Mike Hale

It was created under different circumstances and it is, perhaps inevitably, a less powerful work than “When the Levees Broke,” more diffuse in its storytelling and more uncertain in its point of view.

As it is, it’s the best non-Miyazaki, non-Takahata Ghibli feature. A girl prevents a cat from getting crushed by a truck and gains favor with a nocturnal kingdom of hipster felines, in a story with echoes of Alice in Wonderland and the novels of Haruki Murakami.

The whole turns out to be less than the sum of its elegantly constructed and cleverly uncategorizable parts.

There’s nothing wrong with the type of movie Special Correspondents wants to be. The problem is that Mr. Gervais doesn’t appear capable of making a good version of it.

Mr. Landis’s sensibility, which combines sitcom jokiness with mumblecore sentimentality, tends to be more grating than amusing in Me Him Her, though scattered moments will make you laugh.

"The Warriors” and the “Mad Max” films will come to mind as you watch Tokyo Tribe, and from scene to scene Mr. Sono’s visual inventiveness and sure hand with action stand up to the comparison. The cumulative effect, however, is numbing.

Mr. Ryoo (“The Unjust,” “The City of Violence”) isn’t known for his sense of humor, but Veteran is amusing throughout, even if the funny scenes are more subdued or go on a beat or two longer than American viewers are used to.

Mr. Morgen was given access to Cobain’s archives — “art, music, journals, Super 8 films and audio montages” — and his exhilarating, exhausting, two-hour-plus film, both an artful mosaic and a hammering barrage, reflects years of rummaging through that trove.

Surprisingly old-fashioned. It seems to be having an argument with itself: the dazzling but often antiseptic immersiveness of the viewing experience is countered by storytelling suffused with nostalgia for a simpler, messier, livelier period in Chinese film.

Mr. Bale, turning in a respectable if oddly chipper performance under the circumstances, has the unfortunate task of playing a character who doesn't really add up.

A drab combination of science-fiction horror film and conspiracy thriller, accomplishes something the world wasn't really crying out for: it recreates the tedium of watching the later Apollo missions.

If you don't get the jokes, there isn't a whole lot else to get, and it's a safe assumption that non-Latino, non-Spanish-speaking viewers are going to miss a lot of them.

The overall effect is distancing; there are some early comic moments that have you laughing along with the movie, but eventually the clashing tones and preposterousness just have you laughing.

Sex in this film looks so nonecstatic that a better title might have been "3D Sex and Zen: Zero Child Policy."

The fall-off in sexiness, soulfulness and wittiness from Ms. Gugino and Antonio Banderas, the parents in the first three "Spy Kids" films, to Ms. Alba and Joel McHale is whiplash steep.

Mr. Park's screenplay, pedestrian direction and stolid performance don't set us up to care.

It's significantly smaller and more casual than "Mystery Train" or "Lost in Translation," movies its premise calls to mind, but in some ways it's more layered and complex.

A new wrinkle in how the killings spool out actually makes the film even more predictable, and the deaths, which tend to be squirmy rather than explosive, are so perfunctory and lazily jokey that they leave a decidedly bad aftertaste.

The Harvest, in its modest way, calls to mind "The Grapes of Wrath" but with no glimmer of a New Deal or a union, or even of better economic times ahead.

The depictions of cosmopolitan Germans and mostly avaricious, bestial Czechs are likely to stir strong emotions among some viewers, but over all Habermann is more potboiler than political or historical statement.

It's a hard movie to engage with or even sit through, despite the fact that much of the material is interesting in its own right. Oddly, but perhaps predictably, the problem is the resolutely conventional and soft-headed way in which that material has been assembled.

It all adds up to an entertaining 88 minutes, despite the film's ramshackle construction and its once-over-lightly approach to political, cultural and athletic history.

It's an interesting story, well told, though Mr. Jendreyko overworks some documentary fallbacks: gnarled fingers, the view from a moving train.

The overall mildness and inconsequence of Girlfriend is disrupted for a while by Amanda Plummer, who gives a vivid yet gentle performance in a small part as Evan's patient, protective mother.

Carrying far more weight than their screen time would warrant, the "interviews" with actors playing young children are the best part of the film.

The intertwining of the narratives, along with the somewhat elliptical, or perhaps rudimentary, storytelling, makes for a confusing experience. But the stories are mainly an excuse for pretty pictures, some quite striking, of poverty and oppression, and for a closing frenzy of bloodletting.

Between Mr. Ziman's music-video skills and his close approximation of the kinetic style of Michael Mann (a scene from Mr. Mann's "Heat" has a key role in the plot), it's easy to overlook the formulas and just enjoy the ride.

That things tend not to end, or bode, well doesn't detract from the overall Hallmark vibe.

One of the many pleasures of the Norwegian director André Ovredal's clever and engaging mock documentary Trollhunter is the way it plays with the idea of the supernatural rule book.

It's also a pretty familiar story, and "Reindeer," despite Mr. Neuvonen's verve and Jani's charisma, can drag. Like a lot of addiction stories, it starts to mirror the monotony and self-absorption of the addict's life.

As a meditation Some Days has its virtues - if you're in the market for a picture-postcard bummer - but it will leave your mellowed mind pretty quickly.

As uplifting stories of tolerance and self-discovery go, Spork has a messy appeal, but it's no "Hairspray."

Whether you're predisposed to seeing Second Life as liberating or creepy, Life 2.0 would have been more interesting and original if it, like its subjects, had dwelled more in the virtual world, and if it had told us more about that world's mechanics and folkways.

It becomes clear pretty quickly that the only real thought in the movie has gone into the cowboy-gothic costumes and the computer-generated effects.

After a stirring opening battle, however, the fights in True Legend become pretty routine. And beyond some lovely mountain scenery and a tiny cameo by a radiant Michelle Yeoh, there isn't much else to look at.

Shinobu Terajima, a major figure in Japan who won the best actress award at the 2010 Berlin film festival for Caterpillar, is effective as the wife, though Mr. Wakamatsu is more interested in scoring political and historical points than in shaping her character.

Frenetic, paper-thin but entertaining documentary.

Only for those with a truly bottomless appetite for gore and fan-boy humor.

It has the structure and some of the pleasures of a well-made sitcom or docu-reality show, despite the nervous-looking, unhappy guy at its center; it could have been called "Nobody Understands Phil."

The Robber may have less on its mind than its sheen of seriousness would suggest, but the view is gorgeous.

Producing smarm at the high level of When Harry Met Sally requires special talent, and when you fall short all you're left with is garden-variety smarm.

It's generally fun to watch Mr. Yen move and not much fun to watch him act, and Legend of the Fist is no exception.

That the movie remains consistently watchable is largely a tribute to Brian Hasenfus, a Needham, Mass., contractor making his acting debut as Phillip.

The central conceit of the characters' fates being determined by the "rules" of horror movies feels irredeemably tired; a clever idea that was worth one movie.

Winston Churchill: Walking With Destiny is a handsomely produced, television-scale documentary with a split personality.

What was sometimes charming and funny in "Turnaround" is almost uniformly dreary in "Business," a result of tired humor, a monotonous pace and Mr. Schaeffer's inexpressiveness as an actor.

The strongest analogue for the second half of Insidious is one that the filmmakers probably weren't trying for: it feels like a less poetic version of an M. Night Shyamalan fairy tale.

About the most you can say for it is that it's inoffensive.

It seems that it's time to admit that dressing actors in LED-studded catsuits, asking them to give performances on sterile white sets and handing the results to a team of computer animators is not a way to make a good movie.

As the not-so-comic violence and the violent, misogynistic sex pile up, it becomes the kind of black humor in which the joke is largely on the audience.

Responses to religious films are bound to be personal, so at the risk of sounding patronizing, I'll say that my main reaction to The Grace Card was one of pleasant surprise at its competence.

About the only honestly funny thing in the movie is Faizon Love's uncredited performance in the Joe E. Brown role, as the school maintenance man who's immediately smitten with Big Momma.

Handicapped by Mr. Tapa's sometimes sketchy screenplay and the limitations of his nonprofessional cast. (His clumsy staging of their dialogue scenes doesn't help.)

The overall effect is one of lulling beauty and immersion in the landscape and culture - certainly enough to carry you through the film - but also an irritating sensation of being led by the nose through Ms. Álvarez's highly aestheticized ruminations.

Everyone involved in "Never Say Never" is working overtime to prove that he is, as one of them puts it, "just a regular kid who had a dream," while everything about the movie screams the opposite.

Angel Gracia, whose career has been in European music videos and commercials, imbues his feature directing debut with a televisionlike crispness and disposability.

Their characters are instantly recognizable; how you respond to the film may depend largely on whether you find any of them in the least likable and whether you think that matters.

It's strictly for the fans, who will furiously parse the changes in the narrative (including a new female pilot) and the nonsensical stew of philosophical and religious symbolism.

Ong Bak 3, which picks up the largely incoherent story of the rebel prince Tien battling evil lords and demons in some mythical pocket of Thai history, is actually less bloody than its predecessor.

There's exactly one thing about the misbegotten big-screen Yogi Bear that might make you think back with any fondness to the Hanna-Barbera cartoons on which it's based. That would be Justin Timberlake's charming performance as the voice of Boo-Boo Bear.

While I Am Secretly an Important Man skims the surface of Mr. Bernstein's life, it's a surface with more than enough texture to keep you interested.

Be aware: if you see the film in a theater equipped with RealD 3D and Dolby sound, you'll come away with a pretty good idea of what it would feel like to have flying body parts hit you in the face.

The film works quite well as a melancholy travelogue - an elevated version of something you might see on cable television - but its aspirations for depth of feeling or more profound social commentary aren't quite realized.

The sometimes impressive visual effects make these battles entertaining, in a mindless way, but it's impossible to work up any feeling about them. The only thing supplying that is the occasional laugh, pout or gurgle by Ms. Rudd.

If nothing else, the directors, Duane Baughman and Johnny O'Hara, deserve praise for devoting this kind of attention to a foreign leader and to the internal politics of another country (as opposed to how those politics affect the United States).

The talented Ms. Fanning gives a capable performance, and Mr. Konchalovsky and his camera and special-effects crews put a few arresting images on screen, including some frightening metal rat-dogs. But even there they fall short of obvious models like Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "City of Lost Children," and the 3-D treatment adds nothing.

An immigrant-family comedy that hits all the sentimental clichés of the genre as if they were stops on the No. 7 train.

Some obvious comparables for Skyline are "Independence Day" and Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds," but there is nothing here that even approaches the comic-book verve of the first or the churning dread of the second.

Mr. Kretschmann holds your attention through each whining complaint and bland denial. His character may be banal, but his portrayal is the only thing that keeps you watching.

In her director's statement for Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields, Gail O'Hara writes that "this one's for the fans." Rarely has that been more true.

Holding things together are Mr. Phillips's quiet charm and his songs, which really are funny.

A number of talented performers are stymied by this mediocre material.

You can admire the craftsmanship and enjoy the retro soundtrack, supplied by a roster of Milwaukee musicians, but it seems likely that Modus Operandi was more amusing to make than it is to watch.

Mostly, though, "Kitty Galore" is a grind, as well as proof that "What up, dog?" isn't any funnier when a pigeon says it to a dog.

Absorbing and amusing for as long as it looks back at those Hollywood westerns, recounting their sins against American Indians.

Frank V. Ross wrote and directed this slice of Midwestern mumblecore in a style -- overlapping dialogue, off-center compositions, a jumpy, disconnected narrative -- that suggests Robert Altman without any of Altman's instincts for character and poetry.

Parents may also be happy to see a movie for children that doesn't involve wizards, vampires or action figures that can be bought in the food court. They should be warned, though, that the price of contemporary realism is a story that includes layoffs, bickering and unpaid bills.

Halloween II is full of in jokes and references but nearly devoid of wit.

Mr. Romero is executive producer of the new film. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have his style or sense of humor.

A sad and engrossing look at a haunted landscape.

Mr. Refn, who can pull off stylish brutality (in the "Pusher" films and "Bronson" ), shows no knack for the kind of visionary, hallucinatory image making that would render Valhalla Rising memorable.

Neither the dangers of the plot - a dissolute uncle who wants to sell the farm, a father missing in action - nor the forbidding Nanny McPhee herself are as fearsome as they were the first time around.

The final image - a freeze frame of a pas de deux staged to resemble a triumphal Communist poster - perfectly captures the film's overall effect: it's strenuously brainless.

His film is no more profound than its forerunners, but it’s quicker, funnier and less pretentious.

The courses of colonialism and racial strife were radically different in America and Australia than they were in Africa. That doesn't make Mr. Freeth's cause any less just, but it does mean that Mugabe and the White African needs to be approached with care.

The dancers may be skilled, but their work has no meaning in terms of the story -- it's pure spectacle, and numbingly repetitive spectacle at that.

The Disappearance of Alice Creed will keep your attention, but you may walk away thinking you've seen something like it before: "Sleuth," with more sex and violence.

The Juche Idea is meant to be a comedy, one that cuts two ways: mocking the strictures placed on moviemakers in both Communist and capitalist systems. Viewers who don’t share the radical-nostalgist sensibility of Mr. Finn, who teaches at Emerson College in Boston, may find the humor both too rarefied and too obvious.

What leaves a bad taste in the mouth is not the film itself, which is passable for a low-budget war picture, but the fact that neither the official Web site nor the press notes even suggest that it largely has been scavenged from an existing movie.

Unfortunately, the things that can be funny and even liberating in a movie like "American Pie" end up looking coarse and slightly depressing in the scripted pseudoreality of The Virginity Hit.

The film builds in interest and intrigue as it goes along, helped immeasurably by the directors' choice - canny or fortunate or both - of the astonishingly good-natured and likable Jacquy Pfeiffer, an Alsace-born, Chicago-based chef, as their chief protagonist.

This talking-animal tale - has old-fashioned backgrounds that occasionally achieve a touch of grandeur, but that's about the best that can be said for it.

The consistent comic tone of those earlier scenes - a gentle squirm - makes The Happy Poet a promising debut.

A conventional but delightful tale of self-discovery and heroism from Mr. Miyazaki, it feels like Disney one moment, Truffaut the next.

A toothless satire whose targets include vampire mania, low-rent theater, indie romantic comedies, Scorsese, Shakespeare and “Law & Order,” it plays like a Web series expanded to feature length, or an adaptation of one of the Naked Angels’ staged serial soap operas.

At several points the depiction of Ulla's isolation takes on slasher-movie overtones, which undercuts the general solemnity but doesn't really add anything to the experience.

This homage to vintage Howard Hawks-style aerial thrills is as beautifully drawn and colored as anything he’s done. And it’s tremendous fun.