Robert Koehler

Its mind-bending storytelling and themes of play and paranoia make it perhaps the quintessential Gallic movie of its era.

Solnicki demonstrates that a work of art can be made from the humble materials of home-shot video and various 8mm formats, especially when the eye and ear behind the camera are as observant and unabashed as they are here.

The final days of a band of 1930s Christian rebels in the central Mexican wilderness are depicted with majestic stoicism in Matias Meyer’s elegant ode to independence.

Plentiful screen time for three generations of femme jazzers, led by energetic and witty gals from the golden age of big band and swing who unlock a treasure trove of memories, make this a real crowdpleaser.

While a local filmmaker’s perspective may have brought more dimensions, the coverage of events here is impressive and on the mark.

A romantic-comedy melodrama that’s too gentle by half.

Close encounters of the charming kind infuse The History of Future Folk, which will likely be remembered as the first neo-hipster Brooklyn sci-fi movie.

Haroun’s tender but unsentimental regard for his characters allows his storytelling a natural gravitas thoroughly suited to the simultaneously unfolding private and national tragedies.

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.

[Mock] has made a movie that vitally captures an extraordinary character in extraordinary circumstances.

The resulting film is a trite piece of storytelling, with character development and plot points that feel not so much lived in as borrowed from other movies.

A former rock 'n' roller withers on the vine in California Solo, Marshall Lewy's forgettable sophomore effort (after a promising beginning with "Blue State").

Adopting a postmodern method quite different from that of his remarkable "The Inner Tour," Ra'anan Alexandrowicz poses his questions from a legal angle, and finds these minds stumped by a system they've professionally defended.

Lacking much dramatic or intellectual stimulation, it's ultimately a limp effort.

Heartfelt and formulaic in equal measure.

Lacking the outrage and wit of Michael Moore's "Sicko," which dealt with the different matter of health insurance, this documentary is stronger on finding viable solutions.

Smartly engineered to engage sports fans and non-fans, the picture's account of Lithuania's 1992 Olympics bronze medal-winning team, presented as a symbol of post-Cold War freedom.

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

As a struggling rocker making a last-ditch attempt to gain shared custody of his daughter, Paul Dano delivers a beautifully wrought performance in a different key from any of his previous roles.

The rush of watching images made in such rare locales as Andorra and Sao Tome quickly wears thin as the montage whips through considerably meaty topics (water issues, climate change, immigration, religious faith) like an impatient Web surfer.

An intelligent overview that makes a radical artist's work comprehensible to audiences with no previous awareness of her or her chosen path.

Departing from two decades' worth of domestic and personal dramas and returning to his roots as Japan's maestro of mayhem, Kinji Fukasaku has delivered a brutal punch to the collective solar plexus with one of his most outrageous and timely films.

A textbook example of a movie that betrays its audience, Entrance begins as a mildly interesting slice-of-life look at a struggling Los Angeles cafe worker, then impulsively devolves into a manipulative slasher picture.

If anything, this Canadian production misses a great opportunity to dig into its setting and examine the dark side of seemingly pristine Toronto, even as the script by Elan Mastai and director David Weaver labors over a mostly boilerplate storyline.

By turns gentle, deadpan, droll and sarcastic, Jimenez's film reflects on Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" to track a sweet but doomed love affair between literary -- and pleasurably randy -- college students.

Every bit as cliched as it sounds, picture offers a dramatically crude, overly familiar take on the bad-boy-turned-good story. At its best, it offers young thesps E.J. Bonilla and Veronica Diaz-Carranza a showcase for their range.

This South Los Angeles-set dramedy flirts with terminal stereotypes and high-school movie cliches right and left.

The picture has a first-rate team of actors who visibly enjoy their roles and the sharp dialogue by Baruchel and Goldberg.

Mannion's script goes a bit too far in terms of twists, capping the third-act suspense with a plot U-turn, and then another, that leaves audiences feeling played. Worse, the final development loses credibility in retrospect, reducing the film to the level of an exercise in paranoia, effects and one actor's ability to hold attention for nearly 90 minutes.

The title is an apt one, suggesting that for all its staging and overt theatrics, independent (read: non-WWF) pro wrestling makes huge demands on the body and spirit.

An unusual example of what can be termed a "gay Christian" film, Cone's feature is among the best of a recent spate of dramas observing American Christian life.

Taking the genre to a higher level of intensity, the Welsh-born Evans continues what he started in previous Indonesia-set actioner "Merantau," but this picture will seal his cult status.

A mechanically efficient yet soulless dramatization of the U.S. Navy SEALs in action, Act of Valor ultimately misses its target: The hearts and minds of American audiences.

Jeter's film takes on the quality of a sustained dream, as if the theatrical conceits of Jean Genet were married to a children's story retold via William Faulker's Southern brand of stream of consciousness.

Similar in its battlefield passages to last year's Danish-made "Armadillo," Dennis' film scores a layered perspective that follows Marine Sgt. Nathan Harris into combat and back home.

Doubly disappointing considering that it marks the first feature by Rwandan filmmakers to address the country's 1994 Hutu-on-Tutsi genocide, Kinyarwanda awkwardly and fitfully patches together a half-dozen story strands meant to provide a panoramic view of war and reconciliation.

Detailing the birth, life and death of America's first major urban housing project in St. Louis, Chad Freidrichs' The Pruitt-Igoe Myth combines concise but thoroughgoing sociological-historical analysis and elegant cinematic resources in service of an uncommonly artful example of film journalism.

The screenplay by Daniel Tendler, Fernando Bonassi and Lula biographer Parana succumbs to many of the most unfortunate narrative tendencies of biopics, including a proclivity for piling on incident after incident as a substitute for real character insight.

A weekend romp for four middle-aged buddies devolves into a drug-fueled, suicidal hell in Mark Pellington's ill-conceived and executed I Melt With You, a work of extreme self-indulgence.

The film observes a guy verging on poverty or riches with a bounty of beautiful imagery and fresh angles on skateboarding culture.

The former Beatle, a longtime Maysles friend, could have found no better documentarian.

Great for ADD-style viewing but not for advancing Iranian cinema's currently challenged profile.

When this "Enemy Within" settles into key action sequences, such as a stunning nighttime ambush or a daytime battle against Fabio, it becomes wildly entertaining.

Leiser flexes his animation muscles with a bewitching stop-motion technique, but it proves a poor fit with a scattershot storyline that includes quasi-interview and improv segments that never coalesce into a coherent whole.

While there's the sense that this old guy/young guy spy angle has been done better by films like "Spy Game" a decade ago, Gere, never looking tougher or handsomer, and Grace, adding some action skills to his relatively cerebral persona, invigorate the proceedings in roles that would seem to benefit the actors' career arcs.

The film as a whole isn't quite as interesting, though it is noteworthy that action specialist Emmerich has clearly decided to change course here from anything he's previously made. Although this is primarily a writer's film, with John Orloff's screenplay (and dialogue) placed front and center, Anonymous surprises with how classical, staid and traditional Emmerich's mise-en-scene is, never straying from tried-and-true costumer standards.

Akomfrah's steady, patient pace makes it fairly easy and ultimately fascinating to absorb his many heady references.

More boring than stomach-churning, the film nevertheless contains scattered scenes and sequences so far beyond the tolerance of the squeamish that it can't be overstated.

Impressive as the combination may seem on paper, having Sheridan direct this sort of genre fare reps a clear miscasting of helmer and subject, as he displays no particular feel for the material and is unable to overcome the story's generic approach, lack of striking psychological ideas, and literal-minded denouement.

Just as some of the footage deepens what is already there, additions in final reel, though closer to Blatty’s wishes, restate the obvious or add a feel-good patina which pushes the film closer to our own audience-pleasing period than the more daring early ’70s. [2000 re-release]

This cautionary melodrama about a Korean-American teen girl's slide into depravity is too inconsequential and too earnest to belong in the So Bad It's Good category; rather, it's merely bad.

Limp comedy-drama.

Never really busts out of second gear.

Samuel L. Jackson instantly takes the mantle from Mr. Shaft himself, Richard Roundtree, and runs with it on pure style and charisma.

An unembarrassed, high-octane demonstration of the virtues of a U.S. military with a mission, the latest war pic from 20th Century Fox -- a studio with a proud tradition in this field -- couldn't be better timed to fit the popular mood.

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.

The film is, at times, emotionally riveting -- yet also has an institutional feeling, largely because it attempts to cover too much ground in too little time.

After a long, glum slide, pic becomes an unconvincing story of redemption.

Judd now is top-billed, but her performance is so resolutely humorless and businesslike that Freeman's gruffly affectionate warmth becomes doubly valuable, though not nearly enough to lend this generic project any special character.

Smartly and seamlessly blending a cast of talented Argentine and Spanish thesps, Pineyro seems to be testing how much cinema he can derive from a restricted space.

Intense, fair-minded entry in the pileup of Iraq pictures.

A strenuously solemn film that wants to create some kind of American pastoral tragedy out of the nation's current angst with the war.

At its best, Garbus' account quietly depicts a set of wasted lives, and a closing image of Allen's plywood casket carted away by a bulldozer is emblematic of the tragedy.

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.

Melds a great cause and Dominique's incandescent charisma with care using research from nine years of filming and reporting.

Pic drifts onto a familiar obstacle course for its wide-eyed hero, but displays a spirited, open-hearted goodness along the way. Combination of warmth, humor, danger and a cosmopolitan take on young, urban Eire sets pic distinctly apart.

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.

Succeeds in displaying the physical drive and demands of cheerleading.

Never quite sure what it wants to be -- a magical-mysterious love story, a psychodrama, a sprawling family saga, or an uneasy combination of these.

A blandly conceived youth adventure lacking zing or style.

Los Angeles may be the most photographed city in the world, but it has never have been captured with such complex layers of meaning and fascination as in Thom Andersen's remarkable Los Angeles Plays Itself.

Oil companies aren't the only ones profiting from a spike in prices at the gas pump. It's likely also to boost the prospects of Who Killed the Electric Car? a likable if partisan post-mortem on the now-defunct auto.

The unlikely success story of superstar Brazilian country music duo Zeze di Camargo and Luciano receives a polished if highly manipulative treatment in Two Sons of Francisco.

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 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.

Little more than an overworked exercise in jostling red herrings, and not particularly fresh herrings at that.

Even more than in "Far From Heaven," Moore's housebound wife is a study in pent-up brilliance, with extraordinary devotion to her family.

The results will be received with a large, loud yawn by all but the most loyal fans of Pinter and hard-working co-stars Michael Caine and Jude Law.

Sandler turns the joke around on his detractors and manages to lead a devilishly energetic vehicle that contains about as many laughs as his previous features combined.

Monica Ali's elegant and critically trumpeted debut novel, Brick Lane, about the travails, conflicting emotions and quiet liberation of a Muslim woman in London, is a far lesser thing in its bigscreen transformation.

The textured, thoughtful results may prove too cerebral and abstract for audiences beyond Smith's hardcore followers,

Proves that few can maneuver one of Cohen's dusky, lovelorn songs like Cohen himself.

The most extensive interplay of live action and animation since "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"

The live event was hopefully more engaging than this dull adaptation.

Sloppy but unconcerned about it, pic offers a trip back in time to a pre-PC and feminist era when men were sexist Neanderthals, women supported them from the sidelines and the guy with the biggest mouth scored.

A brawny commercial attraction strategically tapping into the auds for extreme sports, spy pix, thrill rides, popcorn actioners and anyone looking to see Diesel kick butt, blow stuff up and/or take his shirt off.

The filmmakers seem split between doing it straight and gleefully ripping up the genre, and never make up their minds.

Although this "Sopranos" writing vet delivers several flashes of that show's dark humor and irony, the pic leaves a hollow feeling at the end.

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.

Can't decide whether to be an eccentric black comedy or a middle-of-the-road diversion.

This rambling and episodic autobiographical saga of three friends coming of age in Inglewood, Calif. (aka The Wood) in the '80s is so determined to be likable that it forgets to be interesting.

Ingmar Bergman lays his soul on the line in Marie Nyreroed's gentle, intimate and thorough documentay.

Leo Heiblum's pulsating music and Samuel Larson's dense, fascinating sound editing rewardingly compliment Rulfo's electrifying visuals.

A resoundingly old-fashioned and well crafted study of evil infecting an American family, Frailty moves from strength to strength on its deceptive narrative course.

Coming in the wake of the physically astonishing "Bad Boys 2," S.W.A.T. seems square.

An odd case of filmmaking with a crystal-clear subject but no guiding dramatic premise.

Midnight moviegoers aren't so desperate that they will opt for such trailer trash.

As hard as metal and just as dumb, Paul W.S. Anderson's Death Race couldn't be further from producer Roger Corman and director Paul Bartel's goofy, bloody 1975 original, "Death Race 2000."

Seldom boring but also rarely electrifying.

A pleasantly tuned vehicle for R&B star and budding actor Usher.

Simultaneously teasing and loving a subject doesn't make for easy comedy, but writer-star Will Ferrell and director/co-writer Adam McKay pull it off with good-ol'-boy good nature in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

This bad idea is then underlined by pallid direction from tyro helmer and TV ad vet Kevin Donovan, a virtually incomprehensible plot line and a less-than-satisfying co-starring turn from Jennifer Love Hewitt.

This is the kind of movie that was doomed on the page, both by an inherently problematic premise and ill-conceived character motivations.

Mere recitation of homilies for better living -- which is what Nick Nolte's gas station guru imparts to a struggling young gymnast -- and a half-baked account of the athlete's comeback are no substitutes for a complete movie.

Broadway musical purists will shudder in horror, but parents will be whistling a happy tune that there's at least one acceptable pic out there for their kids.

Borrowing heavily from the current trend in zombie comedy and apocalyptic horror but shifting it away from the usual undead norms, pic carves out a fresh angle in the crowded indie horror universe while blatantly stealing ideas from Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Pulse."

Uneasily pivots between comedy and drama, with its best parts strongly reminiscent of Schepisi's previous, British-made drama about aging and dying buddies, "Last Orders."

If all that Ian Inaba's latest Guerilla News Network missive, American Blackout, wants to do is get left Democrats worked up into a lather of righteous anger at crafty Republicans, it does so at the expense of speaking to any other group of Americans. As such, docu is extremely limited and almost without purpose except as an organizing tool for party foot soldiers.

Despite fine casting...familiarity sets in and lack of surprises directly lessen what could have been emotionally gripping.

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.

Begins as a smartly promising, gently farcical comedy of manners and ends as sourly and haphazardly as the lives it is poking fun at.

The latest model in the recent spate of underwhelming female star vehicles, Enough, a thriller detailing how a good wife gets back at an evil, possessive husband, is never provocative enough to generate strong emotional response.

Contains most of the elements of a "Get Shorty"-type romp without the character depth and wit.

Despite occasional awkwardness in character motion, viewers will be swept away by the luxuriant creation of alternate universes.

Not that it ever rises to the level of Sidney Lumet's Gotham police pics ("Serpico," "Prince of the City"), but 16 Blocks does raise the banner for the tradition of the textured urban cop drama, spurred by action but made substantial by characters at crossroads.

In the end, under-realized direction and characters deliver less than a full deck.

Chaos may not quite be "the most brutal, horrifying film ever made," as its garish ads promote. But it does contain moments as thoroughly sickening as any in Herschell Gordon Lewis' or Lucio Fulvi's bloody exploiters.

Weaves a humdrum plot that's never ahead of the audience until three-quarters through.

Partially biographical story of a rich kid's unplanned encounter with the Marines and his even more random romance with a schizophrenic movie starlet is contrived and emotionally incomplete, and strained further by self-consciously cockeyed dialogue.

Uma Thurman, a female superhero with emotional problems and dating issues, doesn't so much fight the forces of evil as battle the wit-starved movie's torpor -- indeed, her perf suggests what the entire film might have been.

Sheer chaos on wheels, a hysterically edited jumble that defies belief at nearly every juncture.

The 2003 edition written by Nat Mauldin and Ed Solomon and helmed by Andrew Fleming places the Douglas-Brooks combo inside a much more complicated if not quite as funny world.

You'd half expect the Xbox logo to pop up on the credit roll for XXX: State of the Union, since what's on view is closer to a videogame than a movie. While that will be music to the ears of young gamers, it's noise to anyone hoping for a coherent action movie.

Departing less from his horror bailiwick than he did with "Music Of The Heart" in 1999, Wes Craven retains shocks but dispenses with scares in the negligible Red Eye.

Ultimately implodes, letting down the 'hood, hip-hoppers and Jamie Kennedy fans looking forward to his first major starring role.

Continually tickles the mind while leaving a heavy lump in the chest, establishing and sustaining a unique low-key tone of mystery and dread.

A blast and a half -- as entertaining as mainstream American docus get.

The cool hand of Canadian writer-director Jeremy Podeswa proves a disappointing match for Fugitive Pieces, a generally dull and unmemorable adaptation of Anne Michaels' extraordinary prose-poetry novel.

This day in the life of a young man attempting to earn cash for his family back home gathers impact by the reel.

Bridges gives the movie its only genuine pulse as a gym coach known for his hard and manipulative ways.

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

Smith's utterly natural filmmaking there is impressive.

Campbell's performance is attuned to the extremes of unnerving calm and intensely erotic; unlike the pic, she pulls it off.

Intriguing and surprisingly witty.

A rock-ribbed sense of committed, personal cinema and a core belief in people being able to pull themselves out of misery supports Ballast, an extraordinary debut by editor-writer-director Lance Hammer.

The politics of homophobia and child molestation receive a badly misjudged tweaking in Peter Paige's writing-directing debut, Say Uncle.

Handling both directing and cinematography duties, Core invests both with a clearly impassioned sense of place, period and perspective regarding this fanfare for common men.

In a brilliant and precise reversal of Hollywood's current casting game of matching older male stars with younger female starlets, Roth takes hold of the mature end of a love affair with the ultra-handsome Becker and steers a course of vivid sexual and emotional power.

Utterly drab and desperate for laughs.

An honorable but failed attempt to dramatize the dynamics that propel a basically good man to become a suicide bomber, The War Within contains provocative points inside a dull package.

Feels entirely a part of an already faded go-go era. Pic is too late by a mile and rightly dumped in a few theaters by Fox, which will doubtless send it to video bins faster than you can say gigabyte.

Writer-director Jack Piandaryan appears as tone-deaf to his miscalculated dialogue as he is unable to eke out convincing perfs from his cast.

A poorer film than the paltry original even as it strikes a self-consciously clever pose.

Never obtains the full impact of its potentially powerful inner core.

Lacking the kind of fire and energy that the best youth movies demand, leads Ash and Russell display skills better tuned to the small screen.

As a showcase for rising young star Michael Angarano and Christopher Plummer, pic offers the pleasures of connecting Hollywood traditions and generations in the spirit of Peter Bogdanovich's films about and inspired by the movies.

To be sure, Kelley's Emmy-winning brand of off-kilter humor and cockeyed affection for rural folk is on display, but his attempt here to blend the citified angst of "Ally McBeal" (co-star Bridget Fonda was Kelley's first choice as that series' lead) with the countrified absurdisms of "Picket Fences," plus bits out of the Peter Benchley playbook, doesn't hold water.

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."

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 .

Mexican-born helmer Alejandro Monteverde's debut will be remembered as a curious case of a mediocre film that wows crowds.

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

Clearly inspired by, though not in the same dramatic league as, "Schindler's List," pic is marred by uneven perfs and lacks the intensity.

More ambitious than her 2002 debut, "Blue Car," Moncrieff's new film maintains her focus on women, expanding to include a range of ages, circumstances and psychologies. Picture's drama, however, is deliberately fractured into a quintet of stories that vary considerably in their overall impact.

There seems to be no bottom to Going Down, a lame also-ran in the rapidly declining teen gross-out comedy genre.

Perky and effortlessly smooth.

Burning with a quiet intensity, Monster's Ball is bolstered by a poetic, intelligent sensibility not seen in an American film since Terrence Malick's "The Thin Red Line."

Takes a notorious true story about a loyal soldier-turned-bank robber, and pumps it up into charged if uneven entertainment.

Certainly not a piffle, nor an impressive departure into a new filmmaking realm, Allen's second film in a row about crooks ranks in the middle range of his work.

The funny stuff continues for a quite satisfying conclusion during the wedding prep and ceremonies, which Stifler single-handedly transforms into his own personal gross-out comedy masterpiece.

Thesping and production values are solid and sometimes even attractive, but pic's overall American-style gloss becomes extremely odd and discomforting given the setting.

Unusually slick, mini-budgeted and broad piece of slapstick that liberally borrows from Neil Simon and "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight'' with the twist that gay hit men are the romantic heroes.

Surely one of the most frantic, virulent and foul-natured Christmas season pic ever delivered by a Hollywood studio.

Giving Jonathan Rhys Meyers the kind of manly yet paternal role Spencer Tracy once mastered, this carefully wrought international production relates the basic story of reporter George Hogg without any vibrancy, emotion or style.

Ghobadi in this pic displays a complete command of his art as he shifts between -- and even blends -- wrenching tragedy and amusing comedy.

Belzberg's unsparing camera sometimes portrays a level of cruelty that tests viewers' tolerance, but her fearless aesthetic is also a measure of the film's brilliant indictment of any society that can allow its most vulnerable to slip into oblivion.

Every stab at comedy in this mirthless slog is botched.

The star in this case is Martin Lawrence, who is not only thoroughly upstaged by nemesis Danny DeVito but is completely boxed out of his comfort zone for broad physical comedy.

A shoddy vehicle for Jamie Foxx to ride into the summer season on.

Unlike the disturbingly mysterious original, Saw III is a neatly wrapped-up package that explains everything -- including Jigsaw's evil contraptions and the background of his crazed female assistant.

Unconvincingly attempts to update the futurist dystopian traditions of Orwell, Huxley and William Gibson.

Seems to be playing the author's music, but like a string quartet that plays a half-beat off.

Even with ties to the true story of high school hoops coach Jim Keith and his unlikely triumph with a 1960s Oklahoma high school girls' squad, the hackneyed, overlong Believe in Me is much too similar to a recent flood of inspirational basketball pics to distinguish it.

A textbook case in which the parts are greater than the whole.

Though the superhero's fans have long awaited his close-up, the Devil's bounty hunter -- complete with a burning skull for a head and a killer motorcycle in flames --materializes in a movie that never measures up to his infernal potential.

A horror movie without horror, a spook pic without spookiness and a metaphysical drama without the slightest spiritual tug, Soul Survivors virtually dwindles away on the screen.

This deliberately pre-'90s slice of rock 'n' roll-tinged sci-fi horror, decorated with anything but the latest in special effects, seems particularly grungy and marginal.

Exceptionally strong cast is pictures beating heart.

The concert film has never looked or sounded classier than Jonathan Demme's superbly crafted Neil Young: Heart of Gold.

Overall aroma of movie junk food.

Assuming the victims' point of view in the type of kidnapping that's now epidemic in Latin America, Jonathan Jakubowicz's Kidnap Express depicts a nocturnal Caracas with tense energy.

Respectfully modest effort.

Fails to stir the emotions despite its heavily melodramatic drive.

While the point of view of privileged, Anglo observers on African issues usually raises hackles, such is not the case with The Devil Came on Horseback, a tense account of former Marine Capt. Brian Steidle's witnessing of the genocide in Sudan's western province of Darfur.

One of the most brutally awful comedies ever to emerge from a major studio.

Refreshing strokes of science-fact in the early sections give way to action strictly from the Ridley Scott-James Cameron playbook, but without a powerful helmer behind the camera or a memorable cast in front.

Hobbled by uninspired stabs at cleverness and surreal narrative curlicues, The Big Empty goes nowhere, replete with a question mark of an ending that isn't worth answering.

Voice work is weirdly awful and funny at the same time.

While the loyal male-teen aud core will not be disappointed with the spate of gags just for them, story contains solid date-movie material.

The picture's first 35 minutes sizzle until a Byzantine plot nudges the story toward near-parody in the final act.

Another superficial film about music from Scott Hicks ("Shine"), picture runs a distant second to the superior new film on John Adams and Peter Sellars, "Wonders Are Many," which really captures how a composer works.

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

The deft shading he (Byler) elicits from his thesps is of a piece with his dramatics and his understated, artful approach to compositions and movement.

Sloppy and dull in equal measures.

Frustratingly fritters away what fascination it develops and bows to the basic conventions of a standard detective story mixed with the theme of a physician healing himself.

Arguably the finest athlete in living memory deserves better than Michael Jordan to the Max, an honorific but unmoving portrait of the Chicago Bulls' No. 23.

Haplessly blends live-action and visually repellent computer-animated work.

Smokin' Aces blows some cool smoke rings until it makes the very un-cool mistake of overstaying its welcome.

As generic as its title.

Picture's tendency to lecture on the power of faith and religion and on the demerits of science seems to assume an almost childlike audience that needs to be spoon-fed Pablum.

Tender, sensitive Sunset Story sidesteps a maudlin tone for a wide-ranging account of two fragile but opinionated retirees.

Family drama appears content to present the situation without going for anything remotely close to the emotional jugular. Result is unsatisfying and even dreary, despite some fine work from Zooey Deschanel and a becalmed Will Ferrell.

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.

The winner by a knockout is Eddie Jones...Without Jones, pic is a standard drama on the sweet science with the usual tropes and a slight tweak on the usual conflicts.

Not content with a straight psychological police procedural, Alvart mixes in distracting -- and unconvincing --Biblical symbolism in a curious bid for weightiness.

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.

With Undisputed, writer-director Walter Hill is back in contention as one of Hollywood's last defenders of the muscular, no-nonsense genre movie.

Michele Maher's Garmento appears more shocked at the fashion industry's cynical side than moviegoers are likely to be, making its drama of corruption a preordained snooze.

My Best Friend is a sex farce on steroids, overflowing with energy and excessive curiosity about what the movie camera actually can do.

Director Mark Pellington hardly lets a moment pass without suggesting some bad vibes creeping onto the edges of the screen, but he's let down by Richard Hatem's script, based on John A. Keel's book, which delivers an ounce when it promised a gallon.

Stylish and substantial enough to prompt even a couch potato to action, Kelly Duane's Monumental: David Brower's Fight for Wild America delivers a stirring and visually dense account of the life and times of Brower.

Plays closer to an after-school special (with HBO-standard dialogue) than a satisfying feature film.

While the picture's reporting on government repression of alternative cultural ideas and lifestyles is noteworthy more than anything, it's a blatant promo for Chong's career.

Falling short of being truly memorable but sharper than the general slagheap of comedies.

Little more than a slipshod, trashy, sometimes exploitative thriller.

Good-natured but only memorable as a platform for the amusingly feisty Peter Falk, The Thing About My Folks plies a light approach to the problems grown children face when their parents appear on the verge of divorce.

A woefully under-realized story of small-time boxers enjoying perhaps their last moment in the spotlight.

Saddled with more industry/celebrity baggage than a high-class safari voyage, Sahara is a rousing and only occasionally ridiculous adventure yarn.

Patently absurd in both the details and larger aspects, the ultraserious pic is undermined by poor casting.

Misbegotten, unimaginative buddy pic.

Never quite catches fire in its too-deliberate attempt to appeal to all ages and all tastes.

Nonsense, hysterics and many cuppas spill in Caffeine, an ensembler that serves up a menu's worth of forced and trite situations.

De Felitta seems a born documaker. He brilliantly constructs a tale born of a genuine love of jazz and a need to understand how Paris went from sensation to footnote in a generation.

Ensemble proves improvisationally capable, but film overall is rather conventional, a Hollywood idea of an experimental film presented with a heavy serving of showbiz-type cynicism.

As a cautionary drama on the price of fame, Undiscovered could not tread on more exhaustively discovered territory, and the result is a reel-by-reel trail of cliches.

Picture veers unsteadily between melodrama and light comedy, with no confidence in either.

As insistent as its heroine to get its point across, She's the Man gathers up enough energy and likeable goodwill that it almost skirts past some extremely strained passages in which Bynes plays out being a boy.

The joys of farce are fumbled in April's Shower, star-director-writer Trish Doolan's arch and undernourished comedy about a bridal shower turned on its head by the bride's lesbian past.

Sadly symbolizes the decline of the Western. The 36th bigscreen version of the exploits of the James-Younger Gang is one of the least convincing.

While it creaks along at times, director Csaba Kael's new film version of a Hungarian opera masterpiece, Ferenc Erkel's Bank Ban, is ultimately an invaluable entry in the opera-on-film library.

Not surprisingly based on a comic book series by Brett Lewis and R.A. Jones (whom pic fails to credit), pic hurtles along at a pace designed by vet music vid and ad helmer Paul Hunter to engage short attention spans.

A lark gone utterly awry.

Disney's tradition of intelligent, live-action family period cinema is magnificently revived in Tuck Everlasting.

Because it's bolstered by proud memories of Vietnam vets who turned against the war, Sir! No Sir! rings with an exultant, even elated tone.

A thoroughly winning and unexpectedly observant lark about the antics of seven Latino skateboarding pals in South-Central Los Angeles.

Light, taut and compact, the zippy adventure is sometimes much too hip for the room.

Alternately glib, superficial and amusing, pic vainly attempts to absorb some degree of Serbian irony into a story that's unavoidably lessened by its privileged American vantage point.

Balances intelligent humor, slapstick, Blighty reserve and Yank spunk along with environmentalism.

The wild, unhinged life of Andy Warhol's favorite "superstar," Edie Sedgwick, is refashioned in Factory Girl as a tame biopic with little feel for the 1960s New York Underground.

Extraordinary perfs by a mostly young cast likely will be cancelled out by the grim subject.

With intermittently amusing glee, writer-director Ryan Shiraki's tyro film, Freshman Orientation, frolics through the political minefields of a typical college campus.

Shows both how far Hollywood's tech departments have advanced in 40 years and how shallow the pool of solid action thesps has become.

Interesting structure provides pic with plenty of opportunities for social satire, human comedy and chance encounters, but few setups are ever dramatically fulfilled.

Picture sets the gold standard for political documentaries.

Powered by exceptional displays of physical filmmaking, Deep Blue Sea is pulled back to shore by the usual suspects -- weak plotting and weaker dialogue.

A family melodrama that becomes less authentic as it progressively takes itself more seriously.

Because plot is the sum total here, the alarming holes, inconsistencies and impossibilities in Chris Morgan's script corrode this drama of distress.

Though it lacks the sheer, depraved intensity of similarly themed pics like "The Gambler," Ride shares much of the sunlit sadness of "Save the Tiger," also populated by desperate, middle-aged men plying their trade in Los Angeles' garment district.

A satire for its time. What Judge is less sure of here than in his previous, perfectly pitched live-action comedy "Office Space," is how to build a complete movie around his key ideas.

"Inspired by a true story" it may be, but inspired it's not.

With verve, style and a fine sense of the human side of surf culture, Jeremy Gosch makes a terrific splash with his debut doc, Bustin' Down the Door.

Eye-popping lensing and an appreciation of social complexities combine for an entirely satisfying experience.

A pathetically conceived drama that wastes the serious theme of how emotionally and sexually inadequate men abuse others.

Combining a gallery of targets including President Bush, "American Idol," the Iraq War and the overarching theme of a nation of citizens held in the thrall of phony dreams, pic and its ambitions are undermined by insistent cartoonishness and comic ineptitude.

A history of verse is laid alongside that of warfare, and the ways in which they are braided together proves fascinating.

Well-turned adult comedy.

Functional if thoroughly uninspired movie. Because it clings to the comedy-action template of "48 Hrs.," pic feels like it could have been made 15 years ago.

Feels particularly like old news after the risks of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle were laid out for the previously uninformed in last year's "Almost Famous."

Pic displays filmmakers Kevin Harrison's and Kemp Curley's love of snowboarding, but suffers from an unjustifiably long running time, considerable repetition and a generally awkward structure.

Though it never disguises its sympathies for Kasparov and contempt for a powerful corporation's machinations, documentary is finally a speculation on the limits of the human mind and how truth can never be fully known.

A quasi-metaphysical revenge Western that remains as elusive as a distant mirage on a long, dusty trail.

Full of bold dramatic strokes and complex character shadings.

Game 6, the first screenplay by one of America's great living novelists, Don DeLillo, is poorly served by Michael Hoffman's flat, soporific direction.

Enough action, a tiny pinch of sex and some campy moments from Morgan Fairchild.

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

No movie like this about friendship between two young lesbians and their various adventures, punctuated with laissez-faire jump-cutting, should be this boring.

A movie at war with itself -- tuned into its characters' vicissitudes one moment, stumbling with awkward stabs at goofiness the next.

It's precisely the lineup of familiar past work that makes I Spy pretty dull goods, invigorated mainly by the sharp interplay between Murphy and Wilson, both of whom shine best when they have a sidekick to work with.