Leslie Camhi

Bening's comic gifts make the most of Ronald Harwood's witty screenplay, though she falls flat in her character's rare moments of sincerity.

It lacks the toughness and social insights of its Mexican new wave predecessors like "Amores Perros." And even as the story of one woman's midlife crisis, it's a bit lightweight.

Though Hopkins lovingly re-creates the surfaces of shtetl life, its deep spirituality seems to elude him.

Offers an incisive glimpse into one woman's inner transformation -- her secret sense of loss in the midst of plenty and her sudden perception of a world of suffering lying just beyond her home.

It traces a sustained and moving portrait of the worldly Sam, whose despair as the society he embraced abandons him is both clear-eyed and devastating.

If you can suspend your disbelief regarding Nello's naïveté, this film offers some quiet pleasures.

Baltasar Kormákur's wacky version of "King Lear," set in an Icelandic village where virtually everyone plays the fool.

Backed by a strong supporting cast, Whaley makes Jimmy a vivid character, but he never achieves anything like the tragic grandeur of a Willy Loman. He's at once too earnest and too unappealing.

Despite the choppy script and cartoonishly bad villains, what emerges is a compelling tale of the moral compromises a corrupt system demands of even its most unwilling participants.

Himalaya lacks such lightness, humor, and grace, offering instead the surface beauty of an ancient and inviolate culture.

With improbable charm, Gabizon knits it all together, his characters' sexual obsessions and earthiness tempered by a soulful melancholy.

Relies on the hefty talents of its two leading ladies.

The complex questions Walk on Water raises receive only confused answers.

Wargnier has assembled a stellar French and Russian cast, but all that talent can't overcome his heavy-handed screenplay.

Marshall Karp's script is clever and funny, though studded with anachronisms.

Berliner captures the eerie beauty of their music alongside their strange dignity. But his mannered style (colored filters, multiple exposures, jump cuts) leaves an uneasy impression about the balance of power in his relationship to his subjects, women of surprising strength and enduring frailty.

The admirable Gainsbourg refrains from overacting, but her leading men never quite transcend the emptiness and inanity of their characters' dilemma.

Brought to life by the weirdness of its subject matter and the risks Madhur Jaffrey takes in her brilliant performance.

There's much to admire here, including an often witty script and a cast that includes Theresa Russell, Seymour Cassel, and the irrepressible Lupe Ontiveros (Celia's mother-in-law).

The filmmakers skillfully evoke the sense of menace that nature holds for many urban dwellers. -- Sometimes, though, the editing is choppy, and the film could use more of a script.

The film's broad performances and heavy-handed moralizing strike a note of condescension sure to be heard by the alienated teenager within us all.

The pacing feels choppy, and the characters' emotions are sometimes too sudden to be believable. (One exception is Rhys Ifans, affecting as Amelia's long-suffering and neglected suitor.)

He's (director Abranches) so focused on creating a strikingly mannerist visual style that he forgets to flesh out his plot and characters.

Flawed but fascinating.

Disturbing and compelling.

A bit naive and formless.

Manchevski has a rare visual intelligence, whether filming the face of a dying woman or Times Square's reflection in a windshield. But in reaching for a cubist style of storytelling, he sacrifices character and motivation.

"No poetry after Auschwitz," Theodor Adorno proclaimed. One sometimes wishes he'd added, "And no big-name cinema either."

This extraordinary story still sparks controversy in France, but in Berri's hands, it never comes alive...a shadow play of historical icons, rather than a portrait of people in love.

The writerly restraint that confines them to the airport is admirable, though the fairy-tale ending in Acapulco seems like a throwaway.

It does best when it leaves behind hothouse literary discussions and closes in on these two legendary behemoths, battling for sexual supremacy.

Handsomely shot, German filmmaker Sandra Nettelbeck's third feature suffers from a certain romantic predictability.

It's a giddy farce worthy of Lucy and Ethel, and Peploe plays up the buffoonery.

The subjects can be amusing, chilling, or tragic -- but in the end, they offer few surprises.

Montias's script lacks surprises -- Still, the minor figures surrounding him (Bobby) -- from teenage Puerto Rican beauties to a mobster's middle-aged groupie -- form a gritty urban mosaic, and Bobby's wanton energy is utterly convincing.

The problems come in the shadow world, where everything's a jumble, where Dark's compositional strategy ("all clues and no solutions") eventually becomes wearing, and Gordon's direction can't hold it all together.

Even Mastroianni cannot hold our attention for over three hours.

How did this rude monk, prey to depression and satanic hallucinations, change the course of history? Luther offers scant illumination, for the big brown eyes that served Joseph Fiennes so well in "Elizabeth" are little help with the spirit of Reformation.

It manages to be both ponderous and silly.