Laura Sinagra

Unfortunately, despite pretty-on-the-inside performances from the four kickass Clamdaddies, too many extra shake-ups end up crowding out the characters, and distract from the easy camaraderie and slice-of-life intimacy that lures us into their van to begin with.

Though agile edits keep things moving, in braiding several tales into one tight suburban tangle, character development takes more shortcuts than "Short Cuts."

Perhaps if Sister Helen had been released when filming was completed in 2000, its tough-loving Irish nun, who gives hell to male drug addicts in a Mott Haven "safe house," might have passed for endearing.

This "Last Waltz"–like doc is almost funereal, full of reverent banalities spliced between overly folksy takes on melancholic Leonard Cohen bombshells.

With a premise this screwy, nobody has any choice but to follow the savvy lead of Bebe Neuwirth, who, as Hudson's "Composure" editor, hams her queen-bitch-mother-hen role to glazed perfection.

This isn't one for the time capsule--just bury it.

Often the script (co-written by Michael Bacall, who plays sardonic bipolar rich kid Chad) rings clear with mouths-of-babes declamations that all pained kids spew before downing adulthood's suck-it-up Kool-Aid.

Disney misfire.

Though Zilberman's affection for the women leads to some indulgent digression, the doc's low-key tone (and lack of the stock, timpani-backed Nazi iconography) throws certain anecdotes into powerful relief.

As a gloves-off Erin Brockovich, Ryan never makes it into the ring.

What makes Winter Solstice, a nice little Jersey vignette about a widower and his two teenage sons, so striking is writer-director Josh Sternfeld's respect for the verbal shorthand of family interaction.

Less "Freaky Friday" than just plain freaky.

The clunky yee-haw script full of tired bitch/angel oppositions and Witherspoon's school-play petulance cranks the twang to a blare.

Not only documents the soul-titan concert held at L.A. Coliseum seven years after Watts burned, but illuminates the rue and kinesis of a city in full Black Power flower.

Moormann's film transcends A&E hagiography, and Dowd's spry egoism and science-hipster joie de vivre provide piquant icing. Recalling trends, technical advances, artists, and landmark sessions (one where he suggests the rhythm for "Sunshine of Your Love"), Dowd conjures the excitement that helped coax so many iconic performances.

Planned inanity never gets mad mad mad mad enough.

With just the right balance of epic grandeur and break-into-song goofiness, this Bollywood love legend does double duty as a women's-rights manifesto and a plea for amity between India and Pakistan.

If Martínez-Lázaro, as he reiterated at the Miami Film Festival earlier this year, wants to expand the U.S. Spanish-language film market, one hopes he'll aim higher than this.

Unfortunately "My Left Foot's" Jim Sheridan, that reliable purveyor of Irish struggle-porn, anchors us in tedious exposition.

The Boys of Baraka's heart may be in the right place, but its portrait of poor Baltimore kids selected to attend boarding school in Kenya is rife with suspect perspectives.

Like "Spellbound's" glimpse of the darker side of childhood competition, Mad Hot Ballroom--a look at New York City schools' fifth-grade ballroom dance program--is best when exploring issues of class and gender and definitions of success.

Kind of a bore.

Clive Owen proves he can just about save anything.

Maybe it's the terrible lighting, but Friend-out-of-water Aniston spends most of this flick looking like she needs Dustin Hoffman to bang on the glass and get her out of this mess.

Despite frequent cuts to mambos and cha-chas, this insulated tale of rich interns swindling rich studio bosses has no “Clueless”-style SoCal breeze (or righteous “Working Girl” gotcha).

The opposition of Christian spirituality and the bad religion of drugs is enough to send you down to the feel-good bodega just on principle.

A convoluted writing exercise gone horribly wrong.

If hopeless literalist Kasdan could have decided on a tone this could have been a gynophobe's "Independence Day."