J.R. Jones

Melville's seedy characters and engrossing friendships are well preserved, thanks largely to strategic redeployment of his crisp dialogue. As revamped caper films go, this offers considerably more texture than Steven Soderbergh's "Ocean's 11."

What Scorsese brings to the table, having created more than his share of rascally villains, is a renewed sense of horror and despair at the power of evil.

This eerie drama harks back to sci-fi movies of the late 60s and early 70s that explored inner as well as outer space (2001, Solaris, and particularly Silent Running).

The songs don't advance the narrative lyrically so much as follow the two characters' uncertain relationship through the slow realization of their themes; in particular a scene in which they first jam together in the back room of a music store is a gem.

As "Kick-Ass" proved, there's a ready audience for the spectacle of a school-age girl who's a relentless killing (as opposed to texting) machine.

In the Apatow manner, Segel mines a mother lode of painful personal memories for his breakup gags, and the vanity of entertainment people proves to be another rich vein.

A power­ful drama, but if I didn’t know Green had directed it I probably wouldn’t have guessed.

The experience couldn't be more realistic, though Cameron also superimposes imagery of passengers recalling the fateful night, to haunting effect.

The documentary begins to lose its shape as Siegel ponders the spiritual and cultural impact of the honeybee, but it does succeed in flagging a potentially critical problem.

The movie gradually deepens from odd-couple comedy into Catholic-themed drama, but it remains marvelously funny throughout. Instead of hitting the easy notes of black humor, McDonagh skillfully modulates between broad character laughs and the men's piercing anguish as the story nears its bloody conclusion.

The documentary becomes more poignant and substantial when old age begins to seriously disable some of the dancers.

Adults won't find much to enjoy here, though the dog's high-octane action series serves as a perverse parody of Jerry Bruckheimer-style summer blockbusters.

Milos Forman's "Amadeus" (1984) is so ingrained in the popular imagination that its portrait of Mozart may never be dispelled, but this thorough and insightful 2006 documentary presents a more rounded and compelling view of the high-spirited genius.

Offers a fascinating inquiry into memory and art, mixing clips from Fellini's films with contemporary shots of the same locales in and around Rome.

Unfortunately the film never establishes either a perspective of its own or a coherent geography of the city, so the politicians pontificating at ceremonies and architects commiserating at building sites become deadly dull long before the the film exhausts its 88 minutes.

As creator and head writer of "The West Wing," Aaron Sorkin had a gift for making policy debate seem sexy, but what worked in the context of that liberal fantasy founders badly amid the realpolitik of this cold war drama.

A 157-minute holding pattern in which neither of the ongoing stories--Harry's conflict with the evil sorcerer Voldemort, the young schoolmates' coming of age at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft--progresses much.

As one might expect from IFC, actors and directors dominate the interview segments, which may be the reason the narrative never finds its way to Heaven's Gate.

There's a good deal of pleasure to be had in the clockwork precision of her hand-to-hand combat, which Soderbergh often shoots in profile to showcase her wall-climbing backflips. The story surrounding it is comparably smooth, skilled, and mechanical, though a lot less memorable.

Moody and thoughtful.

Occasionally cloying, but the distinguished British cast (Anna Massey, Robert Lang, Georgina Hale, Millicent Martin) generates considerable gravitas.

Washes onto the big screen with a tide of weak one-liners, exaggerated reactions, and vaguely nauseating gags.

Like Costa-Gavras's "Amen." (2002), this German drama uses a true story to examine the Catholic church's response to the Holocaust, but it focuses less on institutional politics than on personal conscience and responsibility.

Some might call this movie a step backward after Burger's previous feature, the painfully honest Iraq war drama "The Lucky Ones," but as a stylish intrigue it's hard to beat.

Some of the editing has a giddy, overeager quality, the natural excess of a young prodigy, but when the action and the tempo align, the results are exhilarating: an early brawl in a pool hall fairly leaps off the screen.

Clooney directed with an actor's appetite for vivid star turns, and he certainly gets them from Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Paul Giamatti.

Engrossing documentary.

A heart-wrenching performance from Brenda Blethyn sustains this 2009 drama by French writer-director Rachid Bouchareb.

The movie never finds a consistent tone -- the humor is dynamically offbeat, the dramatic moments a bit canned -- but Braff's affection for his misfit characters and skeptical take on how people sell themselves short in America make this the truest generational statement I've seen since "Donnie Darko."

Krause is completely believeable as the solid old man, and though the story moves slower than molasses, it leaves the same dark aftertaste.

The movie loses credibility with the arrival of Rogen and Bill Hader as two uniformed patrolmen who are drunker and crazier than any high schooler could ever get, but the variety of complications thrown at the three pubescent heroes raises this a cut above most raunchy comedies.

The maternal triangle is pretty well handled too, giving a good sense of where Lennon came by all that exuberance and melancholy.

Not having read the Richler novel, I can't comment on the movie's fidelity to it, but this has the overstuffed feel of a sprawling, life-spanning story that's been wrestled down to feature length.

His story demands to be heard, though Tucker and Epperlein lack the material for a full feature and pad this out to 73 minutes with some incongruously playful elements (spy music, comic-book illustrations, scenes of Abbas frolicking at a beach).

This British drama is so overplotted it smothers the two main characters as much as they do each other.

Clooney badly botches the spy plot by casting himself as Barris's agency contact... and a truly awful Julia Roberts as Barris's Mata Hari lover (she's soundly upstaged by Drew Barrymore as his devoted girlfriend). Yet the mounting delirium drives home Kaufman's basic point: that a shadow government rules by bread and circuses.

Run-of-the mill drama.

Fans of Coppola's movies (and/or perfume ads) will find this free of the absurd pop-rock flourishes in "Antoinette" and more consistent with the skilled tonality and narrative ambiguity of "Translation."

This premise may sound all right on paper, but on-screen it doesn't really wash: if the girl had been half as committed to music as she now is to revenge, she would have overcome her disappointment.

This is worth seeing, but only if you think you can tolerate the precious voice-over narration from the couple's wounded cat, delivered by July in a high, scratchy voice.

Engrossing and frequently hilarious.

The witty title aside, this is a miserably dull exercise in stingy-Jew humor and post-Jarmusch nonreaction.

This smart and rocking video documentary by Tim Irwin follows the trio from its origins in suburban San Pedro, California, in 1979 to the death of singer-guitarist D. Boon in a 1985 car crash, which ended his deep and creatively fruitful friendship with bassist Mike Watt.

Making Shakur the narrator works pretty well at first...But once he becomes an overnight star at age 20, his relentless self-articulation to Tabitha Soren begins to sound like the usual white noise of celebrity, his ideas about race and power in America potent but undeveloped.

Effective advocacy film about the genocide in Darfur.

Jennings's film, with its missing fathers, sometimes threatens to become cloying, but it's almost always righted by a healthy dose of slapstick or the spectacle of little kids posing as muscle-bound killers.

A missed opportunity, though as usual Quaid is dazzling.

An engrossing tale of ego, strategy, and the limits of human intelligence.

Less about the characters than about the first two movies, whose best scenes it congeals into ritual or parody.

One keeps waiting for the title characters' lives to intersect, but when they finally do--with a reporter asking Powell to comment on Child's disparaging remarks about her--Ephron scurries away from the moment and its implications.

"Cut" is the most interesting of the three shorts because Park uses the opportunity to take stock of his career and the excruciating cruelty of his movies.

In the end I didn't believe in their relationship, but I was pleased to see Keaton tearing it up for two hours.

Steven Sebring spent a decade making this documentary about the punk poet, and it shows.

A modest success that makes one wish Soderbergh could find some happy middle ground between funky experiments and "Ocean's Eleven."

Pleasantly acted and moderately funny, but it lacks the genuine bile that made "Heathers" (1987) so bracing.

Diary of the Dead features some of the most hilariously gross images since "Dawn of the Dead." In one online video the filmmakers find, a father playfully pulls off a birthday clown’s red rubber nose and the guy’s real nose comes off with it.

Gripping drama.

In movies like "Happiness" and "Storytelling," Todd Solondz has staged some pretty horrifying courtships, but the one in this seventh feature is surprisingly gentle.

In the end, this admirably broadens our knowledge of the era but doesn't much deepen it.

Visually commanding, conceptually beguiling, but dramatically inert.

This talking-heads documentary by Stefan Forbes doesn't waste much time delving into Atwater's misshapen character; instead it focuses on his South Carolina roots and his instinctive grasp of the southern strategy that's been the GOP's key to the White House for the past 40 years.

Judge races through some of his most provocative ideas in the opening minutes and ignores his story's many logical inconsistencies; the movie is bracing for its bile but ultimately more frustrating than funny.

Unfortunately, every laugh is bludgeoned nearly to death by Marvin Hamlisch's jokey score of neo-James Bond riffs and 70s sitcom melodies; I liked the movie quite a bit, but by the end I felt as if I were at a live TV show with a blinking sign ordering me to LAUGH.

The thing runs more than two hours, but this is the sort of project that's indemnified against charges of excess.

Adapted by Ernest Tidyman from his novel, this suffers from some sluggish dialogue scenes, but the movie comes to vibrant life whenever director Gordon Parks hits the streets of New York.

Fine character work by Juliet Stevenson, Archie Panjabi, and Bollywood regular Anupam Kher make this well worth seeing.

"The Illusionist" also centers on a 19th-century magician, and the elegant contours of its story are even more impressive compared with Nolan's clutter of double and triple crosses.

There's rancor here, but also unexpected tenderness.

Gyllenhaal turns the young ex-con into an enormously sympathetic figure, but by the end there's no denying that her need for the girl is as selfish as her addiction.

Unlike many other purveyors of hip comedy, they're consistently clever without being contemptuous of their audience.

An explosive but scrupulously journalistic drama about the radical group that terrorized Germany for nearly 30 years.

Birmingham and coscreenwriter Matt Drake adapted a short story by Tom McNeal, elaborating on its plot but beautifully capturing its low-key poeticism.

In the last two decades rock documentaries have become ubiquitous on TV but marginalized as cinema; this is the rare exception that earns its place on the big screen.

This being senior year, Burstein can't help but capture some genuine drama, but there's a stage-managed quality to the movie that reminded me of MTV reality shows.

Parts of this are screamingly funny, other parts downright stomach turning, but you have to admire the fact that, for these guys, "anything for a laugh" really means anything. And for all the moronic behavior, there are also some inspired dadaist moments.

This is affecting and thematically pointed but much more pat than the situation that precedes it, in which two different realities must coexist uneasily on the same screen.

The documentary is most valuable for its fly-on-the-wall footage of the inventive tunesmith puttering around his apartment and drilling the band on his idiosyncratic arrangements.

This fourth installment is a complete reboot, returning to the web-slinger's creation story, and Garfield, more than any other factor, contributes to the sense of a bleaker vision along the lines of "The Dark Knight."

Echoes of James Whale’s Frankenstein movies reverberate through this creepy Canadian sci-fi tale, whose innocent, confused beast is alternately terrifying and pathetic.

The action is so relentless that after a while things start to feel hollow, but Rodriguez still seems to believe the moral articulated at the end of the first film -- that keeping a family together is the real adventure.

Aside from the Pirandellian games and some interplay of different film stocks there isn't much going on here, though von Trier rewards the patient with a strange and horrifying climax.

The film is soon bogged down by fake hugs and a faker climax.

Despite the two-hours-plus running time, major plot developments like the actual escape and the eventual departure of Colin Farrell's hardened Stalinist flit by so quickly that they barely register.

The staging is wooden, the story insipid, and the dialogue sequences mostly painful, but the film’s integration of song, dance, and story (“100% All Talking! 100% All Singing! 100% All Dancing!”) was a clear narrative advance over the music pictures being released by Warner Brothers and Fox, and the score is great.

Producer-star Tom Cruise handed this one to alumni from the TV spy drama "Alias," and the result is nearly as good as the series' best, Woo's Mission: Impossible 2.

For the grown-ups there are sweet, sincere performances by Ginnifer Goodwin, Sandra Oh, and, as Ramona's endlessly game father, the likable John Corbett, relieved for once of his drippy rom-com duties.

The popcorn elements are well handled, but what lingers is the sense of urban despair: watching old videotapes of the Today show, carrying on friendships with mannequins, Smith turns out to be no legend at all, just another New Yorker slowly dying of loneliness.

I tend to approach green documentaries with all the enthusiasm of an unemployed logger, but this hard-charging digital video about genetically modified organisms kept me on the edge of my seat with its lucid exposition and frontal assault on Monsanto.

By the time Herzog tried to pass off jellyfish as Dourif's old pals, my indulgence was nearing its end--but then so was the movie.

His (John Cusack) quickness and intelligence make him a poor choice to play the flat-footed main character, a rigidly conservative family man who can't work up the nerve to tell his two daughters their soldier mother has been killed in action.

The film was praised upon release for its hard-nosed look at big money in politics, though these days it seems positively dainty.

The movie gets old fast--mostly because it’s bringing up the rear after "Undercover Brother" (2002) And "I’m Gonna Git You Sucka" (1988). But the kung-fu climax at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (“the Honky House”) is nearly worth the wait, and Adrian Younge’s score, with its moody horns, is a perfect snapshot of early 70s soul.

Documentarians Adam Del Deo and James Stern present a cogent and comprehensive postmortem of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio.

Director Oliver Schmitz is particularly attentive to the superstition and ingrained sexism that make life miserable for these people, though he also seems to view women as the country's best hope.

Jarmusch makes some effort to deliver on the promise of suspense near the end, with de Bankole stalking despicable businessman Bill Murray at his fortresslike compound in the hills.

Actor David Morse establishes himself as a truly formidable presence in this powerful first feature by Alex and Andrew Smith.

A strong cast fails to rescue this ponderous Oscar bait.

By the time director Patrice Leconte arrives at his predictable climax and conventional moral, this lethargic French comedy may not have any friends either.

Too many extraneous elements have been added--the victim here is an aborigine, which prompts a racial backlash against the men and their families--but at the movie's center lies the knotty story of a marriage poisoned by amorality.

Machiavelli epigrams and 70s soul classics embellish this slice of thug life, which succumbs to the usual hypocrisy of condemning Barnes while grooving on his cars, clothes, and jewels.

The argument is so tilted against windmills (sorry) that this comes perilously close to an advocacy video. But Israel deserves credit for delivering the bad news that wind power, like natural gas and nuclear, comes with its own array of social and environmental headaches.

Various news stories have noted the movie's accuracy, which I don't doubt, but the blanket antipathy makes for a wearying and predictable story.

The behind-the-scenes tragedy gives Gilliam an easy excuse for the dull chaos that engulfs the story, but he might have generated it all on his own.

Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road) steals his every scene as the aphorism-spouting Fowley while Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning often fade into the 70s wallpaper as guitarist Joan Jett and front woman Cherie Currie.

There's nothing here about Monroe that we haven't been told a thousand times already: she was sexy, she was troubled; she was warm, she was selfish; she took pills, she lit up the screen.

Broomfield, whose celebrity exposés are known for their intrusiveness and innuendo, lost me with his gentle shower scene between an Iraqi woman and her husband; even if it wasn't invented, is it really any of our business?

There's one nifty and original sequence--an assassination attempt during a state funeral where the pipe organs in the church all go haywire--but otherwise, this is crushingly generic.

Unfortunately, as the opening title might suggest, the filmmakers have punted on the hard cinematic work of making the incredible seem credible; instead they've turned Russell's story into a broad farce with one wocka-wocka gag after another.

As the phlegmatic, beer-guzzling protagonist, Will Ferrell manages to keep this rolling, though Rush's corny narrative devices (each of the minor characters receives an ironic gift at the end) couldn't be less consistent with Carver's stubborn minimalism.

Flawed but ambitious, this biopic of British parliamentarian William Wilberforce closely tracks the political maneuvering of the late 18th and early 19th century as reformers campaign to end Britain's participation in the slave trade.

Director Nigel Cole is best known for "Calendar Girls" (2003), another condescending exercise in you-go-girl uplift.

Tends to let his consumers off the hook--you'd hardly guess that any of these people are responsible for their own financial woes.

The famously oblique French director Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad) won a special award at the Cannes film festival for this existential comedy (2009), whose masterful technique fails to compensate for its glassy characters and mercilessly self-amused tone.

As in "My Favorite Year," the laughs all come from seeing a nervous innocent pulled into the star's debauchery, the heart from our growing realization that debauchery is just emptiness with the volume cranked.

Cillian Murphy gives a tour de force performance.

Coppola's fondness for the operatic gets the better of him as the action approaches a climax, but the movie is girded by a sense of knotty family history.

The movie is most fascinating when it shows how Chanel communicated her enlightened sense of womanhood through her innovative designs, which in turn helped women feel differently about themselves.

Fox keeps the suspense story at a low boil throughout, allowing the politics to emerge as the characters deepen.

I found it warm, humane, pretty, and dull enough to anesthetize patients awaiting massively invasive surgery.

I hate to rap this serious-minded filmmaker, but I'm beginning to wonder whether her scripts aren't better realized when they're held in check.

Pine, who expertly approximated William Shatner in the Star Trek reboot, seems to have picked up some of the actor's air of self-serious buffoonery, and it suits him well; as Witherspoon's best pal, late-night TV comedian Chelsea Handler holds down what might be called the Nora Ephron part, dispensing an endless stream of bawdy man jokes.

Wonderful first feature.

What makes Outrage a bankable indie film is the promise of personal embarrassment--everyone loves a good outing. Except for the person at the center of it.

Coppola based her script on a revisionist biography by Antonia Fraser, though the film reads most poignantly as a personal statement; like Marie, the director was born to a life of privilege and carries the burden of a proud family legacy.

A triumph not only for its technical mastery but for its good taste.

Toward the end the freak-show humor begins to yield diminishing returns, but for most of its length this delivers a steady stream of uncomfortable gut laughs.

The result is pretty entertaining, though most of that entertainment derives from Katz's skillful exploitation of gumshoe formula.

Based on a story by Steve Martin of all people, the script seldom rises above formula (Guy Pearce and Neal McDonough are especially ill served as a pair of starchy FBI agents), but its respectful treatment of Islam is both unusual and welcome.

Sunshine does for sci-fi what "28 Days Later" . . . did for the zombie movie -- its tale about a manned space mission to the sun preys on our growing fear of obliteration as we confront global warming.

This is well worth seeing for Bening's arresting, unpleasant performance.

The script, by newcomer Sabina Murray, is occasionally cloying as the naive hero falls for a bitter prostitute (Bai Ling), but its epic tale of two cultures tragically entwined is anchored by deep and elemental emotions.

The dazzling star power of the French screen royalty Ozon has assembled and the film's sheer exuberance in its own artifice make this a delight from beginning to end.

Big, cruel, stupid actioner.

Scott Speedman gives a piercing, intelligent performance.

This functions perfectly well as a Van Damme vehicle, but it's also a funny and poignant look at a man trapped by his own ridiculous reputation.

Passably creepy chiller.

Stark, mysterious, and often weirdly funny.

You may feel fussy asking for a coherent narrative, though, because director Ridley Scott delivers so many of the shocking set pieces that are the real hallmark of the series.

Seann William Scott is the best comic Neanderthal in Hollywood (American Pie, Role Models), and he's found the perfect story in this fictionalized adaptation of a memoir by minor-league hockey brawler Doug Smith.

The survival drama is genuinely exciting, and the players, both human and canine, put this across with spirit.

Adapted from a Stephen King story, this trite but watchable chiller plays like a scaled-down version of "The Shining," with Cusack driven over the edge by hallucinations of his abusive father and dead daughter.

For the most part this reminded me of a hysterical passenger pushing random buttons in the cockpit of a plunging airplane.

This remake is good fun, aided in no small degree by Colin Farrell's strutting, dead-eyed performance as the bloodsucker.

The quiet exploration of late sexuality is remarkable, but the characters' seniority also makes the triangle doubly painful for the woman's husband of 30 years, who suddenly faces the prospect not only of living alone but of dying that way as well.

Watt's script is a bit overstuffed, and by the end the roiling animated sequences (drawn by Emma Kelly and inked by Watt and Clare Callinan) are wearing out their welcome. But the convincing characters and hearty examination of mortality make this fresh and oddly uplifting.

Never really generates any serious laughs.

Funny, scary, and exuberant, Kaboom delivers the goods as both a generational marker and a tale of things to, uh, come.

Managed to pull the rug out from under me about three-quarters of the way through, and I still hadn't found my feet when the credits rolled.

Irish playwright Mark O'Rowe, who wrote the script, has an admirable sense of dramatic proportion that suits his intertwining stories; theater director John Crowley, making his film debut, has a sure hand with his actors; and an excellent cast enlivens this web of romantic and criminal intrigue, set in a gray suburb of Dublin. R.

This is hysterically funny in parts, but most of the laughs are raunchy or scatological--always a sure bet when puppets are involved.

The narrative conceit requires a fair amount of indulgence as the story progresses, but the fleeting, incomplete glimpses of the monster early on prove the old dictum of B movie auteur Val Lewton that a momentary image can have greater impact than a prolonged one.

Thomas Hardy it's not, but as far as middlebrow British romances go, better this than "Love Actually."

What promises to be a standard postmortem on 60s ideology becomes a thoughtful essay on the choices we all make between work, family, and personal freedom.

The movie is perfectly appropriate for girls, and its opening scenes play like a more intelligent and historically grounded version of their G-rated princess dramas.

Portrayed ad infinitum in sci-fi and fantasy, the postapocalypse may now seem about as scary as Post Raisin Bran, but Hillcoat gives it an unnerving solidity by focusing on the drab details of survival and linking them to the more hellish aspects of modern American life.

The novelty wears off almost immediately, leaving this a real chore to watch; there's something bizarre about low-budget spontaneity being replicated in such a labor-intensive medium.

Roy's story is fascinating in its own right, exploring the hero's mingled shame over his class background and homosexuality, and painting a vicious portrait of Britain's coke-snorting upper crust in the late 70s.

Studded with terrorist attacks... Yet Malkovich never exploits these for action-movie thrills: in each instance the loss of life is terrible and the morality of the act is left treacherously ambiguous.

As the smirking title might suggest, the movie is least prepared to process the feminist backlash against porn movies that followed their early-70s crossover -- in a way the most interesting part of the story.

Packs a punch in its first act with a passionate lead performance by Cyndi Williams and a painfully concrete sense of modern life closing in. But gradually it slips into the indie paradigm of an alienated soul rushing into darkness, climaxing with a semiabstract montage sequence that's more rhetorical than dramatic.

Throughout the tour O'Brien makes it a point of pride to oblige his fans, though even this comes off as self-centered.

This male weepie is ridden with cliches (Farina's character tends to a pigeon coop on his roof, for God's sake) and climaxes with a predictable act of self-abnegation.

The U.S. vs. John Lennon isn't so much a history of Lennon's pacifism as a continuation of it, the last bed-in, so to speak, with contemporary figures like Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky on hand to connect Vietnam with Iraq, President Nixon with President Bush, and the FBI's spying on Lennon with the current administration's domestic surveillance.

Ben Stiller produced, and the movie is so reminiscent of "Zoolander" that I wish he had rounded up Owen Wilson and starred in it himself. Farrell and Heder are pretty funny, but they're consistently upstaged by supporting players William Fichtner, Will Arnett, and Amy Poehler.

This manages to make the real seem generic, rather than the other way around.

Watching this is like watching kids play with Hot Wheels--not a bad time at all, but I wouldn't pay ten bucks for it.

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are enormously funny in this farce.

Luckily LaGravenese has incorporated some of the real students' piercingly honest diary entries and rounded up an engaging cast of unknowns and young actors (April Hernandez, Kristin Herrera, Hunter Parrish) to channel their anger and hopelessness.

The movie's sexual politics couldn't be more regressive--Crudup learns to be a man in the sack as well as on the boards--but it's still a competent middlebrow costume drama.

This pleasant romantic comedy is essentially "Far From Heaven" with the races reversed.

This adaptation of the best-selling novel by Stephenie Meyer never rises above the level of a teen soaper on the CW, and its pale, sulky boy toys (Kellan Lutz, Peter Facinelli, Jackson Rathbone) are more silly than scary.

I came to this expecting a standard rock doc, but its cobwebbed tale of an aged parent and grown child's debilitating relationship seems closer to "Grey Gardens."

Making his feature directing debut, Hoffman shows considerable generosity toward the other players, which was probably a good idea given his own listless performance as the mumbling title character.

Visconti rolls out some heavy left-wing proselytizing in the last half hour, but what really hits like a hammer is Lancaster’s realization that these awful people are the only family he’s got.

Smart dialogue, an impeccably crafted story, and eye-catching LA locations make this low-budget feature by Alex Holdridge the most worthwhile date movie I've seen in some time.

The orgy of violence, as ghastly as in any video game, should go a long way toward erasing whatever goodwill Stallone earned with his sentimental "Rocky Balboa."

Def and Willis are both good, but Donner's lethal weapon here is Morse, a chronically overlooked character actor whose combined tenderness and ruthlessness make him the most fascinating heavy since Robert Ryan.

The result is notably dim and flat on a big screen, and the giant-monster scenes, often cloaked in darkness, are few and disappointing. Edwards tries to take the high road with a politically intriguing premise (a la District 9) and a tight focus on the evolving relationship between his two traveling companions, but his shapeless script doesn't do much with either element.

Intimations of dope addiction drive the compact plot, which resorts to some stiff exposition early on but careens toward a slam-bang ending.

This has some currency as ethnography, showing how tribal and interpersonal matters mesh with sports mania, but it remains a formidably dull account of an inherently exciting pastime.

I guessed the big plot twist as soon as Franklin began setting it up, which gave me a good 40 minutes to appreciate the fine supporting cast and weathered coastal Florida locations while waiting for Washington's character to catch up with me.

There's something wrong with a suspense film when the sets are more interesting than the characters.

Apatow and director Jake Kasdan deliver a fair number of laughs, though nearly every good idea is pressed into service as a running gag. The biggest disappointment is their survey of rock history, which has all the depth of a Time-Life book.

Thoughtful and impressively mounted.

It's the most exciting stand-up performance I've seen in years, yet in all honesty I can't say it made me laugh that much.

The plot of the picture is familiar, but it's realized with such delicacy and affection for the characters that it seems as fresh and warm as its verdant setting.

Produced by MTV Films, this step-dancing drama is mired in cliche, but with its dingy ghetto settings and hardened, despondent young characters, it's marginally more interesting than "Stomp the Yard," the 2007 movie that inaugurated the subgenre.

The movie reunites Pfeiffer with director Stephen Frears and screenwriter Christopher Hampton, who did Dangerous Liaisons (1988); this costume drama doesn't have nearly as much bite as that one, though the age reversal of its central romance gives it a certain topicality.

The first positive portrayal of homosexuality in Russian cinema, a distinction that carries it only so far.

The famously passive-aggressive musicians manage to keep any real drama offscreen; the overriding impression is of four people enduring each other long enough to get their retirement portfolios in order.

The result, though clearly flawed, is passionate and ambitious, celebrating that long-gone era when a book of verse could spark a revolution in consciousness.

The voice-over narration by Bill Kurtis is a stroke of genius.

This incredible but true story marks the first time Eastwood's signature themes have found expression in a woman's experience, and the absence of any distracting machismo only heightens his sense of helpless rage at the perpetual anguish of victims' families.

As usual with Stallone's Rocky sequels, the schmaltz is unbearable, but the fight is plausibly handled, and Stallone's sincere sadness at growing older makes this an unexpectedly satisfying conclusion to the series.

This typically bloated production from Jerry Bruckheimer is good swashbuckling fun for the first few reels but eventually slows to a halt under the weight of too many doubloons.

Weird anachronisms (cars, telephones, home computers) contribute to the craziness, but despite the copious imagination on display, this is a fairly long haul.

Director Paul Greengrass has applied his jumpy, tumbling visual style to action blockbusters with Matt Damon and serious dramatizations of political events. This Iraq war drama makes a game attempt to meld the two, though manufacturing thrills takes precedence over any kind of journalistic insight.

After a 40-year career playing jut-jawed a__holes, Michael Douglas must relish the occasional oddball role: he gave a winning performance as the pot-addled professor in "Wonder Boys," and he seems to be having a ball in this funny debut feature by Mike Cahill.

Columbus beautifully realizes many of Rowling's fantastic conceits -- but for the last hour I was searching for a spell to make the credits appear.

This was shot at the legendary Ealing Studios, but I hesitate to call it a British comedy: its two stars are American, it currently has no UK release date, and its innocuous naughtiness seems pitched at grandmothers who watch BBC America.

A suitable mainstream vehicle for Malkovich's bruised aloofness.

I'd have preferred less personality stuff and more hard information about the current technical and commercial challenges, but if polishing these guys' egos is the only way to make them do the right thing, then so be it.

Unfortunately I can't give this a thumbs-up or thumbs-down; I haven't yet developed an aesthetic that will accommodate a guy firing a bottle rocket from his ass.

Bier is one of the cinema's most acute observers of intimate relations, her Scandinavian reserve muting the inherent melodrama of her material, and she draws piercing, modestly scaled performances from Duchovny, Del Toro, Alison Lohman, and John Carroll Lynch.

The story might have been lifted from an old Warner Brothers melodrama, though it's smartly paced, sincerely delivered, and consistently absorbing.

It plays exactly like a Will Ferrell comedy, but better, because Ferrell's not in it.

Absorbing thriller.

I can't remember when I last hated an art-house movie as much as this one...Other reviewers have praised the film's alleged quirky humor, but I was repelled by the two heartless creeps who set the story in motion and baffled by the protagonist's fascination with them.

An overloaded script by Heidi Thomas... defeats a fine cast

The details of Saint-Laurent's creative process are fairly scant compared to the endless display of material possessions; when the movie is over, it seems more like a catalog than a life story.

Handsome and generally amusing adventure.

Cagey low-budget horror flick.

After the portentous "No Country for Old Men," Joel and Ethan Coen return to their trademark brand of cruel, misanthropic farce, and for dark laughs and hurtling narrative momentum this spy caper is their best work since "Fargo."

The genre shows serious signs of wear in this needlessly fictionalized feature about Vince Papale.

Written by Steve Conrad, this is the smartest script director Gore Verbinski has ever had, and he makes the most of it, aided by a strong cast.

The twee romance was too much for me, though the movie's first half follows in fascinating detail the innovations Warne introduced to popularize illustrated picture books for children.

The cruel imperialism of the war is just the sort of thing that stokes Sayles's liberal ire, which is one reason the movie so often recalls his proletarian masterpiece Matewan (1987).

Siegel manages to keep the action wound pretty tight, though he doesn’t seem to sympathize much with Rose’s bleeding-heart liberalism.

The movie's first half hour is a barrage of lazy narrative pointers--endless expository voice-over, freeze frames and captions to identify the numerous characters--and by the time screenwriter Tina Gordon Chism decides to write an extended scene, the story is already dead in the water.

The swashbuckling first hour is superior to the second, which bursts at the seams with backstory, but a rousing climax makes this the most potent piece of agitpop in years.

On paper the story may seem hopelessly contrived -- another nostalgia piece for art-house liberals -- but on-screen it's presented in purely emotional terms, which allows Duigan and his excellent leads to inhabit and ultimately transcend the period.

Jackman and McGregor throw their best American accents behind the effort, but Michelle Williams seems fairly bored as the sex-club partner who wins McGregor's heart. I'm with her.

An honorable, squeaky-clean children's drama, this is notable for its relatively penetrating morality and for Scott Wilson's fine performance as the meanest man in town.

Indifferently scripted and shoddily animated feature.

Hamstrung by its polemics.

Wyatt Cenac, the latest addition to "The Daily Show" With Jon Stewart, is the best reason to see this easygoing romantic comedy.

This is scandal-mongering fun that also lays bare the deforming power of the male aristocracy.

The movie's studied tranquillity will appeal to some, though its embrace of traditional village life struck me as self-satisfied to the point of smugness.

After decades of revisionist westerns, this drama by TV veteran David Von Ancken is impressive for its stubborn classicism.

This French biopic of Nicolas Sarkozy plays like a competent TV miniseries, moving briskly and focusing on the hustle and bustle of electoral politics as the protagonist climbs toward the presidency.

The leads are good, and Timothy Hutton is memorably off-putting as the pitcher's disengaged dad. But having created the aching umpire, Ponsoldt occupies him with some fairly shopworn situations.

In a novel twist, the movie's dumbest element--joke commercials for racist consumer products--turns out to be the most provocative when end titles reveal the products were all real.

The emotions are as gritty as the Edinburgh locales, and the sex is dark, urgent, and deeply selfish.

It certainly fulfills all the conventions of the genre: sci-fi premise, noir stylings, martial arts, snarky dialogue.

MacFarlane gets an impressive amount of comic mileage from having a plush toy talk like a Boston low-life, though for gut laughs nothing compares to the brutal, frantic, and completely wordless fight scene between Wahlberg and his little buddy in a cheap hotel room.

The most daring aspect of the film, fully realized in Bello's grave performance, may be the notion that a parent can invest endless love in a child and one day find him unfathomable.

It's not a terribly disciplined exercise--the rehearsal dinner and wedding ceremony go on so long I felt like I was watching "The Deer Hunter"--but the performances are outstanding, especially Hathaway's and Debra Winger's in a small but devastating turn as her chilly, resentful mother.

The movie clicks along pretty well until they launch their elaborate plot against the merchants of death, which seems to go on forever.

Turns out to be surprisingly layered.

This has its sappy moments, but both women give wonderfully detailed performances, aided by Michael Learned as Hunt's mother and Chris Sarandon as the calm, cold minister.

Not only delightfully funny but unaffectedly romantic.

This Argentinean comedy is short on plot and leisurely in its character development, though by the end it's become a modest and genial portrait of a dysfunctional family.

Writer-director Michel Leclerc keeps stressing how political all this is (the heroine labels almost everyone a "fascist"), but the movie never really decides what it's about, and its odd-couple romance is stale and unpersuasive.

Steppenwolf alumnus Tracy Letts adapted his play into this fearsome horror movie, directed with single-minded claustrophobia by William Friedkin.

A funny but genuinely dark story.

Hysterically funny CGI fight sequences, which pit the chubby superhero against a series of creatures so bizarre they'd keep Hieronymus Bosch awake at night.

This strange and beautiful Macedonian feature is a welcome reminder that national cinemas still exist.

An agreeably shallow comedy.

George Clooney produced and stars in this international spy thriller, which he probably thought of as existential but which registers onscreen as a giant bore.

Though its intentions are noble, it's hampered by a stock romantic subplot (Phillipe falls for his friend's squeeze, Abbie Cornish), a familiar structure (since The Best Years of Our Lives soldiers invariably come home in threes), and a lack of symmetry (some of Gordon-Levitt's story seems to have wound up on the cutting-room floor).

Even in its truncated state, this is pretty gripping stuff; just think of it as an epic commercial for the director's cut DVD.

As the title of this splatter comedy by writer-director Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator) indicates, he's like a bug stuck to her windshield, and that's about the level of humanity and insight one can expect here.

The Israeli academy showered awards--best picture, director, screenplay, editing, cinematography, sound, costumes, actress, supporting actress, supporting actor--on this coming-of-age story, which makes its modest whimsy even harder to get excited about.

It's a solid indie effort with plenty of nice character strokes by screenwriter Megan Holley and razor-sharp performances by Amy Adams and Emily Blunt.

Watching Best Worst Movie, you can't help but notice that the Troll 2 crowd consists almost exclusively of people in their 20s, which makes perfect sense: manufacturing an obsession with a terrible movie probably seems more worthwhile if you think you've got all the time in the world.

Notorious on the festival circuit for its excruciating scenes of self-mutilation.

Sam Rockwell plays the brother, and in his handful of scenes he skillfully tracks the character's slow decay from cocky loudmouth to thoroughly beaten man; Swank, delivering her usual spunky turn, suffers badly by comparison.

The chills are functional at best and the attempts at pathos negligible.

Though the pain of this 9/11 story doesn't pierce as deeply as it should, the laughs are consistently humane.

Director Peter Kosminsky elicits such genuine performances from his talented cast that the film rarely strikes a false note.

Repulsive 80s flashback.

The word "raunchy" doesn't begin to describe this.

The formula works just fine on a more modest scale, without having to carry all the glittering casino sets and A-list movie stars.

Unfortunately Jia --a rather limited actor, judging from the movies excerpted here -- has trouble either articulating or projecting the existential crisis that ultimately landed him in a mental institution, which leaves the emotional center of the film inert.

This dialectical drama has plenty of creaky moments, but Harvey Keitel compensates with a canny, surprising performance.

This movie will hardly set the world on fire, but it's a worthy vehicle for the two old troopers; Smith has the stiffest upper lip in the business, and Dench is heartrending as the naive, lovelorn sister.

Shepard is the whole show here, as weathered and elemental as the harsh Bolivian locations; the movie's best scenes are those that pit him against Stephen Rea as a former Pinkerton man who tracked the outlaws for years and can't believe Cassidy is still drawing breath.

This time the quest plot involves Asian-American pals Harold and Kumar chasing after a Christmas tree to replace one they've accidentally burned down, but that's only an excuse for the relentless barrage of tasteless gags, most of them damned funny.

The climactic sight gag is lifted from Monicelli's movie like a diamond from a jeweler's window.

By the end, when Moore presents himself as a lone crusader for justice and wraps yellow crime-scene tape around the AIG building, his reasoning is so muddled that he can’t distinguish an economic system (corporate capitalism) from a political one (representative democracy).

From "Beavis and Butt-Head" to "King of the Hill" to "Office Space," Mike Judge has become our most dogged examiner of middle-American foolishness; no other comedy filmmaker more skillfully exploits that nagging sense that you’re surrounded by idiots.

The general tone is one of crusty, unapologetic misanthropy, driven home by the formidable Rudd (who also kicked in on the script).

Only in the last third, when he gets down to the business of telling a story, does The Brown Bunny become a porn movie -- though not in the sense you'd expect.

I'd recommend this, but only if you liked "The English Patient."

Being male, I can't relate to this at all; on the other hand, I don't need Midol either, but I'm glad it's on the market.

Director Roger Michell seems genuinely taken with the contrast between brotherly love and homosexual obsession, but these themes are overwhelmed by the suspense machinery.

The dialogue is superior, though, and director Roman Polanski has cast the characters well; Foster is particularly impressive in a stridently unattractive role, as the pinched, angry liberal who's orchestrated the meeting but doesn't get quite the apology she wants.

Combining the undead and the Third Reich seems like a novel idea--the peanut butter and jelly of trash culture--but in fact Spanish exploitation legend Jesus Franco already got to it back in 1981 with "Oasis of the Zombies."

Despite the 138-minute running time, Temple holds all the artists to one song (or less), devoting about half the movie to kaleidoscopic--and ultimately wearying--montage of festivalgoers past and present.

Despite the fascinating topic, director Yan-ting Yuen offers relatively little history or criticism of the works themselves, squandering screen time on such gimmicks as mock voice-over and scenes of young people performing hard-rock and hip-hop versions of vintage songs. It's enough to make you pine for the good old days when irony was illegal.

A comprehensive and devastating critique of the TV news networks' complacency and complicity in the war on Iraq.

Like Nicole Holofcener's "Please Give" (2010), this turns on the friction between an unusually altruistic character and the self-centered people around him, though screenwriters David Schisgall and Evgenia Peretz never pursue their premise into the sort of moral comedy that so distinguished the other movie.

Shane Acker has expanded his Oscar-nominated short 9 into a full-length feature whose splendid visuals are dragged down by a tedious story.

In a tale filled with perverse twists of fate, the most perverse may be that Overnight, not "The Boondock Saints," is Troy Duffy's masterpiece.

There are some funny scenes in which the two brothers spy on the wife, who may be having an affair, but the movie's climax is a badly contrived attempt to ratify Jeff's notion of personal destiny.

I expected this to open out into another loud, thumping thriller. Instead it remains quiet and focused, exploring the couple's frayed relationship and the economic divide that separates the husband from his captor.

The result is a problem drama with more problem than drama.

Tasteful, unremarkable art-house fare, rescued from complete irrelevance by Stephen Dillane's bottled-up performance as a writer scarred by the Holocaust.

As in Christopher Nolan's Inception, the premise is so mind-boggling and fraught with implications that it tends to obviate the action mechanics of the last couple reels.

Combines a delayed-gratification romance and rumblings of war.

Gilbert would have done well to stick with these witnesses; instead his History Channel-type video presents a dutiful overview of the Brown case.

The Holocaust subplot is contrived and schematic. Yet the central love triangle is fairly compelling, aided by Krol's fine performance.