J.R. Jones

Bowdon makes a compelling argument against the defensive maneuvers of teachers' unions and in favor of vouchers and charter schools, but his documentary is no exercise in free-market cant. It merely explodes the fiction that funneling more money into the same highly bureaucratized and politicized system will fix our deepening education crisis.

The epic poem Beowulf gets an imaginative, low-budget workout in this 2005 Icelandic feature by Sturla Gunnarsson.

This fascinating video documentary covers a nine-month rehearsal of Shakespeare's final play by inmates at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in La Grange, Kentucky.

A spirited crowd-pleaser.

Ron Howard directed, with outstanding support from Kevin Bacon as Jack Brennan, Nixon's fierce chief of staff.

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.

With one of these two alpha males anchoring nearly every scene, Scott really can't go wrong, but the lead characters are pretty thin, a fact highlighted by generic subplots.

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

Funny, smart, and complacent.

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

Bujalski has a knack for the genuine moment.

The outcome is never much in doubt, but Salvadori artfully choreographs the endless table turning, and the Moroccan-born Elmaleh capitalizes on his striking resemblance to Buster Keaton with a similarly comic composure.

Even as a hagiography, though, it's pretty interesting: Fishbone predated-and outlived-the early 90s "alternative" boom that provided it with a brief marketing hook, yet the band truly embodied alternative music's underground ideal, challenging listeners of all races and musical persuasions.

Feels a little soft and boomer-indulgent with its 10,000th rehash of the Nixon years and its soundtrack of trite 60s anthems.

This began as a one-man show, but Lepage has transferred it beautifully to the screen, where its cosmos of ideas hangs weightless.

This adaptation of Robert Ludlum's third and last Bourne thriller doesn't have much story left, so director Paul Greengrass has to keep it moving all the time.

Ehrlich and Goldsmith carve out their own little place in the canon by focusing on the ethical journey of one man who refused to shrug off his own responsibility for the war and atoned for it with a seismic act of civil disobedience.

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.

The more interesting woman is Epper, who comes from a highly respected family of stunt doubles and at 62 shows no signs of slowing.

In archival photos Petit seems to float between the towers, a tiny black figure against a vivid blue sky; the images are all the more poignant for the unstated fact that Petit is still around when the buildings aren't.

This is a polished, palatable intrigue, with a knockout performance from Olivia Williams as the PM's hardened wife and a highly persuasive one from Kim Cattrall, cast against type as his buttoned-up personal assistant. But the mystery is unraveled a bit too conveniently.

Jensen's dramatic structure is so visible this sometimes seems like a late Rod Serling teleplay, but Bier has proved highly adept at merging conventional drama with the immediacy of the Dogma 95 movement.

Like "The Verdict," this is a big, crowd-pleasing Hollywood redemption drama in which the lonely hero not only thwarts the corporate villains in the end but silences them with a killer riposte.

An Inconvenient Truth may not save the planet, but it's already gone a long way toward rescuing Gore's public profile.

Enjoyable action comedy from the Clint Eastwood mold, though the comic elements are more fun than the action.

The main reason I enjoyed this high-powered action flick and its 2001 predecessor is their willingness to poke fun at the premise of crime-fighting dolls, even though it now has more currency than ever.

The same virtue doesn't apply to his commentary, which is too general to rise above the pedestrian; the movie works best traveling from the eye straight to the conscience.

French filmmaker Agnes Varda returns to the guiding metaphor of "The Gleaners and I "(2000), her documentary about scavengers, though in this visually witty 2008 memoir she's poring over her own past and its artifacts--some of them people.