Ray Bennett

All the action is staged with energy, but it gets relentless without anything really funny going on.

The drive to keep alive the name of a young American woman who died beneath a U.S.-made bulldozer driven by an Israeli soldier in Palestine continues in Simone Bitton's sober documentary Rachel.

The film is neither intelligent enough nor silly or grotesque enough to become a lasting favorite.

Colorful, noisy and brimming with special effects, the picture may please young audiences simply looking for loud action, but its corny storyline and brittle lack of warmth may discourage both parents and children.

Shot in high definition and filmed at many historic locations, the film somehow still lacks the splendor of an epic, and its urgency to get on with the next plot point leaves much unexplained while context goes out the window.

The film belongs to the women, with Knightley going from strength to strength (and showing she can sing!) and Miller again proving that she has everything it takes to be a major movie star.

The most affecting scenes, however, involve the class of Israeli teenagers visiting Auschwitz.

Complex but cold tale.

Cantet keeps a lid on a story that he could have easily exploited, but he makes his points about beauty, fulfillment, self-indulgence and delusion with a measured hand.

A penchant for suffocating close-ups and an overabundance of scenes that go on far too long mar Abdellatif Kechiche's The Secret of the Grain, an otherwise engaging drama about an immigrant Arab family in France.

Whether or not Bobby Kennedy was the man his supporters believed him to be, the film makes a persuasive case that something important in America was silenced when he was gunned down.

Earnest and slow, the film takes time to reveal its intentions and the result is worthy but not engaging.

Being in Paris is to be inside a work of art, and it is no surprise that in the charming collection of vignettes that make up Paris je t'aime, the art is love.

The real pirate radio ships, whose days ended in 1967, wound up being towed away for salvage but the film avoids that fate -- like the best rock songs -- with a rousing finish and a pleasing climax.

Brainlessly entertaining action picture.

The observational detail is impressive and the two men's growing affection is well-drawn but Takerman's depiction of the conventions and strictures of religion and the impulses of two closeted gay men are too understated to achieve universality.

Rowan Joffe's film of Graham Greene's 1938 novel "Brighton Rock" takes a gothic approach to the story of a young thug obsessed with hell with little of the writer's subtlety and too much reliance on a loud quasi-religious choral score.

Trite, grim and feebly provocative.

What it lacks is a villain, and magic without danger is simply a parlor trick, which is what the film becomes.

Acutely observed but gloomy and lacking narrative, it tells of 12 months in the life of a decent but dull suburban couple and their friends, most of whom you would go out of your way to avoid at a party.

With its intelligence at the level of the simple-minded, however, the film is not likely to attract moviegoers who seek something more than a screen filled with kaleidoscopes of colored metal. Fan boys will no doubt love it, but for the uninitiated it's loud, tedious and, at 147 minutes, way too long.

Politicians, the media, educators, military commanders and a docile public all come under fire in a well-made movie that offers no answers but raises many important questions.

Tedious humor and sentimentality bury what could have been a pretty good road picture.

The script by first-time director Li Yu and producer Fang Li introduces some degree of subtlety in the responses of the four principals, but the plot doesn't really hold up.

An earnest tale about a faded rock star who discovers he has a teenaged daughter and takes her on the road, Janie Jones follows a predictable path and despite decent performances it does not catch fire.

Atmospheric but pedestrian, it is a retelling of the classic tragedy of all civil wars, from the U.S. to Vietnam to England, where brother is pitched against brother.

Blandly interesting.

Remaking eccentric English comedies is seldom a good idea, especially the ones from Ealing Studios with all those wonderful character actors. But against all odds, the new version of St. Trinian's almost pulls it off.