Ken Fox

A wildly entertaining detective thriller that succeeds entirely on its own terms.

This superbly played film, directed with remarkable skill for a first-time feature filmmaker, is truly an adult drama.

Routine thriller.

After a positively thrilling first half, Brazilian director Andrucha Waddington's follow-up to his acclaimed 2000 debut "Me You Them" badly stumbles over an unfortunate casting strategy.

The film's opening dedication to Pasolini acknowledges Arslan's debt to Neorealism, but the gritty, documentary style is offset by a charming bit of chalkboard animation that helps lighten the mood considerably.

It's an engaging diversion from a master director who, at the ripe age of 78, appears to be once again at the top of his game.

An even sweeter and lighter whipped confection than "Legally Blonde," this hugely enjoyable sequel serves up a generous second helping of the ingredient that made the original such an irresistible hit.

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

Indeed, Hirschbiegel himself seems reluctant to single out a protagonist, and finally settles on Junge.

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

All the paraphernalia so important to the image of the Reich, particularly the uniforms, are painstakingly rendered, bringing a heightened sense of realism to what might otherwise have been a romantic coming-of-age tale.

A tense geopolitical thriller that leaves a curiously bad aftertaste.

Marvelously entertaining.

It's very funny, and the little woodland critters that make up the cast are a kiddie-pleasing bunch.

A deep waste is more like it.

One of the most perceptive movies about the gentrification of Los Angeles.

A sad and sometimes funny tale of Alzheimer's, love and loss.

Director and enfant terrible-wannabe Gregg Araki winds up his Teen Apocalypse trilogy with this loud, ridiculous mess, and not a moment too soon.

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.

The film's potshots are perfectly aimed.

Misbegotten mess.

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.

The film is bold stroke that hopes to push Romanian society forward by staring into the dismal failures of its recent past.

Cloying, immature and relentlessly cute, this grating British comedy about two London con men is every bit as shameless as its heroes.

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.

Damon, an underrated comic actor, is particularly good as an ultra-rationalist who'll scream like a girl and run from anything he can't immediately explain.

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.

This dark, almost mythic heart is what makes the film such an emotionally rich experience.

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

Once again brushing aside critical drubbings and public indifference, determined independent auteur Henry Jaglom follows up the abysmal "Let's Go Shopping" with something far better: an old-school Hollywood cautionary tale about -- what else? -- Hollywood.

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.

The drawn-out effect is deliberate -- director Babak Payami wants his audience to concentrate on the characters' inner development and their isolation -- but his strategy slows the film down to a crawl.

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

Directed with charming restraint by the acclaimed American producer Dan Ireland, the film is a quiet triumph for Dame Joan.

The film, beautifully shot in widescreen by Luca Bigazzi, is surprisingly accessible and always engaging, if ultimately tragic.

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.

Folks watching any movie that opens with a shot of a butt crack (with the possible exception of "Lost in Translation") can't claim they weren't warned.

There's a telling disjunction between the dismal lives of Jia's characters and the optimism of China's officially sunny advance into the 21st century, and their helplessness often becomes a pathetic pantomime.

In the end, Haar's powerful and terribly sad film speaks volumes, not just about life in contemporary Israel, but in the U.S. as well.

The acting is superb.

Expansive and undeniably brilliant.

Often fascinating.

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."

Fly's striking, often suspenseful drama has all the elements of a Shakespearean tragedy: an insecure young prince who must prove his mettle and loses his soul; a cruel, manipulative queen who cares only for power; a close adviser whose motives aren't always clear.

One is left with an unsettling ambivalence about the night's awful events -- there are no absolute villains here, just as there are no total victims -- and much of the credit is due to the performances.

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.

While not exactly in the same league as the visually dazzling "Excalibur" and saddled with cheap looking CGI effects, this Anglo-Italian co-production has quite a bit of fun finding a direct path from the fall of Rome to the birth of Arthurian legend.

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

Ratanaruang's simple willingness to tie different strands of melancholy melodramas and violent yakuza thrillers together with flashes of surreal mystery immediately sets him apart from the herd.

The atmosphere is once again black, creepy and unsettlingly elegant, lending this twisted tale of psychological dominance and submission a patina of anxiety and dread.

Sweet, melancholy comedy; it's ineffable charm lies entirely in the delivery.

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

Of the long list of couples who have loved neither wisely nor particularly well, few have such power to disturb as Burton Pugach and the love of his life, Linda Riss.

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.

Most significant and contrary to the Mormon Church's ongoing position, the film depicts Young as present when the plot is hatched to slaughter the emigrants. Needless to say, this workmanlike but unflinching film won't be playing in Utah anytime soon.

Says many things at once without much perspective or clarity.

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.

Stylish, well acted drama.

An uncommonly smart and bittersweet romantic comedy.

Without slavishly imitating the photographer's distinctive style, Almereyda also manages to connect his own images to all that's "Egglestonian" in the photographer's world.

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.

Important, awareness-building documentary.

South African director Mark Bamford's sweet-natured ensemble film doesn't shy away from addressing issues of racism -- both black and white.

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.

German filmmaker Malte Ludin's gripping documentary about the father he barely knew is both an extraordinary exercise in family history and an example of what Germans call Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung: "facing the past," particularly the years of Hitler's Third Reich.

One hundred and nine minutes of drama and not a single moment rings true.

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.

Eisenstadt has an unerring sense of comedic rhythm and a knack of cutting away just in time to extract the drop of humor from a potentially pathetic situation.

Newcomer Cassidy is excellent, and Hoskins gives a flawless performance.

Rae's 80-minute film isn't able to answer every question or flesh out important details of these events, and she spends more time on Trudell's artistic endeavors than on his direct political action.

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

It's a bit like a Chinese "Splendor In The Grass."

Flawed, but fascinating, this somber adaptation of David Guterson's award-winning novel is sometimes sluggish and difficult to follow, but it's also unexpectedly poetic.

Polanski's film is an unqualified success both dramatically and artistically.

The soundtrack (Heart, ELO, Todd Rundgren, and an original score by the French duo Air) is spot-on and the costume design (pukka shells and knee-socks) is hideously accurate.

Bahrani's willingness to expose the shameful reality of third-world conditions in the Land of Plenty while telling a crackling good story marks him as a filmmaker as important as he is accessible.

A marvelous, deceptively simple accomplishment shot on grainy 16mm film and featuring a cast of mostly nonprofessional actors delivering loosely written dialogue.

On the whole, it all goes down rather smoothly. Those left wanting more are referred to the RSC's monumental production, now available on DVD, or better yet, to Dickens's original novel.

You'd have to be more than merely intoxicated to find anything about this dismal stoner comedy remotely funny. You'd have to be unconscious.

The movie's is really good, clean fun that's fine for slightly older kids and a lot of fun for adults.

MacGregor demonstrates just how far he's come as an actor. Swinton, meanwhile, adds another notch to a resume already crowded with good performances.

cinematographer Mo-gai Li's keen sense of color balance and composition make this freaky fairy tale the most beautiful - if not the scariest - horror movie in ages.

Breezy, surprisingly poignant Spanish film.

A little like a leisurely surf through YouTube.

Intelligent but incomplete-feeling documentary.

Clumsy and amateurish. But it's also occasionally quite charming, and ultimately more commendable for what it ISN'T than worthy of censure for being nothing more than an inconsequential comedy.

An extremely funny, ultimately heartbreaking look at life in contemporary China.

For all the film's cleverness -- and it's often very clever -- it's as thin as its heroine.

Lucas rarely breaks his glower to express anything other than tough determination. It's an attitude that's clearly modeled on that of storied Nicks' coach Pat Riley, who, it so happens, played for Kentucky that now legendary final game.

What's surprising is how bright and engaging these kids are, and for once you're left wanting more.

Screenwriter Vincent Molina takes into account changing attitudes towards homosexuality and the resulting film never feels like the kind of thing we've seen time and again in the '80s and '90s.

Fascinating on a number of levels, and deeply disturbing through and through.

Wrenching documentary.