Maitland McDonagh

It's a high-energy blast.

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

Less a sequel than a variation on a haunting theme -- the nature and origins of humanity.

The film's bizarreness pales next to that of little-known exploitation film "Sonny Boy" (1990), which weaves similar material into something authentically nightmarish.

Though the film ends on a surprising and genuinely magical note, it takes its own sweet time getting there; some viewers will have lost patience before the denouement arrives.

The fewer movies like this you've already seen, the better this one will play.

This gentle, slow-moving film contains some charming sequences but no new insights into the pleasures and burdens of family.

It's a mixed blessing, in some ways even richer and more atmospheric than the original version, in others attenuated and logy.

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.

Overall, the film feels a little stiff, perhaps because screenwriter Steven Peros adapted his own stage play. But the performances are a delight, especially Dunst's effervescent turn as Marion Davies.

This melodramatic action opera is a lurid love letter to the guns and poses aesthetic of Hong Kong action cinema.

The script is heavy on platitudes about friendship, but since there isn't a single fully fleshed character in sight, who cares?

Would be funny if it weren't so horrifying.

A welcome alternative to such hyperkinetic drivel as Pokémon.

The film's major draws are R-rated gore and some nice physical effects, proof that a man in a top-of-the-line monster suit can still be more effective than CGI.

Allows the supporting cast to steal the movie.

Antal's debut is a sharp, blackly comic hugely entertaining thriller.

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.

Gray doesn't condescend to his outer-borough characters and elicits pitch-perfect performances from his ensemble cast.

Litvak's broad comedy has novelty on its side, and though the script never rises above sitcom-style one-liners and sight gags, strong performances invest both the jokes and the syrupy moments of forgiveness and reconciliation with no small measure of, yes, heart.

The result is something close to a textbook example of how NOT to visualize spiritual principles of the "be here now" variety.

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

So consistently, outrageously wrongheaded in every way it's hard to know where to start.

Despite its provocative premise, this throwback to deliberately paced, low-tech chillers of the pre-CGI era is a dreary slog through haunted-child movie cliches -- portentous dreams, glassy-eyed stares, cryptic pronouncements.

Ford is the problem: He looks great for his age (56, to Heche's 29), but oozes a stolid gloom that snuffs out those sparks long before they can set the lush scenery on fire. In a classic screwball comedy, he'd be Ralph Bellamy.

It's an amiable, middle-class coming of age story, soft and sweet and ultimately a bit inconsequential.

The film's flippant style ultimately undermines its material - Rosen's decision not to immediately identify interviewees is especially irritating - and, ironically, makes the American art scene of the '60s appear as shallow and trendy as its detractors always claimed it was.

Ultimately aimed at a Christian audience looking for genre entertainment with a certain sense of propriety (which partly translates into there being no murders), the film tries to serve two masters and doesn't quite deliver for either.