Marrit Ingman

Perhaps the lesson to be learned is that just because we CAN use computer technology to give dogs goofy faces, that doesn’t mean we SHOULD.

On the plus side, Costanzo is an appealing and likable young actor who carries the film easily; he gives the impression that he is thinking deeply and mildly amused.

Works quite well for what it is: a wooly crime yarn with touches of humor and a satisfying, well-developed relationship between the schemers.

The elliptical narrative also recalls Fernando Meirelles' somewhat similarly themed "The Constant Gardener," a film ultimately more heartfelt and accessible to mainstream audiences because its maker is unafraid of grief and explores it more deeply.

This is a film strictly for hardcore sentimentalists, despite its straight-ahead depiction of the harsh urban landscape in contemporary China.

Every movie about the Holocaust should be this good, but few are.

Expect lots of Slasher Movie 101.

The film’s resolution is more implied than complete.

Is it funny? Not for a minute.

The film’s light hand, appealing style, and simple exposition make it an eminently watchable inquiry into the politics of food and public health, accessible to the documentary-shy and wildly appropriate for older kids, who may further respond to its generational emphasis.

With its wonderful veteran cast, its heart on its sleeve, and a love for the landscape that suffuses its technique, Don't Come Knocking is a peculiar but rewarding escape.

It works best as a spank-it movie you don’t have to feel guilty about and that you can dance to. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

The House of Sand is a more transparently ambitious, prestigious "woman's picture" than Waddington's previous feature, 2000's "Me You Them."

The strangest part is that half the movie’s arc is missing, but the credits promise its arrival in 2009 as Milarepa Part II: Path to Liberation.

This pseudo-Phildickian actioner is chum for the bigger fish to come this summer; for Moore, it's a slummer.

There's not much spunk here.

Yet as wonderful as it is to see a breezy, earnest romantic comedy that is so matter-of-factly gay-themed, Big Eden suffers somewhat, unsurprisingly, from some of the usual perils of a breezy, earnest romantic comedy.

More than worthy viewing. What it lacks at times in elegance it possesses in intensity and feeling.

With its jellyfish direction, A Good Woman throws its actors overboard to see if they can swim.

The very concept of such an assassination isn't so absurd as to be wacky – at least not since somebody fired a rocket at UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last Thursday.

It's got practically everything you could stuff in front of a camera, with the possible exception of Rip Taylor throwing confetti. Dancing transvestites? Check. Elephants? Check.

Beneath its layers of epic detail, this Zatôichi is cinematic cotton candy.

This indie rambler was my favorite movie of South by Southwest 05, where it premiered. But before I go any further, let's establish that Mutual Appreciation is not for you if you go to the movies to see things blown up or if you expect such conventional niceties as a three-act structure or lighting effects not achieved by yanking up a window shade.

The overall execution add up to a film of beautiful, ultimately heartbreaking honesty.

The film is a wonderful choice for older teens and has considerable crossover appeal for adult audiences.

Abundant arthouse crowd appeal.

Like a lot of sports movies, this biopic about boxing promoter Jackie Kallen is better than it has to be but not as good as it ought to be.

Somehow the film doesn't quite cohere; it's hobbled by its awkward exposition, with salient facts about the characters' lives.

The movie's quirk isn't forced; it sincerely ponders the nature of love and of human need, opening with a quote by Jacques Lacan and ending with a shrug.

Made by teachers for teachers, this local indie – which now sports the imprimatur of executive producer Morgan Spurlock – offers no easy answers to its statistic that 50% of teachers quit within their first three years on the job.

Even at its most contrived, the filmmakers believe in this project so passionately that its atmosphere seems absolutely real.

There’s much to enjoy, even if the funny bits don’t add up to Spinal Tap greatness. And the titular anthem, performed in a star-studded closing jamboree, has a wickedly funny payoff.

Ill-suited to casual viewing. But its challenges are worthwhile, and the gifted Gleize is one to watch.

Hallström's latest is fine but unambitious, content with what it is – an arthouse trifle for the masses.

A suitably rigorous sports movie. On the other hand, at no time does it break out of the "sports movie" mold.

The film is set in post-WWII Scotland, but its tone and its telling are so stark, so Medieval, that it seems anachronistic when one of its characters picks up a telephone or plays a bebop jazz record.

The action set-pieces, double crosses, and narrow escapes are handsomely mounted and suspenseful as a Saturday matinee.

A paradox, balancing the contradictions and ambiguities of its characters and setting with a careful hand that rarely falters, even though the film seems dramatically thin at times.

I can tell you in two words why to see this movie, which is otherwise an unspecial Cinderella farce...and those two words are: Queen Latifah.

Everybody’s sleepwalking here. Vincent D'Onofrio is fantastic with Vaughn in a small part as his brother, but it's as if he’s running in during a break from "Law & Order: Criminal Intent."

Schepisi underscores each emotional note by pulling the camera away from his actors and pointing it at family photographs, a saccharine conceit that becomes more irritating each time it appears.

Mainly it's messy, and I don't just mean the gouged-out eyeball in a puddle.

This is not a conventional love story but a philosophical one.

Acted with such venomous restraint that it hurts to watch.

It is really gory, for the record -– though it's too silly and insufficiently twisted to slake the appetite of the hardcore gorehound, it's not something to take a kid to.

In casting an all-American Jersey girl and surrounding her with Manolo Blahniks and the Strokes, Coppola draws a connection between her audience (domestically, at least) and the doomed dauphine, who is likewise insulated and distracted from her country's pointless involvement in a disastrous foreign war that is bankrupting its government and starving its people – and all the while she spends, spends, spends.

It’s a shame when a movie brings together so many underutilized thespians of color – even Ajay Naidu of "Office Space" is in here someplace – and gives them absolutely nothing to do.

The elements of the film don’t quite mesh: The villains are cartoony, but Du Chau aims for soggy family drama in his father-son story.

A pleasant and often surprising ensemble dramedy set almost entirely within the walls of a busy, fashionable Tribeca trattoria on a spectacularly busy Tuesday night.

A slick, sexy little package with fast cars, big explosions, dazzling locations in the south of France, a trip-hop score, and about as much plot to fill a thimble.

Monster is, at its best, simply a chronicle of people trying to get along, which makes it compelling viewing indeed.

It feels mechanical, more conceptual than realized, like a senior project by a particularly ambitious student who's recently read "West of Everything" – and who's lucked into working with a world-class actor.

It's a soggy drama said to be inspired by actual events – too serious to be trashy, too trashy to be serious.

Though the story is thinly conceived, Antal throws a fantastic curveball in the second act. Kontroll is a hot ticket.

It’s too didactic to be a spaghetti Western but lacks the moral compass required of a more evolved philosophical statement.

Sweet enough while it lasts.

Fans of "The Graduate" should skip this strange comedy.

Parents might appreciate a lighter hand with the barnyard whimsy and food fights, but overall the movie doesn't condescend about heavy matters (grief, healing, and blended families) and is pleasantly diverting.

Substantive and imaginatively filmed but is not an off-putting art movie; rather, it's the kind of solid but accessible filmmaking that prevailed in Hollywood's golden age.

An indie grab bag.

Its star, who injected such life into the surprisingly unformulaic "Drumline," is adrift in a sea of cop-movie clichés, and Siega's party-to-go direction hews more closely to his music-video beginnings than to his critically noted "Pretty Persuasion."

When the special effects aren’t getting in the way, the kids’ imaginary scenes have a hazy, shimmering quality, as if the potential of a long afternoon with no homework could be measured in waves.

This kindly and spirited film doesn't exactly break the mold of the heartwarming, humanistic boarding-school dramedy.

The movie gets goofy from time to time -- as when payola arrives in a vintage "Clash of the Titans lunchbox -- but the filmmakers and cast have the style and the swagger to back it up.

Sort of annoying, and it doesn't do what you want it to do, but you know, it's so scrappy and persistent that it seems kind of cute in spite of itself.

It's not quite masterful enough to achieve all its goals, but Zucker is undeniably ambitious despite its relatively lowbrow and farcical approach.

If the film had allowed them to fall in love in real time, instead of to the drumbeat of history, their relationship would seem immeasurably more nuanced.

Proof that movies don’t always have to be busy to entertain and enrich, this tale of life at a bucolic Korean monastery is at once profound and simple.

You'd have to be a real a..hole to hate this movie, loaded as it is with adorable animals. Sadly the task falls to me.

But is it funny? Not really.

Aiming to break the land speed record for poop 'n' piss jokes.

This frothy little crime comedy isn't half bad, bubbling with caper-farce energy supplied by a game ensemble cast and a source novel by prolific pulp writer Donald E. Westlake.

The result is a lyrical contrast of two contiguous cultures, worlds apart in their definitions of family and love but brought together by mutual awe and basic human need.

Somewhere between the pop jouissance of Guy Ritchie and the social realism of Ken Loach, this ballsy drama freeze-frames bleak Thatcherite Yorkshire and exposes its racist underbelly.

The film isn't going to catapult Butcher to international stardom, but he holds his own in it and helps to sell its curious logic.

The film has no script; it goes from moment to moment unhurriedly.

Once again the title pretty much says it all.

Qualitatively different from its cinematic forbears: It doesn't linger on the gothic curlicues of its source material, it moves straightforwardly from place to place, and it emphasizes the emotional development of its characters with dramatic interplay rather than expressionistic, atmospheric gloom.

There's a bright spot in the form of Amy's publicist (screen veteran Aaron), a salty, whiskey-voiced lesbian; it's a pity the movie isn't about her.

This a deeply humane and affecting movie, surprisingly gentle in spite of its black-comic tinge, and without the slightest hint of schmaltz.

If it's not perfect, it still gives pleasure to the eye.

Not in recent memory has a movie so short – 90 minutes on the nose – been so stagnant and stubbornly slow to build. And that's exactly the point.

Well-considered, beautifully made, and often gripping in its narrative, the film epitomizes the best the documentary format can offer.

Shot in just over a week with a minuscule budget, this artsy thriller feels like a one-off from Shimizu's Ju-on films but is probably worth a look for fans.

It is a sweet, simple movie with a sweet, simple message: that children see the world differently and have much to teach the people who love them.

Wispy, cosmopolitan slice-of-life.

There’s not a sympathetic character in the bunch.

Mutant Aliens would have been brilliant as a short; there's just not enough story for a full-length feature, so the film seems strung together.

It recommends itself best to viewers who can appreciate its novelty and roll with the risks it takes.

Though it’s as estrogenic as dong quai, this amiable adaptation of Karen Joy Fowler’s eponymous bestseller about six friends and their book club is thoughtfully rendered with a certain universality of spirit – in that sense not unlike the books of Jane Austen herself.

But for what it is, I think it's pretty okay. It's not going to win an Oscar or anything. But I liked how it was actually made for tween girls.

Offers more questions than answers. Even the Kurds, who seem the closest thing to a success story, long for a unified Iraq.

Problems arise in the film’s third act, however, with a profoundly implausible plot turn that sends the movie skidding into bogeyman horror. It cheapens the sentiment, and the film doesn’t recover.

The film’s approach suits an audience broader than the usual documentary crowd, though it’s worth mentioning that those pictures can really stay with you.

The kind of winking, disingenuous youth comedy that tries to play it both ways, dangling the twins as fetish objects and then yanking them back on the leash because, you know, this is a family film.

Half the time the movie wants to be balls-out weird, and it is. But the other half – the half with the good guys – is plodding procedural fare.

Wiper doesn't exploit the possibilities of his setting, so the only conflict is the fighting, the only suspense comes from waiting for the next character to pop out from behind a tree and do something possibly interesting.

Pretty to look at, tamely racy, and fairly fluffy, despite its two-hour running time.