pornography -- cheesy music, low-rent acting and attractively framed genitals -- into a plot of stunning imbecility.

Best enjoyed as a sampling of Ms. Zorrilla's combustible energy and still dazzling screen presence.

Soon becomes tiresome, but it’s emblematic of a film that is dancing as fast as it can to entertain.

Form and content fight to the death in Wondrous Oblivion, Paul Morrison's defiantly gauzy tale of racial friction in 1960s England.

Jagged and gentle, shocking and sweet, Life During Wartime finds the King of Cringe more concerned than usual about forgiveness: who deserves it, and who is capable of bestowing it. True to form, though, he's not telling.

A scorching affront to Italians, Iraqis and the intelligence of movie audiences everywhere.

Has a friendly, blue-collar vibe (Cody is an ex-fish-sorter from the Shiverpool, Antarctica) and some sly, low-key humor. Nevertheless, a moratorium on penguins might be called for, despite the inevitable anthropomorphic void.

Luridly earnest and laughably immoral, Illegal Tender is an old genre movie with a new look. Call it Hispanixploitation.

Tom Shepard's quietly observant documentary tracks its stressed-out subjects through an array of personal and scholarly challenges.

Free of blood, bruises and visible trauma, DOA revels in its fakery. And though the film presents more exuberant female flesh than hiring day at Hooters, it's strictly for titillation.

Irena Salina's astonishingly wide-ranging film is less depressing than galvanizing, an informed and heartfelt examination of the tug of war between public health and private interests.

Offered only hints of life away from the barre or of Sy’s relationship with his coolly poised benefactress, viewers will see either a very fortunate young man or a beautiful protégé, dancing as fast as he can to please everyone but himself.

Placidly photographed and lacking in urgency, "Survival" shows us the living flailing at fate and the dead just flailing.

Harnessing the twin virtues of drollness and economy, Mr. Tully keeps scenes brief and melodrama on the margins.

Swift and stealthy P2 is a canny exploitation of one of the urban woman’s greatest fears: the after-hours parking garage. Throw in a car that won’t start, a creepy security guard and a filmmaking team with perfect synchronicity, and the result is a minimalist nightmare.

Garbage Dreams records the tremblings of a culture at a crossroads.

Epic in scope but intimate in theme, The Warlordsheaves with spectacular battles and the relentless sway of self-interest over conscience.

A “Decalogue” for special-ed students, The Ten leans too often toward the bizarre and the bewildering. And though rough sex is a recurring motif, the movie’s overall tone is less blasphemous than raunchy.

Clogged with court transcripts, medical records and repetitive (if moving) patient testimony, Burzynski tickles the mind only at the cost of trampling the eyes.

Chico Teixeira’s languid, libidinous Alice’s House is the best argument against marriage and motherhood to appear in many a year.

An animated twist on the Frankenstein story that never sparks to life.

A warm, entertaining compendium of counterculture voices and literary landmarks.

The result is a movie that evolves naturally from the filmmaker's compassion for her subject; as much as possible, she remains off camera, and her immense act of charity is never permitted to become the film's focus. Instead this remarkable documentary offers a brief but satisfying look at a defiantly self-sufficient life.

A minor chiller and major downer from the talented Alexandre Aja.

A heartbreaking and meticulous documentary about life inside a blue-jeans factory in China.

The message may be clear -- suppress the past at your peril -- but the execution is a mess. As for the line-dancing soldiers, your guess is as good as mine.

A charmingly sentimental but ultimately pointless hommage to the sci-fi classics of yesteryear, Alien Trespass proves only that while styles and technology have moved on, the affection for corn is everlasting.

Despite the film’s sketchy aesthetic and barely animate lead, its tone is carefully contrived: I’ll wager no one in your circle is as dryly funny or spontaneously surreal as Harmony’s nonsupport group.

A coming-of-age tale so treacly it doesn’t just tug your heartstrings, it attempts to glue them to your ribs.

The movie's lack of subtlety is countered by an unswerving commitment to impartiality.

Like most films of this type, Room 314 demands a great deal from its performers, not all of whom withstand the intense scrutiny. Fortunately, the action is bookended by four of the best.

Set in North Florida and based on a book by Harry Crews, The Hawk Is Dying is a dreary study of male angst groaning beneath the weight of its own symbolism.

Like Douglas Sirk without the throw pillows, Sunflower is a shamelessly old-fashioned melodrama performed with such sincerity that resistance is futile.

An affectionate, rollicking guide to the drive-in classics of Australian filmmaking from the 1970s and ’80s.

Giving "inspirational" a good name, Matt Ruskin's vibrant and soulful documentary The Hip Hop Project sets its universal message to an inner-city beat.

Everyone’s sorry about something in Forgiveness, a glum drama about the way repentance can do more damage than the sin that precedes it.

A moody thriller with more emphasis on mood than thrills.

Harks back to the drive-in classics of yesteryear with unapologetic nostalgia and undisguised affection.

The movie imprisons its talented cast (including Alia Shawkat as Danny’s overlooked soul mate and Brandon Hardesty as his worldly best friend) in roles that leave little room for anything but caricature.

Missing no stops on the road from cloying to annoying, Harlem Aria has waited more than 10 years for domestic release. Maybe its destiny has been written.

Reeking of self-righteousness and moral reprimand, Michael O. Sajbel’s Ultimate Gift”is a hairball of good-for-you filmmaking.

The sledgehammer message is clear: Best friends can help when you need a McMansion, but only God can help when your husband needs a man.

Filming over four years and tracking several cases, the Brazilian director Jorge W. Atalla favors a fevered shooting style that's repetitious and disorienting but also effortlessly dramatic.

This pointless parody dumps us in the fictional town of Sporks, Wash., a location lousy with vampires and werewolves.

A minimalist mood poem to loss and alienation.

Fateful and funny, haunting and magical.

Spurred by the medical and emotional problems of her own three children, Ms. Abeles embarked on a deeply personal inquiry into the insanely hectic lives of too many of our offspring.

Four years in the making, Marwencol emerges as a number of things: an absorbing portrait of an outsider artist; a fascinating journey from near-death to active life; a meditation on the brain's ability to forge new pathways when old ones have been destroyed.

Respectfully and without dramatization (the ideas are electric enough), the directors observe a cross section of articulate evangelicals and accompany a Christian group on a revealing trip to Israel.

As guileless and eager as the most avid fan, Gunnin’ is neither cautionary nor analytical, allowing its insights to occur organically and without fancy camera moves.

This witless installment features the usual ultra-slow-motion mayhem and helpful freeze-frames to allow us to admire the extra dimension. Fans will not be happy, however, to learn that Ms. Jovovich is more decently clothed this time around.

Female-empowerment fantasy or just plain prurience, "Grave" is extremely efficient grindhouse. If there is any message here at all, it's don't mess with a novelist: being creative is her job.

An adamantly linear, myth-busting stride through a prodigiously talented life.

Letters transforms a picture-postcard location and odd-couple narrative into a pretty, and pretty predictable, snooze. Yet the acting is flawless, the tone gentle and observational, and Leila's transformation, when it occurs, is unforced and unaccompanied by pious lecturing.

A lesbian-foodie fairy tale that keeps its appetites well under control. The title may hint at naughty pleasures, but the director, Pratibha Parmar, is more interested in pappadams than passion.

Shapes a standard prison-break drama into a metaphysical study of freedom and reparation.

Boorish, bigoted and borderline pornographic.

If your sole image of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner is that of a lanky, silk-jammied sybarite strolling the grounds of his mansion with a jiggling blond on either arm, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel will knock your socks off.

A seductively fluid and tactile drama from the writer and director Karin Albou, explores love and identity through the prism of the female body and the rights of its owner.

Unless you’re trapped on an airplane or enjoying movie night at the penitentiary, you have no excuse for watching Killers. A brain-deadening collision of high concept and low standards.

A weird, wordy but oddly compelling thriller.

Arriving as inevitably as puberty, Bratz introduces the swollen-headed, fashion-addicted dolls of the title to a live-action movie.

Unfortunately, in keeping its inflammatory subject matter at arm’s length, Provoked does exactly the same to its audience.

An unusually restrained and genuinely eerie little movie perched at the intersection of faith, folklore and female puberty.

Feels passé and lacks a charismatic lead. Too bad Daniel Radcliffe is an only child.

Soured by its enervated star and uninspired writing, the movie offers only tiny moments of joy, like a hailstorm of gumballs that's unexpectedly magical.

A futuristic vomitorium of bosoms and bullets.

Korean director Hong Sang-soo unleashes yet another emotionally stunted antihero in Night and Day, a rambling study of male arrested development.

Exit could be a new subgenre: the prankumentary. Audiences, however, would be advised simply to enjoy the film on its face -- even if that face is a carefully contrived mask.

Home brilliantly illuminates the invisible damage inflicted by years of deprivation. When survival hinges on trusting no one but yourself, the kindness of strangers can seem too good to be true.

Part rockumentary, part howl of outrage, Screamers would have benefited from less concert film and more historical background.

Generous in spirit and nimble in technique, this riveting documentary about the Republican operative (who died of a brain tumor in 1991) reveals a scrappy genius rife with contradictions.

A strange synergy of old and new, My Bloody Valentine 3D blends cutting-edge technology and old-school prosthetics to produce something both familiar and alien: gore you can believe in.

Self-consciously edgy and romantically limp.

Flash Point”attaches coldly professional visuals to a narrative so baffling that it’s rarely clear who is pounding on whom or why.

Drawing much of its energy from an eclectic and fully integrated soundtrack, Skills Like This gazes indulgently on 20-something aimlessness and the comfort of assigned roles. In Mr. Miranda's hands sloth can be more appealing than you might think.

There’s precious little to laugh at in The Sasquatch Gang, a sad attempt to board the loser-nerd comedy bandwagon.

Louder and more literal than its inspiration, The Eye benefits from a spiky performance by Alessandro Nivola as Sydney’s rehabilitation counselor. “Your eyes are not the problem,” he tells her at one point. He is so, so right.

The film's greatest accomplishment is its ability to change tone at least three times without losing the audience.

The problem with these my-family-was-messed-up-and-I need-to-share projects is that they require an audience of complete strangers to give a damn. And while we sometimes do, it’s usually because the material is inherently compelling (“Tarnation”) or the filmmaking uncovers truths beyond the template of family therapy (“51 Birch Street”). Sadly, Phyllis and Harold fulfills neither requirement.

Featuring exceptional people doing extraordinary things, Blindsight is one of those documentaries with the power to make you re-examine your entire life -- or at least get off the couch.

Swift and amusingly brainless, Hatchet II more than delivers on splatter expectations.

Clueless, directionless and altogether pointless.

A tired mash-up of every men-behaving-badly sitcom ever to grace a third-tier television network, Speed-Dating tries to coax laughs from characters so dated even Eddie Murphy would balk.

Directed with extraordinary empathy by Aaron Katz (who also wrote the story), Dance Party, USA is an admittedly slight movie, but one that is given heft by a yearning tone and a camera fascinated by the emotional shifts and shadows on a young person's face.

It's brilliantly silly entertainment whose flaws are glaring only in hindsight; in the moment, you'll have much more fun if you stop looking for holes in the script and join Paul in looking for a way out.

The movie is most effective in its early scenes of prickly menace, and while the Dolphin is no Overlook (the haunted hotel in "The Shining"), its old-world creepiness is exactly right.

Filled with clear, bright images and moments of skewed genius, this delicate debut effortlessly evokes those languid summer doldrums, when even a rotting girlfriend is better than no girlfriend at all.

National Lampoon’s Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj harnesses smut and silliness to an oddly innocent tale of true love.

The Milk of Sorrow is constrained by a rarefied screenplay and a near-mute central performance.

One part hagiography and two parts psychotherapy. Together they showcase a talent both formidable and erratic, its bright and shining peaks sliding inexplicably into valleys of disaster.

A creative tour de force, an intellectual high-wire act as astonishing as it is entertaining.

This stylistic restraint may help deflect accusations of exploitation (though the film's two pivotal sex scenes both feel uncomfortably extended, the initial crime lasting a squirm-inducing six minutes), but it also impedes our connection with the victims.

As an interrogator Ms. Ismailos is no Torquemada; she lobs softballs that her subjects genially accept.

A fascinating glimpse of a dreamer and a music culture that has always depended on dreams.

This disorienting, dippy documentary makes one thing abundantly clear: for the Hubers, the toughest climb may be into their own heads.

The template is familiar, but Quarantine delivers the heebie-jeebies with solid acting and perfectly calibrated shocks.

Documents courage, but steers clear of character.

Coming out has rarely looked so pretty.

All in all, this is a movie best enjoyed with a snoot full and a morbid disposition.

Frequently moving and quietly enlightening, Last Train Home is about love and exploitation, sacrifice and endurance.

The role played by her camera in exacerbating Avery’s natural, adolescent self-absorption continues to nag; in the end, I was less concerned for the wildly indulged Avery -- whose own narration reveals a charismatic and extremely fortunate young woman -- than for the hearts breaking around her.

According to the press notes, pandorum means “Orbital Dysfunctional Syndrome”; whatever that is, by the end of the movie I was convinced I had caught it.

Cocaine Cowboys is a tabloid headline, a movie as oppressive and inarticulate as the lives it represents.

A clear-eyed and utterly ruthless dissection of the battle for Ohio in the months leading up to the 2004 presidential election.

Saw IV is bloody proof that Jigsaw may be dead, but his well of corporeal abuses has yet to run dry.

This latest recycling of foreign-grown frights shows less interest in horror than in healing.

Equal parts enlightening and alarming.

An ill-advised sequel to "Are We There Yet?" and a feeble fable of better parenting through home improvement.

Horror without suspense is like sex without love: you can appreciate the technicalities, but ultimately there’s no reason to care.

Automatons is driven less by its hints of suicide bombers than by its rigorous adherence to a time when robots were played by inverted dustbins and battles were represented by dots converging on a crackling screen. This lack of sophistication is enormously endearing, leaving us with the comforting notion that the end of the world will look a lot like the beginning of television.

Alternately rancid and ridiculous, strident and sickly sweet, Our Family Wedding”offers plenty that’s old, borrowed and blue; it’s the something new that’s missing.

The irritations and tedium of high school life are staged with refreshing simplicity, while the performers interact with an age-appropriate naturalness the American teenage movie rarely achieves.

A poker-faced puzzle whose biggest shock is the absence of Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Frothy, frantic and inescapably unromantic - the two leads have less chemistry than an American high-school curriculum - Heartbreaker marks the uneven feature debut of television director Pascal Chaumeil.

Drag Me to Hell has a tonic playfulness that’s unabashedly retro, an indulgent return to Mr. Raimi’s goofy, gooey roots.

Though not without its charms -- the scenes in Mumbai are comically chaotic -- Offshore might have raised more chuckles when it was made, in 2006, than in the economic chill of 2009. And not only in Michigan.

Spirited, probing and frequently hilarious, it coasts on the fearless charm of its front man and the eye-opening candor of its interviewees, most of them women.

The movie offers less gore than the average Band-Aid commercial and fewer scares than the elimination episodes of "Dancing With the Stars."

The movie is sharp, charismatic and so light on its feet we never know which way it will turn.

The Trotsky runs 20 minutes too long and several rungs above the head of its target audience. And though Mr. Baruchel can be very funny in small doses -- a slacker sidekick in “Knocked Up,” a gung-ho kid in “Tropic Thunder” -- here he swiftly becomes insufferable, a neurotic nudnik in funeral director attire and John Turturro hairdo.

Buffed to an expensive-looking gloss and dressed in period-perfect finery, Max Manus has an old-fashioned sincerity that entertains without engaging.

A cheapie hostage drama with a lot more swagger than substance, The Killing Jar strains to wring tension from a tired premise and an airless script.

Like the disastrously overpopulated "Amazing Race: Family Edition," Morning Light never finds a way to make us care who wins.

Love is a mournful thriller about the myth of assimilation and the way nurture - or, more precisely, the lack of it - fashions identity and character. Elegantly directed by Vladan Nikolic using multiple viewpoints and an elliptical, nonlinear narrative, the movie presents a New World disrupted by old grievances and a neglected community living by its own rules.

Suffers from abusive close-ups, repetitive fight sequences and uninspired demon design.

There used to be entertainment in the dodging and wit in the scripts; now there’s 3-D.

Packed with illuminating interviews and lyrical movement, Breath Made Visible portrays a woman with angels in her feet and innovation in her blood. Long may she rock.

Depending on your age, sex and mechanical inclinations, Tales of the Rat Fink will convince you that Mr. Roth should either have been canonized or smothered at birth.

A tiresome blend of overacting and underwriting, The Salon moves from one predictable conversation to another -- the lack of available black men, the wondrousness of Bill Clinton -- without originality or comic rhythm.

Poised self-consciously between art and entertainment, Joshua offers imaginative staging and some superb performances.

Belonging more in the realm of tragic melodrama than true crime, The Sicilian Girl is hobbled by sluggish direction (by Marco Amenta, who previously addressed Atria's story in his 1997 documentary, "One Girl Against the Mafia: Diary of a Sicilian Rebel"), and a revulsion to nuance.

What makes the journey compelling is the relaxed chemistry between the young actors and an insistently apprehensive tone that pervades even the most prosaic exchanges.

The director, Craig Saavedra, generates surprising warmth from the familiar tropes of the odd-couple road movie. Shooting mostly in the verdant sweep of California's wine country -- and with a superb supporting cast -- he allows Mr. Le Gros room to engage.

Unfailingly modest and profoundly humane, The Way We Get By profiles three people over 70 whose lives have been changed by a simple act of service.

Eyes popping and mouths agape, Martin Lawrence and Raven-Symoné mug their way through College Road Trip as if it were a silent movie -- which, come to think of it, would have been a lot less irritating.

Working with four interchangeable Deweys, the filmmakers create a sufficient number of lively stunts to keep the kiddies amused, though the film's wittiest moment -- a canine parody of Dudley Moore's first glimpse of Bo Derek in "10" -- will be appreciated only by their parents. In trying to straddle both age groups, however, Firehouse Dog proves decidedly less nimble than its furry star.

Enjoy it; according to the spectacularly nauseating final moments, a cure for this virus seems unlikely, but “[REC] 3” (a k a “[REC] Apocalypse”) is a virtual certainty.

Julian P. Hobbs directs by getting out of the way of his star's soulful eyes and considerable talent, allowing Mr. Mays to feed on the tension between the rationality of his character's courtroom argument and the utter lunacy of his beliefs.

Audiences will be either captivated or irritated, depending on their tolerance for high-concept whimsy and high-energy theatrics. By the end of the wake itself, they may be wishing Binew’s illness were running ahead of schedule.

Stagy, stiff and marinated in egg cream.

Leaving no cliché unturned, Coffee Date provides cheesy music, chats about "gaydar" and the obligatory are-you-looking-at-mine? urinal scene.

Trafficking in irresponsible inferences and unsupported conclusions, the filmmaker Brent Leung offers himself as suave docent through a globe-trotting pseudo-investigation that should raise the hackles of anyone with even a glancing knowledge of the basic rules of reasoning.

In Kit’s world the absent father (a familiar theme from girls' novels including "Little Women" and "A Little Princess") is an epidemic, and the picture makes this the impetus for children's resourcefulness and emotional development.

As the film picks up speed it also accrues a socially progressive agenda. If only this were half as well developed as the female leads.

Technically innovative but narratively moribund, Metropia is all stasis and shadows. Perhaps Mr. Saleh could have listened to a lighter voice.

An unusually perceptive scrutiny of absence and emptiness.

Memory is an inane, sluggish mess.