Maitland McDonagh

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.