Ken Eisner

Riveting and timely.

Combo of gorgeously shot Western settings (mostly in snowbound Idaho), memorably mismatched characters, and light-touch social commentary.

Thoughtful, surprisingly fast-moving documentary.

When Sordid Lives does what it does best -- showing Southern gals in the full flight of rabid self-denial -- it's as screamingly funny as this subgenre can get.

Third outing for prairie auteur Gary Burns is his most ambitious, and most uneven, effort yet.

Educational value aside, pic is exciting for its extended performance sequences, with the most notable finding Traore and Farke strolling with guitars through the acoustically amazing atrium of an abandoned mud schoolhouse.

A relentless excoriation of the School of the Americas.

By sharp turns poignant, disturbing and hysterically funny.

An ill-conceived effort that starts OK but quickly goes off the rails.

One-liners and dry sight gags still abound, but the ennui-sodden formlessness of "Slacker" doesn't fly as well in this $ 6 million, smoothly lensed package, which calls for shapelier narrative and resolution.

Starring an excellent Paulo Costanzo (late of "Joey") as a twentysomething uberslacker who is nonetheless willing to fall into accidental success, pic is seasoned with fine perfs by JR Bourne as a charismatic, creepy hustler and Steph Song as Constanzo's sexy potential love interest.

A visually opulent but dramatically undernourished prequel to the 1979 hit of almost the same name.