Maitland McDonagh

Daughters of the Sexual Revolution: The Untold Story of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders is a truly engrossing film, one that balances the big picture and the small one.

Overlord, produced and presumably overseen by J.J. Abrams, is good, bloody fun, with all the polish and production value that come with not being a low-budget exploitation movie.

Don’t Go is sufficiently subtle that some viewers will find it dull and lacking in traditionally “scary” moments. But others will appreciate the care with which it walks the line between supernatural and psychological horror.

The Super is well written and acted—two things that should be givens but often aren’t, especially in genre films

It’s a smart reimagining, but not a particularly compelling one, which is the problem overall.

The film’s pleasures are small ones, but they’re perfectly pitched and anyone who’s ever collected anything will empathize with the depth of Alan and Paul’s passion, if not their actions.

A Crooked Somebody (the title derives from pastor Sam’s unheeded advice that “it’s better to be an honest nobody…”) is a meticulously balanced blend of character-based drama and genre conventions.

Older Than Ireland isn't relentlessly upbeat. It's filled with stories of loss, disappointment, tough lessons learned and compromises made, and it's hard not to suspect that the genetic hand you're dealt counts for a lot.

It’s clearly meant to be a light romp –a party movie to be enjoyed in group settings—and it is.

Writer-director Colin Minihan’s thriller is tightly plotted and delivers a couple of terrific shocks, shocks that are firmly rooted in character

The film isn’t a genre changer, but it’s elegant and admirably remorseless—and when it breaks bad, it breaks very bad indeed.

What makes it play is Archambault, who gives a strikingly unpleasant performance as Gerald.

Though the story meanders, the film's look is nothing short of breathtaking.

Thoroughly heartfelt. But though Trachtman alludes to the impact that Lior's special needs and local fame has had on his family, she seems uninterested in exploring the larger history of beliefs and traditions concerning mentally challenged people and their closeness to God.

The Carter and Spotnitz's credit, such weighty concerns aren't the stuff of most mainstream genre movies. But they're also not sufficiently gripping to transform a middling thriller into something truly provocative or haunting.

Intelligent and engaging, this documentary about rave culture overcomes the challenge inherent in its subject; rave's appeal is by nature nonanalytical and experiential, while documentary films play to the intellectual observer.

Though meticulously researched, well acted and filled with striking moments, the movie ultimately feels oddly disconnected.

Unlike most mainstream filmmakers, Ratnam doesn't try to include something for everyone, but he does deliver several handsome production numbers.

A tabloid slice of tabloid life, ragged, vivid, awkward and punchy all at once.

Homey but not especially interesting trips down the Ellis and Cheney family lanes.

Formulaic and derivative, but sufficiently well made to work as both teen-angst melodrama and bone-rattling brawl picture.

But in the end it all comes to naught: Tantalyzing though the leads are, the paintings remain elusive.

Owen Wilson single-handedly hauls this amiable, middle-of-the-road comedy out of sheer mediocrity.

Roth's screenplay, steeped in the peculiar rituals, lock-jawed repression and smug sense of superiority of the WASP ruling class that both shaped America's intelligence community and made it vulnerable, is less interested in derring-do than back-room deals and the day-to-day drudgery of spying, driven by the notion that espionage is a cynical high-stakes game played with people's lives and the ante is human decency and connectedness.

It's lavish, clever entertainment, a welcome opportunity to laugh without shame.

Scruffy, loosely structured and piercingly perceptive about the ways in which technology that supposedly brings people together actually keeps them apart.

The "cute" kids are insufferable, but leads Ali Khan and Mukerji radiate the unabashed star quality that's all but gone from American movies -- poverty and desperation haven't looked so glamorous since the glory days of Joan Crawford.

The devil is in the degrees. Pineyro and Ferrer have a fine old time teasing the viewer with the ongoing search for the corporate mole.

Based on the story of Milarepa (1043 - 1123), who renounced the violence and vengeance of his early life to become a revered Tibetan Buddhist saint, lama Neten Chokling's directing debut ends on a frustrating spiritual cliffhanger.

There isn't a one-note character in the mix, and they respond with haunting, subtle performances that feel utterly natural and unaffected. It's a striking debut for Estes, and a remarkable showcase for the cast.

A creepy, clever, film buff's delight of a fantasy.

Once upon a time there was a feisty young woman who didn't sit around twiddling her pretty thumbs and singing "Someday My Prince Will Come." That's the revisionist spin on Cinderella, and it twirls very nicely.

But for all the profane language and sexual frankness, Soderbergh's film is no more cynical or world-weary than its inspirations, and in the end, it feels like a clever trick wrapped around a hollow center.

While both the novel and the film are weighted in favor of Bill's (Cruise) character, it's Kidman who gives the film's standout performance.

Does so many things right that it's a shame to see it sink into horror-movie cliches.

Sharply acted and cheerfully coarse.

Impassioned, unwieldy and padded with celebrity interviews.

It's a fearless performance and yields some squirm-inducingly funny moments.

Ribisi is painfully intense without being histrionic.

There's nothing more to it than meets the eye, but Bertino understands the mechanics of suspense and knows how to use them.

Cynical, misanthropic and embittered.

For all the flash and flutter, the movie overall lacks, well, HEFT.

If he were a more subtle director, it would be a great film; as it is, it's an extremely good one, anchored by the subtly devastating performances of Penn, Robbins and Bacon. The supporting cast is equally good, and blue collar Boston's mean streets take on a beaten-down life of their own.

Surprisingly enough, puberty-stricken J.D. and Chowder actually sound like real teenagers, but the cartoony look will probably alienate real-life kids that age, and the man-eating house might be downright terrifying to younger kids.

Propelled by a soundtrack as diverse as its international gallery of thieves, Jordan's cheerfully scruffy neo-noir caprice even lays on the religious imagery with a palette knife and sweetens Melville's ending without seeming terminally sappy.

While Rachel's story is fiction, many of its incidents are rooted in historical events carefully researched by Soeteman and the film's briskly staged action and stunning reversals of fortune ensure that its two and a half hours fly by.

The film satisfies on both visceral and emotional levels.

An oddly lifeless affair, though Gretchen Mol's sunny performance almost hauls it out of its doldrums.

The film's uniformly excellent performances are a delight, and fans of Irish actor Farrell (whose pitch-perfect American accent has served him well in Hollywood) can hear both his natural inflections and his singing voice.

A deep and astonishingly authentic streak of melancholy runs through this fifth sequel to the 1976 sleeper that made both struggling actor Sylvester Stallone and hard-luck slugger Rocky Balboa international stars.

But the real marvel is that beneath the ghoulish in-jokes and horror-geek allusions, there's a core of the same bittersweet truth that makes the best fairy tales resonate from one generation to the next.

Their doomed fling is oddly hypnotic and ultimately haunting.

Although this first chapter in a three-part tale is inevitably overburdened with back story, it ends on one hell of a cliff-hanger.

What you're seeing isn't wire work or CGI -- it's stunt choreography, beautifully executed, flawlessly cut together and brainlessly thrilling.

Just when the film seems to be getting bogged down in "before I made it big" anecdotes -- around the time she and Andy Dick, who was once dismissed from a food-service gig, spend a day operating a mobile lunch stand -- Gurwitch wisely broadens her focus, interviewing ordinary victims of corporate "right-sizing," plant closings.

Phillippe has the unenviable task of trying to make O'Neill equally interesting, but an eager beaver with some unresolved family issues is no match for a poisoned soul methodically laying the groundwork for his own inevitable fall. The unfortunate imbalance makes long stretches of the film feel dull, but when Cooper is on screen it's mesmerizing.

It's just a clever, pointed little fable about the price of complacent conformity, slavish worship of the status quo, and trading freedom for the illusion of safety, wrapped in a sugary-sweet, Jordan-almond-colored coating that looks good enough to eat.

Best of all, though the Simpson clan is 18 years older, they're not one bit wiser.

The ideal viewer is a Miike fan...You know who you are.

Seductive, funny, whip-smart and ultimately tragic.

It's the kind of film Hollywood doesn't make any more, and a pleasant retro diversion.

The result is a little bit nutty and pretty entertaining in a thoroughly unconvincing way. And watch out for that 11th-hour twist -- it's a head snapper.

Outsourced is a sweet, good-natured surprise that takes the cliches out of an overworked genre and makes them seem almost fresh and entirely charming.

Dellal and their cast consistently hit the right notes, and the result is an uplifting tale that you don't have to be embarrassed to enjoy.

Beautifully acted, minutely observed story.

While Travolta and Gandolfini have the beefy, closed-off look of post-WWII era cops, they never FEEL: They look like actors playing dress up. Leto overcomes his delicate good looks to embody Fernandez's feral, faintly exotic charm, but Hayek is a standard-issue femme fatale, damaged on the inside but flawless on the surface.

It's as laceratingly entertaining as its predecessor.

On its own low-bar terms, it delivers the goods: pole-dancing, gut-chomping and Jenna J.

It has a creepy power all its own.

It's about ordinary people living in the shadow of nagging, day-to-day racism, and about the music that reminds them of what's right with the world rather than what's wrong.

Restrained and decorous to a fault.

The feisty supporting cast is forced to carry the show, and fortunately, they're more than up to it, notably Olin, Platt and Jeremy Irons.

Gorgeous and menacing at the same time.

The film is flat-out gorgeous and contains moments of sheer lunacy.

The film's performances are uniformly strong and remarkably coherent, given the conditions under which they were delivered. The actors shot for eight hours straight in a fully lit and set-decorated house, each individually miked and followed by his or her own personal camera operator.

Expanded by writer-director Randall Miller from a nostalgic half-hour short he made while a student at AFI, this well-intentioned film about loss, grief and new beginnings gets bogged down in syrupy cliches and blunt self-help dialogue.

The film's ensemble portrait of women caught between nostalgia for the tough and free-spirited babes they were (however much that freedom may have been illusory) and uncertainty about what their futures hold is almost painfully on target.

Thoroughly dotty and surprisingly endearing.

This intelligent, oddly aloof thriller is a worthy follow-up to director Steven Soderberg's "Out of Sight."

Klapisch's use of split screens, fragmented images and nouvelle vague-ish editing would be annoying if it weren't so in keeping with the youthful exuberance his characters haven't quite lost.

The film's resolution is both haunting and satisfying.

Brawny, he-man spectacle combined with a surprisingly solid story and buttressed by excellent performances.

Screenwriter David Auburn's awkward dialogue spells out the film's themes with painful literal-mindedness.

Neither Ketchum nor the filmmakers take an exploitative approach to the material; their focus is the way the youngsters' petty cruelty erupts into murderous sadism.

The result is the farthest thing from a bland, spineless sequel: It's a brutal, insanely excessive successor to grindhouse pictures of yore.

Heir to a long tradition of apocalyptic scare stories, the film wears its influences proudly.

Often technically rough, but it's painfully compelling.

Werner Herzog's self-proclaimed "science-fiction fantasy" is a meticulously constructed fiction made from a combination of real-life footage repurposed in ways a conventional documentarian couldn't imagine.

28 Weeks Later is flawed -- the constant reappearance of one key character verges on the absurd -- but it knows where it's going, and it gets there in a chilling blaze of fire, blood and poisonous fog.

Gypsy music is the music of pain, poverty and oppression, all of which she's experienced; it's their blues.

Steeped in what may be the ultimate postmodern irony: Talen's impromptu, defiant piece of performance art with political undertones has actually taken on a spiritual dimension.

The film's strident tone also serves to undermine its generally above-average performances.

Alternately sweet and raucous comedy.

Delivers equal parts overwrought tedium and mind-bending beauty, spiked with brilliant throwaway images that more than make up for Kelly's heavy-handed hot-button pretensions.

Stanford's script is painfully obvious, right down to the line of dialogue spelling out the title's significance.

The overall effect is either exhilarating or exhausting, depending on your emotional investment in the franchise, but credit where credit is due: Steven Spielberg and George Lucas set out to make one for the fans and delivered.

For all her own frustrations, Davenport is honest enough not to gloss over the fact that what Muthana's adventures in the screen trade taught him was to hustle, toady and ingratiate himself to useful people. And she helped.

A tour de force and an utter delight, studded with priceless supporting bits by Miriam Margolyes, Maury Chaykin, Rosemary Harris and Rita Tushingham, each of whom steals at least one richly deserved moment in the spotlight.