Ronnie Scheib

Few could dispute the obvious physical and mental benefits derived from the practice of this ancient discipline. One could, however, wish that this endless encomium played less like a PowerPoint sales pitch, illustrated with clip-art imagery, scored with generic music and narrated in mellifluous tones by Annette Bening.

Dancing Across Borders, Anne Bass' uneven docu debut, traces the fortunes of Cambodian ballet dancer Sokvannara "Sy" Sar from the time Bass first discovered him performing traditional temple dances at Angkor Wat to his conquests on the world stage.

If Caranfil’s mix of comedy and tragedy seems too scattershot to fully achieve catharsis, it does boast a rather Jewish sense of humor, itself a curious testimonial to the past.

Sentimental and a bit too cute in evoking a child's-eye view, the picture, nevertheless will please its target Jewish auds.

Its provocative subject matter, though seriously treated, qualifies it as a dark-horse candidate for latenight cable.

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.

Evocatively fleshed out with surprisingly iconic homemovies, passionate love letters and well-chosen pop tunes, Kleine's homegrown Jewish "Madame Bovary" escapes the navel-gazing boundaries of the personal-diary docu by the sheer force of its evocation of bygone sensuality.

Keeps grimly glued to its one-note premise, relieved by nary a glimmer of humor, surprise or personality.

Once Choose Connor ventures into the larger political arena, it begins to work against itself.

Though picture is downbeat and defiantly low-budget, its laid-back absurdist tone and no-nonsense pacing make for an audio-visual delight.

Far from encouraging "Survivor"-style competitiveness, the desert setting serves as a serene Club Med-type backdrop to the all-male bonding.

Part personal quest, part testimonial and part fund-raiser, A Journey in My Mother's Footsteps fulfills disparate agendas for helmer Dina Rosenmeier, a mildly resentful daughter wondering why her humanitarian mother prioritized orphaned Indian children over her own offspring.

Culture shock often proves the stuff of comedy, but the sight of a silver-studded, sombrero-topped mariachi band breaking into a rousing rendition of "Hava Nagila" transports diversity into the realm of the surreal.

This far-fetched, deliberately artificial game of musical chairs -- in which mismatched characters encircle, attract and repel each other -- feels forced, often losing itself in excess verbiage.

Set in cramped apartments and hole-in-the-wall storefronts in the East Village, Michael M. Bilandic's nanobudget comedy Happy Life plays like a poor schlub's "High Fidelity."

This strong, well-crafted documentary preaches eloquently to the choir.

Shetty’s need to maintain his characters’ romantic heroism constantly grates against his depictions of their ridiculousness.

Undeniably topical but the lack of emotional investment in its characters renders it more intelligent than engaging.

Picture touchingly conveys the everyday closeness of the Rashevskis, who are wont to tango their troubles away, but spiritual upheavals and tonal shifts feel artificial and strained.

With Cross jump-starting others on a liquid road to health, this glorified infomercial could saturate latenight TV after its April 1 bow.

The film’s emotional center rings coldly hollow, its star-crossed lovers coming off more like projected figures than flesh-and-blood players.

Likable but lightweight slacker comedy.

Spinning a wry, tall-tale version of his autobiography, the septuagenarian audaciously plays himself at every age and every stage of his improbably picaresque adventures.

Mia and the Migoo boasts a handsome, folkloric look that is often undermined by a ham-handed script.

Brand has assembled a cast of world class improvisers, yet doesn't take advantage of their own particularized, inflected rhythms, as each ritualistically experiences a jump-cut fragmentary flashback in front of the same bathroom mirror.

The latest in a line of documentaries decrying the destruction of viable working-class businesses and residential neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Su Friedrich’s film bypasses sadness and indignation for flat-out anger and well-aimed sarcasm.

Beyond its cool, reflective surfaces and infinite plays with perspective lies nothing -- character, relationships, motives all seemingly irrelevant. Even Willem Dafoe as a haunted cop cannot ground these artfully grisly optical illusions, unconnected to any comprehensible storyline.

A startling wake-up call about appalling conditions prevailing in American schools, The War on Kids contradicts popular wisdom.

The edge achieved by director-editor-producer-scribe Garth Donovan is jeopardized by overreaching for topical relevance.

One need not fully subscribe to Peter Navarro's demonization to appreciate his lucid wake-up call to the imminent dangers of the huge U.S.-China trade imbalance and its disastrous impact on the American economy.

What starts as an impassioned exploration of the medical establishment's court-proven conspiracy to "contain and eliminate" the chiropractic profession soon turns into a scattershot expose of the entire health care field in Doctored.

Dustin Guy Defa's Bad Fever takes mumblecore to its reductio ad absurdum, featuring a hero whose utterances border on the unintelligible.

But atmospherics notwithstanding, the narrative unfolds unconvincingly in jerky fits and starts.

Lacks focus, stumbling from one emotionally fraught stopping place to another but arousing less and less curiosity along the way.

Satirist and "Daily Show" ex-contributor Mo Rocca's faux-disingenuous tone and nonstop jocularity dominate the documentary to quickly grating effect, significantly diminishing its impact.

Unable to establish a consistent tone, picture goes derivatively screwball one minute and stickily sentimental the next.

The story of a ragtag Native American team rediscovering the tribal roots of the game to defeat preppie champions is rife with tired tropes, and lacking in three-dimensional characters or colorful plot-twists. Happily for this Onandaga-financed production and vet director Steve Rash, gifted Native American lacrosse players lend hard-hitting impact to the game scenes.

Ultimately, nothing can save this pic from the warm fuzzies.

An old-fashioned postmodern hoot.

Culturally falling somewhere between "Sideways" and "Dumb and Dumber," this low-rent road movie similarly rides on principles of audience identification, largely minus competent helming, thesping or scripting.

Comes off as lame and unfocused as its draggy dramatis personae.

The script’s autobiographical roots tend to substitute for a well-constructed dramatic throughline, giving the film an open-endedness that feels more dismissive than ambivalent.

A bland, perverse round-robin of teen angst.

Stephen Vittoria's documentary about Mumia Abu-Jamal -- unrepentant commie cop-killer to some, political martyr to others -- makes no bones about its allegiance.

Registers like a quaint display of local color.

Buday's astrology-themed romantic comedy boasts a promising premise, convincing chemistry between its attractive leads and fine thesping by a defensively edgy Jena Malone. But the uneven script, repetitive tropes and over-indulgence of actorly bits slow the pace, tipping youthful casualness into complacency.

More entertaining than especially revelatory, this timely documentary adds a sprightly note to a somber subject.

Wide-ranging educational documentary attaches itself to the rise and fall of a 12-year-old fashion model, and indeed, its sincere, cautionary tone seems best suited to younger auds and small screen exposure.

Watching a consummate pro like Turner navigate an uneven script, veering from farcical determination, her cheeks puffed like those of a demented chipmunk, to utter devastation, can be immensely entertaining, particularly when she's backed by an able cast, as she is here.

Standout perfs by Bernadette Peters as an aging diva and Rachel Brosnahan as her solicitous 15-year-old daughter are the only reasons to see Lisa Albright's Coming Up Roses, a tired '80s-set meller hobbled by lackluster helming and an unconvincing script.

It is the presence of Duncan as a Mike Tyson-esque, malaprop-spouting ex-champion that, at least momentarily, lifts the pic out of its mediocrity.

The overly simplistic script by Zac Stanford (“The Chumscrubber”) hits nothing but high notes, making the whole dramatically less than the sum of its parts.

Thesping is more engaging than accomplished, as Anderson's constant smile cracks around the edges and Northover's dourness is a bit overdone.

Even a magnificently inspired Maria Bello proves insufficiently daring to save Richard Alfieri and Arthur Allan Seidelman's Chekhov-based chamber piece Sisters from pretentious psychodrama.

Tracing a journey of self-discovery through six North Indian states without a formal script, Ali’s actors, like his characters, effectively improvise in a meandering present tense, stripped of any viable destination.

Icelandic helmer Baltasar Kormakur ("101 Reykjavik," "Jar City") injects notes of hysteria into the script's frenetic pileup of gratuitous cliches, as Dermot Mulroney pushes his square-jawed, desperate hero to near-masochistic extremes.

The leads jell well but the film overcompensates to justify their union, surrounding them with broadly drawn secondary characters presented in an uncertain, inconsistent comic tone.

Trite, sententious and generally unfunny.

After a seductively moody intro, Michael Walker's domestic thriller devolves into a cartoonish attack on the filthy rich.

Tracks the race-to-the-deadline scramble of a personable young designer preparing an underfunded fashion show, but offers few threads that were not already more solidly and stylishly woven into "Unzipped," "Seamless" or "11 Hours."

Picture narrowly avoids outright bathos, thanks largely to first-rate perfs by its child thesps and by Ray Liotta. But by self-righteously rejecting facile solutions, then employing them anyway in the tradition of "no ending left behind," the result conforms to parents' old-fashioned notions of kid movies rather than demonstrating true kid appeal.

Unfortunately, the documentary's impact is mitigated the benefactor's constant presence and paternalistic, infomercial-like exposition.

Pic contains its share of viable gags and stars generate a certain degree of convincing chemistry. But eventually, the seams in personality design and artificially stitched-together script construction begin to show.

Another in the procession of dead children movies that followed Atom Egoyan's magisterial "The Sweet Hereafter," helmer Gaby Dellal's sophomore effort unfolds in a similarly snow-blanketed small town filled with grieving adults, the community divided in apportioning blame. In contrast with Egoyan's labyrinthine structure and complex storylines, Crest cobbles together bits of plot and a motley assortment of half-formed characters.

Pic relies on nerdy world-weary irony to carry the day, but doesn't convincingly draw its characters.

Brit helmer Malcolm Mowbray's film assumes the constrictions of a stagebound farce, taking place on a single set in real time, and swept along in magisterially broad strokes by Jeffrey Tambor's playfully theatrical perf.

Clunky allegorical elements, however, remain unsatisfyingly ambiguous throughout the picture.

Sarah Jessica Parker's myriad fans will doubtless appreciate her frazzled warmth in a part she energetically inhabits, but the picture at times feels out of step with contemporary reality and humorless in its adaptation of a comic bestseller.

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

Stellar thesps gamely strive to elevate the one-note material, but gravity ultimately defeats them in this relentless downer.

Featuring a strong central perf by Bill Sage, a raincoated detective turn by Roy Scheider and the upscale autumnal serenity of the Hamptons, If I Didn't Care remains a stylistic exercise in elegant gratuitousness.

The film is hamstrung by its fidelity to real-life inspirational models.

French actress-writer-director Josiane Balasko plunges in with all the finesse of a hopped-up Pollyanna, her simplistic interpretation of an impaired sexagenarian coming close to outright parody.

In the central role, first-time feature helmer Alexander Poe may trigger sheepish identification among the neurotic with the protag's vaguely ridiculous reactions. While his character registers as white-bread bland, strong performances from the two "exes" save this indie from a surfeit of self-deprecating charm.

The picture's assorted characters, though credible, feel wearisomely one-dimensional, while the pumped-up action, unfolding in a single day, basically consists of an extended game of hide-and-seek.

The Sweet Inspirations ranked as one of the most important backup singing groups in record-industry history, having performed with Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison, Dionne Warwick, Jimi Hendrix, Nina Simone, the Drifters, Wilson Pickett, Dusty Springfield and Elvis Presley. Yet, aside from an occasional still photograph, not a single frame of archival footage from their illustrious careers shows up in This Time.

Lack of perspective and shaky comic tone plague Tollbooth -- sinking it in a morass of whiny cliches.

An ambitious, low-budget neo-noir, Stephen Purvis' El Cortez navigates the genre's tawdry twists and crosses and double-crosses with intermittent flair.

A behind-the-scenes comedy about the making of a reality TV show, My Uncle Rafael looks suspiciously like an outright sitcom itself, with the same careful dosage of sententiousness and one-liners.

A lackluster actioner.

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

In scope, depth, rhythm and gags, "Pizzas" seems best suited to the small screen.

A rousing, hilarious Bacchanal of family togetherness, Roger Paradiso's brilliantly cinematic adaptation of the second-longest running play in Off-Broadway history might be the best of the recent rash of wedding pics.

Colorless exposition and a lack of imagination or wit stall Father of Invention at the starting gate.

Strictly for fans of free-form, DIY hit-or-miss humor (and those who prefer a miss to a hit), pic complacently parades its alienated amateurism in the mistaken belief that half a gag is better than none.

Timothy Hutton's fine, loose-limbed perf as a man adrift lifts Multiple Sarcasms, frosh scribe-helmer Brooks Branch's male menopause apologia, out of cliche-ridden territory -- at least temporarily.

Winters deserves better.

Watching TV feels fundamentally old-fashioned in its storytelling. Thesping is solid, particularly by O'Nan, Nam and Jacobs. But the conversations feel artificial, overly concerned with re-creating period detail or interjecting relevant philosophical life concepts.

Simultaneously insightful and idiotic.

Some six or seven men (women conspicuously absent), including a mayor, an immigration lawyer, a congressman and a "coyote," offer views on immigration. Unfortunately, they all say the same thing -- and it's nothing new, affecting or articulate.

Colburn's focus is so single-mindedly laudatory that the whole collaborative process is reduced to people either helping or hindering the visiting genius.

The tale of a pickpocket's redemption through love, plus a vengeance-seeking cop and assorted betrayals, Loosies weakly channels Sam Fuller's "Pickup on South Street" but without the explosive action, iconic thesping and stylistic punch.

More polished and better acted than many "inspirational" biopics.

Despite the presence of Glen Matlock, Steve Dior and a handful of other punk rockers, plus a slew of oblique eyewitness who lurked around before and after the fact, the documentary soon bogs down in tiresome minutiae.

Though the Pangs prove culturally adaptive on a visual level, they seem completely clueless as to the tonal modalities of Mark Wheaton's admittedly undercooked, all-American script.

Complex story twists unfold to confusing effect, while characters angrily toss cliches at one another and revelations multiply rather than resolve murky plot developments.

Amiable but uneven.

Lacks seismic guffaws but elicits many mild smiles.