Ken Fox

While at times overly familiar, the film never feels self-mocking.

You just know that any film that opens with Nietzsche's aphorism about hope being an evil that only prolongs the torments of man isn't going to a comedy.

It's both very funny and very scary, and never descends to the level of spoof.

Dark, dank and violent, filled with terrifying scenes in which exploited children are beaten, shot or starving to death. In other words, it's just as Dickens wrote.

Heartfelt and often very funny.

Despite its flaws, the film has the same dreamy, romantic melancholy that distinguishes Wong's best films.

A drum-tight, extremely grisly thriller. And odd as it may sound given the subject matter, it's also surprisingly funny.

Weerasethakul mixes fact, fiction and filmmaking into a blend that's intriguingly obtuse, yet surprisingly revelatory.

The morbid theme notwithstanding, this is by no means a downbeat film, and it ends with the rather hopeful thought that for every disaster there's also a chance for survival.

Silly but endearing comedy.

What the film lacks in artistry it makes up for in commitment.

Stylish and surprisingly effective thriller.

British director Shane Meadows' strongest film to date is also his most personal: A stylish fictionalization of his own wayward youth, spent among a group of working-class skinheads in Thatcher's England.

It was really no bigger than a beach ball, weighed about as much as a full-grown man and it beeped. And aside from transmitting a radio signal and accidentally opening a few automatic garage doors, it didn't really do anything except orbit the globe once every 96 minutes.

"Queer as Folk's" Peter Paige makes a strong debut as a writer/director with this original black comedy.

Pitch-black and bound to offend anyone who's not on its wavelength, Nick Guthe's entertainingly slick debut is a mordantly funny slice of lust, crime and sleaze life set in the world of L.A.'s industry elite: Call it 9021-noir.

There's little difference between this joyful holiday film and the standard-issue yuletide-miracle movie, except that the holiday isn't Christmas.

Like the film's giddily intoxicating cannabis hybrid, Rogen and Goldberg's script cross-pollinates Cheech-and-Chong style stoner comedy with Tarantino-esque ultra-violence.

This quirky, uncommonly intelligent adaptation is a strange delight.

Slow but charming film.

Cassavetes' instincts are spot-on, particularly when it comes to casting Timberlake in what turns out to be the most important role in the film. He manages to be both reprehensible and deeply charismatic, and winds up stealing the picture.

Based on the book by syndicated columnist and savvy media watchdog Norman Solomon, who appears throughout as the main talking head, Earp and Alper's documentary shows just how the U.S. government coerces a nation into accepting the very idea of war, and it's a job it couldn't do without the full cooperation of the media.

Looks and sounds great, and is at its best when it isn't trying too hard to have fun.

Some nice scenery, an unexpectedly funny performance by Jodie Foster and a unflaggingly spunky Abigail Breslin make for above average family entertainment.

What this spectacular-looking sci-fi thriller lacks in originality it makes up for in pure beauty: It just might be the most visually audacious and startlingly beautiful space opera since the original "Solaris."

perfectly serviceable costume drama.

More gripping than anything on Court TV and unexpectedly uplifting.

What's best about Block's documentary is how well he captures his own shifting perceptions.

Dryly funny, deceptively simple road movie that quietly reveals the state of contemporary Romanian life.

fFrst-time feature filmmaker Cam Archer turns what might have been an exercise in salaciousness into a stylish visual poem about desire and adolescent alienation.

A flawed but nevertheless endearing father-son road trip with a distinctive twist.

There have been a number of worth documentaries about gender-benders who cross every conceivable line, but Tomer Heymann's film about a group of Filipino cross-dressers living in Israel is a drag doc with a difference.

Watching Binoche dithering about an American comedy takes some getting used to, but she's a believable soul mate for the hangdog Carell. The rest of the family, however, has got to go.

Rapp's theatrical past is evident throughout: His strongest scenes tend to be those purely character-driven moments when his sharp dialogue takes precedence over any cinematic action. Harris gives another strong performance and Ferrell is great in a comic but low-key role, but this is Deschanel's movie.

It's all confusing, woozy and slightly stoned, and feels very much like adolescence.

Cruise is downright scary. It's the creepiest -- and most entertaining -- performance since his unforgettable appearance in that Scientology video.

Location shooting gives this intermittently powerful film a semidocumentary feel.

For all the impending doom, the film remains suitable for kids of all ages (the filmmakers even end on a happily reassuring note that is at odds with the film's overall message).

The title refers to the giant promotional sign for the Hollywoodland real-estate development that once loomed on the side of Mt. Cahuenga. Shorn of its last four letters 10 years before Reeves' death, it survives as the iconic Hollywood sign.

Leaves you wanting much more.

A well-acted character piece.

Wragby is a stately manor straight out of English House & Garden, rather than a sprawling, suffocating warren teetering on the edge of a coal pit, and sex is portrayed as a means of personal deliverance rather than a universal salvation, leaving Lawrence's admirers still waiting for the film that will finally do the novel justice.

Where "Brockback" leaves its lovers where gay love stories have left them for centuries - isolated, ostracized and miserable - this small comedy finds a far more liberated alternative for everyone involved. In its own modest way, it's the far more radical film.

Even though Kinnear is meant to be obvious love interest, it's the relationship between Kate and Angie that becomes the film's central story, making this comedy sweeter -- and more honest in its depiction of class difference -- than one might otherwise expect.

Among those who are on hand to offer their own feelings about the man known as Peter Berlin and his art are fellow porn legend Jack Wrangler, groundbreaking gay writer Armistead Maupin, pornographer Wakefield Poole and director John Waters, who remembers Peter from his days in San Francisco, and still doesn't quite get what he's all about.

It will certainly appeal to its target audience, and Bynes is charming enough to carry the whole film on her shoulders, which is a good thing considering that she's in just about every scene and leading man Tatum is a stiff.

A sweet, unassuming surprise.

Ambling but never less than endearing.

Sebastien Pentecouteau's startlingly beautiful cinematography lends the film a dreamlike quality and perfectly suits Kounen's mystical subject matter.

Fortunately, no amount of optical wizardry and quick-change trickery can disguise the fundamental power of Harper's performance, a revelatory turn that's truly transformative in every sense of the term.

Raw, uncompromising and surprisingly explicit.

Conrad's script surprises at nearly every turn.

Happily, many of the figures spoken about throughout the film are still with us -- Neville is even able to reproduce Patricia Foure's famous group photo with most of its original subjects.

With 20/20 9/11 hindsight, it's clear that covertly arming the Mujahedeen wasn’t such a good idea after all, but neither Nichols nor Sorkin wants to spoil the fun.

Throughout, Holstein makes no bones about the fact that Father Mychal was hardly perfect -- he was a recovering alcoholic who found salvation in Alcoholics Anonymous -- nor does he attempt to disguise Father Mychal's homosexuality, something he never made public but which no doubt grounded his gutsy work with gay Catholics and people with AIDS.

If you can get past the lips, Ryan gives a touching performance as a woman determined to battle her cancer while knowing life offers no guarantees except death -- an understanding no doubt sharpened by Kasdan's own experience battling Hodgkin's disease as a teenager.

The film's highlights are far and away the musical performances.

The overall effect of watching his film is a bit like a nerve-racking game of Russian roulette: You just know a gun is going to go off, but you don't know which of this multitude of characters it's going to hit.

It presents an image of today's Israeli army, composed of teenagers who are by now several generations removed from the founders' original vision and have begun to question whether tactics designed to keep the country safe will only lead to increased levels of fear, humiliation and deadly violence.

Even though the screen is often divided into a Mondrian-like grid, each individual box containing its own discreet moving image, McDonald's film is surprisingly fluid and easy to follow.

Likably low-key, character-driven dramatic comedy.

The film is by turns strident, obvious, righteously angry and inspired.

Goldbacher's film is lovely to look at, but the blurry heart of the film only suffers by the comparison.

Running just a little over two hours and wordily narrated by talk-radio host Amy Goodman, Stephen Vittoria's hagiography spends more time bemoaning the past 30 years of U.S. political history and setting the dismal tone for McGovern's arrival on the political scene than it does on his 1972 campaign.

Though extensively fictionalized -- Sorowitch is loosely based on the notorious, larger-than-life forger Salomon Smolianoff; Herzog on SS officer Bernhard Krueger, after whom the operation was named.

Apatow's clever comedy is a romance in reverse, and it works.

A solid performance by the often underrated Judith Light lends considerable weight to this melodrama's controversial subject.

The fine acting and sexy chemistry between Bonham Carter and Eckhart make it work.

Aside from the overbearing soundtrack, the film is mercifully unsentimental and Ami himself can be quite droll.

Crtainly worthy of serious attention and filled with revealing moments.

Peculiar but oddly winsome fable.

Andrew Neel's fascinating but troubling documentary about his famous grandmother is more than a mere biography of an important 20th-century artist: It's also an intimate portrait of a family member that questions whether or not "great artist" and "good parent" can ever be combined in the same person.

Director John Crowley and screenwriter Mark O'Rowe's follow-up to their feature film debut "Intermission" may follow an all-too schematic flashback structure, but the film is too brilliantly acted for that to really matter much.

It's a handsome production, and a pleasure to watch. With a shadowy palette and a set design reminiscent of Edward Hopper's nocturnes, a soundtrack hearkening back to the sounds of vintage rock 'n' roll, and a cast of characters straight out of a James M. Cain novel.

Working from a script by TV actor Dylan Haggerty, Araki manages to capture what he's been trying to say all along about the lives of the stoned and indifferent with the kind of effortlessness those earlier attempts sorely lacked.

Law-abiding Americans who hand off a solid chunk of their salaries to the IRS might be interested in what filmmaker Aaron Russo has to say on the subject of income tax.

This handsomely mounted documentary takes the same, indulgent tone that at lot of Thompson's friends and associates seem to have had.

The original English scripts certainly were peppered with sly, topical asides aimed squarely at adults. Paul Bassett Davies' updated screenplay attempts to follow suit, but what passes for topical these days is pretty much limited to industry inside jokes and constant allusions other movies. Thankfully, the animation itself is thoroughly inspired.

Whatever the project's "reality," it's insightful as well as entertaining, and the inclusion of real interviews with people both inside and outside the business means it functions as both an intelligent critique and a dire warning.

Neither a prequel nor a sequel. Nor is it really much of a horror movie: It's a bizarre, bloody family drama that puts its predecessor into a larger social context.

An observant and sensitively played drama about adolescent sexuality, unrequited love and heartbreak.

Many of the script's observations sound as though they were lifted directly from the pages of Baxter's book, and they're too platitudinous to impart much wisdom to anyone who's been in and out of love at least once in his or her life. But it's nice to see these ideas played out by a fine cast.

The dialogue is minimal but sharp, the pace swift and the action sequences suitably loud and brutal.

As lightheartedly as the film plays, Morrison manages to say quite a few serious things about immigration and otherness.

Chinese director Ann Hu follows-up her tepid 2000 debut "Shadow Magic" with another luscious historical drama that, thankfully, is a lot more interesting. The plot is no less melodramatic, but here melodramatics work along with the film's theme, not against it.

The gritty location shooting, the absence of a soundtrack and the casting of non-professionals in key roles help capture an all-important sense of place with almost documentary precision.

Style oozing from virtually every frame.

It's mostly very crude, often very funny and a little bit smarter than you might otherwise think.

The film is a pleasant breeze that refreshes, mostly because it's a rare, thoughtful comedy clearly intended for grown-ups.

This charming tale of a quartet of Australian orphans who share a life-altering holiday in the 1960s should appeal to sentimental adults old enough to wax nostalgic over their own adolescences.

In the end it remains an academic exercise, though a dazzlingly ambitious one that’s well worth seeing.

Goldberger, who made his debut with the similarly gritty and deliberately unpolished "Trans," tries to pull the novel's concerns to the surface, but much of its subtlety is lost. Giamatti, however, delivers yet another superb performance, turning what might have been a freak show into an unexpectedly moving experience.

The end result is an entertaining tour film.

Much of it will probably go right over the heads of kids who aren't familiar with classic movies or the naughtiness of Eddie Izzard.

One isn't quite ready to forgive the miscasting of Gere, however, who is about as convincing a Kabbalistic scholar as Madonna.

Aduaka's comprehensive account of an African nightmare covers a lot of important ground, making this flawed film worth seeing.

Unlike, say, David Cronenberg, who manages to establish a crucial, critical distance between his audience and his schizophrenic protagonist in his adaptation of Patrick McGrath's similarly themed "Spider," Carrere re-creates the insane mind through his camera, and diffuses his point about subjective experience by inadvertently raising questions about truth and the movies.

Taking its title from a key track by the NYC noise band Sonic Youth, S.A. Crary's documentary about No Wave music and its paradoxical influence is both a history of music that sought to defy history and a sharp look at the crisis of innovation in an age of commodified nostalgia.