Robert Koehler

As beautiful as it is unrevealing, James Longley's Iraq in Fragments rests on a debatable but firm premise -- that the embattled country is irrevocably separated by its three dominant groups, Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds -- but brings back nothing journalistically substantial from the war front .

Latest pic directed by Gil M. Portes, could be called "To Madam With Love"; vet Filipino helmer is out to open maximum tear ducts with sentimental tale.

Though tinged with the sheer gumption and personal resolve of amateur vidmaker and would-be rapper Kimberly Roberts, this is ultimately a minor doc contribution to the bulging library of Katrina-related films and TV reports.

Writer-director Craig Ross Jr. offers both rigorously effective dramatic sections and terribly pedantic and melodramatic strokes of overkill.

The time away from the ring has done Rocky and the franchise some good, although it takes pic a good long while to gather momentum and clout before a surprisingly satisfying third-act heavyweight bout.

Imax 3-D process has lost its original novelty, and little is done in Deep Sea to find new and exciting ways of using the medium.

The film toys with audience expectations and perceptions by playing fast and loose with circumstances and clues, while leading to an almost unavoidable and dismayingly obvious conclusion.

It's a wipeout once the pic skids into melodrama and an overly schematic sense of how success tore the group apart.

Before the music takes over, the film inserts a few bits of charm, such as Emmylou Harris excitedly following the latest Major League Baseball scores.

Succeeds in displaying the physical drive and demands of cheerleading.

This makes the film feel perilously close to widescreen sitcom, as do montages of New York set to Beethoven's Sixth Symphony.

Sometimes veering close to being a promotional film for the Special Olympics, pic will be applauded by the disability community and its advocates but quickly ignored by longtime fans of the Farrellys and Knoxville.

Fascinating if overly self-involved Slamdance entry is among the few U.S. pics that deliberately smudges the line between non-fiction and invention as it tells how Crumley and Buice meet online and develop a relationship.

The temptations of allowing a promotional video to seep inside a genuine non-fiction study nearly overtake East of Havana and its look at a bubbling hip-hop culture in Cuba.

Zhang Yimou's strangest and most troubled film, abounds in hysterical, mannered Tang Dynasty-era palace intrigue and dehumanized CGI battle sequences.

Unlikely to draw new fans but destined to please followers who couldn't catch the live act.

An especially dramatic, if needlessly frantic, work of polemical reportage on racism in America.

Pic's not-so-hidden agenda is to promote the fusion of science and New Age religion, making it a close cousin to ventures as Bernt and Fritjof Capra's "Mindwalk."

Von Trotta’s Arendt biopic feels like a movie stuck in another era, stolid and rote, more of an outline for a dramatic treatment than the real thing.

Result is a loose personal piece of reportage that places people over ideas and larger issues, and reveals the pic's severe limitations long before a surprisingly upbeat ending.

Falco, light years from "The Sopranos," is exquisitely vulnerable and her scenes play well with Hutton, in his finest role in years as a good man who knows he's sold out.

Alternates too deliberately between jaunty comedy and serious message-making.

The latest and most calculated re-do on the formulaic fantasy of an innocent conquering Gotham.

Although guided by considerable empathy toward its small circle of kinfolk eking out a living in southern Texas, Eska's tale of a woman's unconditional support of her father-in-law is told with a faux-poetic sensibility that never really connects with his characters' lives.

Couldn't be less involving and more sentimentalized.

Writer-director Montiel creates a movie of many parts that don't always congeal. Mix this with the many meaty scenes and a roster of often exceptional actors and the effect is one of a fabulous acting showcase more than a wholly finished work.

A sweetly raucous adventure. Widely quoted comparisons to "Billy Elliot" and Tim Burton overstate the case for what is really a modestly eccentric entertainment.

Deeply influential, even to his enemies, Atwater's career is viewed here with fascination and some sympathy.