Maitland McDonagh

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sharply acted and cheerfully coarse.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Gorgeous and menacing at the same time.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's vivid evidence that great music and stories transcend time and place.

The movie opens with the dismal statistic that most teachers quit after three years. Akel and Mass see the humor in the situation, but the laughs are small and sad.

Say what you will about feel-good films anchored by feisty old broads, the English have a knack with them and Stephen Frears' fact-based tale of a formidable, aristocratic widow who makes it her mission to put naked girls on the London stage is delightful.

The cast deliver consistently fine, subtle performances, underscored by Ben Nichols' mournfully melodic guitar score.

Foster finds the common ground on which his eclectic cast can meet (no small feat when they range from brassy Queen Latifah to "Arrested Development"'s deadpan Tony Hale) and keeps the story's sweetness from devolving into saccharine kitsch.

Until the disappointingly conventional ending, in which dad and the head baddie go it mano a mano on the streets, this dark drama -- based on a 1956 Glenn Ford picture of the same name -- negotiates its narrative twists and turns with professional aplomb, even daring to make the hero an arrogant schmuck.

An unabashed call to action that shines a spotlight on a problem whose intimate medical nature relegated it to the shadows.

Resnais cuts constantly between the various narrative threads, signaling each change of scene with a superimposed shower of snowflakes; it's a highly artificial device, and a deceptively lovely one that reinforces the sense that all Ayckbourn's characters are slowly succumbing to an emotional chill.

Although the film revolves around a child, it's not a children's movie: A cruel and bitter undertone runs through the fanciful adventures, and Walker's depression is no mere plot contrivance to be cured by Alexandria's childish enthusiasm.

Veers regularly into disease-of-the-week territory but is rescued by the powerhouse performances of Ken Watanabe (who was instrumental in getting the film made) and Kanako Higuchi.

Beautifully animated, the celebrity voice performances are terrific, and the action sequences negotiate the fine line between being physically convincing and becoming too intense for the young children.

Thalbach's passionate performance is the film's center, but she's aided by a strong supporting cast, Jarre's propulsive score and the gritty locations: It was shot at the very shipyard where real-life history was made.

The mockumentary conceit gives a vivid immediacy to the material, and the PAL digital video cinematography is often surprisingly lyrical -- certain shots of empty, fog-shrouded San Francisco sites more than make up in eeriness what they lack in special-effects decrepitude.

The defendants – especially Hoffman and Rubin – baited elderly Judge Julius J. Hoffman, who never failed to take the bait; Seale was so obstreperous that Hoffman had him gagged and bound to a chair, another indelible image.

Bendinger pulls out all the stops visually, using bold set design, frantic editing, extreme angles and computer image multiplying that turns what begins as a Busby Berkeley exercise in synchronized movement into a kaleidoscopic infinity of handsprings and back flips.

If there's a gay cliche who doesn't flounce through this feel-good German comedy, he must have been out of town when the casting call went out, but its fundamental good nature is tough to resist.

Sweet, goofy story.

Like "Secret Things," the film is ultimately infuriating, subtle, self-indulgent, astute and disingenuous, which makes for great -- if divisive -- conversation.

The filmmakers know the tropes of spooky movies: Glowering shadows, squeaking playground equipment, eerie storms and half-glimpsed forms, but the film rests on Rueda's subtle, intense performance, rooted in every half-articulated anxiety that ever gnawed at a parent's brain.

A throwback to an age when action movies had room between shoot-outs and car chases for dialogue - real dialogue, not rim-shot-ready one-liners - and character development.

Negret brings personal experience to the material; his own family endured two ordeals by kidnapping, and he works up a painfull convincing sense of sweaty desperation.

A small slice of a suspended life, intimate and filled with the mundane details most people forget when the waiting is over and their real lives begin.

It's funny without being toothless, adrenaline turbocharged without being mean and utterly deranged in the best sense of the word.

Solomonoff cuts back and forth between 1984 and 1976, gradually revealing the truth of what happened, but the mystery is less important than the complex relationship between Natalia and Elena, which was sorely tested by events beyond their control.

Overall, Grindhouse may well be the Beatlemania of sleaze-movie viewing, but since the real thing is gone it's the best that many fans will ever have.

Horror buffs in search of a fresh take on the usual grue should embrace it wholeheartedly.

A sweat-slicked, near-abstract ballet of blood and sand.

Ultimately, Coppola's pastel-colored take on Marie's life is beguiling and annoying in equal measure.

The Savages is funny in the if-you-didn't-laugh-you'd-cry way and superbly acted by all involved, including the supporting cast of home-care attendants, nurses, hospital administrators, intake personnel and nursing-home staff.

The brothers' dark, all-star farce about sex, lies and surveillance is pretty damned funny.

By the time Reilly's shaggy life story winds down, it's hard not to wish he'd been your friend, too.

Wright's haunting performance is the anchor that keeps Ruscio's film from vanishing down a rabbit hole.

It's an impressionistic experience rather than a linear one, and the process of surrendering to the images and rhythms of lives lived in simultaneous harmony with the physical and the spiritual is greatly helped by the chants that dominate much of the soundtrack.

Ultimately, Dick subordinates scholarship to passion, which may be exactly what it takes to convince mainstream moviegoers that they should care about a system that shortchanges THEM when they go to the movies.

You don't have to know an arabesque from an alligator handbag to enjoy Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine's loving documentary about the various incarnations of the Ballet Russe.

Shot on digital video as murky as Masuoka's imagination, its creeping sense of dank dread is as slow to build as it is hard to shake.

Kor's intentions are beyond reproach, but her campaign raises discomfiting questions.

An utterly preposterous but entertaining sci-fi action brain-bender.

The result is fearlessly divisive and will no doubt play according to viewers' preexisting perceptions.

The supporting cast is uniformly strong, with Simon McBurney standing out as an oily representative of the British foreign service.

No, it isn't as magically enchanting as the 1952 children's classic by E.B. White, any more than a museum-shop print of La Giaconda is as mysteriously beguiling as Leonardo's original. But this respectful, live-action adaptation of White's gentle tale about an undersized pig, a clever spider and the everyday marvels that too often pass unnoticed is a charmer nonetheless.

Neither trite nor pandering, and that's what makes the film better than most of its peers.

DiCillo's short, sharp snapshot about celebrity and life on the fringe has nothing new to say, but it says it with considerable charm and affection.

The story is familiar, but terrific performances and a vivid sense of place elevate it above the average teen-oriented picture.

Inventive visuals and funny bits abound, but the film's gritty look and unsentimental characterizations - Harry, Hermione and Ron are far from golden teens - ominously foreshadow the truly wicked shape of things to come.

Well acted and hugely entertaining, the film strikes a near-flawless balance between sly pop-culture allusions and the details of how business gets done under pressure.

Jim Brown and Gary Burns hang a powerful antisuburban diatribe in the form of statistics, expert opinions and pictures worth a thousand words on the experiences of the Moss family.

Both a biographical portrait and an exploration of the tradition of Jewish liturgical music in America.

If the film ultimately amounts to little more than a middle-aged coming-of-age story, it's richly imagined and filled fanciful touches in keeping with its passionate subject.

A huge hit in France, Michel Hazanavicius' straight-faced spy spoof unleashes a French operative of incomparable incompetence on the volatile Middle East of 1955.

The best thing about Fracture is the way in which it defies genre cliches and turns all Hopkins' mannerisms into assets.

The extensive CGI work is well used and the children are exceptionally well cast, especially the girls.

A dark delight that combines pop-culture wit and genuine emotional depth.

The film's heart is the concert, whose highlights include "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?," "Wimoweh," "Guantanamera" and the crowd-pleasing "Have You Been to Jail for Justice?"

Funny, perceptive, bawdy, tragic and philosophical, pretty much everything a viewer -- or a listener -- could ask for.

Firm dates and more detailed historical background would have better served the filmmakers' purpose than their "chronological narrative relay race," which muddles an already complex situation.

Taut, cynical thriller.

There's no time wasted and no showy effects to detract from the situation -- just sheer tension.

Seeks to set the record straight. But Gere's sneaky, ingratiating presence keeps it dishonest to the last frame.

Billed as a dark comedy, brothers Jay and Mark Duplass' shaggy, ultra-low-budget tale of a tense New York-to-Atlanta road trip is more accurately a relationship-hell drama peppered with strangled laughs.

"Charlie's Angels" director Joseph McGinty Nichol (aka McG) shows surprising restraint with this emotionally freighted material, weighting the movie heavily towards relationships.

Smilovic's rapid-fire, Tarantino-esque dialogue is consistently razor-sharp, and the elaborate set design - which leans heavily towards shiny, riotously patterned wallpaper - is an eyeball-jangling blast.

This handsome, elegant and restrained fable about love, artifice and power in fin de siecle Vienna is lavishly imagined and yet oddly airless.

The flashy spectacle of intersecting narratives and its crosscutting and fractured chronology nearly overwhelms the film's simple message, in this case that despite divisions of language, race and geography, we're all connected.

Mendez directs with remarkable assurance, using B&W footage to suggest the monochromatic clarity Santiago craves, as well as color to depict the riotous reality that threatens to overwhelm him.

Thompson's stories are familiar, but she weaves them together with such assurance and good humor that they're equally soothing and thoroughly enjoyable.

Spare, elegant and tailor-made for intense discussions over dark coffee, Boe's film is a slily bold and delightfully inventive variation on an age-old theme.