Paula Nechak

Though the pop idol recently said that movies are his ultimate goal, the best thing about On the Line is its music.

Isn't so emotionally powerful as the Oscar-winning "When We Were Kings" but which -- in its more intimate way -- still packs a punch.

The film is many things: dark fable, gritty thriller, satirical social commentary, horror film and a love story that's blessed with a marvelous, near slapstick physicality.

The performances by Davidtz, Weston, Wilson and especially Adams stand out as Morrison paints his character study with raw, true bits continually tested by the absurdities of pain life dishes up.

Noyce's movie is a testament to endurance -- the camera caresses the landscape -- instilling us with a respect and reverence for it, its harsh ways and the attachment to it that Australia's indigenous people hold.

The real find in this lovely family film is Castle-Hughes, who makes Pai's confusion, emotional fragility and devotion palpable.

Exquisite and fragile in visuals and tone, yet has some difficulty with a choppy narrative.

In remarkably compact and quietly concise vignettes, we're introduced to each member, and immediately understand what they're all about.

The director's tenacity has resulted in a breathtaking as well as heartbreaking adventure of life and death.

Dizdar humorously compares and contrasts extremes in economics and lifestyles and looks at the west through the eyes of an outsider.

For all its moodiness, despair and disconnect, I've Loved You So Long is all about acknowledging human error and embracing ties -- to family and life -- that can't be undone.

Ullmann has honed a too-long and sometimes relentless film that delves into the selfishness of passion but also captures the elusiveness and unpredictability of love.

Cast and crew have a blast making a family movie that spoofs its James Bond-like premise, is jam-packed with action, sweaty-palm suspense and adventurous, high-tech fun effects, and yet never loses its at-the-core heart and sympathies.

In its austere visual understatement rests a ton of emotional power.

There are two reasons Ramsay succeeds with a story that might at best be called morbid: She visually transforms the dreary expanse of dead-end distaste the characters inhabit into a poem of art, music and metaphor -- and she has the perfect actress to embody Morvern.

The jokes run dry, the situation is redundant, the cast becomes tiresome and the running time is interminable.

Don't give the kids any sugar before this one -- it's so hyperactive it'll send them into overdrive without it.

Meanders as aimlessly as its drugged-out characters.

Feels the scratches of too much time and tinkling and is as disjointed as a dislocated shoulder.

The film manages to make the ordinary extraordinary. It takes visual risks, tells its story subjectively through images and moves confidently to a stunning, imaginative climax.

It's a well-acted but rote and strictly by the book "war movie."

While young Coppola is a pro with her camera, she'd be wise to brush up on her storytelling skills.

The Cockettes is a fascinating poke into the soul of the '60s and it moves past a simple chronology of a counterculture phenomenon to examine how this predecessor to glitter rock and camp movies, such as "The Rocky Horror Show," could ever have ascended to such heights.

Assails with its in-your-face, repulsively compelling (like a train wreck) brutality.

While the film shuns the glamour or glitz that an American movie might demand, Scherfig tosses us a romantic scenario that is just as simplistic as a Hollywood production.

This devastating film is buoyed by Dequenne's bravura willingness to go all out; she's a baby-faced kid when the camera focuses full on and an exceptionally beautiful young woman in profile.

Breathtaking visual accomplishment.

(Arteta's) yanked an eerily accomplished performance out of his lead actor.