Joe Leydon

The naturalistic style of the storytelling is stealthily enthralling, as is the lead performance by Margita Gosheva as a provincial Bulgarian schoolteacher who is slowly, inexorably driven to the edge by crushing debt.

Ganem has sufficient verve and appeal to sustain interest in both of her characters, and the sporadic tweaking of telenovelas and the fans who love them is often quite clever.

The line between priggishness and creepiness is repeatedly smudged by multihyphenate Rik Swartzwelder in Old Fashioned, a faith-based drama that looks as lovely as an expensive greeting card, but moves as slowly as a somnolent turtle.

Both fascinating as a glimpse at the not so distant past, and provocative as an account of what arguably was an early step in the decline of political discourse on television.

The five leads earn kudos for their ability to come across as something approaching credible.

Even though it’s easy to identify all the recycled elements — bits and pieces of several inspirational-teacher scenarios, ranging from “To Sir, With Love” to “Stand and Deliver” — in this “based on a true story” concoction, there can be no denying the feel-good effect of the finished product.

Preservation ultimately impresses as an arrestingly suspenseful thriller that takes clever narrative twists and turns while moving through familiar territory.

As Red Knot (very) slowly unwinds, Thirlby conveys an impressive range of emotions through the eloquence of her facial expressions and body language. Like Kartheiser, however, she labors under the burden of playing a role that is more a vague concept than a fully developed character.

Copenhagen remains more intriguing than compelling.

The cinematic equivalent of a modestly amusing shaggy-dog story that meanders toward a clever punchline.

La Scala is able to maintain interest and sustain narrative momentum throughout his fantastical narrative, even while he covers overly familiar territory. In this, he gets immeasurable aid from the sincere performances by his game cast.

A potentially gripping story of empowerment through armed resistance is almost totally undermined by studied, self-conscious storytelling.

Born to Fly teasingly suggests that some displays of avant-garde virtuosity could be enjoyed equally by venturesome aesthetes, dance enthusiasts and devotees of World Wrestling Entertainment.

All things considered, The Identical might have worked better as a TV miniseries, a format that would allowed the filmmakers to give equal time to Hemsley’s story.

Connor and co-director Michael Worth allow Fort McCoy to proceed at an unhurried pace, giving Stoltz ample opportunity to subtly convey undercurrents of guilt and anger percolating beneath his character’s affable exterior.

The mix of raucous buffoonery and violent mayhem isn’t exactly seamless, and the laugh-out-loud moments come with conspicuously less frequency during a third act that suggests a rough draft for “Bad Boys 3.”

The film deserves more than just a passing grade, and is a good deal better than any plot synopsis might make it sound.

Premature winds up resembling nothing so much as the coarsely smutty teen-sex comedies that abounded throughout the ’80s in the wake of “Porky’s.”

For the most part, however, D’Souza gives the impression of someone obsessed with whitewashing any and all dark chapters in U.S. history books. There are times when his defenses and rationalizations come across as almost laughably facile.

The pic is less than fully satisfying as a conventional performance cavalcade, but sustains considerable interest as a behind-the-scenes overview of a musically and culturally diverse event.

Tureaud and Salzberg achieve their potent impact through the straightforward (but clearly admiring) observation of men who band together in battle and, in the film’s emotionally stirring final scenes, mourn their fallen comrades.

[A] ponderously paced, needlessly convoluted and altogether unexceptional thriller.

A sci-fi thriller as generic as its title, Alien Abduction generates only low-voltage shocks.

Kakkar and Pastides generate a rooting interest in their characters, with compellingly persuasive performances.

Scripter Wittliff and Spanish helmer Emilio Aragon (“Paper Birds”) hit the sweet spot between galloping and sauntering while unfolding the movie’s plot, an interlocking chain of coincidences, encounters and colorful supporting characters that often recalls the twisty storylines of Elmore Leonard.

Equal parts suspenseful road movie, persuasively detailed period drama and emotionally resonant coming-of-age story, The Retrieval is an outstanding example of regional indie filmmaking accomplished with limited resources and an abundance of skill.

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.

Aiming more for bemused chuckles than for convulsive laughter, Plotnick and his actors deftly evoke a faux Me Decade ambiance throughout Space Station 76.

The final destination is entirely predictable — right down to the deus ex machina reappearance of an erstwhile antagonist — but the trip itself is never less than pleasant, and often extremely funny.

The pacing gradually accelerates after a leisurely first act, so that The Attorney easily sustains interest, and often stirs emotions.

The four leads are nothing if not game, and actually earn respect, along with a fair amount of sympathy, for their uninhibited willingness to go to extremes. But there are limits to what they can do to dispel the overall sense of mounting desperation as the gross-out tomfoolery grows ever more tedious.

The term “freewheeling” does not begin to describe the slapdash, anything-goes quality of the screenplay co-written by Troma mogul Kaufman.

A modestly inventive but curiously bloodless version of the Bard’s timeless tragedy.

A slickly entertaining piece of work that will doubtless delight the young pop star’s fan base, and possibly engage curiosity-seekers who have heretofore remained immune or indifferent to Bieber Fever.

An ingeniously simple setup is cunningly exploited for maximum suspense in Hours, a slow-building, consistently engrossing drama.

Hopelessly stagebound, despite halfhearted efforts to open up what’s basically a talky two-hander, and risibly pretentious in the manner of soft-core porn that’s no sexier than glossy ads for expensive perfume.

Even when judged by the standards of broad farce, however, Expecting repeatedly strains credibility and defies logic in ways too glaring to ignore.

There doesn’t appear to be any purpose at all to the random exchanges and interactions that pass for a plot.

It seems even more slapdash and desperately unfunny than their earlier work.

Filmmakers Andrew Cohn and Davy Rothbart uncover and illuminate a strain of stoic resilience that could be the last best defense against bottomless despair. Unfortunately, as Medora repeatedly suggests, that invaluable resource may not be inexhaustible.

Moderately interesting as a once-over-lightly political history lesson best suited for home-screen consumption.

Working from a script by Lou Berney, which in turn was adapted from a novel by Turk Pipkin, director Tim McCanlies maintains an even hand throughout, so that neither the moments of broad comedy nor the stretches of tearjerking sentimentality get out of hand.

Despite the bumpy pacing and the routine plot elements, writer-director Le-Van Kiet periodically generates a sense of palpable trepidation during what might best be described as a worst-case scenario about post-partum depression.

Hellbenders becomes what it intends to burlesque, and that’s not so damn funny, even with 3D gimmickry.

Director Vincenzo Natali (“Splice”) is more effective at sustaining clammy suspense than hiding all the holes in Brian King’s script. But top-billed Abigail Breslin (“Little Miss Sunshine”) is effective enough to generate a rooting interest in the plucky protagonist of the piece, and to sustain interest when narrative logic turns fuzzy.

The road to hell is paved with well-intentioned clunkers like I’m in Love with a Church Girl, a strenuously sincere but tediously schematic and heavy-handed attempt at cinematic proselytizing for Christianity.

Sufficiently sweet to serve as a date movie for all ages, Lost for Words comes across as almost subversively retrograde in its old-fashioned approach to charting the slow blossoming of a cross-cultural romance.

First-time feature helmer Nate Taylor, working from an adroitly constructed screenplay by Peter Moore Smith, skillfully evokes a clammy sense of dread in this stealthily suspenseful indie.

Will Wallace's turgid indie tells an earthbound and anemic story about an orphan's progress in small-town Texas.

Beautiful lensing by Mauro Brattoli and an evocative score Steve Poltz enrich the pic’s flavor as a document of, and a tribute to, an iconic cowboy’s indomitable spirit.

The makers of Grace Unplugged deserve at least some credit for resisting temptations toward melodramatic excess.

A lightly engaging bilingual trifle that benefits greatly from the charm of lead player Jaime Camil, a Mexican TV and film star who evidences smooth self-assurance at the wheel of what could be his crossover vehicle.

Costa-Gavras develops such a propulsively suspenseful pace — with no small assist from Armand Amar’s mood-enhancing Euro-tech score — that his drama comes across as the cinematic equivalent of an engrossing page-turner you might purchase off the rack at an airport newsstand.

Too many stretches of Wedding Palace are so garishly lit and broadly overplayed that they seem more cartoonish than the actual animated sequences that pepper the live-action production. That’s a pity, since this indie romantic comedy is not without its minor charms during its infrequent quiet moments.

An initially intriguing but ultimately exhausting tale of grieving parents left quite literally dazed and confused in the wake of their young son’s death.

Charged by alternating currents of nostalgic bemusement and wistful melancholy, TV Man: The Search for the Last Independent Dealer evinces all the amiable enthusiasm and discursive rambling one might expect from a do-it-yourself labor of love.

The concept is thought-provoking but the execution is flat-footed.

Instructions Not Included is a sporadically amusing but unduly protracted dramedy that slowly — very slowly — devolves into a shameless tearjerker during its third act.

Despite an effective Jim Caviezel, this anecdotal drama never rises above the level of lightly likable.

Stevens offers a couple of revelations that bring the documentary to a dramatically and emotionally satisfying conclusion — and, not incidentally, leave a viewer with the pleasing sensation of discovering a worthy individual.

“Portrait” abounds in the sort of ironies and contrasts that can make a biodoc fascinating even to auds totally unfamiliar with its subject.

Deftly balancing twin goals of informing and entertaining, the pic matter-of-factly details the various ways that marketers, multinational corporations, police departments and government-run intelligence-gathering organizations obtain and exploit info.

Once you get past an incredibly self-indulgent intro — an uncomfortably long mash-up of comedy sketch and road-trip-with-entourage doc that seems simultaneously apologetic and arrogant — you can enjoy approximately an hour of boisterously freewheeling and unabashedly raunchy funny stuff in Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain.

There’s something curiously underwhelming about the blood-soaked mayhem on display in Hatchet III.

Each member of the ensemble offers a vividly detailed performance resounding with emotional truth, delivering lengthy swaths of LaBute’s sometimes savagely furious, sometimes shocking funny dialogue with pitch-perfect degrees of intensity.

Not so much a probing examination as a fulsome celebration.

Boasts way better production values than the penny-pinching 1981 original and conceivably could delight genre fans who have never seen the first version or its previous remakes/sequels. But it’s bound to play best with those who catch Alvarez’s many wink-wink allusions to Raimi’s picture.

Neatly balancing brightly sentimental comedy with slightly edgier funny business, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone pulls off the impressive trick of generating laughs on a consistent basis while spinning a clever scenario about rival magicians waging a Las Vegas turf war with a wide multi-demographic appeal.

A lightweight, warp-speed, brightly colored trifle.

The helmer generates suspense with shrewd pacing, deft emotional manipulation and efficient use of familiar tricks -- jittery editing, flickering lights and unsettling sounds -- common to haunted-house pictures.

An appalling misfire that tries and fails to evoke the anything-goes spirit of such '70s sketch-comedy concoctions as "The Groove Tube" and "Kentucky Fried Movie."

Agreeably amusing but unduly extended, Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola suggests what might have resulted had Rodgers and Hammerstein lived long enough to attempt a Broadway musical about the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The hit-to-miss ratio is less than impressive throughout A Haunted House, a frenetic and freewheeling satirical comedy that only sporadically scores a bull's-eye while aiming at easy targets.

A boisterously Tarantinoesque mash-up of cliches, archetypes and bodacious craziness in the tradition of Southern-fried '60s and '70s drive-in fodder, The Baytown Outlaws is the sort of cartoonishly violent and swaggeringly non-PC concoction that defines guilty pleasure for many genre fans.

While there's something undeniably fascinating about the way Fairhaven repeatedly avoids predictable payoffs for portentous dramatic setups, narrative momentum is conspicuous by its absence.

Helmer John Luessenhop ("Takers") and a small army of scripters go back to the bloody roots of the long-running franchise to concoct a better-than-average horror-thriller that relies more on potent suspense than graphic savagery or stereoscopic tricks.

A slickly produced and brazenly clever piece of work that could attract a cult by sheer dint of its ingenious nastiness and self-aware snark.

The picture all too obviously recycles bits and pieces from "Madagascar," "The Lion King" and other made-in-America toons. Unfortunately, much gets lost in the translation.

Trouble is, apart from some modestly inventive carnage and an undeniably humorous hambone turn by Malcolm McDowell, there's really nothing here to make genre fans dash through the snow (or maneuver through traffic) to megaplexes before the low-budget, high-concept Canadian production's Dec. 4 homevid release.

A slickly produced, unabashedly celebratory picture about professional skateboarder Danny Way.

When a documentary begins with its subject using his crutch to deliver a vicious blow to the director's nose, it's reasonably safe to expect less-than-smooth sailing ahead.

Even by the freewheeling, mood-swinging standards of Bollywood, the pronounced disparity between the pre- and post-intermission halves of Jab tak hai jaan is more than a tad jarring. Indeed, viewers may feel they've been treated to an oddly matched double bill -- a delightfully vivacious romantic dramedy, followed by an Old Hollywood sort of psychological melodrama.

Writer-director Ciaran Foy skillfully taps into primal fears and urban paranoia to keep his audience consistently unsettled in Citadel, an intensely suspenseful horror-thriller.

Although it traffics freely in stereotypes and sitcom-style one-liners, Gayby is never less than likable.

Affecting performances and effective storytelling are the hallmarks of Fat Kid Rules the World.

There's something perversely fascinating about helmer John Hyams' freewheeling yet deliberately paced mashup of noirish mystery, splatter-movie intensity, first-person-shooter vidgame and "Apocalypse Now"-style surrealism.

Despite the considerable impediment of a premise arguably even sillier than that of the original "Red Dawn," helmer Dan Bradley's long-delayed remake of John Milius' 1984 kids-vs.-Commies adventure delivers enough thrilling action sequences and rock-'em, sock-'em fantasy-fulfillment to amp its B.O. potential.

Passably pleasant but thoroughly predictable.

This enervating muddle of paranormal nonsense manages the difficult feat of seeming frenzied and lethargic all at once, while building toward the sort of ludicrous cop-out climax that often incites die-hard genre fans to shout rude things at the screen.

While it's highly unlikely that anyone predisposed to championing Obama would be won over by the sound and fury here, there's no gainsaying the value of "2016" as a sort of Cliffs Notes precis of the conservative case against the re-election of our current U.S. president.

The script is so thinly written that the main characters are defined almost entirely by the actors playing them. Fortunately, seasoned pros Slater, Rhames and Cromwell are able to flesh out their boilerplate parts.

Yet another attempt to mix raunchy excess and romantic-comedy sweetness in an anything-goes raucous farce, The Babymakers offers a few big laughs between ho-hum stretches of frenetic vamping.

The interaction among opposites inspires an abundance of predictable race-based jokes, many of which have the saving grace of actually being funny.

A picture so thoroughly generic as to suggest a contraption assembled from spare parts with the aid of a how-to manual.

An engrossing and satisfying picture, one that can be enjoyed even by people who have never before heard of its subject.

Despite enough good intentions to pave a four-lane highway, the ardently sincere but dramatically unfocused For Greater Glory plays like a multipart miniseries that has been hacked down to feature length.

Scattered stretches of suspense and a few undeniably potent shocks are not enough to dissipate the sense of deja vu that prevails throughout Chernobyl Diaries, a wearyingly predictable thriller about "extreme tourists."

First-time feature helmer Brian Crano maneuvers some tricky tonal shifts with impressive ease in A Bag of Hammers, a droll, quirky comedy with a pleasant amount of heart.

The picture could provide modest amusement for indulgent viewers with a taste for tales of loquacious killers and not-so-innocent bystanders.

Despite the over-familiarity of its once-trendy time-tripping plot structure, 96 Minutes maintains a brisk pace and generates a satisfying degree of suspense with its credibly contrived tale of disparate lives forever changed by a violent carjacking.

This handsomely produced but ponderously uplifting trifle should be flagged for excessive schmaltz and offensive illogic.

Devotees of folk and bluegrass -- and, of course, diehard Nickel Creek fans -- are the natural audience for this leisurely paced documentary.

Newcomer Rachel Hendrix grabs attention and sustains sympathy as a lovely yet troubled 19-year-old student determined to unlock the secrets of her past after learning the circumstances of her birth.

This filmed-in-Texas road movie finds a smooth groove between self-conscious quirkiness and broadly played farce.

Good Deeds is relentlessly unsurprising in its plotting and borderline comical in its melodramatic flourishes.

Enjoyably upbeat and intelligently inspiring.

While the sheer novelty of a feature about lacrosse may be enough to generate some audience curiosity about A Warrior's Heart, this respectably crafted but thoroughly predictable indie rarely deviates from the gameplan followed by countless other dramas about self-absorbed young hotheads who get a shot at redemption on the playing field.

Slow-burning buildup, lack of explicit mayhem and overall low-tech approach may strike cineastes as amusingly quaint.

Once again, Beckinsale brings an impressive physicality and subzero cool to her portrayal of Selene.

The picture's dialogue-heavy stretches and ambiguous finale could leave ticketbuyers impatient for less chatter and more chomping.

Plodding and repetitive in its efforts to maintain pressure-cooker intensity, The Divide resembles nothing so much as an extended "Twilight Zone" episode as it brings a sci-fi twist to a familiar scenario about stressed characters who bring out the worst in each other while trapped in close quarters.

Despite the palpable air of deja vu that hangs over it like a light fog, The Devil Inside generates a fair amount of suspense during sizable swaths of its familiar but serviceable exorcism-centric scenario.

The Darkest Hour turns out to be a modestly inventive and involving variation on a standard-issue sci-fi doomsday scenario.

Despite a few continuity problems, this rough-edged, low-budget drama impresses with spot-on performances, perfect-pitch dialogue and an overall sense that something bad might happen at any moment, unless something worse happens first.

Family-friendly and abounding in uplift, The Mighty Macs is an undemandingly pleasant indie drama.

Much like its predecessors, Paranormal Activity 3 is a slow-building, stealthily creepy supernatural thriller that takes a teasingly indirect approach to generating suspense and escalating dread.

Moviegoers devoted to faith-based fare will flock to megaplexes for Courageous, easily the most polished production so far from brothers Alex and Stephen Kendrick, the prolific and increasingly accomplished filmmaking pastors at the Sherwood Church of Albany, Ga.

Earnest and understated, Weekend has the intimate look and feel of a two-character stage play that has been opened up -- but only slightly, with minimal addition of supporting players -- for a mostly faithful filmization.

Mark Landsman's spirited Thunder Soul offers a heaping helping of uplift while documenting the past triumphs and recent reunion of a predominantly black Houston high school's singularly accomplished jazz stage band.

Helmer Joel Schumacher and a game cast headed by Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman do their damnedest to build and sustain suspense while trying, with some degree of success, to breathe fresh life into a formulaic, even generic scenario.

For most of its running time, Fordson wanders far from the gridiron to offer overall impressions of a close-knit community of Arab-Americans who, in the wake of 9/11, often have found themselves targeted and stereotyped as militant Islamists or worse.

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.

Despite stretches of skillfully sustained suspense, Apollo 18 ultimately comes across as little more than a modestly clever stunt.

An improbably effective and affecting mix of raw emotions and exciting smackdowns.

A lightly enjoyable road picture about a circuitous road to redemption, Black, White and Blues offers simple, down-home pleasures while spinning an undeniably familiar but emotionally satisfying tale.

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

This latest entry in the 11-year-old horror series duly adheres to tradition by providing inventively grisly demises for various characters.

Some movie buffs will be amused to note slight but perceptible plot similarities between Daylight and, of all things, "The Tall T," Budd Boetticher's classic 1957 Western. To their credit, the filmmakers more or less acknowledge the influence in the closing credits.

Slickly produced and blatantly manipulative, Bannon's hagiographic tribute is a celebratory cavalcade of career highlights and glowing testimonials that doubtless will please Palin's devoted followers, appall her fiercest critics -- and, perhaps, occasionally surprise the undecided.

The biggest laughs and most intriguing revelations are provided offstage in this slickly produced documentary, as O'Brien -- often pushing himself to the point of exhaustion before, during and after performances -- plays for keeps while playing for laughs.

A technically proficient and aggressively unpleasant suspenser about sadistic home invaders.

Mildly amusing but overly discursive.

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

Serves up a bland recycling of cliches and archetypes from just about every youth-skewing, dance-centric picture to hit the megaplexes since "Flashdance."

Charged with alternating currents of teen angst, sardonic wit, nervous dread and impudent sensuality, Daydream Nation suggests "Juno" as reimagined by David Lynch, or a funnier, sunnier "Donnie Darko."

A sluggish, charmless misfire in which even the most appealing players -- must try too hard to make anything close to an engaging impression.

Another lumpy mix of broadly played ethnic comedy, deadly serious soap operatics, and aggressively rousing religious uplift. Picture may help him reconnect with faithful fans.

Exceptional performances by two femme leads and sensitive but unsentimental storytelling throughout.

Think of it as the cinematic equivalent of a buzz-kill.

Despite a few grace notes and mildly clever twists, this handsomely produced indie is such a grating turnoff throughout its first third that its minor virtues may be discovered only by insomniac latenight cable viewers.

A hagiographic portrait of the standup comic and social satirist who never quite reached beyond cult status in the U.S., American: The Bill Hicks Story might have impressed more of the unconverted had it included more performance footage of its subject.

A modestly engaging domestic drama that earns few points for originality but rewards aud attention with persuasive performances, outbursts of robust humor and a vivid yet understated evocation of time and place.

Blessed with fine performances, credible dialogue and slick production values that belie a reportedly paltry budget, The Grace Card ranks among the better religious-themed indies released in recent years.

Kind of a drag when it resorts to frantic slapstick and tired action-comedy tropes, but modestly engaging during stretches that suggest the project would have worked better as an exuberant musical.

Evan Ross impresses with an implosive performance as Tariq Mahdi, a moody young African-American.

Based loosely and playfully on Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility," From Prada to Nada is a predictable but pleasant comedy.

While marred by cheap tricks and borderline camp, picture comes off as a largely low-key, intelligent effort.

There's more mood than matter here, but suspenseful atmospherics effectively distract from minor plot holes.

What it doesn't have, to its credit, is a neat conclusion. In the end, the film appears to suggest that Aura likely will feel free to keep searching for herself, repeating mistakes and making new ones, because she has all the time in the world.

A visually inspired multi-genre amalgamation, a borderline-surreal folly that suggests a martial-arts action-adventure co-directed by Sergio Leone and Federico Fellini.

An underwhelming and derivative sci-fi thriller that's only marginally more impressive than a run-of-the-mill SyFy Channel telepic.

Equal parts hagiography and hatchet job.

Fitfully amusing and two leads generate engaging chemistry.

Silly script, broad slapstick and overstated lead perfs by B-team cast might be acceptable to target audience.

Freeway is roadkill. The directorial debut of screenwriter Matthew Bright ("Gun Crazy") is a sophomoric and morally repellent mix of fractured fairy tale, juvenile social satire, bloody mayhem and overstated B-movie melodrama.

If John Cassavetes had directed a script by Eric Rohmer, the result might have looked and sounded like Mutual Appreciation.

The Prisoner is in many ways a justifiably angry film, simmering with moral outrage. But it is also -- surprisingly, maybe even amazingly -- hopeful.

It's meant as high praise to say that, very early in Robots, the extraordinary starts to seem perfectly ordinary.

Jack Frost is a slickly packaged and engagingly sentimental fantasy-comedy that stands out as one of the season's most pleasant surprises. Pic offers a shrewdly balanced mix of humor, high concept and heart tugging, along with some amusingly impressive special effects.

A well-intentioned misfire featuring 3-D CGI animation that recalls lesser vidgames of the mid-1990s.

More than passably amusing.

More hagiography than history, Heather Rae's long-in-production portrait of Native American activist and poet John Trudell has the uncritically admiring feel of authorized biography.

Throats are ripped, heads are crushed and limbs are severed with brutal efficiency throughout See No Evil, but that's not nearly enough to dispel the sense of deja vu that pervades this generic slasher thriller.

Brimming with heart and humor -- Drumline is a formulaic crowdpleaser set in the competitive world of university marching bands at predominantly black universities.

Seriously hampered by glaring inconsistencies of tone and intent, and often feels like a series of highlights carved out of a much longer epic.

A wildly uneven but compulsively watchable mix of high camp and grand passions, soap opera and softcore sex. Very much in the deliriously lewd style of Pedro Almodovar.

Mix "Night of the Living Dead" with Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead" movies, then add a hefty dose of "Beavis and Butt-Head"-style silliness, and you have "Tales From the Crypt Presents Demon Knight," a fang-in-cheek horror thriller that likely will please fans and turn off non-devotees.

Entirely comfortable as the crude character he has honed in countless stand-up routines and TV appearances, Larry the Cable Guy sustains a level of likeability that enables him to get away with a lot more than he has any right to. But, he remains very much an acquired taste.

Still nothing but a gussied-up B movie.

Mexican helmer Carolina Rivas obviously intends her slow-paced and contemplative doc as a testimony to the indomitability of the human spirit under dire circumstances.

Far too aggressively seamy (and ferociously foul-mouthed) to please diehard fans of traditional sagebrush sagas, this misfire offers nothing in the way of wit, innovation or even marquee allure to interest auds accustomed to edgier revisionist oaters.

Key to drama's success is the artful underplaying by Kurt Russell in the lead role of Herb Brooks.

Unquestioning agitprop for vegetarianism, hemp fiber, solar energy, sustainable organic living and other causes espoused by actor-activist Woody Harrelson.

Strong performances, a few dramatically potent scenes and a vividly specific evocation of locale barely offset hackneyed and muddled elements in a script that plays like a first draft.

Obviously the product of minimal effort by all parties involved, Strange Wilderness is a slovenly, slapped-together stoner comedy.

Modestly amusing in fits and starts, Fired! proves most potent when on-screen interviewees are playing for keeps, not for laughs.

Outrageously over-the-top gore doubtless will scare off all but the heartiest genre aficionados.

At once raucously free-wheeling and meticulously contrived, picture satisfies as a boys-gone-wild laff riot that also clicks as a seriocomic beat-the-clock detective story.

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

Riveting portrait of a straight-talking, tough-loving Benedictine nun in charge of a South Bronx home for recovering substance abusers.

Perfectly harmless, often humorous, featherweight confection -- think "Serendipity" re-imagined as a teen-skewing Saturday morning sitcom.

Earnest but prosaic.

A slackly paced but modestly diverting trifle, with cameos by recording artists Beck, Beth Orton and Hank Williams III to elevate the hipper-than-thou quotient.

Hot-wired, white-knuckle thriller.

This Dog won't hunt. Although well crafted and handsomely mounted, pic lacks sufficient sizzle.

It's obviously intended as a star vehicle, but Broken Bridges turns out to be a rattletrap jalopy for country music performer Toby Keith.

Grotesquely smutty and obnoxiously overbearing, this is a pitiful excuse for a comedy.

A clunky and cheesy disaster.

Despite these flashbacks, however, God Spoke never really delves into the reasons and/or motivations behind Franken's transformation from monologist and sketch-comedy performer to political pundit and liberal activist. Indeed, even during intimate moments, Franken rarely comes across as someone given to explaining himself.

Since the new pic contains little that's genuinely amusing or minimally original, it likely will fail on its own merits.

A lightweight but likable fantasy that offers a playfully feminist twist to Arthurian legends.

Quickly devolves into a standard-issue crime drama laced with routine martial artistry.

Admirably ambitious but ultimately frustrating musical dramedy.

Despite game efforts from a first-rate cast and acres of impressive production values, Event Horizon remains a muddled and curiously uninvolving sci-fi horror show.

Manages to amuse as a cleverly concocted hybrid of conventional romantic comedy and mistaken-identity farce.

Well positioned to slake the thirst of action fans for world-class, slam-bang rough stuff.

By turns defiant and apologetic, gleefully raunchy and anxiously defensive.

Most successful when it is engaging, not uproarious. Glossy amusement is an updated remake of a well-regarded 1950 Brit comedy-drama starring Alec Guinness, improbably retrofitted as a star vehicle for Queen Latifah.

Lightweight but likable romantic comedy about two mismatched gay singletons who are, of course, made for each other.

Toddlers and pre-teens will be entertained, and parents will be pleasantly surprised, by this more-than-just-bearable musical road movie.

At once annoyingly hyper and underwhelmingly dull.

The documentary works best when it simply offers a concise and cogent account of epochal events.

The tone of Reel Injun is respectfully serious, though well short of angry, while focusing on how the stereotypical depictions of marauding redskins affected the self-images of Native Americans.

Trendy influence of insidiously creepy Japanese horror pics is felt in almost every frame of Boogeyman. The effectively atmospheric and unusually involving thriller tells the story of a distraught young man's protracted duel of wits with the eponymous evildoer.

Much like a botched souffle that fails to rise, Simply Irresistible is a bland confection that remains doggedly earthbound while attempting flights of romantic fantasy.

Might be extremely effective while preaching to the converted, but it's no great shakes as secular entertainment.

A genially haphazard but frequently amusing neo-stoner comedy that plays like "Cheech and Chong Go to Animal House."

Shamelessly sappy and emotionally manipulative, Patch Adams is an aggressively heartwarming comedy-drama that may be roasted by critics but embraced by ticketbuyers.

It's an unabashedly corny but occasionally stirring dramedy based on the true-life story of scrappy young baseball players from Mexico who, in 1957, scored an improbable string of successes while playing their way from a Monterrey sandlot to the Little League World Series.

A lavishly mounted and appealingly old-fashioned swashbuckler with nary a trace of wink-wink irony or revisionist embellishment.

Provides enough cheap thrills and modest suspense to shake a few shekels from genre fans before really blasting off as homevid product.

Just funny enough to mollify purists and amuse the uninitiated.

A pleasingly retro recycling of "The Love Bug."

Uplifting and entertaining feel-good, fact-based sports drama.

Lightweight but likable.

Harvests a bumper crop of laughs.

Plays more like '70s drive-in fare than a monster mash of recent vintage.

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.

Aimed squarely at adolescents who might find "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" too intellectually taxing.

An undemanding dramedy.

Even more family-friendly than its immensely popular predecessor.

Seldom has a pic been more appropriately titled than Disaster Movie, yet another frantically unfunny free-form farce.

A spectacularly trashy and aggressively flashy motorcycle melodrama in which computer-enhanced action scenes, unbound by gravity or logic, are choreographed, photographed and edited to resemble video-game stratagems.

Long on atmosphere yet short on dramatic tension.

Indeed, you could argue that weighty questions about the nature of evil and the allure of sin figured more prominently in the similarly titled "Se7en," one of several other, better suspensers dimly echoed here.

Sometimes shaky, sometimes smooth handheld DV lensing (by Drews and Krybus) gives the pic an immediacy that greatly enhances its dramatic and emotional impact.

Picture benefits greatly from appealing performances by Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn, who deftly apply darker emotional shadings to their characters when necessary, and equally fine work from a small ensemble of solid supporting players.

Engaging lead performances and snatches of witty repartee help lubricate the creaky plot mechanics in Weather Girl, a lightly amusing but thoroughly predictable dramedy.

There’s barely enough plot for a half-hour episode of a weekly TV series spinoff. And there’s even less here in terms of acting, writing and filmmaking polish to appeal to anyone over the age of 10.

Emerges as a formulaic thriller that plays more like direct-to-video fare than a megaplex-worthy feature.

Amiably slapdash docu about The Comedians of Comedy tour mixes on-stage performances, backstage bull sessions and downtime tomfoolery to generally satisfying and frequently hilarious effect.

Loosely plotted and wildly uneven farce.

This undistinguished picture qualifies as an endangered species. As a digital babysitter, however, it may prove sufficiently efficient to generate fair-to-middling homevid sales.

Lofty ambitions and unaffected sincerity are not quite enough to sustain The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyam, a reverentially pokey drama that plays less like a conventional movie than a lengthy series of hagiographic historical tableaux.

Imagine a '30s screwball comedy played to a sensuous Brazilian beat and you're ready for Bossa Nova, a delightfully amusing romantic roundelay.

A glossy teen-weepie romance that often plays like an inspirational indie skewed toward Christian niche market.

The fragrant aroma of magnolias is undercut by the distinct smell of mothballs throughoutThe Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, an admirably earnest but curiously flat attempt to film a long-unproduced scenario by Tennessee Williams.

Even though it sprints along a well-trod path through familiar territory, Saint Ralph remains surprisingly compelling.

Only small children with limited attention spans will be impressed by the lackluster kung-foolishness in 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain.

Generates genuine suspense as it follows a group of American actors in the former Soviet Union during a fateful period of the Perestroika era.

There's a provocative premise at the heart of Master of the Game, but uneven acting, indifferent direction and melodramatic dialogue blunt pointed ironies.

Trifling time-killer.

A low-key charmer that's bound to enchant small children and amuse their parents during many hours of repeat viewings.

Beautifully lensed and intelligently crafted.

Slickly entertaining documentary.

The Legend of Ron Jeremy is, at a brisk 75 minutes, long enough to get the job done.

Scores a few chuckles while following a familiar game plan.

Unvarnished verisimilitude, visceral impact and vividly evoked emotional and physical extremes distinguish Hooligans, the impressive debut feature by German-born helmer Lexi Alexander.

Picture shrewdly shuffles together attractive young leads, cagey screen vets and a fantasy-fulfillment scenario in a slickly polished package that should appeal to anyone who's ever dreamed of beating the odds.

Richly amusing and sporadically insightful as it offers an up-close-and-personal view of Ivan Thompson, a self-proclaimed "cowboy cupid" who plays matchmaker between American men and Mexican women.

Feels achingly sad and frustratingly incomplete.

Nacho Libre strikes a delicate balance of whimsy and absurdity that may surprise auds primed to expect wall-to-wall slapstick.

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 is a great deal more style than substance here. The special effects experts and the other members of the technical crew do their considerable best to give their various hacking sequences the look of warp-speed sci-fi fantasy.

A stunningly unfunny farce that makes the worst of a stale concept.

Amusing indie comedy blithely blurs the line between risque and raunchy, often to hilarious effect.

One of the summer's more pleasant surprises. A silly bit of tiptop tomfoolery with cross-generational appeal.

Solid performances, handsome production values and a few genuinely creepy scenes are not enough to save Godsend.

Offers a largely satisfying mix of broad slapstick, seriocomic sentimentality and mostly amusing satirical thrusts at easy targets.

Sandler (never making a false step while maneuvering though vertiginous mood swings) and Cheadle (deftly commingling instinctive decency with quiet desperation) are individually excellent, and bring out the best in each other. And the picture itself transcends its real but relatively minor flaws to score a satisfyingly potent impact.

An extremely enjoyable neo-screwball comedy about attractive opposites on the road.

Latenight cable TV filler disguised as a feature film.

Destined to be better remembered for its grisly billboard imagery than for its relatively tame torture-porn tropes, Captivity is a thoroughly nasty piece of work that nonetheless earns credit for generating modest suspense after a predictable but effective plot twist around the 50-minute mark.

With equal measures of prickly wit, gleeful pride and bemused gratitude, Charles Nelson Reilly looks back at his life, and invites his audience to share the view, in this thoroughly engaging filmization of his one-man stage show.

This family affair is a squeaky-clean cable-ready comedy, unabashedly retro fluff.

A star vehicle composed of second-hand parts that nevertheless gets great mileage (and big laughs) from its recycled plot.

An impressively polished documentary by Bob Hercules and Cheri Hughes. Perhaps even more thought-provoking than its co-helmers intended, pic is bound to spark conversations and debate.