Ronnie Scheib

Cindy Kleine pays tribute to her famed theater-director hubby in Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner, with thoroughly delightful results.

Entertaining, painlessly educational documentary.

The women's personalities and strengths command attention, their stories neatly dovetailing with the study's hypotheses. But when the film suddenly, almost subversively, shifts gears, and the questioner becomes the questioned, the pic's dynamic changes radically.

The constant, genial comic undercurrent of teenspeak exchanges, penned by the writing team of helmer Meyer and Luke Matheny, contrasts satisfyingly with Kingsley’s wry musings and the more serious treatment given to David’s evolving maturity.

A smartly paced, highly entertaining Bollywood gagfest. No comic masterpiece, perky pic nevertheless boasts likable characters, colorful villains, well-timed gags and Ram Sampath's extremely catchy tunes, all woven into a seamless, escalating whole.

The 13 women, all born or made New Yorkers -- all born or made women -- of various ages, shapes, sizes and backgrounds, lose none of their mystique by being captured "behind the scenes," traipsing through airports or meticulously applying weird makeup. Rather, they reveal themselves as more conscious, integral parts of a spectacle that unfolds to hypnotic effect.

Reminiscences about Goodman and readings of his poetry are played over old pictures that capture his singularly seductive appeal and lively sense of humor.

The film doesn’t so much avoid cliches as brush off any sentimental excess, briskly maintaining narrative flow.

At a leisurely 172 minutes, the pic takes on the desultory rhythms of rural stagnation, its rigorous compositions imparting aesthetic weight and meditative scope to everything in its purview.

Unlike Steven Soderbergh's twisty "Side Effects," Karpovsky's picture seldom surprises, its strengths lying in a leisurely journey toward a clearly predestined denouement.

Mistaken for Strangers, a documentary about indie group the National, comes off like an exercise in self-deprecation. As much a diary film as a rockumentary, it almost compulsively veers away from its ostensible subject.

Scotti's amateur camerawork proves strangely compelling.

Slight, extremely likable picture, a sly variant on recent immigrant movies like "The Visitor" and "Goodbye Solo."

The excellent cast in Christophe Barratier's loose remake of a 1945 Jean Dreville film ensures that the predictable, nostalgic ride remains enjoyable throughout.

Superb emotional thesping complements script's measured restraint.

Unfortunately, instead of the usual larger-than-life male figures--Marcello Mastroianni, Harvey Keitel, Bruno Ganz--of Angelopoulos's recent films, we get a distractingly vapid couple who tend to drain the emotional resonance of these extraordinary, ever-shifting tableaux.

Though highly improvisational and slapdash a la mumblecore, Kotlyarenko’s pic proves more anarchic and satirically energetic, showcasing individual actors almost like performance artists.

The superlatively acted indie promises more than it delivers, but chillingly evokes sufficient primal dread.

Pitch-perfect dialogue, quietly dynamic helming and small-scale action on a widescreen canvas make for a very appealing film.

The picture's deepest fascination lies in the soldiers' complicated reactions to the war, perceived simultaneously as funny, horrific, stirring and traumatic.

A vibrant, unpretentious small-town tale.

Though fans might miss Perry's genre-exploding daring, the excellent cast injects enough pathos and zing to keep picture percolating.

Pays fitting tribute to Wetlands' unique rebirth of '60s idealism within a '90s urban setting.

A curiously warm-and-fuzzy hindsight interpretation of artistic aggression, delivered by the artists themselves.

[A] meticulous postmortem.

This curious blend of documentary and narrative, held together less by any plot device than by a rigorous aesthetic, proves all the more effective for being in service of casual naturalism.

Tyro helmer Sara Lamm satisfyingly stitches together the family soap opera into a comfortable crazy quilt without sacrificing its unique, oddly topical edge.

This engaging character study functions best as a two-hander: The male leads build a wholly believable, offbeat co-dependency, while their interactions with others tend toward the more generic.

Momentarily abandoning the strain of imagining liberation within a realistically perceived Israel, Fox here settles for the ephemeral glow of an exuberant block party.

Alternating between New York clubs by night and the colorful streets and countryside of Santa Domingo by day, pic captures the spirit of the music and the nation that gave birth to it.

Laurien van den Broeck's masterful unblinking performance transcends the uneasy all-English dialogue.

A sure-fire audience-pleaser, Scott (son of Garry) Marshall's winning comedy bow could have been titled "My Big Fat Jewish Bar Mitzvah."

Celebratory, family-friendly fable.

Ultimately, picture's fascination lies with the personalities and strategies of the candidates themselves.

The amazing invincibility of Hollywood-entrenched pedophiles creates a thematic unity of its own in Berg’s otherwise somewhat shakily constructed film.

Briskly paced humor and/or pathos flow organically from situation and characters.

Stephen Dorff's powerhouse perf as an ordinary Joe trapped behind bars with warring ethnic psychopaths propels Felon well ahead of its expose/exploitation brethren while still avoiding the pious learning curves of Frank Darabont's prestige prison dramas.

Impressive though the results of the WHO’s campaign to eradicate polio may be, it is Zaidi’s lensing of the streets, waterways and people of Pakistan that lingers in the mind.

So strong are the perceived parallels between the Peruvian situation described in State of Fear and the sociopolitical dynamics of the current U.S. war on terror that filmmakers have trouble, in post-screening Q&As, returning the discussion to the historical subject at hand.

Effortlessly interlinking the stories through the jaunty perambulations of a fresh-faced waitress from a local cafe, Thomson's crowd-pleaser makes up in refined schmaltz what it lacks in innovation or profundity.

Expertly constructed, impressively lensed and surprisingly entertaining.

Oddly, the director's personal connection with his subject adds little warmth, filmmaker Carl proving nearly as unemotional as his deadpan dad.

Surprisingly entertaining.

This engaging if somewhat underwhelming tale of unlikely redemption builds a funny-sad web of intersecting interactions around its strong central perfs.

Upbeat Urbanworld documentary prizewinner, full of strong personalities and crisply edited court action.

Clearer, more thoughtful editing would have greatly enhanced the effectiveness of this sometimes-revelatory documentary.

For some, the documentary will represent the endorsement of a self-hater spouting traitorous ideas; for others, it celebrates the courage of a reviled, truth-telling martyr to the cause of academic freedom.

Morrison has always closely collaborated with musicians, but here the helmer goes one better, making music the ultimate product of the Great Flood.

The film’s rather simplistic cultural juxtapositions, pitting artistic appreciators against status-seeking philistines, work best when narrowly focused on the subject of wine.

Competently written and skillfully acted, the film seems to be melodrama-bound, when a shocking discovery and the sudden arrival of friends instead send it careening into comedy.

Gerwig, charmingly unflappable in "Greenberg," lets it all hang out here, unafraid to sacrifice likability to over-the-top hysteria as someone who cannot control herself, despite a lingering sense of her own absurdity. Alexander proves a worthily understated foil, his self-deprecatory whimsy recalling that of a young Johnny Depp.

From this polarizing lie, Techine fashions a brilliantly complex, intimate multi-strander, held together but somewhat skewed by the central perf of Emilie Dequenne ("Rosetta"), whose radiant physicality threatens to eclipse even Catherine Deneuve.

Sticking closely to the written text (with basketballs and barbells supplying incidental props) and wisely not attempting to reimagine the specific circumstances that separate the lovers, a dynamite ensemble cast of young actors invests the Bard's poetry with energetic immediacy.

Gleefully piles on everything anyone could want in a docu on the fabulous Kuchar brothers, whose deliriously campy zero-budget mellers -- with titles like "Hold Me While I'm Naked" or "Sins of the Fleshapoids" -- enlivened many otherwise somber evenings of '60s underground cinema.

With equal measures of showmanship, patriotism and irony, hundreds vie at NYC's Pussycat Lounge for the East Coast Division of the first-ever nationwide air guitar championship for the right to eventually represent the U.S. at the world championship.

Piles the pathos high as if to see how many hard-luck cliches its pugilist hero can fend off without succumbing to schmaltz. Given John Leguizamo's knockout perf, sentimentality never dares raise its head, and the improbably stacked deck from which his character is dealt gives the pic's would-be "neo-realist" premise a peculiar edge.

Pic's quiet lucidity and matter-of-fact procedurals pack a cumulative emotional punch.

Maintaining a bemused, sometimes comic distance, Betbeder traces how happenstance crystallizes into biography as his characters traverse the titular seasons.

PBS-bound docu constitutes a revealing look at a poorly understood chapter in American history.

With an eclectic mix of strong-minded thesps all pulling in slightly different directions, this shape-shifting genre hybrid successfully commingles 12-step therapy, romantic comedy and hit-man thriller.

Works better as a series of well-conceived, impeccably timed and executed physical gags, with light dustings of pathos, than as the story of a woman sacrificing her artistic identity on the altar of motherhood.

Enjoyable, daffily improbable escapist romp.

"Mundo" saves the full effect for dramatically lit performances at stopovers along the road, climaxing at the jam-packed Luna Park arena in Buenos Aires.

Atmospheric picture positively vibrates with authenticity, and Janssen's intense, febrile performance earned a special jury prize at the Hamptons fest.

Altina makes for loose, exasperating but oddly endearing viewing.

Crams a wealth of material into 90 minutes without losing clarity or momentum.

Functions swimmingly as both a bigscreen inflation of smallscreen icons and a fairly hilarious stand-alone.

Initially registers as meandering and disjointed enough to qualify as mumblecore. But remarkably, the film gradually, effectively coheres, building to a climax at once unexpected yet integral to what has transpired before.

Fascinating case study of the moral quagmire of globalism.

Suffused with buoyant, sunlit sensuality, like its free-flying heroine, Elza confounds logic while seducing the senses.

The horrific events in Mexico are proving fertile ground for black comedy, and though Saving Private Perez is certainly not the blackest, it may well be the funniest.

Hentoff presides over a film rich in the sounds and occasional sights of legendary cultural figures, from Lenny Bruce and Malcolm X to Bob Dylan and Coleman Hawkins.

With its convincingly antique-looking artifacts and hilarious “re-creations,” the March 1 release should please audiences searching for an intelligent, satiric spin on historical hindsight.

Nominally structured around the Intel Science Talent Search, Whiz Kids traces a dual process: the empowerment of economically challenged students who otherwise might not realize their potential, and the empowerment of the nation through the problem-solving efforts of its best and brightest.

Amid the flood of documentaries about the Arab Spring in general and the Egyptian Revolution in particular, Uprising takes a clear, cohesive approach to the spontaneous events at its center.

Mai Iskander's stunning documentary-helming debut.

Proves as entertaining as the earlier "The War Room," which also featured Carville, but is more somber.

Picture offers unique glimpses into the hearts and minds of those who have turned reasons for hatred into a crusade for tolerance, braving the scorn of enemies and compatriots alike.

Winning, consistently funny comedy, with lively script by veteran Colombian producer/scribe Dago Garcia ("Maximum Penalty"), The Car is driven by unusually sharp helming from newcomer Luis Orjuela, and a dynamite ensemble cast.

Fascinating study of free enterprise in free fall. While it may disappoint thrill-seekers, "Girlfriend" should still delight Soderbergh fans and niche auds.

Pitch-perfect central perf (by scribe and co-producer Damian Lahey), total lack of dramatic artifice and surreally situational humor make for a minor-key vignette of unmistakable, if unstable, authenticity.

Deftly avoiding both the haphazardness of mumblecore and the fakery of studio romantic comedies, Khoury deploys a light directorial touch marked by assured thesping and a genuine appreciation for neurotic angst.

A worshipful tribute to the life and work of Jane Goodall.

Bristling with wry wit and peopled with a rogue's gallery of disaffected losers.

Basically conservative yet titillatingly "eccentric" British laffer could succeed in the "Full Monty" import slot.

Helmer George Butler correctly gauges his film's strengths, with the search for life in the universe becoming a heartfelt tribute to a couple of robots.

A delightfully inventive valentine to his 83-year-old Lebanese grandmother, Mahmoud Kaabour's Grandma, a Thousand Times tenderly deconstructs the family-portrait genre, investing all manner of postmodernist distancing devices with emotional resonance.

Arguably stronger conceptually than visually, surreal mix of the unexpected and the banal is definitely not to everybody's taste. But the music is inarguably sublime.

Cleverly channeling gangster tropes through a British kitchen-sink soap opera, TV scribe-helmer Ben Wheatley has concocted a nifty black comedy, with a little help from his friends, in Down Terrace.

What emerges from Walter's docu is not a sense of failure, but a recognition that the play's the thing, enriched by every flawed performance, perfection almost irrelevant to its cry of anguish.

Throughout, the drivers are framed against the various cityscapes they traverse, though their philosophical views on what is unfolding around them differs with age and temperament.

Laid-back yet incisive, The New Black examines the complexity of black attitudes toward same-sex marriage, which the mainstream media tend to oversimplify as church-dominated and uniformly negative.

The film, produced by Cherney, makes a clear and cogent case (later upheld by a court verdict) that police and FBI falsified evidence in order to discredit Bari's cause.

Beastie Boy Adam Yauch proves he can make a comprehensive, state-of-the-art docu of interest to basketball aficionados.

Cunningly fashioning found footage into a rabbit's-eye view of events, Polish helmer Bartek Konopka creates a chillingly apt political allegory in Rabbit a la Berlin.

Instead of using its hot-button issues as a present-day hook, sticks with a 19th century mindset which it accompanies with elegant turn-of-the-century decors.

[A] deft assemblage of homemovies, work tapes and interviews is further invigorated by 1980s interviews with Pomus and a dynamite soundtrack of his rock ‘n’ roll perennials.