Neil Genzlinger

If the opening gag in your R-rated movie is an extended flatulence joke you should reconsider whether you're qualified to make such a movie. Not that flatulence jokes aren't funny; 8-year-olds love them. The thing is, not many 8-year-olds go to R-rated movies.

If the intent was to keep the characters here just as anonymous as most migrant workers are to prosperous people in the United States, it succeeds: Pedro and his family remain mere sketches. If, however, the aim was a more meaningful portrait of hardship and aspiration, the film is merely underdone. It's no secret that life in many places is hard.

This heartfelt documentary is also, more subtly, a tribute to the squadron of caregivers that has enabled Mr. Becker not only to survive for an extraordinarily long time but also to continue to compose music, using virtually the only part of him that still moves, his eyes.

The film might have made a decent end-of-broadcast segment on a newscast. But inflated to feature length and devoid of nuance or fresh insights, it just seems self-congratulatory - aren't we great for having done this for these old guys? - and exploitive.

The worst thing about the animated film Delhi Safari isn't that it's awful. It's that it shamelessly rips off much better animated movies.

New Jerusalem feeling like an acting exercise in search of a theater class.

It catalogs agony without making you feel it.

Ms. Blecher draws fine performances out of the young actors and, to her credit, sugarcoats nothing.

An admiring but restrained documentary about Darko Kralj, a Paralympic shot-putter from Croatia. The film is more about what it takes to overcome adversity and recommit to finding meaning in life, terrain that anyone with a disability has to negotiate, athlete or not.

Relies too much on rehash and preaching to the choir to kindle a broad-based outrage, but it does make you wonder what really happened on May 24, 1990.

A documentary that features forthright interviews with major players and gives a good sense of the infighting and pettiness without getting bogged down in it.

If the Boy Scouts offered a merit badge for inept filmmaking, Todd Rohal would certainly earn it with Nature Calls, an unwatchably bad movie about a camping trip gone haywire.

The film doesn't just serve up Mr. Balog's amazing and undeniably convincing imagery. It also records his personal struggles as knee problems threaten his ability to hike the difficult terrain to get the shots he wants.

It ends up being largely just another story about a rebellious American teenager.

Some viewers will be frustrated by the film's determination to be evenhanded, but with this same battle likely to be fought repeatedly in the coming years (the issue is again on the 2012 Maine ballot), Question One stands as a pretty good primer in how referendums are won and lost.

Sure, you've seen this story before, but this version has a freshness nonetheless.

A lumbering mess in which he has somehow trapped several recognizable actors.

If you can choke down the implausible notion that the doughy Kevin James would last more than five seconds in a mixed martial arts ring, Here Comes the Boom is a moderately enjoyable, nontaxing sort of comedy.

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, a film based on Peter Cameron's novel, is several kinds of excruciating.

What follows seems like a nonstop car and foot chase, with Albanian after Albanian falling victim to Bryan's remarkable aim and hand-fighting skills. Foreigners bad, Americans good, box office busy.

Only occasionally funny and not at all illuminating about the rich world of a cappella singing.

For the first half of the film, amusing monster humor keeps things interesting; some monsters, it turns out, are better at party games than others.

Mr. Miller makes a questionable choice in setting the film against the backdrop of the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, and he lingers too long on an offensive fringe group that hangs out near ground zero with signs saying the terrorist attacks were God's will. But for most of the way, his treatment is substantive and evenhanded.

Maybe that's romanticizing things, but baseball wouldn't be half as beautiful without its mythology.

The story, too, undercuts the actors.

Among the problems with the humorless comedy General Education is that the lead character's sister is more interesting than he is, and she spends much of her screen time as a mute mime.

It is also unabashedly one-sided and is short on solutions, other than the usual "Call your Congressional representatives." But its message, despite the hyperbole, certainly warrants examination and discussion.