Neil Genzlinger

The excitement factor only intermittently carries from the arena to the screen.

The filmmakers found an appealing collection of relatives and others who knew these artists and Savitsky to tell the story, but they also let the art do the talking, with loving, lingering shots of the brightly colored works.

The script, by Mr. Canon and Doug Simon, eventually strains credulity - even frat boys aren't this dumb - but Mr. Canon, in his first feature, shows a great knack for keeping things moving. The gathering implausibility is dispelled by a nice ending twist.

An aimless film about an aimless fellow, but it's not without its charms. It may be without a point, but hey, you can't have everything in a no-budget film like this.

A lightweight comedy aimed, presumably, at tweeners and fans of World Wrestling Entertainment.

It's not outlandish enough to work as slapstick, not intelligent enough to make a comment on the fickleness of immigration policy.

This film seems blissfully unaware that political obstructionists are paralyzing the legislative process; that deep-pocketed influence peddlers have a vested interest in maintaining the fossil fuel culture; that, in general, people resist change.

The film, though, might have been more powerful with a little less grit. A few minutes of dispassionate discussion by experts about ibogaine and the obstacles to its legalization in the United States would have enhanced the film without damaging its street cred.

The product - sloppy even by guerrilla filmmaking standards - has no revelations to offer that are worth the slog of watching it.

The film couldn't be more heartening - yes, individual actions do make a difference. But it's bittersweet as well. You can't help wondering about all the children who don't get tapped on the shoulder by the hand of fate.

The Taqwacores aims for a provocative, anarchic cool by juxtaposing Islam and punk rock. But the storytelling is so muddled and the filmmaking so unpolished - and not in a good way - that mostly this movie is just unpleasant. It's also not nearly as insightful as it thinks it is.

Ellington fans will certainly relish the many vintage clips scattered throughout.

This might have made a good children’s film.

It takes a while to realize that this is actually a sly, very funny comedy, one that stays admirably deadpan every time you think it’s about to veer into gross-out territory.

Comes close to being that rare film that is perfectly bad -- i.e., that has not a shred of social, entertainment or even curiosity value. But it misses out on this dubious honor by having one tiny redeeming attribute: it answers the question "Whatever happened to Edgar Stiles?"

Gregory M. Wilson, the film’s director, has made the kind of movie that makes you wish you could rinse your brain in bleach, to wash all traces of it from your memory.

So overwhelmed by its own based-on-actual-events tale that it can’t find the tone to tell it effectively.

It may not be classic sci-fi like the original “Alien,” which it has in its DNA, but it’s a perfectly respectable next step in the series.

Mr. Johnson and Ms. Lively are both pretty good, and with a more nuanced approach could have made this a powerful film.

The sex (of which there isn’t much) isn’t sexy, and the humor isn’t funny.

Ms. Zeta-Jones is too elegant for the lowlife she's supposed to be, Ms. Ronan isn't endearing enough to be a ragamuffin, and, under Gillian Armstrong's direction, never for a minute do you believe they're mother and daughter.

Mr. Perry has his moviemaking machine running smoothly, which is to say somewhat predictably.

The best thing about In Search of Beethoven, Phil Grabsky’s biography of the composer, is the company he brings along on the hunt.

A bit of patience is required to get through The Taste of Tea, but patience is often rewarded, and it certainly is by this droll and oddly touching film.

Mr. Rotaru paces the film perfectly, mixing performance footage with scenes of the competitors talking about their lives and the role music plays for them.

The filmmakers, chronicling the Dalai Lama’s somewhat muddled attempts to respond to the protesters’ calls while not antagonizing China, do a fair amount of muddling themselves. They lurch awkwardly between reverence for the Dalai Lama and hints that he has become, politically, irrelevant or an obstacle.

In truth there isn’t much story here, or much insight either; the kind of alienated teenagers wandering through this film exist in movies far out of proportion to their number in real life.

It does have some sweet touches and a droll sense of humor.

The earlier “Alvin” movie made more than $217 million just in the United States. It’s hard to imagine this somewhat confused sequel doing as well.

The computer-generated world is visually rich, but short on the droll humor that makes good children's films bearable for adults.

Disorganized and somewhat annoying.

The terrain is so familiar that it has a slightly stifling effect, even in Mr. Plympton’s demented hands. We long ago loved these characters to death.

Over all, though, the hands-off approach leaves the viewer to draw his own conclusions, but without providing enough information.

Has its share of funny moments. But it also has its share of tired ones, like the subplot involving the inadvertent swallowing of a ring.

There are enough good jokes in Fanboys, a road comedy about geeks on a "Star Wars"-related quest, to satisfy hard-core fans of that George Lucas franchise. But the film doesn't have the boosters, or thrusters, or whatever, to elevate it to more ambitious heights; it's weighed down by tired conventions and a general sense of having missed its moment.

Of course, while your brain is fritzing out, you're trying to figure out how the cinematic trick was done and what the implications might be for other old films. Scary, disturbing, intriguing, all at once.

An admirable documentary about an unusual concert tour.

A quirky documentary about, yes, a parking lot, is probably not unlike working at such a lot: there are long stretches when not much happens, but every once in a while there's a burst of activity that is kind of enthralling.

It's like being trapped in a roomful of teenage girls for 80 minutes.

Has some delicious moments, but you never quite shake the feeling that it’s documenting a tempest in a teapot.

It lacks focus and adds little to the awareness of the subject that even a casual follower of the news has already acquired.

The dancers are prone to feel-good sound bites, but Ms. Berinstein also takes the time to draw out their back stories, making for a sweet group portrait of ordinary folks who found a late splash of fame.

When a movie aspires to be gay pornography but can't even manage that, well, you know you've got a bad movie.

The guy's not much of a filmmaker, but he certainly gets your attention.

Cess Silvera, the film's writer and director, doesn't find any of the humanity or inner demons that would allow the characters to rise above B-movie exploitation.

Dismayingly, bad filmmaking isn't really to blame for the lack of punch in Ever Again. Perhaps it's the familiarity of it all.

Mr. Yudin keeps dragging things back to the restaurant and bathroom humor. He sabotages his own story, as well as the creditable work being done by Mr. Qualls and Ms. Reed.

It’s like choking down 72 minutes of a stranger’s unedited home videos, only without the occasional cute kiddie or pet to lighten the tedium.

How do you know you're looking at a pretty good piece of filmmaking? When the director and actors can make you care about the central characters even though they exchange almost no dialogue.

For $600, it turns out, you can make a short documentary about aging recreational swimmers that has just enough winning moments in it to let viewers forgive that it's little more than a glorified home video.

Sprinkled with moderately amusing comic moments, but basically your enjoyment of this film will be proportional to your tolerance for the one-joke phenomenon of air drumming.

John Waters is darned entertaining as he delivers a monologue that annotates his scandalous movies and encompasses assorted other subjects that interest or annoy him.

It's beautifully played and will hit home with anyone who has had to struggle with the most difficult aspects of aging.

Several varieties of creepy run through As Good as Dead, a gruesomely alluring tale of long-simmering revenge.

Starts out feeling a little too “inside Hollywood” and only grows more so as it rolls along. By the end, this small film about scriptwriters ends up being mostly for scriptwriters, despite appealing performances from the two leads.

Mostly Mr. Jun's script is sharp, and Laurie Metcalf, James McDaniel, America Ferrera and Raymond J. Barry in supporting roles help keep the tale mesmerizing, in a small-scale sort of way.

It’s a boilerplate plot like one you might find in any morning cartoon.

If "Wall-E" pushes the boundaries of what can be done in an animated movie, Space Chimps proves that the old formula is still pretty effective when executed well.

Do they have date movies in China? Probably, and Hot Summer Days, an enjoyable concoction of loosely intertwined stories of love and obsession, is just right for that purpose.

Someone really needs to take away Patrick McGuinn’s camera equipment. A few years ago he made a spectacularly bad gay-sex movie called “Sun Kissed,” and now he has made another, Eulogy for a Vampire.

Generally speaking, bird-watching is a pastime that is extremely interesting to a few people and not at all interesting to anyone else. But Scott Crocker has turned a bird-watching tale into a multilayered story that will fascinate practically everybody in Ghost Bird, a witty, wistful documentary.

The premise had promise, but Baghdad, Texas, a clumsy comedy directed by David H. Hickey, quickly disappoints with an inconsistent tone and painful overacting.

It is Mr. Akhtar whose understated performance holds together this far-ranging, cameo-filled film.

Snow Blind calls itself a documentary, but it's really all about selling the product of snowboarding; it never stops feeling like the in-house channel on a ski-lodge television.

The director, Josh Appignanesi, has a nice sense of comic timing, slipping in some of the best jokes when you least expect them.

Dazzling to look at of course. But such ponderous, cliché-heavy narration.

Those whose tolerance of Greatest Generation war stories isn't exhausted, not to mention those who still thrive on them, will find the group of men who called themselves the Ritchie Boys good company.

Cedric the Entertainer's artless performance deadens what could have been a much funnier comedy.

Wedding chaos has been heavily mined by both film and stage comedies, but Jann Turner, the director here, keeps this story fresh, aided by the effortless interplay between Mr. Nkosi and Mr. Seiphemo (who are credited with Ms. Turner as writers). The goat helps too.