Paul Malcolm

Jalil penetrates a carnivalesque subculture of self-reinvention and obsession, emotional need and materialist greed, with a camera that is, by turns, cruel, kind and incisive.

Director Olli Saarela, who co-wrote the script with Antti Tuuri, offers up a trembling romanticism that gradually hardens -- like Eero's consciousness -- with exposure to the horrors of war.

Ultimately, Jolie's efforts to establish a character are dashed against the film's increasingly inane dialogue.

Shooting Fish wants to hang with the hip crowd--witness the vibrant colors, the flashy camera work and the stream of catchy pop songs--but its heart just isn't wild enough.

Far too complex and provoking.

A half-baked classic.

In the end, Macartney and screenwriter Stuart Hepburn decide that love conquers all, which may have been the way it happened but doesn't leave the film with much going on.

The film gives good action (amid more tired spy business) but comes riddled with contradictions.

None of it rings true, and it distracts from the film's real heart, which, on its own, would have made for a strikingly original first film.

What feels genuine in the film -- mother-son bonds, the wedding party -- is surrounded by overdetermined and formulaic scenes lifted from other films.

A movie with a lot on its plate, but nothing interesting on its mind.

A tedious exercise in ethical hand wringing.

While the film throws a solid pop punch, you could still swear you've seen it all before.

The film at times feels less than objective, in part due to Douglas' often breathless narration.

It would all be too obviously feel-good if Ducastel and Martineau weren't also tuned in to the liberating drift of the open highway and a sharp native humor that adds needed flesh and blood to their walking metaphors.

Though the two-hour film can go slack with excess explication, Shiri compensates with an overheated drive that forces the myopia of current events toward a broader field of vision.

Unfortunately, it's our knowledge of what's actually to come that puts much of the chill and complexity in Hopkins' rather formulaic script.

A Rumor of Angels beats its wings furiously, only to sink back into spiritualist goo.

Salva falls back on dull, jumbled action and an awkward subplot as he lurches toward a sequel.

Director Chang builds some chilling suspense into the cop's grim investigative routine -- as well as generous helpings of blood: It runs, splashes and sprays as the amputations continue.

So many romantic cliches it's laughable.

A hyperreal, visually layered period style that finds film noir shadows creeping in at the edges of a blue-sky, get-along-to-go-along America.

The convoluted plot unfolds mechanically and with little atmosphere as if sex and death in the Oval Office would provide enough gravity on its own. That it doesn't is a sign of mediocre filmmaking as well as a measure of just how cynical the times have become.

Fate plays both prankster and deliverer in Firode's never-too-clever scheme, buoyed, like his often-winsome images, by romantic fancy.

Struggles to achieve a giddy eccentricity that never fully emerges.

Softley starts out a little awkwardly, as he tries to capture turn-of-the-century flux by opening several London scenes from disorienting, too-obvious camera positions.

Bounces through the bush in search of good will and comes up with recycled charm as it reintroduces most of the original's major characters.

The Kornbluths don't offer much visual style -- the film is as flat and sterile as its corporate environs -- but they build an excruciating tension from Kornbluth's confounding inability to lick a few stamps.