Ken Fox

What will really shock Western viewers are the luxurious trappings of Handong's world: The tailored suits, Mercedes Benz and expensive Japanese sushi bars have little to do with age-old perceptions of the PRC.

Odd yet thoughtful romantic comedy.

Mortimer is riveting as the sympathetic but flawed Lizzie.

She's an adventurous, occasionally reckless filmmaker who deploys a full arsenal of cinematic flourishes, but Lemmons' lack of restraint gets in the way of her storytelling.

There are a number of excruciating moments that are almost too silly to mention.

If it were possible for an entire state to sue for defamation of character, Iowa might have a strong case against writer, director and star Matt Farnsworth.

Chances are you'll watch most of this documentary with both hands over your eyes, but as a window into a particular kind of insanity seizing kids in heartland America it's enthralling.

A tense and tightly plotted fictional thriller is based on real tactics used by the Stasi -- East Germany's secret police force -- to spy on and interrogate their own citizens.

Sitting through this charmless romantic comedy is like going to a restaurant and being seated next to a drunken couple who argue throughout dinner: It's messy, embarrassing and absolutely none of your business, but there's no escape.

The film is a dispiriting experience.

The result is somewhat confounding, but utterly spellbinding.

Every character fated to die in Othello meets his or her maker by the time the curtain falls on Blake's adaptation, which means the manicured campus of Palmetto Grove is left littered with slain coeds.

Neil Armfield's film hits hard because it sensitively shows how life on drugs can never be about anything else, and how the real horror of addiction is not what users do to themselves, but what they do to each other out of loneliness and despair.

On the list of WWII stories criminally ignored by six decades of combat movies in the past 60 years, the heroics of French colonial soldiers ranks pretty high. But Rachid Bouchareb's powerful drama -- which won the 2006 Cannes Film Festival's best-actors award for its superb ensemble cast and was nominated for a best foreign-language-film Oscar, went a long way toward rectifying the situation, both on screen and in real life.

A ludicrous foray into psychological horror.

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

Exquisitely crafted drama.

The film, like its subject, is a hoot, both shamelessly entertaining and bursting with personality.

Not even Drew Barrymore's million-dollar smile can save this humiliating comedy.

There's also precious little chemistry between the players. Only Mol has any charm of which to speak, and, frankly, she deserves much better.

A few funny bits float the film for a while -- it's always nice to see Peters onscreen, no matter what she's doing -- but it's really as showcase for Marcus, who also wrote the script.

It's a beautifully constructed, often disturbing look at a day in the life of several down-at-the-heels denizens of Recife.

Taylor, while perhaps a little small to become a real Vegas showboy, makes for a very charismatic hero, while Joaquin Baca-Asay's cinematography captures all the glitz and slightly tawdry glamour of the Vegas strip.

The result is something truly special.

Coming at a time when the settlements on the Gaza Strip are being dismantled, Cedar's film offers a sly critique of their origins, and refreshingly different point of view.

We never see enough of the small compromises Willie Stark makes on the way up to fully grasp the tragedy of his fall. Some will undoubtedly find Penn's hamboned, spittle-lashing performance a bit much, but it's a pretty close to Warren's original conception.

The only criticism that can possibly be leveled at Black's film is its narrow focus, but it's not hard to extrapolate.

The film is an encouraging effort from McCrudden -- he manages to avoid the staginess of the recurring two-characters-in-a-hotel-room set-up -- and features a standout performance from Williams.