Reece Pendleton

Aside from the waste of a talented cast, the only thing that really caught my attention was the tomblike silence of the audience--at least until the bong jokes started.

The tradition goes back centuries, but by tracking the seven-year odyssey of a young girl named Guddi from dutiful daughter to family rebel, Brabbee is able to puncture the system's facade of social acceptability, exposing its contradictions in memorable fashion.

Camara and Peña are perfectly cast as the bewildered couple, and early on Berger gets some laughs from the one-note premise. But the material grows increasingly stale as the film drags on to its unintentionally creepy finale.

Wellman’s splendid direction animates an otherwise static script, deftly blending comedic moments with surprisingly dark undertones. This 1931 drama may lack the punch of Wellman’s The Public Enemy, released the same year, but it’s still a fine display of his talents.

Muddled attempt at edgy comedy.

A straightforward account of the debate between evolutionists and ID proponents might have been both entertaining and enlightening; instead this follows the avuncular Ben Stein (who cowrote the movie) as he jet-sets around the globe trying to prove that a cabal of Darwinians has conspired to destroy academic freedom.

This is a deeply engaging portrait of a remarkable man and a brutally frank indictment of the West's moral cowardice in the face of a tragedy it could have prevented.

The movie may not amount to much, but the genial tone and exceptionally good performances from the three leads make for a winning debut by the Duplass brothers.

Yates makes good use of her access to participants in Peru's Truth Commission, creating both an engaging historical survey and a timely warning about the perils of declaring war on terror.

Most fascinating about this PBS documentary is the unflinching look at the dynamics of the three generations involved.

If you can make any sense of this you've probably been smoking whatever the animators were when they concocted it.

Despite its nasty facade, this comedy is surprisingly good-natured.

Those craving more visceral kicks will be gratified by the endless crash sequences, but despite the perverse thrill of seeing guys fly off their motorcycles at 150 miles per hour, the crack-ups wear thin after the first hour.

The film may never fully attain the emotional resonance it seems to be striving for, but it's still an accomplished and interesting piece of work.

The film's elliptical structure seems little more than a device to compensate for the thin dramatic material, but it's saved by a fine ensemble cast and Akhavan's convincing transformation from a naive romantic to a disturbing reactionary.

Compelling despite an almost complete lack of subtlety.

Gast does a nice job of building the suspense leading up to the fight, fleshing out the story with some good color commentary by a handful of people (filmed by director Taylor Hackford, who wisely convinced Gast that these reminiscences and remarks would fill in some historical gaps).

Devastating.

A general lack of charm make this pretty tough to sit through.

The film clearly means to celebrate the power of imagination, but while younger kids may find it charming, some parents may begin to wonder if the girl's obsessive fantasies don't warrant a trip to the local shrink.

The cast is excellent--especially Kinnear, who's perfected his wounded everyman persona--and Marc Abraham's direction is elegant and understated. But their work is seriously undermined by the skeletal script.

Oscillating between a furrowed brow and her trademark horsey smile, Roberts battles the repressed harpies on the faculty and strives to shake her students out of their conformist mind-sets. Dispensing with character development, Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal's lifeless script shunts its caricatures from one predictable plot point to the next.

Engaging and well acted, the film is admirably low-key, yet Burman's relaxed approach becomes a liability--everything goes down smoothly but leaves one hungry for something more substantial.

While the outcome is never really in doubt, director Frederic Fonteyne illuminates the wife's inner world with a rich sense of atmosphere, and Emmanuelle Devos' riveting performance manages to convey every shift in her character's suppressed emotional life with the subtlest of gestures and expressions.

Crushingly dull teen horror flick.

Although Broomfield's grandstanding has provoked charges of hypocrisy, this is a genuinely moral work that raises unsettling questions about the haphazard application of the death penalty, and it's certainly more complex and affecting than the fictionalized portrait of Wuornos in "Monster."

While never boring and sometimes quite gripping, Bielinsky’s manneristic style becomes distracting; he seems more concerned with generating an ominous atmosphere than with telling a compelling story.

Has the spiritual and emotional depth of a Hallmark card.