Kevin Maynard

A new version of the greatest psychological mystery of all: love.

Just try not to smile while watching Jump Tomorrow.

The results are far more real than MTV's The Real World.

Plays out like a raunchy episode of "Felicity."

This bed-swapping crime story is ultimately too protracted, but Piñeyro's direction is richly atmospheric, full of noir shadows and strong period detail.

This fictionalized, frequently stomach-churning biography of Australian criminal Mark Chopper Read features the most bloody ear-severing scene since "Reservoir Dogs."

A punishing tragedy that could best be described as the anti-"Shine."

In spirit, 101 Reykjavík is so Almodóvar that it could melt the polar icecap.

Come Undone is the quintessential gay date at the art house.

Elevates the horror genre with a refreshing intelligence and humor -- too bad it's not half as good at generating scares.

Ultimately too slight and opaque to inspire much ardor.

As talented as Polley proved herself in "The Sweet Hereafter" and "Go," this is her best work yet.

Billed cleverly as a comedy from the heart that goes for the throat. If only Brooks had had the guts to avoid the schmaltz.

Plays like a Chinese "Cinema Paradiso," full of feeling without succumbing to sentimentality.

Worth navigating for its refusal to play to the crowd. There's certainly nothing safe or sweet about Weaver's performance.

This is nothing more than a bare-assed fart in the face of Smith's fans.

A fast, funny film that goes down like a cyanide-spiked piña colada.

It's the kind of flourish that makes you smile -- that makes you believe in the power of movies.

What's right as rain with Diary is the casting.

At best a vaguely Semitic episode of "The Wonder Years."

A genre-busting film that deserves to be seen.

Actually, it's a childhood "A Clockwork Orange," a reverent realization of the late Stanley Kubrick's final obsession.

The most poignant (if hard-hitting) depiction of childhood to show up this year.

A witty, if overextended, take on pornography.

The biggest piece of supernatural hooey since estranged wife Demi Moore's "The Seventh Sign."

A jauntily entertaining ride.

Simply a pleasant diversion rather the paean to crazy-in-love classics it would so like to be.

Ultimately, Grateful Dawg will only be of real interest to musicology students and diehard Deadheads.

This predictable romantic comedy outing has occasional flickers of ingenuity.

Even if the great debate that pits artistic integrity against corporate compromise doesn't thrill you, see Cradle Will Rock anyway. It's marvelous, provocative entertainment; art for art's sake.

All that this really amounts to is a lot of hot-headed, hairy men threatening each other -- whenever they're not dancing on table tops, that is.

A bit too bloodless to howl about.

Too poignant and funny to be dismissed.

Optimistically explores how vastly different people can come together, and how any journey is more about what happens along the way than simply getting from one place to another.

This one's still worth checking out -- especially for the naturalistic performances by the feisty Touly and the rest of the young cast.

There's lots of sweet music to savor in this snide industry satire.

Zahn's dazed and confused, droopy-mustached dude steals every scene he's in...a movie that will make you smile and put a lump in your throat.

Plays like mediocre outtakes from better bell-bottomed fare (Richard Linklater's authentic, seriocomic "Dazed and Confused"; Fox's "That '70s Show") without making any kind of impression of its own.

After an uproarious first half, Saving Grace arrives at its conclusion somewhat hastily and conveniently.

A satisfying, sentimental trip.

American History X is a crash course on how to make a message movie that resonates with crackling power.

Despite the film's impressively epic look and an interesting cast of young and old actors, it ringingly sounds the same dour note over and over again.

A meticulously mounted film that retains the author's ambiguous characterizations yet is still emotionally accessible.

Despite impeccable performances, this is bloodless, ho-hum stuff.

Juggles a few too many subplots, cramming in more issues than your average nightly newscast. But more often than not, this is a film to savor.

Basically one elaborate joke about male modeling and all the vanity, emasculation, and fatuousness that attend it. Fortunately, it's a good joke.

A hilarious and utterly faboo documentary...you'll be begging for more.

A bright, lively picture.

Too much of a study in formalism to register deeply on an emotional level.

Nico and Dani merely retells a not uncommon tale without significantly enriching it. It's just too familiar to play as poignantly as it would like to.

This jailhouse jam is quite a haul.

It plays out like an endless series of scenes we've seen before.

Contains more than a handful of big laughs and a highly charismatic cast that knows how to put them over.

Works so hard at being pleasant and ingratiating that it wears out its welcome.

Sentenced its audience to a maudlin death.

Makes for compulsive viewing even though its noirish plot doesn't make a lick of sense.

This self-consciously kooky road movie about an unusual trio of bank robbers aims for Hal Ashby misanthropy, but hasn't a single emotionally grounded or plausible moment to justify its purely cinematic eccentricities.

Dares to substitute wit and warmth for the standard gay indie tropes in tackling its tale of an unconventional couple.

But jaw-dropping trailer aside, there isn't much movie here.

Strangely, what it most lacks is the genuine tension found in the first "Mission"'s signature set pieces.

You could do a lot worse than spend two hours in the company of two such talented actresses.

The Spy Who Shagged Me is impossible-to-resist summer fun that left me feeling, dare I say, randy for more? Oh, behave.

That's just not enough to recommend it, though it does have one moment of real justice: The person sentenced to jail has truly bad hair.

Never less than riveting.

A riveting, unsentimental tragedy of unrequited love.

Strictly where the boys are: posing, posturing, and talking engine envy.

Unsuccessfully attempts to fathom Kaufman's lunatic sensibilities, supplying scant psychological insight into what made the outrageous comic tick.

It's a wonderful reminder of the importance of music in the movies.

Pie has some nice surprises and is enjoyable in a smutty, sitcom way. It offers up the outrageousness of "There's Something About Mary" without wallowing in cruelty.

The movie is as schmaltzy as I'd feared, and yet De Salvo does elicit some nice performances from her ensemble cast.

The flat, gross-out live-action bits, directed by (surprise!) Peter and Bobby Farrelly, don't jive with the zippy, Tex Avery-style animated segments, directed by former storyboard artists Piet Kroon and Tom Sito.

It's filled with far too much talk and it never justifies its length, but if you succumb to its old-fashioned Renoir style of storytelling, The Grandfather has its pleasures.

Every frame of Scott's film is gorgeously lurid and baroque, but it just hangs there like bad art, even during the gore-spilling, Grand Guignol climax.

Brooks' least satisfying film in quite a while.

The narrative disjointedness is not at all relieved by confusing editing, an uncertain tone, and a dragging pace that makes the film a progressively dreary experience.

The total lack of sexual chemistry between them doesn't help. Frankly, I'd rather see Scott Thomas play a nun than sit through another one of these turgid romancers.

The film is never less than a satisfying mix of compelling entertainment and social critique. The performances are uniformly superb.

All this artful violence won't change your life, but Non-Stop is a satisfying quickie.

Beautifully performed and filmed, but tiresomely schematic episodes like this one cause us to experience major sensory deprivation.

Despite good performances and moments of spectacle, it seems to go on longer than the Cultural Revolution.

The overlapping dialogue and the comedy of famous people playing self-variations is pure Altman (Leigh, not surprisingly, has worked in three Altman films).

The script is pure Disney formula. Dinosaur offers next to nothing in the way of variation.

Yields beguiling nectar.

Smith and Fitzgerald are funny, feisty, poignant, and altogether realistic. Will they end up lovers, friends, side-by-side corpses? Their sharp performances make Series 7 as frighteningly addictive as crack, or even "Survivor."

Agnes Browne hums along as a series of pleasant vignettes, only frantically shifting to a single narrative track in its third act for the sake of an unbelievably upbeat ending.

Though far from a sophomore slump, Snatch, like "Smoking Barrels," is such a grab bag of other influences that it's tough to figure out what, if anything, about Ritchie's style is uniquely his own.

The entire ensemble is first-rate.

Writer-director Harmony Korine seems more interested in churning your stomach than in warming your heart.

Giuseppe Tornatore has long been a master of cheap sentiment ("Cinema Paradiso," " The Legend of 1900"), but his latest film is his most shallow, reprehensible exercise in nostalgia to date.

The year's first sure-fire Oscar nominee has arrived with flying colors.

So desperate to be rebellious and cool, that it's impossible to see it as anything more than one big case of "been there, done that" -- even if your drugs have already kicked in.

A gritty, well-acted urban drama with lots of humanity.

Relevant message aside, there's no good reason to sit through photographer Neal Slavin's directorial debut.

Too much of a locker-room melodrama to make for great tragedy.

Crawford's such a good-hearted guy, you can't help but want a cut from his clippers.

The movie's still thinner than a supermodel's waist. It's not just that the results are less than heavenly; it's that we don't know what the hell they are.

At their trenchant, tuneful best, the Barenaked Ladies take flip comic spins on serious subjects (alcoholism, heartbreak). But offstage, they have nothing of substance to reveal.

Deserves to be applauded for not casting Freddie Prinze Jr., but this sloppy, somnolent, strung-together flick pales when compared to such other teenage riffs on classic literature as "Clueless" and "10 Things I Hate About You."