Mike Hale

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.