Ken Fox

Odd, quasi-mystical movie that’s too silly for adults to take seriously and frankly too weird for kids.

The film is marvelously acted all around, and the fact that there isn't a false note in the entire film is especially impressive given Kureishi's melodramatic contrivances and the fact that his characters are clichés whose behaviors are predictable at nearly every turn.

Greenebaum manages to portray old-age as a condition with its own peculiar beauty and considerable grace.

In the end it all comes down to Mitchell. She turns in a truly harrowing performance that will leave you shaking.

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

Martel can barely contain her disgust, and like Bunuel before her, she knows just when to cut the laughs and go straight for the throat.

Given Argento's willingness to attempt the controversial book at all, she pulls a surprising number of punches. What at first appears to go too far in reality doesn't go far enough: Argento doesn't even broach the subject of child prostitution.

We already knew Hudson and McConaughey weren't exactly Gable and Lombard from their first romantic pairing in "How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days," but director Andy Tennant's complete lack of inventiveness comes as a surprise.

The excuse given here that Gerron couldn't resist one last opportunity to direct, even under the most grotesque circumstances, is really no excuse at all.

By the film's end we feel neither sympathy nor, oddly, total disgust for this most loathsome of killers. We simply begin to understand, and perhaps that's achievement enough.

When it's not wasting time with character, this deliberately dumb collegiate comedy is good for a few laughs of the big butts and sex variety, but not much else.

The complete absence of world leaders is a bewildering sign that the world still doesn't care much about small African countries with no exploitable resources to speak of, and a troubling indication that such atrocities can, and no doubt will, happen again.

A rare, unexpected treat.

Demonstrating just how different literature and filmmaking can be, filmmaker-turned-writer-turned filmmaker Dai Sijie botches an adaptation of his own best-selling short novel.

Isn't nearly as bad as it might have been.

One of the most harrowing, viscerally upsetting films ever made.

Multi-character drama that reveals a vivid cross-section of the city's inhabitants but fails to live up to the director's high ambitions.

Tom Gilroy's debut feature is a little obvious, but it's an excellent showcase for the criminally underused Ned Beatty.

Leave something on the shelf long enough and it'll either ripen like cheese or rot like garbage. Guess what: This ain't Camembert.

Presenting facts in a wrapper of fiction only muddies the waters, and many of the film's subtler points are likely to slip by viewers who haven't first read Schlosser's book. Other salient points are shoehorned into the dialogue, rendering key scenes preachy, heavy-handed and dramatically inert.

However deep the divide currently separating the Middle East from the West appears to be, there's at least one thing we can all agree on: Albert Brooks isn't all that funny anymore.

Aside from an inspired bit involving a pair of sycophantic starfish, it's amazing how unimaginative a movie about a mermaid can be, and it's sad how thoroughly its girl-power stylings devolve into a muddle of mixed messages.

It's not nearly as funny as "The Waterboy" and has little of "The Wedding Singer's" goofy charm, but die-hard Adam Sandler fans -- whose numbers are legion -- will find plenty to laugh at.

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.

Released simultaneously in the U.S. with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Oscar-nominated fictional thriller "The Lives of Others," this chilling 82-minute documentary about three souls destroyed by the Stasi, the notorious secret police of East Germany, puts a cold, factual gloss on what might otherwise be taken for fiction.

Herek does capture the rush and crush of a stadium concert, and the music (more Leppard than Priest) isn't half bad -- in a disposable, arena-rock sort of way.

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.

Thrilling, heart-wrenching tale of the real-life incredible journey.

It shifts the focus from Charles and Sebastian's youthful idyll to the stronger, more provocative relationship between Charles and Julia, wherein lies Waugh's concerns with materialism and velvet-gloved dual grip of family and religion.

Bakan's arguments are buttressed by entertaining clips culled from commercials, industrial films and, appropriately, monster movies.

While it stands as a distinct film in its own right, this film is still very much of a piece with "Shoah," and the subject is presented in the same haunting manner.

But good intentions aside, Tucker and codirector Petra Epperlein only further confuse the issue: Their rap-video stylings and use of non-source music create the impression that you're watching characters trapped in a Tom Clancy Xbox game.

The film is rich in period detail and a keen visual sense of irony, but it's curiously static; scenes that blister the pages of Miller's novel barely move.

The comedy is fairly light and the romance decidedly offbeat.

The cast is unusually good for this sort of film, which only makes the poor execution more regrettable.

With his sure handling of this thriller's switchback plot and hairpin turns, Hideo Nakata confirms his mastery of genre material in the wake of his phenomenally successful "Ring."

The theme song, a wonderful Portuguese version of Bread's soft-rock classic "Everything I Own," is by Dinah, a long-forgotten Brazilian singing sensation of the 1970s who deserves to be better remembered.

Few of China's Sixth Generation filmmakers have turned to their country's explosive economic growth and its attendant upheavals with so sharp an eye and so heavy a heart as Jia Zhang-ke.

The excellently translated subtitles retain the wit and flavor of the brisk, at times even hardboiled, dialogue.

Most of Halim's script is a laundry list of offensive remarks that he no doubt means to serve as titillating spoof, but none of it's funny or even the least bit provocative, just offensive.

No matter that the setting is one of the most picturesque on the planet: cinematographer Jean-Max Bernard's camera would much rather linger all the skin and muscle Morel contrives to put on display.

This loud and exhilarating documentary from director Julien Temple brings it all back in a vitriolic spray of spite, spittle and raw rock and roll that still hits like a heart attack.

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.

The phrase "Everything happens for a reason" is heard more than once, a risibly simplistic cliché that not only stands as this film's hackneyed theme but also as a surprisingly honest confession as to just how calculated the entire film is.

The skating photography is excellent and, like the documentary's soundtrack, songs from the Stooges, Blue Oyster Cult and the Weirdos set the proper mood. But this dramatization does nothing Peralta's documentary didn't do better.

A powerful anti-war film.

It does get K-Mart to pull handgun and assault ammunition from their shelves after two Columbine survivors show up at corporate headquarters with Moore's camera crew in tow and bullets bought for 13 cents apiece at a K-Mart store still embedded in their bodies.

A clear, unbiased documentary examining of the UNSCOM debacle would benefit anyone attempting to make sense of the dire situation. This, unfortunately, is not that documentary.

The final confrontation is a slow-motion, De Palma-esque massacre in a hotel lobby that begins and ends in the amount of time it takes for a high-flying can of Red Bull to hit the floor. Breathtaking.

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.

The film serves as a potent reminder of what conditions were like in Afghanistan before the U.S. bombing campaign ended the Taliban's reign of terror, and, as such, its timing couldn't be any better.

For the first time anywhere, filmmaking brothers Craig and Damon Foster capture this rare event as it happens, and it's something to see.

While far from her best work, this accessible, emotionally involving domestic drama nevertheless serves as a welcome introduction.

Far more than mere fish tale, Sauper's dark, devastating documentary profiles a socio-ecological nightmare with unimaginable consequences, and it's one of the best films about the ugly reality of the global marketplace.

The music is surprisingly good and there's a skateboarding bulldog that you've just gotta see to believe.

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).

A tightly woven tapestry of extraordinary breadth, and director Fernando Meirelles's control over the material is extraordinary.

While the film captures all the beauty of these extraordinary pieces, the details of Saint Laurent's legendarily turbulent personal life are glossed over with frustrating tact.

It highlights a still shadowy moment in the creation of Pakistan that saw the abduction of nearly 100,000 Sikh and Muslim women in both India and Pakistan.

In the end, it all remains a dramatically inert set of talking points, and not even the high-caliber cast can make much more out of it.

The entire movie is one big build-up to a twist that, while not exactly cheating, plays is an awfully cheap trick.

If the idea of playing Scrabble conjures up dreary images of dull evenings with aged family relatives, you haven't met the subjects of Eric Chaikin and Julian Petrillo's irresistible documentary.

This short, gentle film is surprisingly involving.

On the surface, nothing really happens, but to call it a nonevent would be to miss the point entirely.

Phoenix gives a nice performance as a man caught between loyalties but blind to the realities all around him, but Gray's screenplay is filled with clunky, Dr. Phil-sounding aphorisms that stop the movie cold.

This isn't your usual kiddie fare: Beneath the initial glare and blare is a quietly literate script by first-time writer-director Zach Helm that deals directly with big issues like believing in yourself and living on after a loved one passes away. But is it heavy? Not really.

Smith has changed a few plot points around to keep readers who already know the secret of the ruins guessing, and to some extent the strategy works. There was, however, no reason whatsoever to change the book's perfect endings.

Never an easy one to impress, Reed is clearly in awe of Antony's ethereal voice, and it must now stand as the definitive version of a 40 year old song.

But it's all done with such high style and whizzes along at such an exhausting pace that you probably won't have enough time to notice how little you care.

Funny without out ever making fun, Vardalos mixes elements of ethnic stand-up, Cinderella romance and Bridget Loves Bernie-style situation comedy, all grounded in something very real.

At heart an emotionally rich look at mothers and their daughters.

A pastel-pretty and oh-so-dull coming of age tale.

For all its shocking content, it remains a rather conventional psychological portrait of Oedipal attraction taken to a disturbing extreme.

An unintentional parody of the kind of overwrought melodrama Pedro Almodovar once reworked to far better effect.

Deeply personal film that often feels more like an artfully produced home video than a documentary.

A fascinating allegory of life in Iranian Kurdistan, a remote borderland still deeply scarred by years of war with Iraq.

Unfortunately, the characters feel more like symbols than people, despite strong performances, including what might be Portman's finest work to date.

It's a conspiracy theory worthy of "The X-Files."

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.

The film may be lighter in tone than Imamura's more recent work, but it still has a number of serious things to say about life in contemporary Japan.

A moving look at the choices parents make on their children's behalf, and the reasons behind those choices.

Romano is no match for his heavy-hitting supporting cast: Next to the seasoned likes of Harden or Rip Torn, who's hilarious as Cole's campaign manager, Romano's presence barely registers. Aside from the charming Tierney, there are no surprises in Mooseport.

Not to be missed.

Fontaine's thoughtful character-driven screenplay is the perfect vehicle for Berling and Bouquet and both are superb. As father and son, they play off each another in fascinating ways as the film moves towards its perfectly modulated, intriguingly ambiguous final moment.

Decent songs, an amusing script and some surprisingly imaginative animation.

A moody, beautifully acted character piece.

If there's pleasure to be derived from the misfortunes of others, then Julian Fellowes' wickedly entertaining adaptation of Nigel Balchin's nearly forgotten 1951 novel is a barrel of fun.

Sally Field's flawless performance as a mother whose imminent death reunites her four grown children elevates a fairly formulaic melodrama in the made-for-Lifetime mode into something considerably more memorable.

This likable adventure is basically "Lassie" with scales and should appeal to the books' large audience of adolescent boys.

A cheesy romance tricked up in cheap sanctimony.

Disco gets its due in this lightweight but entertaining look at the underground dance culture that flourished in New York City throughout the 1970s.

While the film's erotic symbolism is surprisingly obvious -- all those trains and tunnels! -- it's otherwise bafflingly vague.

This short documentary might teach you a thing or two about the electronic instrument that revolutionized the sound of modern music.

The terrific soundtrack, which includes the Only Ones' "Another Girl, Another Planet" and New Order's most excellent "Temptation," is heavily weighted towards the '80s, which is exactly as it should be.

To help break the monotony, Frost relies on relentless digital effects; there are so many shots of giant golf balls whizzing toward the screen it looks like the film was meant to be projected in 3-D.

A well-crafted potboiler from start to finish.

Ask yourself this: Did the title make you laugh? If so, you're probably the target audience.

Far too long for a movie so unabashedly formulaic, Sylvain White's drama about a kid from L.A. who discovers the world of "stepping" at an Atlanta university uses a propulsive soundtrack and flashy dance sequences to draw attention away from wooden acting and a cliched plot.

At just under 80 minutes, Gluck's film would make a perfect double bill with "Trembling Before G-d," Sandi Simcha DuBowski's acclaimed documentary about gay Orthodox Jews who, like Gluck, have found themselves caught between their love for their religious heritage and all the secular possibilities they could no longer ignore.

Huge in scope and beautifully shot on location in South America, this ambitious production is undone by terrible casting choices.

History has since overtaken Ponfilly's film, which now more than ever seems like but one chapter in a much larger story -- the ongoing tragedy of Afghanistan -- and a tragic tribute to all that might have been.

It's intriguing stuff, but Curtis overplays his hand when he underplays the existence of any real threat (Madrid? London? Amman?), proposes that Al Qaeda is a fiction and risks undermining the credibility of an otherwise compelling argument.

Harkening back to a time when race relations in New York City were even worse than they seem today.

Leaves you wanting much more.

A rare adaptation that actually improves upon the original material: It's everything a good children's adventure tale should be, and a powerful fable for adults.

Mehta says it all so articulately and with such good humor.

The reality of the situation and the nightmarish consequences they suggest, however, are frighteningly real.

A heartfelt sleeper from screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and director Guy Ferland.

The real emotional impact of the film lies in the candid interviews with Crowhurst's wife, Clare, and his son, Simon, both of whom are clearly still haunted by Crowhurst and his fateful voyage.

What a waste. Check out "Breakdown" or Aldo Lado's 1971 Italian giallo "Long Night Of The Short Dolls" for a far better treatments of the same subject.

It shares all the original's shortcomings —--it’s too long and too loud and filled with historical disinformation -- but none of the snap that made "National Treasure" fun for kids and a guilty pleasure for some adults.

If it's not an entirely wholesome portrait of the immigrant experience, it's certainly an entertaining one.

The less said about Simpson the better; whatever her talents, she can't sell a simple reaction shot, and, perhaps sensing this, Coolidge's camera tends to drift south of her face.

A well-acted character piece.

We're treated to endless scenes of women getting slammed, thrown and clothes lined, while men's genitals are grabbed, groped, stroked and tasered. It's all just as painful as it sounds.

Features a first-rate voice cast and state-of-the-art animation that's nothing short of miraculous.

Packed with more information than can possibly be digested in a single viewing, the film will be a bracing eye-opener to anyone who hasn't considered the full implications of recent Congressional debates advocating further media deregulation.

Unless you grew up in an Italian-American neighborhood like the one featured in this contrived but pleasant enough comedy, you might not know that "chooch" is slang for jackass, a likeable loser who can't help but screw up.

Innovative sounds and striking visuals combine to form an exquisite cinematic work.

Wildly entertaining and a visual delight.

Wonderfully droll, Cannes Camera d'Or winner.

He's (Mann) a solid historian and this film is full of fascinating facts, but he's a cultural critic at heart, and a good one at that.

Runge's coolly photographed, intricately plotted feature is always interesting in its execution, but disappointingly pat in its resolution.

In the end, despite Williams' extraordinary, nearly wordless performance, it's impossible to fathom what this young woman is experiencing at her moment of crisis, because we never knew what could have brought her to such a desperate pass in the first place.

While trying so hard to have such a good time, the movie simply forgets to be funny, and begins to grate before the body even cools.

The whole film has a rag-tag, purposefully shambolic feel -- but this communal commitment to a DIY aesthetic is also his undoing, particularly when he allows an irritatingly manic Jack Black to run wild and virtually hijack the movie.

The strangest thing about writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson's unusual romantic comedy is how much of it is based on a true story.

The direction is slack -- it's Lloyd's first feature film and it shows -- the choreography clumsy and every ten minutes there's yet another gratuitous showstopper shouting in your face and insisting you have a good time.

It's a handsomely mounted but poky thriller undone by a fatally miscast lead.

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.

About as subtle as a hammer blow to the skull and marred by a heedless mixture of fact and fiction.

It's all a pretentious bore that feels twice as long as it's two-hour running time.

Shane West does a pretty impressive impersonation of the on-stage antics of Darby Crash...Unfortunately, little else in this clunky, half-baked biopic rings very true.

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.

Zieger's thoroughly researched film is a vital reminder that beginning in the mid-'60s, a few conscience-stricken military individuals -- including dermatologist Dr. Howard Levy, sickened by cynical attempts to win Vietnamese "hearts and minds" through medical treatment, and Navy nurse Susan Schnall, who wore her uniform to a civilian antiwar demonstration -- actively and openly voiced peace sentiments.

It's hard to believe this shoddy, dishonest mess is Clark's sixth feature film, and not the unpromising debut of a rank amateur.

The lesson -- that three into two won't go --has been learned by other improbably attractive couples in "bold" movies about youthful experimentation and its long-term consequences, but the word never seems to get around.

Look carefully at that final scene; few happy endings have ever felt so downbeat.

Imagine "The Full Monty" without any of the feel-good uplift, and you'd be pretty close to capturing what this bitter -- and often bitterly funny -- film from Spain is all about.

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.

The result is an astonishingly complex, striking original portrait of an artist whose deeply personal art, intended for no one but God and himself, demands to be treated on its own terms.

Overall, the filmmakers are a little too reverent -- it would have been interesting to hear Derrida respond to criticism leveled against deconstruction as an academic methodology -- but then again, they're not entirely in control here.

But for all the divine touches, FH is no Jesus, or even his son: He's just another wide-eyed American Adam on the road again, a dazed and confused Huck Finn of the highways.

Works better as a look at life among a family of Croatian immigrants in Vienna during the nightmare years of the Balkan conflicts than an exploration of the psychosexual tension between a prostitute and her son.

The action come fast and thick, and the sentimentality reaches near-operatic proportions.

The Duffs are certainly cute together, but not even their natural chemistry can enliven all the preachy bits about hard work and the meaning of happiness.

Flashing by like images in a flip book, these protean forms appear to dance a cosmic quadrille set to the music of the spheres.

Too bad the film isn't nearly as elastic as the miraculous green goo: It can barely contain all the flubber-induced chaos and still make sense, but the filmmakers don't quit till they've run out of funny things for flubber to do.

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.

With its artfully artless hand-held cinematography, haphazard focus, non-diegetic dialogue and what sounds like a largely improvised script, Thraves's film is all about style, but contains a surprising amount of substance.

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.

This terrible sequel to a bad movie was directed by Fred Savage, the now-grown star of "The Wonder Years," though there's no evidence of any behind-the-scenes adult supervision.

Bleak political parable.

This might be the only documentary that will appeal to punks and Mormons alike.

With consummate grace and exceptional style, Terence Davies transformed Edith Wharton's caustic tragedy of manners into a somber, languid dream.

Offers exactly what you've come to expect from the series: Bland but wholly innocuous family entertainment featuring a cute kid and an even cuter dog.

A sweet, unassuming surprise.

An entertaining road movie with a topical point: The three passengers on this cross-country trip are U.S. soldiers who've just returned from Iraq.

The first-act crash is admittedly spectacular and the ending adequately suspenseful, but what comes between is disappointingly routine and completely lacks the kind character complexity that made the original a thrill every step of the way.

It's filled with great footage of what must have been a wild time behind the Iron Curtain, and the music itself speaks volumes.

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.

Not surprisingly, the film is strongest when its characters are simply hanging out, shooting the breeze and venting their feelings, while moments of high drama occasionally fall flat.

Raoul Ruiz's absurdly overwrought phantasmagoria tries to recast the notorious Viennese artist's life as a kind of Divine Comedy: Inferno.

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.

Israeli director Keren Yedaya's remarkable debut feature, which won the 2004 Cannes Film Festival Camera d'Or, is a powerful study of a teenager's willingness to do anything to save her mother, a Tel Aviv prostitute who may be well beyond salvation.

Raw, uncompromising and surprisingly explicit.

Beautifully acted, structurally sophisticated heart-tugger.

None of it really adds up to much but it's smart, low-key fun -- terrible title and dangling preposition notwithstanding.

Conrad's script surprises at nearly every turn.

A handsomely produced but unintentionally risible film that mistakes high grotesquerie for high gothic.

Terrific acting and fearless direction transform what might have been a silly exercise in the slightly spooky into a somber and deeply romantic mystery.

Alternately accessible and obscure, the film is almost too rich to digest at one sitting, but even if experiencing this remarkable films means latching onto just a few of its myriad ideas, it's still a richly rewarding encounter.

While maintaining the appearance of clinical objectivity, this sad, occasionally horrifying but often inspiring film is among Wiseman's warmest.

In the final analysis it all feels very much like a successful acting exercise that while psychologically acute, doesn't really bring much more to the table than what we've already gleaned from a few episodes of "Oz."

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.

Ranks among the best films ever made about the acting profession.

This strikingly beautiful anti-western is filled with arresting images.

Some good lines notwithstanding, this is a real disappointment.

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.

The end result is a series of stylish vignettes, some entertaining and all variations on essentially the same theme.

It never fails to come as a shock to find how profoundly moving it all is when these gentle films draw to their graceful conclusions.

Filled with some of the most powerful poetry and shattering images ever to come out of warfare.

Evokes feelings of fascination and heartbreak, as well as a sense of disbelief.

Armstrong is fortunate to have the luminous Blanchett, who, along with her equally fine supporting cast, helps compensate for what the film lacks.

Barney has been criticized as willfully esoteric, but if traditional meaning is once again elusive in this film, it remains an enthralling aesthetic experience, one that's steeped in mystery and a ravishing, baroque beauty.

Entertaining documentary.

Though many of the risks she takes don't pay off, Elster's film contains a number of stylishly staged set pieces.

Warm and frequently very funny, Argentine director Carlos Sorin's third feature weaves together three story lines into one road-tripping adventure that's a joy ride from beginning to end.

Touching, if cliched.

Told mostly through haunting, often chilling visual fragments, this handsomely mounted and unusually gripping account amounts to an important exercise in biography: It faithfully restores Spielrein to her rightful place as a crucial contributor to the fields of child psychology and psychoanalysis.

The writing is sharp and often blithely cynical, although not above using a shooting star to put a lump in the throat. The tone, however, is at times dangerously uncertain.

Tsai finds great beauty in streets of Kuala Lumpur particularly at night, making this gorgeous film one that should be seen on a large screen in the total darkness of a theater.

Regardless of the artistry involved (though the street-level anxiety of post-9/11 New York is far better evoked in Jane Campion's underrated "In the Cut," The Brave One ultimately never really strays from the same moral low road as "Death Wish."

Moreau gives a beautifully sensitive performance as a woman who finds herself at a literal and figurative crossroads, a performance for which she was quite justly rewarded the Cesar Award in 2005.

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.

Zombie delivers a scary horror movie immediately recognizable as his own -- something that will come as a welcome relief to fans who've diligently sat through seven "Halloween" sequels in hopes of one day reliving the original's terrifying magic.

Though the film springs an okay twist at the very end, there's a good chance you won't be awake to see it.

It's an ideal collaboration: A stylish director desperately seeking substance transforms the first, somewhat flat novel of a promising young writer into powerful and brutally honest film about a highly controversial subject.

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

The message this oddball film propounds is pretty much standard stuff on the Oprah circuit.

Generations of healthy spirits were twisted and deformed by the good Sisters of Mercy, all in the name of salvation.

An unconvincing and uninvolving psychological thriller.

Green and his regular cinematographer Tim Orr have a feel for the sad, generic landscape of small-town America, but rather than adding to an overarching melancholy it only reinforces an already drab, at times bizarrely comic tone.

The face may be vaguely familiar, and if the name "Mimi Weddell" doesn't ring a bell it will after you've seen Jyll Johnstone's affectionate documentary portrait of this unstoppable nonagenarian model and actress.

Not much happens in this gentle-hearted, black-and-white film from Argentina, but it's what doesn't happen that makes it such an unusually satisfying experience.

More reminiscent of Hitchcock's progeny than of the master's own films, Cedric Kahn's intelligently menacing thriller combines Brian DePalma's sexy style with the ice-cold cool tone of Claude Chabrol and the sense of mounting panic George Sluizer exploited in "The Vanishing."

This far more modest production is a much more interesting film (than "Anywhere But Here").

This raw and raunchy drama from director Henrique Goldman offers what few feature films have ever bothered to attempt: a realistic, wholly sympathetic look at the lives of transgendered prostitutes.

A predictable amalgam of every military-academy movie you can think of.

The film unfolds with all the heart-stopping suspense of a true-crime expose that sheds light on the twisted policies of Kim Jong-il's strange and secretive nation.

The results feel slack – sometimes funny, but slack.

In the end it appears that the problem is less divorce per se than immature and deeply selfish parents who should never have had children in the first place.

This surprisingly grim comedy-drama is about as good as director Joel Schumacher gets.

Mimics the kind of comedy that doesn't date particularly well to begin with.

More shaggy dog story than a contribution to the ever-growing mountain of fact and fiction dealing with the Kennedy assassination, Neil Burger's feature film debut is a cleverly crafted but ultimately hollow mockumentary.

Hooking up can be as random, and as rewarding, as hitting the jackpot -- and helps makes "This Car Up" the best of a pretty good bunch.

Only the heavy stylization mitigates some highly artificial plot contrivances, and the final photo montage of America's poor, while no doubt exciting to Von Trier the provocateur, is maddeningly oblique.

Moore's film is unusually sharp looking for this sort of documentary, and comes complete with a nice soundtrack. But most important, it's as comprehensible as any "Dummies" guide, something even non-techies can enjoy.

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.

This tightly structured, often exciting film is among the boldest in a series of increasingly explicit movies.

An appealing, if decidedly unconventional, buddy picture that seems to channel "Midnight Cowboy" while going its own quirky way.

On a miniscule budget, Ghobadi conveys the terror of war, while the beautifully edited sequence in which Iranian villagers make bricks resembles nothing so much as a choreographed dance number.

Cheung gives a revelatory performance.

A little too derivative of much better movies to succeed on its own. However, in the context of recent Chinese movies, it's a pretty amazing piece of work.

Gordon makes the mistake of preserving Bradfield's highly idiosyncratic dialogue -- dazzling on the page, deadly in any actor's mouths -- and the otherwise talented Lloyd is miscast.

(Valli) brings an ethnographer's eye for detail to a plot that amounts to little more than the good old generation gap.

The line separating "fan" from "fanatic" has never seemed as thin or as permeable as it does in this harrowing, and at times surprisingly humorous, case study from actress-turned-director Emmanuelle Bercot.

It's painfully corny and surprisingly vulgar, but this embarrassing attempt at a father-son heart-warmer just happens to feature two Hollywood legends, and they're both in terrific form.

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.

Unexpectedly touching -- odd-couple buddy comedy.

The first 45 minutes of this wickedly clever comedy features the smartest, tartest high-school satire since Alexander Payne's "Election."

Granted, the film is a technical marvel: The many chases through rooms, under floors and behind walls -- including one very scary encounter with a nail-gun -- are all done to jaw-dropping, state-of-the-art perfection.

It's essential viewing for anyone interested in the state of post-Apartheid South Africa.

A good opportunity to catch some marvelous acting.

The freedom to answer Hamlet's nagging question over whether to be or not for oneself is explored in this thoughtful and thought provoking documentary about the Swiss organization EXIT AMD.

Dabbed with sentimental touches, the film nevertheless avoids facile victim psychologizing and pulls no punches.

Playing straight man isn't really Barrymore's strength, but former "Simpson's" writer Larry Doyle's script is funny and Stiller is even funnier; he turns even the more juvenile moments in something to laugh at.

It's a fascinating film that manages to touch on subjects as diverse as mental illness and what's wrong with the record industry, set to brilliant music by the one of the best bands you've probably never heard.

A coarse and unappealing black comedy.

Admitting that it's formulaic doesn't make it any less so, but it's enjoyable in a mushy, easily digested sort of way.

Swank and Elba work hard for their paychecks, but Rea quite literally phones in his performance.

Given its premise, it's hard for any Hostel sequel to be little more than a rehash.

Even worse than its hypocrisy, gratuitous homophobia and cheap proselytizing, the movie is dull.

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.

The title, by the way, is age-old slang for a soldier's complete combat gear, which for the U.S. soldiers in Iraq -- both real and otherwise -- weighs over 50 pounds.

Aside from a little eleventh-hour pseudo-mysticism about death and the weight of the soul, the story is really little more than a unusually gripping thriller.

Trapero again proves himself a master of mood, evoking the gritty, workaday world of contemporary Argentina that helped establish him as one of the most important young directors of the new Argentine cinema.

Of course, no creepy movie worth its salt would be complete without an appearance by Udo Kier, and Parigi doesn't disappoint: Kier appears as Kenneth's louche, hookah-smoking next-door neighbor and, as always, is a disturbing delight.

While probably not suitable for the wee ones, older kids and most adults will love this exciting and heartfelt adventure of one boy's survival during the darkest days of post-war Europe.

Sensitive, extraordinarily well-acted drama.

Beautifully played by Valette and Zylberstein, and directed with amazing grace by Albou, this touching film offers a respectful, fascinating look at a community that's ignored as often as it's misunderstood.

Powerful crime drama does more than just expose the criminal underbelly of South African township life.

It all adds up to an unfortunate misfire: a film at odds with both its source material and itself.

Likably low-key, character-driven dramatic comedy.

What Guttentag and Sturman gain in dramatic immediacy, however, they lose when it comes to historical context, and the chance to offer insight into why such things occur in the first place -- and continue to happen today -- is lost.

There's a hilarious performance of a "de-fascisized" version of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," and the soundtrack prominently features an Italian version of the crypto-fascist girl-group classic "I Will Follow Him," a joke Kenneth Anger first made in "Scorpio Rising" that's still funny today.

Staunton is phenomenal - she barely speaks throughout the entire last third of the film, but the power of her posture and distraught expressions are enough to break your heart.

It doesn't meet the minimum number of laughs to qualify as a comedy -- two would have clinched it -- and it's far too asinine to be taken seriously.

Set in Paris in 1975, this sensitive, low-key film is another exquisitely crafted volume in French director Benoit Jacquot's collection of films about young Frenchwomen at pivotal points in their lives.