Joe Leydon

The performances are perfectly attuned to the material, with Koechner dominating his every scene as a kind of demented ringmaster, and Healy adroitly demonstrating the potential for both humor and horror in a character with nothing left to lose.

Neatly avoiding temptations toward mawkish excess, writer-director Chris Dowling hits a solid double with Where Hope Grows, his intelligently affecting faith-based drama.

It's plotless, shapeless -- and yet, it must be admitted, not entirely humorless. Indeed, the more outrageous bits achieve a shock-you-into-laughter intensity of almost Dadaist proportions.

Director Steve Gomer’s well-crafted faith-based film is affecting without undue heartstring-yanking, almost entirely saccharine-free and, perhaps most impressively, not entirely predictable.

Has the unmistakable look and feel of a micro-budget indie produced for a small circle of friends, many of whom are listed in the credits.

There's a potentially fascinating and appreciably more concise 60-minute documentary to be found somewhere amid the uneven and unfocused 88-minute hodgepodge that is Echotone.

Good intentions can't breathe fresh life into cliches or dispel the overall impression of schematic didacticism.

A smartly constructed and sardonically funny indie with attitude that somehow manages the tricky feat of being exuberantly over the top even as it remains consistently on target.

Slickly entertaining documentary.

Martin hits all the right notes while subtly conveying both the appealing sophistication and the purposeful reserve of Ray. But he cannot entirely avoid being overshadowed by Dane's endearingly vulnerable, emotionally multifaceted and fearlessly open performance.

Harvests a bumper crop of laughs.

Fitfully amusing and two leads generate engaging chemistry.

Equal parts coming-of-age story and slow-burn thriller, writer-director Megan Griffiths’ quietly absorbing and methodically disquieting drama is a genuine rarity: a sympathetic portrait of a budding sociopath.

By turns whimsically humorous and intelligently sentimental, but also infused with a pungent air of working-class realism.

Result: An undeniably clever commingling of a new cast (and spoken dialogue) with a silent classic. But pic fails to engage consistently on its own terms, and begins to coast on novelty value around the midway point.

Aimed squarely at moppets with minuscule attention spans, “The Rugrats Movie” is a fast and frenetic animated feature that should delight young aficionados of the long-running Nickelodeon TV series.

It's an instantly disposable and shamelessly derivative piece of work -- call it petit guignol, and you won't be far off the mark -- but first-time feature helmer Jonathan Liebesman shows a savvy flair for atmospheric visuals.

Although it's very much a contemporary yarn, there's a distinctly '70s feel to much of Beautiful Boy.

Sincere but unexceptional.

Smartly written and sprightly played, Sky High satisfies with a clever commingling of spoofy superheroics, school-daze hijinks, and family friendly coming-of-age. dramedydramedy.

An intelligent and arresting fact-based drama.

Potent performances by stars Katie Holmes and Luke Kirby, strong contributions by well-cast supporting players and an overall sense of understated verisimilitude offset the predictable aspects of the narrative.

A wildly uneven drama, by turns sincere and synthetic.

To put it simply and gratefully: Braven is the sort of unpretentious yet thoroughly professional popcorn entertainment that brings out the best in everybody involved.

An entertaining story that, while not terribly original, is sufficiently arresting and often laugh-out-loud funny.

Ingeniously nasty and often shockingly funny as it incrementally worsens a very bad situation, then provides a potent payoff with the forced feeding of just desserts.

There's a pronounced lack of emotional pay-off that likely will derail any attempts to position Word Wars as an aud-friendly crowd-pleaser with breakout potential comparable to "Spellbound."

Even under the best of circumstances, it would be late in the day for another bigscreen adventure from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. But coming so soon after the well-received reissue of George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy, the high-camp cheesiness ofTurbo: A Power Rangers Movie is especially unimpressive.