Ken Fox

Moritsugu's film is really just a loose collection of encounters between characters that at times barely hangs together.

Offers a rare glimpse into the hermetic world of the Satmars.

A tense geopolitical thriller that leaves a curiously bad aftertaste.

Eason balances the clichés of a fairly standard story with convincing realism and a powerful momentum that never flags.

Brimming with fun and a few great ideas, it's little more than a foggy memory the minute it's over.

While the film may drop a few of the novel's more disturbing moments, it still travels some emotionally rocky territory, and each of those actresses -- particularly Alison Lohman, who carries most of the movie on her young shoulders -- turns in a first-rate performance.

And if you can't figure out who [the bad guy] is the minute he first appears, you've either seen too few movies with mind-numbingly predictable plots or you've seen far too many.

Like any good soap opera, the script deftly flits among story lines, offering just enough tantalizing plot development to keep you sticking around for another bite.

With a little more plot, this could have been a killer.

John Carlos Frey's tough social drama has a slightly sensationalistic edge, but the disturbing fact is that all too much of his worthy film hews closely to the real-life experiences of undocumented immigrant workers.

It's a complex new approach toward putting memory to tape, and the result can be at times too theoretical, too personal and too opaque, but it's a consistently challenging work that's often sharply poignant.

It's strictly for the kids, and they'll be tickled.

It's really just "Rocky" in gleaming dress whites.

Meeske does offer insight into a way of life that may be finally gone for good.

The acting is superb.

It's hard to believe that this oddly mesmerizing film, set in large part in the vast subway system that snakes its way through Manhattan and its outer boroughs, wasn't made by a native New Yorker.

Levinson, who has directed enough films to know better, should recognize a stinker of a script when he smells one: Instead clever laughs he serves up sloppy schtick, dead spots filled with lame ad-libbing and Walken crooning "The Happy Wanderer."

Anyone who understands the meaning of the title or catches all the frog references scattered through writer-director Martin Curland's feature debut will have a head start understanding this confused and confusing comedy.

Aronofsky has given us a well-acted, gorgeously overwrought and luridly entertaining exploitation flick -- a midnight movie for future generations.

While Brosnan, an Irishman by birth, lays it on bit thick, his performance is surprisingly effective.

For what amounts to a fairly sentimental glance backward, the film is oddly styled; Andrew Dunn (who also shot the baroque "Monkeybone") favors oblique angles and lighting worthy of an Italian horror movie.

Atonal romantic comedy.

Broomfield's film is didactic, awkwardly acted by the cast of former Marines who are meant to lend the film credibility, and clumsily inflammatory.

An uncommonly smart and bittersweet romantic comedy.

Unfortunately, that imagination flags early in the first sequel to the grisly 2004 sleeper hit, though the bang-up ending nearly makes it all worthwhile and it opens with a set piece worthy of its predecessor.

This film's splendid visuals suit the subject, Spain's greatest painter, but its stilted dramatics are wholly at odds with Francisco de Goya's tumultuous life and times.

All that menace is simply decorative, and it's disappointing that Laconte never properly addresses the intriguing sexual undertones (like voyeurism, exhibitionism and sexual obsession) he uses to darken the film's palette.

Troche has bitten off quite a bit here, and it's too much for her to chew properly.