Rene Rodriguez

A wonderfully rumpled, loose comedy about the paralyzing fear of failure.

Despite moments of intense suspense and glints of bizarre horror, Tom at the Farm is ultimately a psychological thriller.

What distinguishes Spider-Man from most other comic book movies is that the film is at its most engaging when its hero is out of costume.

It's a breezy, homespun, relaxing thing...watching this laid-back picture feels, oddly enough, like a vacation from movies.

Margin Call doesn't demonize its characters, nor does it absolve them of their sins. The movie simply shows, without judgment or anger, how our economic crisis came to be.

By film's end, Leconte has made you believe these disparate men inhabit the same soul: The chasm between them is a matter of paths not taken.

A mean and exceedingly well-made little B-picture, but the questions it raises are far too complex to answer with a simple gunshot.

Lurking just beneath Water's serene, storybook surface is an unmissable, defiant passion.

Although there are several stretches in the movie in which Seidl seems to be repeating himself, the director is carefully building toward a knock-out final scene in which the inscrutable, often annoying Anna becomes beautifully, poignantly human in front of our eyes, like magic.

Escape from Tomorrow is more of an experimental film than a traditional narrative, but intrepid viewers — or anyone who has ever visited a Disney park — will enjoy getting lost in this dark house of happy horrors.

The most horrific -- and heartbreaking -- scene of any movie thus far this year comes at the climax of The Cove.

What makes the picture sail past its flaws is its earnest understanding of the desperation that drives people to regain control of their lives -- and the profound courage required to attempt it.

By giving the hero's inner plight so many dimensions, Superman Returns brings a richer, grander perspective to a seminal character without changing his essence. It's a profoundly personal take on a universal icon, made by a filmmaker who continues to improve with each movie.

In a simple, direct manner, Gunner Palace reminds you that the thousands of faceless, nameless troops in Iraq are still there after you switch off CNN.

It's all speed, movement and blood -- lots and lots of blood.

Watching this essentially good but misguided kid slide into a hopeless future is both transfixing and heartbreaking.

Scary? Yes, in spots. Gratuitously gory? You bet. But, first and foremost, Zombieland is a comedy.

Don’t expect Hitchcock or De Palma here — Reichardt is much too low-key and modest for such crowd-pleasing pyrotechnics — but one long, sustained shot near the end seems to suggest that people who are convinced they are doing the right thing are capable of great evil.

It's an uncommonly optimistic meditation on death and lament, befitting a filmmaker whose movies (Jerry Maguire, Singles, Say Anything), no matter their subject matter, always double as a celebration of life.

One of the amazing things about Volver is that Almodóvar once again manages to make a preposterous, overloaded plot seem sublime and organic: It's his profound empathy for his characters and their very human dilemmas and flaws that allows him to fling them into all sorts of odd places without ever losing sight of them as people.

The movie doesn't quite achieve the transcendent effect it reaches for, saddled with an ending that fails to live up to our expectations. But the experience of watching Babel is undeniably riveting: Even if the film doesn't really lead anywhere, you still can't take your eyes off it.

As the movie breathlessly cuts back and forth from a boisterous wedding celebration to a high-stakes soccer match, even the grumpy cynics will have been won over.

A big, boisterous action-comedy - a funny, exciting and intentionally goofy summer movie that just happens to arrive in the middle of January.

Has a crackling, almost farcical pace, even though its subject matter could not be more serious or complex.