Joshua Land

Todd Verow's overstuffed Vacationland promises more than it delivers in just about every sense.

The master propagandist comes across here as a brooding, insecure megalomaniac--or at times, a bitchy member of a particularly malevolent high school clique, an effect enhanced by some of narrator Kenneth Branagh's English line readings.

A few American soldiers are interviewed in a halfhearted attempt at balance, but Berends, who thankfully eschews narration, makes his own p.o.v. clear enough.

The movie recovers from a sluggish opening act to pack some real suspense in its second half.

While the questions may be universal, they're not particularly original, and the responses largely run the expected range, rendering the whole project less enlightening than your average collegiate coffee-and-cigarettes bull session.

Grappell implicitly uses the juxtaposition with the martyred Kurbas to gauge her commitment to her own art. Light From the East drinks freely from the triumphalist cup of the glasnost era.

A movie refreshingly lacking in social graces, Piggie uses the transparency of video to x-ray the psyches of characters obsessed with the essence of things.

Surprisingly bearable family comedy.

Establishes a strong sense of milieu in these street scenes, and while the movie's not without its flaws--much of the dialogue is colorless and Lisa seems a bit too together to be hanging out with Curtis--it's never less than credible.

Not only is the candid (but never prurient) treatment of early-teen sexuality and drug use too hot to handle, but the narrative blend of fairy-tale wonder and nightmare logic feels sui generis.

Poorly organized mishmash of archival war films, scholarly chatter, and literary quotations.

Lively, intelligent look at the art of film editing.

Frustratingly little here grapples with the day-to-day realities of life in Chechnya and the surrounding areas.

A formal hodgepodge, Congo suffers from abrasive voice-over narration, stilted re-enactments, and an awkward courtroom conceit, but gets by on its shocking material.

As a director (Caan) occasionally falls prey to the rookie mistake of excessive crosscutting, fragmenting the dramatic momentum created by his fine cast.

It's all pleasant enough, but the pretty pictures, languid pacing, and endless stretches of mood music eventually combine to soporific effect.

Kill Your Idols pulls a few punches, tempering its respect for No Wave values like extremity and contentiousness with a more 2006 concern for not actually offending anyone in particular.

Florida-born folksinger Jim White serves as guide on this musical tour of the rural South, conceptualized less as a state of mind than as an atmosphere.

Christopher Browne's entertaining A League of Ordinary Gentlemen goes behind the scenes of the Professional Bowlers Association's comeback bid following the league's 2000 sale (for a mere $5 million) to a trio of retired Microsoft execs.

The Roost proves that West has enough talent to do without the gimmick next time around.

Witherspoon's oft charming perkiness is merely patronizing here, but mid-'90s MTV staple Donal Logue steals every scene he's in as an ethically challenged therapist.

The thriller plot sputters and the romance between Slater and eco-friendly Harvard MBA Selma Blair is a nonstarter, but the movie's threadbare execution actually enhances its queasy vision of a nation in decline.

Investigates the events leading up to the coup d'état; that it was the second for Aristide (overthrown in 1991, mere months after becoming Haiti's first democratically elected president) darkens the film's triumphalist-sounding title.

While positioned firmly as camp, the new Trapped by the Mormons is a surprisingly faithful rendering--at least until the flesh-eating zombies show up.

At times resembling an Iranian "Dead Man Walking," Beautiful City goes out of its way to give each character a fair shake-a few patriarchal rages notwithstanding, even the vengeful father is treated sympathetically. But the script, overly laden with red herrings, forces its characters into some improbable dilemmas.

Raging Dove can't avoid the biodoc pitfall of fixating on its subject's personal saga to the virtual exclusion of all else; by the end it's essentially blaming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for Abu Lashin's professional demise.

Nicely rendered moments of casual intimacy between the men attest to the trip's therapeutic value, but very little of it transfers to the audience. The dull large-group scenes consist mostly of old standbys like writing problems on slips of paper and burning them.