Ken Fox

If you don't already have a handle on the complicated conflict at the heart of Darfur's ongoing genocide, you probably won't come away from this harrowing documentary with any comprehensive understanding.

Techine's unwillingness to soften his characters reflects a rare honesty about human nature that's rarely seen in movies, particularly movies about fatal illnesses, and his film is an engaging and particularly French character study.

There's so much less to the film than the novel: Nicholas Meyer's screenplay fails to capture the intricate subtleties of its subject and replaces Roth's moral scope with a moralizing tone.

The sad fact is that this comprehensive and compassionate documentary about the hottest of the "hot-button" topics - gay marriage - probably won't change one's mind

The film is filled with the kind of choreographed carnage that became synonymous with Hong Kong action during the genre's heyday, but there's an elegiac self-consciousness to it all that acknowledges that while the best is behind us, there's still something to be said about its passing.

A slow and pensive tone, but for all its lyrical pretensions it lacks real poetry.

However intriguing from a theoretical perspective, this gorgeously shot film is first and foremost and purely sensual experience. Filled with the sights and sounds of Rio of a bygone era, the whole thing virtually pulses with excitement.

You may give up on Ian Iqbal Rashid's feature debut long before things get interesting, courtesy of a distracting conceit that shatters whatever spell the hackneyed premise might cast.

French director Helene Angel's dark but deftly handled fable about familial violence has a terrifying, fairy-tale atmosphere that's in perfect keeping with its unique point of view.

It's a humbling way of life, and one that, as Varda discovers in this wonderful, 80-minute essay, has survived in surprising ways.

As overstuffed as a twice-baked potato.

Through the hard-won experiences of these families, Karslake shows that Scripture and homosexuality are not mutually exclusive, and with the help of a number of academics and theologians, shows how the Bible has been misread, particularly during the 20th century.

It's actually a clever commentary on documentary filmmaking, an pretty good monster movie to boot.

The general level of mayhem, the sudden transformations that are Plympton's trademark moves and the pervasive irreverence will no doubt delight Plympton's legion of fans; others may find 80 minutes of these shenanigans exhausting.

Ichaso tells Piñero's story through a sometimes disorienting series of flashbacks and flash-forwards, fracturing the time frame to suit the film's internal rhythms, rather than any coherent time line.

This is pulp with smarts and a social conscience.

As the film makes pointedly clear, ALS is what is considered an "orphan disease," meaning drug companies aren't willing to devote their resources to finding a cure because they feel too small a percentage of the population suffer from it to make an effective drug profitable.

An exciting dramatization of the strange events that marked the turning of the legal tide against Big Tobacco, and a particularly dark moment in the annals of CBS News.

Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzman's powerful and sometimes triumphant documentary is not only an excellent overview of the affair, but serves as the perfect finale to his monumental trilogy about the coup and its aftermath, which began with "The Battle of Chile" (1978).

It's all terribly trite, but Durst does make an effort to keep his film grounded in the reality of a lot of once thriving towns like the fictional Minden.

perfectly serviceable costume drama.

Who these brave men were and why they fought disappears under the usual clichés, while the astounding acts of courage that occurred at Ia Drang are lost to the dust and din.

Warm, funny and often brutally honest profile of an aging divorcee and her three very different daughters.

It's a bit of 60s idealism wedged in what basically looks like a hip-hop music video.

More gripping than anything on Court TV and unexpectedly uplifting.

The beautiful ice-blue landscapes are really the only reason to sit through this rambling and rather silly first feature by writer-director Sue Clayton.

Whether you take the film as a deliberately vile act of filmmaking that unpacks rape-revenge scenarios while making a point about male desire, or simply as a deliberately vile piece of filmmaking, one thing is certain: It's about as close to a physical assault on viewers as movies get.

It's a great part for a great actor and Cheadle does a magnificent job turning this living legend back into flawed, flesh-and-blood reality.

The rogue feminism of "Thelma and Louise," mix in some of "Rock 'N' Roll High School" punk-rock energy.

A bracing cover of Ian Tyson's "Four Strong Winds," performed by no fewer than seven acoustic guitars, rounds out the set, but be sure to stick around for the credits.

The sheer size of the production dwarfs the human drama.

Spin it however they like, the troubled but talented Lohan isn't what's wrong with this misbegotten mess.

Fred Frith's lovely and subdued score is a perfect accompaniment.

A chilling corporate thriller with an intriguing mystery on the surface and a deeply troubling idea at its dark core.

At a time when the images of Arab-Americans are already largely negative, do we really need more violently temperamental, bomb throwing men in turbans and beards?

Not since Larry Clark's "Kids" (1995) has the threat of HIV infection been used so gratuitously, driving a narrative that ultimately has nothing to do with the AIDS crisis.

It's alternately stimulating and exhausting.

Too lazy to play your own d--- video game? Lucky for you there's horror director-for-hire Uwe Boll, who's making a career out of adapting successful Atari and Sega games into tedious popcorn fare that's the ultimate in cinematic passivity.

For all the blood spilt -- and there are gallons of it -- this is a surprisingly understated thriller.

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

A sprawling, semi-biographical account of two real-life filmmakers who both found work during darkest days the German occupation.

Shot on reverse film, poet-turned-director Lukas Moodyson's debut feature has a grainy, immediate feel that nicely enhances the story's emotional honesty.

Even if you think you know a little something about world music, Cuba's cultural riches may come as a surprise.

The not-so-incredible story of two girls in love.

From the proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and the president's opposition to the morning-after pill to his pandering to fundamentalist family groups, Cho has all things Bush-related in her crosshairs, and she's taking no prisoners.

As thrilling as they can be on stage, Chekhov's plays have never been the stuff of great movies -- there's simply nothing cinematic about them.

If anyone is to blame for this bomb it's Forte: He wrote the thing, and one would assume he's the one responsible for those uncomfortable silences where jokes are supposed to be.

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

Songwriter Jack Johnson's collection of laid-back, sunshine pop tunes unobtrusively support the sweet and surprisingly touching story line, rather than the other way around.

None of this is funny, the surreal touches are ridiculous and the final fantasy sequence, in which the nameless ghosts of the murdered Wiener family smile on Josef, is simply nauseating.

Simply and eloquently articulates the tangled feelings of particular New Yorkers deeply touched by an unprecedented tragedy.

(Tykwer's) unpredictability has become predictable, and the only thing genuinely uncanny here is the unsettling — and unintentional — sense of déjà vu.

Given the serious subject matter, this adaptation of Irish writer Brendan Behan's autobiographical novel is surprisingly light and exceedingly good-natured.

The kind of film only a mother could really love.

There's no getting past the shockingly poorly dubbed voice work of the English speaking cast; Meyer's voice is particularly shrill and grating.

A hoot and a half.

The almost supernatural turn which Kim's lovely film takes during its final act, however, is totally unexpected, and just one reason why Kim ranks as one of the most justly celebrated talents in contemporary Korean cinema.

Barak Goodman and Daniel Anker have done a tremendous job of sorting the facts from a tangle of fictions, and include perspectives from a wide variety of experts and testimonies from a surprising number of surviving eyewitnesses. Together, they do the whole, horrible episode justice, something awfully hard to come by in the state of Alabama in 1931.

Looks great but has a shambolic, off-kilter feel that might not be entirely intentional, and is alternately tedious and shocking.

Even during the most intense moments, it's hard to shake the impression that the conspicuously buff-and-polished Justine is only visiting this drab world, her miserable life an interesting career move.

So silly it's best taken ironically. But the film, much of it shot digitally, is also astonishingly beautiful.

Director Gore Verbiniski delivers the best one can hope for: a cleverly nostalgic, high-tech copy of the real deal.

Aside from the women themselves, the most remarkable thing about Gabbert's unexpectedly entertaining film is how effortlessly it dispels misconceptions about the elderly.

Shot through the bars of a barbed-wire topped cage and staged to a pounding soundtrack, the fight is quite a spectacle, but it's ultimately an empty one.

If a year in the life of a university department head doesn't sound like the stuff of a riveting documentary, please allow this stirring film by husband and wife filmmakers Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson to change your mind.

That the film should have the look and feel of a classic teleplay by, say, Rod Serling, is probably no accident -- the style is one more reminder of just how regrettably short of Murrow's vision we've fallen.

What makes husband-and-wife directing team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' hilarious debut such a great family film isn't that it's suitable for the whole family (it's not), but that it speaks a simple truth about what it means to be part of one.

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.