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.

The Perfect Man is like Teen People come to life. It's perfectly PG, and it's probably not the worst thing a young lady could see, depending on your criteria. Cinematically, it's like watching your lawn grow.

Doesn't necessarily make for a crowdpleasing experience, though it is a provocative and uncomfortably authentic one.

What do you get when you mix Adam Sandler with SPAM gags, a trained vomiting walrus, a wall-to-wall soundtrack of calypso covers of 1980s pop hits, and Rob Schneider in native-Islander brownface? You get a pretty crappy movie, but for one major mitigating factor: Drew Barrymore.

It’s part camp, part trash, and part cabaret, with a delightfully retro Hollywood Hills palette and zingy dialogue served up with relish.

It's not wrong to wish these actors were working in the service of a better script or more assured direction, but it's probably also possible to simply take pleasure in their performances.

Can someone dial down Cuba Gooding Jr. a few notches? He's so hyperactive during this MTV Films production - which is comedically indistinguishable from "Sister Act," but with more marketable music - that his Vegas-showgirl drag act in the dreadful "Boat Trip" looks like Bressonian minimalism by contrast.

This is your standard genre fare: Smart-a-- player gets schooled, finds love, and is redeemed in time for the final big game.

Final verdict: Cast is excellent; movie is OK; men and women are soooo different.

It's the snobs versus the slobs! And this holiday's no picnic!

Bizarre, even darkly comic at times. But it's also elegant and mannered.

This family melodrama is as subtle as a load of bricks and occasionally as painful, but it offers two of the most finely tuned acting performances yet this year.

The film lacks the emotional resonance that made "Big" such a sentimental favorite with audiences of all ages.

Depends on the two actors who all but carry it.

The real problem is that the story is just incoherent, and the faster it moves, the more frantic it seems.

A perfectly marvelous matinee option for young children.

Monk would probably make a nice rental on a dull evening, with some kind of salty snack and a drinking-game accompaniment. (Drink whenever Scott cries, "Oh, shit!")

The whole production is simply as mediocre and half-baked as Hollywood gets.

No doubt some viewers could find fault with the slack pacing, though it's hardly inappropriate for a film that's fundamentally about emerging from frustration and stasis into a state of grace.

It points a determined finger (a middle finger, almost) at law enforcement, which cannot or will not recognize kidnapping victims in our midst, especially if they are undocumented and brown-skinned.

A charming surprise, the kind of neat little low-budget movie that seems more like a collaboration among friends than it does a corporate investment.

It sounds high-minded, but 3-Iron is in fact simple and economical, blessedly straighforward, absorbing, and hard to forget.

There are football movies, and then there's this 800-pound gorilla of a gridiron weepie, which should be penalized for roughing the viewer.

Cute and toothless as a kitten, Seamstress doesn't inspire the same kind of fervent devotion its principals feel when confronted with art, but it does make a pleasant enough diversion.

Too bloodless to satisfy except as a political exercise.

The movie is kind of a mess – all over the place tonally, hastily paced, and overly reliant on the ostensible truisms of romantic comedy.

The first "Nightmare on Elm Street" was wickedly surreal, but the wacky dream sequences were offset by the sitcomlike, almost satirical flatness of ordinary suburban life; that was the really scary part. Freddy Vs. Jason is innocent of such nuances.

The film is a pleasant surprise.

It's got a good creative pedigree and confident execution – as well as nifty design, down to its Hammond-organ Photek soundtrack and desert chic – but this ensemble piece set in a rural mobile-home park steps off the trail into melodrama from time to time.

His (Law's) is the standout performance, probably because it's quiet and reflective and nuanced amidst the flurries of relationship talk.

For venturesome viewers, Jailbait would make a potent late-summer palate cleanser in preparation for festival season, even if you wouldn't make a meal of it.

Has its charms, but for a movie about loving radically, it sure plays it safe.

Faultlessly truthful in its observations.

One need not necessarily appreciate Darger's art to enjoy Yu's sympathetic, intimate, and often breathtaking journey into the workings of his mind.

Maybe America will prove me wrong by voting, but I felt like you were holding back until the end.

How can a movie narrated by Junior Brown and backed with wall-to-wall southern rock – a movie that at one point features co-stars Nelson and Carter tied together, surely a first in celluloid history – be so uneventful? Why, it's lazier than Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane's good-for-nothing hound dog, Flash.

Garçon Stupide is interesting enough to merit an audience broader than its intended niche, though it isn't perfect.

Pardon the pun, but audiences will reap little from this satanic backwoods juju thriller.

Wistful voiceover explains too much, and, even worse, interrupts the requisite Teen Movie Climactic Speech.

There's a place in life for movies like this – goofy and lowbrow but never truly icky; the good guys are lovable losers and the bad guys have frosted feathered hair and unitards with inflatable codpieces.

It is wonderful for what it is: a delightful, thoroughly satisfying comedy of modern manners.

Perhaps future generations of film scholars will embrace The Quiet as a B-movie that problematizes the oppressive gaze, but for now, it's a misfire.

You don’t have to be a cynic to find Radio naive for suggesting that high school is a good place for emotionally fragile misfits, that racism is not a problem, that caring for someone is all it takes.

Its characterizations are as bland as sand.

The worst thing about Bounce isn't that it's bad but that it just isn't interesting.

The eye candy can't quite compensate for the murky mess of a plot.

No doubt this effort will find its fans, as it should, but there's a lot of lost potential.

The combination of high animé style and old-school heart gives the film a broad enough appeal to merit a wide release. Not that it isn't quirky.

Were it allowed to be dark, Duplex would probably be more interesting, possibly even with cult appeal. Call it a fixer-upper with potential.

There are bad movies, and there’s Boat Trip, a puerile comedy so appalling and unfunny, it’s like contracting the Norwalk virus at sea.

There is great material here and ample food for thought, but the presentation is lacking.

The film’s simplest pleasure is its naturalism – the illusion it creates of observing the animals undetected.

Ruffalo makes a dent as a dogged narcotics detective, and the Spanish superstar Javier Bardem appears as a crime boss. Overall, however, Mann seems content to play games with his fast cars, cool streets, and loud rock, leaving Collateral squarely within the action genre.

The end of the film edges toward camp, and the sudden arrival of surreal dream sequences threatens to push it over the side. The movie is more sophisticated when it’s not trying to be complex.

Less a movie than a longform, live-action Celebrity Death Match between its leads, this wheezing comedy may herald the death knell of the interracial buddy-cop farce.

There's a genuine sense of loss when dreams go unrealized, and in these moments Dig! transcends the typical "rock movie" format and aspires to something greater: an examination of why we create and what we receive from art.

If you like "Maxim," you will love The Island. It is glossy. It is expensive. It has lots of slick ads for Aquafina and Cadillac.

There's nothing terribly wrong with Surf's Up, except maybe the part where one character calls another a "dirty trash can full of poop." But the movie isn't terribly robust, either.

The quest for sexual happiness is a radical notion in these repressive times, as well as a legitimate basis for storytelling, but Shortbus doesn't quite delve as deeply as it ought into its characters' emotions.

Comes across as stiff and uneven.

More factual rigor wouldn't hurt, but directors Quinn and Walker delve instead into the lives of their subjects with a fly-on-the-wall candor, revealing as much about American life as they do of African life.

The best surprise is Yuan, the daughter of Hong Kong actress Cheng Pei-Pei. She has great screen presence and invests Lichi with a mix of kitty-cat cuteness and hellcat ferocity.

There's also a little something smarmy about the interactions between the lawyers and their clients, all of whom are poor.

A compelling small-scale drama, and Lapica is a talent to watch.

Cuddlier and more charming, this alcoholic-hitman comedy isn’t your typical Dahl noir (The Last Seduction, Red Rock West), but it is offbeat, lovably deadpan, and just tart enough.

It is funny at times – the teams for dodgeball break down into "popular" and "unpopular" – but Chicken Little is painful to watch for all ages.

Tamyra, Tamyra, Tamyra. I didn't recognize you at first!

The film has lovely moments – Gehry buildings can be extremely photogenic, after all – but it doesn't sink its teeth in the way it probably should.

There's just not enough real heart to go along with the cutesiness.

A playground for Malkovich – enjoyable enough but not terribly deep.

If you like the character – his tooty yellow Mini, his busily working beetlebrows, his tendency to point and grunt and eat shellfish whole – then you will be rewarded with 90 minutes of such.

Funny Ha Ha is often offhandedly funny, and Bujalski has a knack for letting scenes build and then cutting out abruptly, duplicating the flow of a life in flux.

An intriguing export with crossover appeal.

Goofily funny, oddly tenderhearted mock-documentary.

Will likely test the patience of all but the most devoted fans.

This could be a pilot for the WB. Hollywood choreographer Fletcher makes the jump behind the camera but displays a greater aplomb for staging than drama, and the movie is as fleeting as the last weekend of summer.

It's a call to arms, a call to pick sides in the deepening cultural, political, and spiritual schism between the two Americas of the 21st century.

A singularly distasteful campus romp.

If Tears is indeed too weird to take America by storm – Miramax bought the film after Cannes and shelved it until it is now being released by Magnolia – it should neither be considered a cult item, approachable only to film nerds (though they will appreciate it best).

It is a rewarding tale for public educators, parents, and kids with big dreams.

Moments of black comedy break up the melodrama – a newsreel depicts the song's "victims" and a Nazi secretary rages against her Duden grammar manual – but the overall tone is still that of a four-alarm weeper.

The film is more of an old-school wartime yarn, crackling with the expected camaraderie among the hardscrabble volunteers.

Not content to merely be lowbrow and stupid – there's room in the world for lowbrow and stupid mass entertainment – the film is pushy and might actually cause chafing.

It's a magnificent film – thoughtful but not distant, aesthetically and technically sophisticated but staged with restraint and delicacy.

The real problem isn't that Anacondas is bad – it's just so bland, so unremarkable, so by-the-numbers, and so instantly forgettable that bad might be a step up.

The movie doesn't quite add up beyond its performances.

The film veers toward sheer silliness at times, losing the sweetness that defines its strongest moments.

It's too bad Shafer spent his budget making a fiction feature instead of just shooting a documentary about the scene. So much of the film is melodramatic kitsch, but there's still a movie in here.

A pleasant, often beautiful, and surprisingly light-hearted film that affirms the human traits of resilience and intelligence while clearly denouncing the bellicose tendencies of nations and factions.

The story is simple and true-to-life, and the technique is naturalistic, using nonprofessional actors, photography that emphasizes the characters' environment, and deliberate narrative pacing that mimics real-time events.

The characters are mechanisms who move along the plot arc from Point A to Point B. They’re not particularly memorable individuals.

A good bet for family viewing. It's got a charming, simple plot, a smart Alan Menken score, and enough subversive humor to wring a chuckle or two out of Mom and Dad.

If the sensitive coming-of-age love story is a well-worn tradition in gay cinema, Come Undone is at the very least a superior example of it.

Never mind the fact that romantic comedies about gay African-American and Latino men aren't exactly plentiful, let alone ones this good-natured.

Less subversive and infinitely less intelligent than 1999’s Wahlberg-starrer "Three Kings," this movie does blow lots of s--- up real good and punish contemptible public figures otherwise left unaccountable for massacring African villagers.

“This is just like a video game,” observes rapper-cum-actor Ja Rule, taking aim during one of the myriad firefights that comprise this lunkheaded, vaguely dystopic actioner. Man, is it ever.

This is not a family movie; the kids will be bored by it. This is a guilty pleasure for thirtysomething stoners with ironic dispositions and large nacho platters.

The real shame in the storytelling is that the people in this film are interesting and inspiring enough to warrant a real film about them.

My cynical half hated it, despite the presence of Lane, who is so magnetic that she could prance around the countryside in the absence of plot and still be compelling somehow.

You could call this film repugnant and abrasive, and Solondz would probably agree.

It helps that J.K. Rowling’s third book in the series is full of spooky stuff that translates beautifully to screen.

Plenty thought-provoking, but it's not much of a movie and ultimately inspires curiosity rather than passion.

Deschanel, as the token oddball of the gang, runs off with the movie.

This is the kind of scrappy Seventies-throwback B-movie that fits the bill when you desperately need to see regular-seeming, occasionally inept people rise up against our corrupt criminal oppressors and cudgel them with pool cues and bits of blasted-off brick.

A twist ending in search of its movie.

Eighteen short films by an international who's-who of filmmakers make up this omnibus celebrating the joys and sorrows of love and Paris, organized by neighborhood.

While viewers who expect a conventional suspense film may be disappointed in Lantana overall, it does succeed on a smaller, more intimate scale.

A holiday film Joe Lieberman could love, unembarrassed by its wholesome, sugary pro-family message.

Jacquet's penguins are as absorbing and incredible as any man-made phantasmagoria you'll find in the multiplex this summer, and it's all real.

The script is really the heart of the problem.

It's a good bet for youth audiences (the PG-13 rating is for one instance of language) and finds plenty of thought-provoking subject matter courtside.

The film is a sure winner for arthouse audiences enamored of the new Argentine cinema, but it has crossover appeal for venturesome viewers in search of a good mystery, as well.

The filmmakers assume familiarity with the show's documentary premise and in-jokes (e.g., deputy Garant giving all his commands in French), which will make the movie even less accessible to novices.

The movie itself offers few real answers to the problems teachers face.

Yaar has enough heart to redeem its cruder moments, and it turns out to be quite a little charmer.

There's nothing terribly wrong with Kate & Leopold -- it's just an awfully conventional upmarket romantic comedy.

This is Iranian cinema at its most accessible: a bit slow even in its 92 minutes, with more environment than story, but deeply immersive and thought-provoking, and quite often funny.

When it's on, it's really, really on. But when it's not, it feels like it's struggling to find its style, just as Jerome is.

Old Joy is an accurately observed slice of that moment between postadolescence and parenthood, when friends cling or scatter, and circumstances force buried feelings to the fore.

Cody Banks would probably be appropriate for the 13-and-older crowd, but it’s far too dopey for teenage sophisticates.

This moody Hong Kong thriller puts a stylish new spin on the old "Hands of Orlac" horror motif.

The characters all feel like concoctions, like synthetic movie people forged in a crucible of Red Bull during late-night meetings at the studio compound.

It is an observant and effective study in character and setting, suitably grave and distinctively realized.

This first dramatic feature by documentarian Evans is an important film but not necessarily a successful one.

She's funny, she's feisty, she's a flabulous, fat-positive “fag hag,” and Margaret Cho isn't apologizing for any of it.

The result is total immersion in the moment of the music, sure to send jazz fans over the moon.

The film is sufficiently methodical and well-researched to walk the walk behind its controversial premise. More to the point, it's terribly involving, intriguing enough to hook documentary-shy viewers.

A sterling example of what Hollywood can accomplish when it puts its trust into an offbeat project whose creative team has a different perspective on American life.

A bright, amiable chronicle of the vivid lives of the women of Juchitán.

Surprisingly fresh and charming overall.

It manages to be a watchable, even enjoyable movie about and for girls, and in our world of candy-coated sparkly pink c---, that's a rare and commendable thing.

The film is often quietly humorous.

The movie isn't perfect – Spielberg-slick, its power is sometimes dampened by melodrama that overstates its message – but it is compelling and thought-provoking and topical as hell.

97% of the movie will make you need a shower. Possibly two.

Before the cocaine economy, Miami was a sleepy seaside hamlet, a "virgin city" with a permeable border and largely unprotected coastline.

It's the most honest, refreshing comedy about love – gay, straight, or both – I've seen in many moons, and at the end everyone's problems are solved by a country-western dance battle with drag doyenne Jackie Beat on the mic.

Honest and unflinching, Daughter From Danang isn't always pleasant to watch, but it is powerful and memorable.

This spook story is a surprisingly mediocre Hollywood debut for Hong Kong's Pang brothers.

The movie doesn’t stand in judgment of its characters, which will probably disappoint audiences who think it ought to, but its breezy tone and ultimately affirming message should please comedy fans with an appreciation for the offbeat.

Critic-proof moviemaking, a candy pink wish-fulfillment fantasy prominently peppered with pubescent pop platters.

Like a lot of animated fare, it's overly busy, lacking the comic's gentle, contemplative air.

This is one of those rare movies about children but not necessarily for them, and it treats its adolescent subjects with bravery and compassion.

A couple of the cinemaniacs are less defined than others, but the portrait that emerges is a detailed composite of life on the fringe.

Ultimately the film manages a warm, offbeat appeal despite its flaws, and it has real heart.

A frenetic affair, busy and silly enough to make family froth like "The Princess Diaries" look like Grand Illusion.

Never really sure what to say about its subject.

Worth a look.

A Tail of Two Kitties couldn't care less about its human principals, and all it wants its animals to do is air-guitar to "Cat Scratch Fever" and wear silly sunglasses.

Here's an interesting surprise: Dour, dry Duchovny's directorial debut is more weepy than creepy.

This is joyful filmmaking, imbued with an infectious, giddy enthusiasm.

For older and more reflective viewers, it’s a quirky, fresh slice-of-life more inviting than a tater-tot pyramid.

It's such high sports drama you'd swear this documentary is fiction.

Never really quite great, it's still a good enough diversion for the family and should please adult fans of racing.

Stuck somewhere between melodrama and the flat tone of an "issues"-oriented television miniseries.