Ken Fox

Sharp-edged comedy.

The similarities between this film and Michael Bay's overblown "Armageddon"are too numerous to ignore; the crucial difference is that this one is actually pretty good.

Starts with a bang and ends in a long, protracted whimper.

It's a documentary, but the filmmakers couldn't have scripted a more revealing microcosm of profiteering and exploitation.

Dunn's elegant, full-length debut presents a frightening and powerful argument against the kind of reckless, profit-driven land development that not only threatens natural resources, but life itself.

Cameron Diaz is the ideal guy's gal and Ashton Kutcher is, well, a guy. Together, they're a zero.

Despite Schnack's half-hearted attempt to divide the film into chapters, his film is too unstructured to hold the interest of non-fans who might have appreciated a somewhat less hagiographic approach.

Rather than portraying these girls as one-dimensional victims, Harada offers a complex portrait of teenagers who've learned to make their exploitation work for them.

Neither the appealing cast nor the bouncing, ska-inflected soundtrack can keep the party going.

Resembles an Impressionist masterpiece come to life, and ends with a tremendously moving acceptance of art and mortality.

Even Wong's detractors, who consider him more stylist than auteur, will have a tough time dismissing the extraordinary emotional depth he achieves here.

The cast, however, is great -- Crudup and Duchovny in particular share a fun chemistry that's just toilet-obsessed enough to be absolutely believable.

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 French-language voice cast is first-rate, although the film will also be released in the U.S. in an English-language version featuring Sean Penn, Iggy Pop and Gena Rowlands in addition to Deneuve and Mastroianni.

No matter how deep one's affection for man's best friend, there's something undeniably fatuous about considering the emotional impact 9/11 has had on a dog named Rain.

Director Scott Kalvert returns to wring every last cliché out 1950s juvenile delinquent movies, without adding anything particularly fresh to the formula.

Eight magnificent sled dogs must fend for themselves amid Antarctica's frozen wastes in this top-notch survival adventure that will reduce the coldest heart to a puddle of warm slush.

What's suspenseful - and so troubling - is seeing exactly how far the "progressives" of GCS are willing to go to put a decidedly unpopular candidate back into office, regardless of what it will mean for the future of the country and for Bolivian democracy itself.

Both De Bouw and Decleir are superb.

This relentlessly name-dropping comedy lacks the teeth that could have made it really interesting.

Looks very much like a documentary: It's grainy and raw, and Seidl's actors -- a mix of actors and non-professionals -- are often unglamorously posed under what appears to be natural light.

Christensen simultaneously avoids all the cliches that might have been heaped upon her beautifully rendered characters and roots their travails in everything that makes for a good soap: tragedy, tears, sexual tension, misplaced letters and a slightly sardonic voice-over that teases the plot lines like the old-fashioned, "tune in tomorrow" narrator of yesteryear.

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

Has everything one could ask of a true-crime expose.

It's almost inconceivable how Glass could have gotten away with so much, but the movie makes a convincing case for how Glass used office politics, the good faith of his editors and his own personal charisma to get away with the worst offenses a journalist could commit.

Entertaining in spite its dubious accuracy.

Powerful stuff from writer-director Li Yang that's both an uncompromising indictment of the human cost of China's evolving market economy and an nail-bitingly suspenseful thriller.

The film is beautifully told and superbly acted. More importantly, Paul Laverty's screenplay goes along way toward showing how the traditionalism that can turn a community inward on itself is often a response to racism, and in that sense the film's timing couldn't have been any better.

The film is all a little Lit Crit 101, but it's extremely well played and often very funny. But beware: Solondz uses humor as a booby trap, so be careful what you laugh at.

This is the rare Holocaust documentary that ends on an optimistic note, and Comforty's film might even help reinforce one's faith in humankind.

Often thrilling, if overwhelmingly brutal, trio of interconnected short stories.

Writer-director Daniel Burman's dryly humorous, poker-faced comedic style is once again in full play in this funny and touching film about a young Argentine man and his aging father, both of whom happen to be lawyers.

Title notwithstanding, there's nothing particularly funny about this political drama from the tireless Claude Chabrol.

It's a fascinating story teeming with pride, arrogance, greed and overweening hubris, and Gibney attempts to give it all an added dimension by finding the archetypes of Greek tragedy among the sleazy deals and Ponzi-scheme financing.

Handsomely appointed and faultlessly acted, but no more alive than a well-dressed corpse.

Character and plot are the main event, and the film's got both in spades.

Feels more like a 90-minute pilot for a TV series than a feature film.

The kids are fine, the original songs range from OK to wretched, and Barney is annoying as ever -- even more so, given his big-screen size and Dolby-enhanced guffaw.

Cornillac is excellent as the emotionally immature Gilles, but this is Devos' show.

Beautifully filmed, but extremely painful examination of the African slave trade takes a difficult position: Rather than focusing on the white European superstructure, Ivory Coast director Roger Gnoan M'bala focuses on African complicity in the capture and selling of African people.

Both enjoyably lighthearted and proof that even the most stridently purist approach to filmmaking can produce a cliched romantic comedy.

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.

Taut, powerfully acted political thriller.

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

It's a richly textured, psychologically acute film that takes an unblinking look at the tattered life of the returning soldier, and it's boosted by two powerful performances from Phillippe and the increasingly impressive Tatum, a former underwear model who has somehow turned into a fine actor.

The kids are real and their stories enthralling: When it comes to drama, there's nothing quite like high school.

Grateful fans so enamored of traditional Irish folk music that they don't care how they come by it may enjoy John Irvin's folk-filled feature, but while there's lots of great Ceili music on tap, it's wrapped in a story so traditional that it's not especially interesting.

Powerfully acted, intensely carnal drama.

This exceptional film features some of the most beautiful cinematography ever seen on film, in service of some of the most horrible images imaginable.

When characters aren't quoting Alfred de Musset, they're speaking in aphorisms of their own, and the dialogue is stylized and stilted. Happily, Kaas, one of France's most popular jazz singers, has a sensuous, sonorous voice, and Lelouch uses it as often as possible; in many ways, the film is a musical.

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.

The music continues to speak for itself. Play loud.

When she's not babbling about the weird symbological system that rules her personal cosmos Imelda is an entertaining storyteller, vividly describing a life that became a national embarrassment and a camp legend.

It comes as a huge disappointment, then, that having cast Witherspoon as Miss Sharp, director Mira Nair and Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park) were unable to resist that impulse to find 21st-century prototypes in 19th-century literary characters, fictional creations whose values lie not in the way they reflect our own narcissistic times, but the way they reveal so much about their own.

The film fires off too many intriguing plot possibilities that remain nothing more than that.

You'll feel lucky for such a comprehensive introduction to Turkish music.

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.

A grim meditation on faith and betrayal that focuses on a relatively obscure corner of Holocaust history: the fate of the Catholic clergy under the Third Reich.

An intelligent and very funny satire about the bloody game of American politics.

Takashi Miike's frenetic comic yakuza thriller embodies the best and worst this notorious Japanese genre auteur has to offer: It's endlessly inventive, consistently intelligent and sickeningly savage.

Fessenden uses an unsettling mix of montage, time-lapse photography and animation to create an atmosphere of great, unknowable menace that closely approximates the haunted spirit of Algeron Blackwood's unforgettable tale "The Wendigo." These hills are indeed alive.

The film only gains its footing in the final half hour, when Griffin and Solvang interview a healer who regularly performs female circumcisions and, finally, two people who actually have AIDS.

As a visual counterpart to some of the most sublime verse ever written, it's often thrilling.

The acting is uniformly superb, as is the rich, somber cinematography.

The film is surprisingly successful in developing a sense of mounting dread.

Ivory's last minute decision to render his hero sightless may make certain symbolic sense, but creates an even greater distance between Jackson and the woman he must inevitably come to love; their dull self-restraint makes "The Remains of the Day" look like soft-core porn.

The final effect, particularly the climactic ballroom sequence, is astonishing -- a haunting impression of the vast synchronicity of unbroken time that must surely stand as one of the great achievements in the development of the movie medium.

There's also very little dialogue, but what there is is often very funny, and Ceylan is a master of the dead-pan visual gags that reveal volumes about his character.

Basically a one-joke film, but the joke is a good one.

Linney's character is written as a one-dimensional monster whose selfish cruelty is beyond redemption and, ultimately, belief.

This thin premise is better suited to a half-hour sitcom than a feature film (in fact, there's an episode of Frasier with a very similar setup).

Anyone lucky enough to have lived within broadcast range of Rodney Bingenheimer's radio show on L.A.'s KROQ during the late '70s had a privileged upbringing, whether or not they realized it at the time.

Marker revisited (the film) in 1993 after the fall of the Soviet Union: He trimmed an hour and added a remarkably prescient coda: "Terrorism has replaced Communism as the ultimate evil."

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

More a reflection in a fun-house mirror than a portrait of the artist.

Thoughtful look at the itinerant street musicians of Paris.

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

Bertuccelli's heartfelt film affords a unique peek into the hearts and minds of a generation who, after having been awakened from the lie they'd been living all their lives, must now face the aftermath of an entire nation's failure.

Though it clearly explicates the problem, the film is by no means a straightforward documentary.

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.

Neither Parker nor Donovan is a typical romantic lead, but they bring a fresh, quirky charm to the formula. Nor are their characters typical meet-cute types: David and Toni are imperfect people who are some how perfect for each other.

Beauchamp reconstructs the actual crime with disturbing immediacy, and his treatment of how Till's death galvanized a country makes this short film a good way to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a crime that still has the power to outrage.

Appears to be a complete about-face for Kitano, and yet it's unmistakably his, both stylistically (the film is gorgeous to look at) and thematically.

What Garvy's oral history of the Students for a Democratic Society lacks in clarity and opposing viewpoints it makes up for with fascinating personal reminiscences of a turbulent time.

A moody, subtle drama that has more in common with the tragedy of "Endless Love" than "Where The Boys Are."

Excellent performances from Sarah Polley and Deborah Harry, and a sensitive script from writer-director Isabel Coixet transform what might otherwise have been little more than a disease-of-the-week cable melodrama.

Instantly forgettable but fun while it lasts, Disney's live-action adaptation of the classic cartoon is an ideal action-adventure thrill ride for kids who may be a little too young for the latest Bond extravaganza.

Lars Von Trier's silly script about a group of pistol packing misfits gets better treatment than it deserves, thanks to a fine young cast and the game direction of Thomas Vinterberg.

Viewers hoping for a brutal, pitch-black war comedy along the lines of M*A*S*H are in for a major disappointment.

Perhaps too clever for its own good.

This beautifully shot, 70-minute black-and-white film remains deliberately inconclusive.

The year's most eagerly anticipated green-eyed monster finally rears its ugly head, not with his trademark radioactive roar, but a deafening yawn.

Marvelously entertaining, and occasionally brilliant, political satire.

That the film seems willing to erect a simple religious parable on such a moral morass is bewildering. That it should do so without accurately depicting the nightmare of Hitler's Europe is unconscionable.

Bearded, burly and even balding, these "bears" are a refreshing change from the depilated, youth-obsessed men of "Queer as Folk."

The real-life Modigliani did indeed live a short, tragic life, but this factually inaccurate, plodding film makes it feel twice as long.

It's basically a one-joke comedy that spins out of control once the joke's over, but the cast is likable, the women smart, and one can't argue with the important safe-sex message.

Each frame is exquisitely framed, the acting is superb -- Abedini deserves to be a star -- and the impermanence of the lives of displaced Afghans is hauntingly expressed.

Under the candy coating and girl group soundtrack, the film acknowledges some hard truths about women and education that haven't changed much since the '60s. But it never loses sight of having a good time, and the girls are great.

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.

Despite some excitingly shot concert footage, one scene begins to feel very much like the next, and it's all rather predictable.

A dreary, downbeat "Field of Dreams."

All that charm is wasted in careless scenes that don't make much sense and the whole thing feels slapped to together with chewing gum and spit.

Powerful and startlingly unsentimental.

Like so many true stories, Comes' lacks the clarity and comforting resolution of fiction

It's hard to care even just a little when you have no idea what's at stake or why, be it Heaven or Hell.

While none of this is meant to be taken seriously, the premise demeans Moliere's great achievement.

Veteran conspiracy buffs probably won’t find much of Stone's material particularly new, but Stone’s film does serve as a neat summary for the rest of us while offering a number of intriguing insights into how conspiracy theories work and what they say about specific cultural and political climates.

It's rendered in shiny, state-of-the-art CG animation, not the charming pen-and-ink drawings with which Seuss illustrated his own books or the hand-drawn artistry Chuck Jones brought to the 1970 Horton Hears a Who! short. But considering the messes that came before, that's a minor quibble.

Beautifully shot against Iceland's frozen landscape, the film is nearly as spellbinding as its strange heroine, whose essential mystery Gudmundsson preserves until the film's final frames.

This is a rare road picture that leaves us knowing less about our traveling companions than we did when the journey started; Dahan and screenwriter Agnes Fustier-Dahan reduce their characters to pasteboard symbols, colored by unexplained quirks.

A bold, painful memoir that finds an innovative middle-ground between conventional documentary and a homemade, home-movie collage.

Surprisingly humor-free. Worse, with the exception of Cornwell's brilliant Bowie, the impersonations aren't particularly good, and can be found in any two-bit comedian's repertoire.

A cerebral thriller that dares to ask a fundamental question: What, exactly, is love?

Cruz's willingness to allow her appearance to be so degraded for cinema's sake doesn't really help.

Hadzihalilovic succeeds brilliantly at crafting a meaningful enigma that somehow grasps the essence of adolescence, but only grows more mysterious with each revelation.

A fascinating fictional documentary.

However you feel about her character and what she may or may not have done, Tamblyn's portrayal of Stephanie Daley is softly devastating.

We only experience the horror of the genocide through several layers of artifice -- first Saroyan's, then Egoyan's own -- a sad acknowledgement that with each story told, we're drawn that much further from the truth.

"We're not that different, but we're different from what you think we are," says 16-year-old Ebony, and no playwright could have said it better.

Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro's powerful documentary takes a microcosmic look at the war and its devastation by focusing on a single casualty.

So while the facts of Frank's actual political career tend to fall by the wayside, Everly treats us to an insightful look at a remarkable public figure who first became famous for what he does in private.

White's take on southern life is no more "real" than the stereotypes he's trying to disrupt, just cooler.

There is, however, considerable humor to what might have been an exceedingly grim film, and most of it comes courtesy of Mona's slippery brother, Marwan (Ashraf Barhoum).

If you pitch your expectations at an all time low, you could do worse than this oddly cheerful -- but not particularly funny -- body-switching farce.

Swank's nuanced performance is remarkable and it's a powerful film.

Amazingly, many of Jack's and Ina's letters survived and -- read aloud by Dutch actors Jeroen Krabbe and Ellen Ten Damme -- serve as the thematic thread that runs through Ohayon's film.

Anyone unfamiliar with Chomsky's work may be unsettled by his unblinking critique of the U.S. policy at a time when patriotism is the order of the day, and while he fails to offer any real solutions, his conscientious perspectives on the questions remain invaluable.

Shattering documentary.

Edward Klosinski's staid cinematography lends the film a feeling of late summer languor, a deceptive calm before a terrible storm. The spare, evocative piano soundtrack is by John Cale.

The subject can sharply divide even the most liberal-minded critics, but it's no secret on which side of the debate filmmakers Bathsheba Ratzkoff and Sut Jhally find themselves.

With its thumping soundtrack, absence of body hair and a camera that practically pants over every bulge, curve and crack of the male form, the film is really closer to porn than a serious critique of what's wrong with this increasingly pervasive aspect of gay culture.

Though impressively ambitious and making the most of a small budget and talented cast, director Ari Taub's feature concentrates so intently on the day-to-day minutiae of infantry life on World War II's European front that the bigger picture gets lost.

Wickedly funny, deeply disturbing, live-action retelling of an old Czech folktale.

So it should come as no surprise that what Maddin eventually produced is a film about HIS Winnipeg, a psychological terrain that's no more -- nor less -- "real" than William Carlos William's Paterson or Marcel Proust's Combray.

A truly trangressive film as unsettling as it is psychologically acute.

They're answers that will either earn your respect, or further damn him as the architect of an American nightmare.

In light of the recent plight of real New York City-based filmmaker Micah Garen, who was kidnapped and nearly executed while attempting to make a genuine documentary in Iraq, the whole endeavor seems simply foolish.

Slight, genial documentary portrait of a man and his dream.

Brilliantly acted and lugubriously paced, Liv Ullmann's fourth feature as director — the second written by her mentor, Ingmar Bergman — will no doubt be manna to those who miss the brilliant acting and lugubrious pace that characterized Bergman's late-period films.

Through what sounds like a project of unpromisingly limited scope, Lee manages to touch on a surprisingly wide range of subjects, from cultural identity, familial expectations, community responsibility and, above all, self-definition.

The whole thing whizzes by in such a panicked rush that there's no time for anything so immaterial as character, but what little we do learn about Chev works against the film.

Twenty-five years on, hardcore continues to be the soundtrack of choice for extreme, white-supremacist groups hoping to tap into teenage rage. With no one on hand to counter the argument, this may go down as hardcore's lasting legacy.

Teenage angst and adolescent agony are the stuff of sharp, observant comedy this quirky, wonderfully dry first fiction feature from documentary filmmaker Jeffrey Blitz (Spellbound).

Too dumb to take seriously, but just silly enough to be sort of fun.

Lacking the thematic depth of "On The Run," this brisk, bubbly jape never really transcends the genre it's emulating, and your enjoyment of the film really depends on your tolerance for bumbling misunderstandings and improbable coincidences.

Think of it as a dark, suspenseful scenario penned by Joseph Conrad and designed by Toulouse-Lautrec and Auguste Renoir, and jump right in.

Throughout, the notion that hip-hop is much more than rapping is a persistent theme, and anyone seeking a solid introduction -- or re-introduction -- to that ever vibrant culture shouldn't miss it.

The only surprise here is how a film with so much promise could ultimately settle for so little.

Rather than adapt the novel per se, Winterbottom has adapted Sterne's hilarious attempts to make the mess of life fit the neat contours of the novel by making a movie about an attempt to make Sterne's chaotic and confusing novel fit the contours of a film.

Be sure to stay for the coda, a damning piece of newsreel that casts much of what went before in a whole new light.

Despite the overplotting, there's scarcely any of the characterization that might have made some of it interesting.

A brisk dramatic comedy that combines melodrama, humor and social critique in equal measure.

Clever and offbeat.

The film has all the pregnant pauses, exaggerated reaction shots and melodramatic scoring of an overripe telenovela, but, unlike a good soap opera, the sisters' separate story lines are clumsily balanced.

Makhmalbaf shot this film under extremely difficult circumstances, and it sometimes shows; but it's still an important achievement.

Unfortunately, this earnest but short-sighted documentary by New York-based painter-turned-filmmaker Stefan Roloff touches only the tip of a very large iceberg.

Writer-director James Ponsoldt's first feature is a small, modest movie structured around a fairly simple situation that leaves plenty of room for some fine performances.

Dumb premises have driven some wonderful romantic comedies, but for all its vaguely mystical trappings, Prywes's film lacks the magic that makes them work.

A sweet and surprisingly unconventional look at the changing definition of family in contemporary Japan.

It's not a total shock when this gay romantic comedy suddenly veers into to heavy S&M, non-consensual sex and suicide.

Neither very dark nor particularly funny.

Interestingly, the real horror lies in the film's depiction of the era: The sight of guillotined bodies -- naked, headless and dumped under the shady trees of Picpus -- is truly shocking. Rarely has the horror of the Terror been so graphically and effectively evoked.

The tragedy of modern Tibet haunts this otherwise lighthearted tale of life inside a Buddhist monastery-in-exile.

Needless to say, anyone who's not entirely down with the beastly noise of the Beastie Boys will hate every second of it. This one's strictly for -- and, for the most part, by -- the fans.

The overall effect of Demme's film is a little like experiencing Nazi prison camps through reruns of Hogan's Heroes, right down to the few bona fide laughs.

What begins as a gripping adventure, thrillingly told with virtually no dialogue, eventually becomes a rather routine parable despite the unique setting and circumstances.

Extremely difficult but worthy film.

Wildly entertaining and quite poignant.

Everything about Takashi Miike's brilliant and blood-soaked crime thriller comes as a shock.

An uncanny and thoroughly creepy nip-yuck nightmare about plastic surgery and identity.

Christopher Browne's fun, surprisingly exciting film probably won't convert anyone convinced that bowling is something you do while downing fish sticks and beer. But it may teach them a newfound respect for the sport's champions.

It's just plain lurid when it isn't downright silly, and that "drunk cam," a blurred, cockeyed lens through which Sonny's soused point-of-view is shown, is just a terrible idea.

A startling about-face for Australian director Alex Proyas, and an unwelcome one as well.

A beautiful, slow-motion melodrama.

In a rare and inspiring example of the way art can both reflect and alleviate human suffering, photojournalist Zana Briski's wrenching documentary traces her valiant use of photography to help children trapped in one of the most wretched places on earth.

The one film to see on this most crucial subject.

Like everything else about this insulting romantic comedy, the Jessica Alba/Dane Cook love match is degraded by vile jokes, a boorish attitude toward women and a smutty tackiness not seen since those stupid nudie-cuties of the 1960s.

From the ravishing landscape photography to the exquisite costume design, the entire film is a stunning visual experience; rarely since Hollywood's golden age has the genre been so well served.

This gripping documentary contends that some shockingly sleazy efforts to undermine Clinton's character and authority were very real.

Its opponents, Arab and Israeli alike, the "wall" is a dispiriting symbol of apartheid and defeat.

It's all about as white and bourgeois as you can get, but the film does take a few risks, and some actually pay off.

The best parts of the film come when he (Doillon) just lets the camera roll and lets the kids be kids.

Filled with long, obviously improvised pseudo-philosophical ramblings about nothing -- and that's before the drugs kick in.

We can only hope that the time frame is meant to be sometime before 9/11, and not after. Either way, it's a troubling vision of how terrorism and "martyrdom" occur on both sides of this ghostly war, and is both perpetrated and facilitated by the very forces enlisted to stop it.

The subject may be familiar to those who happened to catch the 1998 documentary "Port of Last Resort," but this remarkable true story certainly bears repeating.

For all the gushy feelings, the plight of women like Kiranjit, bound not only by domineering, often physically abusive husbands but by racism and oppressive cultural traditions as well, is poignantly portrayed.

Documentary filmmakers Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine found an ingenious way to tell their story in a film that is as unflinching as it is uplifting.

The surprisingly tragic climax may make it rough going for kids too young to grasp the film's comforting message.

Energetic and ambitious, and its likeable cast marks a welcome return of non-white faces to the center of a gay-themed film.

Naturally there's plenty of adolescent drama both on stage and off, and if the film ultimately feels a little thin, that's also to be expected.

Serrill wisely divides his film into chapters according to year, which helps structure the story's natural repetitiveness.

Maggie Gyllenhaal cements her reputation as a gifted, if somewhat aloof, actress in Laurie Collyer's sad character piece.

With very little dialogue and lingering shots of the landscape -- always a very important visual trope in Dumont's deep-psyche explorations -- the film is nevertheless tighter and, clocking in at under 90 minutes, relatively brief.

[Solondz's] blistering, brilliantly transgressive satire is sure to rattle even the most jaded filmgoer. It's also a remarkably compassionate profile of American life at its most desperate.

Kids might find the sight of monkeys -- sorry, apes -- wrestling in outer-space funny, but unless they're unusually sophisticated, much will probably just confuse them.

Wahlberg, whose Bobby is the kind of guy who enters a room gun first, swinging a can of a gasoline, is the glue that holds everything together; he's perfectly cast and has never given a more persuasive performance.

Actor-turned-writer Dan Futterman's smart, subtle screenplay, which explores both Capote's determination to turn murder into literature and the deeply troubling questions he raised in the process.

This loud and thoroughly obnoxious comedy about a pair of squabbling working-class spouses is a deeply unpleasant experience.

It's also very cleverly edited - one scene will often branching off from another in much the same way a crossword puzzle works - and features a bang-up ending that will actually leave you cheering over a word game.

Much ado about nothing much at all.

Filled with moments of real poignancy and gentle epiphanies, the film is also marked by strong Christian undercurrents, but, like everything else in Salles's film, they're handled with extraordinary delicacy and never feel exclusionary.

The period detail is evocative, Watson and Etel are particularly good, and baby Crusoe -- a computer-generated image seamlessly woven into the live action -- is a slippery little star in his own right.

It's wholesome fun for the whole family.

The result is a bittersweet trifle one can conceivably fall in love with, and Honore's best film so far.

This abysmal "Spider-Man" satire has more in common with the lamentable spate of "Epic" and "Date Movies" than Zucker and Nielsen's truly funny "Naked Gun" series.

This breezy romantic trifle isn't nearly as clever as it imagines itself to be, but it's smart enough not to take itself too seriously.

Marred by lack of a clear strategy and an over-reliance on audio-visual trickery.

The widescreen photography is, however, quite beautiful, and the scenes of aerial combat thrillingly staged.

Im distinguishes what might have otherwise been a standard Hollywood biopic through his use of exquisitely composed shots that could have been imagined by Jang himself.

It's Norton who makes the film such an enlightening experience, and he's mesmerizing.

The nerve-racking wait at the Contention hotel is no longer the film's centerpiece, but the deeper characterization gives Bale an opportunity to once again sink his teeth into a complex role, and offers a reminder as to why the notoriously difficult Crowe is sometimes worth the trouble.

Wu is able to demonstrate both the timelessness and the universality of stories which, on the surface, sound extreme and unique.

Not just an engaging melodrama that explores the class conflict and sexual mores of feudal Japan, but a work of extraordinary beauty; you could literally hang any random frame on the wall and call it art. No doubt the master would have been pleased.

This gentle comedy marks the feature directing debut of writer Peter Hedges, a gifted writer who's perhaps best known for the screenplay based on his novel "What's Eating Gilbert Grape."

Ask New York-based filmmaker Amos Poe, who badly botches this profile of the artist with a sloppy structure, careless editing and amateurish optical effects that detract from what's actually good about the film: Earle's music.

There's nothing unique about Zarhin's plot -- it's a standard coming-of-age tale with traces of "Good Will Hunting" -- but she portrays the intra-family dynamics with unusual honesty and accuracy.

All of this of course would be forgivable if it all added up to a scary movie or made even a lick of sense, but Balaguero manages to disappoint on all possible fronts.

A beautifully shot, wonderfully moving film.

Funnier than you might imagine.

An intriguingly mysterious, self-reflexive ode to the dream factory, it's one of Lynch's most satisfying films.

Alternating between the sad facts of Nascimento life -- which included a stretch at one of Rio's notorious prisons -- with the events unfolding outside the botanical garden, the film is a pulse-pounding piece of documentary reportage, and a terribly important account of a social problem in developing countries that won't be going away anytime soon.

The soundtrack includes great songs by Andre Williams and Shirley Ellis, and music by local R'n'B legend Ernie K-Doe and electronic organ freakazoid Quintron, who both appear in the film.

The movie winds up becoming "The Annette Bening Show," and she's quite good: Bening makes the most of a string of mad scenes for which any actress would kill, and the real pain she brings to the part grounds the film in something real.

Berman and Pulcini, who turned Harvey Pekar's graphic memoir into the visually inventive, Oscar-nominated "American Splendor," dress this film as an anthropological field diary and add several fabulous touches.

A rare treat — catch it while you can.

Perry's careful juxtaposition of images showing the town's sad present with footage of what it's long ceased to be is positively haunting.

De la Iglesia's years of filmmaking experience are obvious in the film's formal touches -- his transitions between scenes and time frames are smooth and very stylish.

The film is merciless in its depiction of death and suffering, Pitt and Corbet are perfectly cast, and Watts, who also served as executive producer, gives a disturbingly raw performance.

You'll gladly surrender to the whole gorgeous muddle.

A gorgeous feature that's both passing strange and undeniably beautiful.

Interestingly, the real heart of the film is in the finely drawn adult characters.

A modest but finely tuned look at small-town life.

It's easy to see why this violent, thrilling tale broke all box-office records in Thailand: Not only does it stir a sense of deep national pride, but Thanit delivers the goods when it comes to action.

Short on action but heavy on ambiance, and the cumulative effect packs a whopper if you're willing to stop and think about it. Penn, never one to opt for action over thought, clearly expects that his audience will.

Salles is a master storyteller, and the film's pacing is flawless.

Moodysson puts it across with a sincerity that's genuinely heartwarming, and he sets it all to a surprisingly good soundtrack culled from the Swedish rock (who knew?) of the era.

Warm and utterly beguiling fable.

Belvaux is no Douglas Sirk, but the film is an admirable, if uneven, conclusion to an audacious project.

The devout will no doubt enjoy this picturesque dramatization of an inspirational story many have known since childhood; others may understandably expect something more.

The film is a trifle long too long for its rather slim mystery, but in face of so much beauty and invention that's a small quibble.

An uncomfortable go at romantic comedy that belabors the same mistaken-for-gay premise as"In & Out," but without much of that film's charm.

There's something surprisingly sweet at the center of this grim prison drama.

The film is informative, often grisly and undeniably riveting.

A fun and fanciful comic adventure, based on the novel "The Death of Napoleon" by Simon Leys, that takes a great premise and runs with it.

It's a forgotten piece of history worth recounting. One only regrets it wasn't better recounted than it is here.

More than any previous film on the subject, Braun's documentary offers an answer to a common question, perfectly phrased and answered by Cheadle himself: "What can I do? More than nothing. A lot more than nothing."

It may be a simple matter of cultural dissonance, or maybe just a bad translation, but it's hard to see why this obnoxious romantic comedy about a lifetime-long relationship between two mischievous adults locked in an ongoing game of "Dares" was such a huge hit in its native France.

The result is so overloaded with extra characters, tangled story lines, dance numbers, fantasies and flashbacks that the once-simple plot feels puffed-up and irritatingly self-important.

Under the beautifully appointed costumes and to-die-for interiors is Breillat's preoccupation with female sexuality and desire, all centered on a blistering performance from a perfectly cast Asia Argento.

It's all pretty tasteless, but surprisingly chaste and not very funny.

True to form, Salles' version is an intelligent, brooding ghost story brimming with atmosphere, emotions and, above all else, water, but it's disappointingly short on scares.

Rossier's film leaves the dispiriting impression that democracy simply will not be tolerated in the Southern Hemisphere.

The film could easily be reduced to a parable of post-Communist Eastern Europe, but the allegory digs deeper into the very order of things, exemplified by 17th-century musicologist Andreas Werckmeister's arbitrary imposition of a "tempered" tonal system over naturally occurring tunings.

Forget haunted houses and the mountains of the moon: There's no better environment to show off the wonder of the immersive IMAX 3-D experience than the deep blue sea.

Hoch's very funny satire on racial stereotyping cuts both ways.

A bizarre hybrid between Euro erotic thriller and a parable of Jewish awakening.