Ronnie Scheib

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.

Engages but underwhelms.

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.

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

Scotti's amateur camerawork proves strangely compelling.

Holiff Sr.’s extensive audio diaries and taped phone conversations with Cash give authentic voice to the film’s otherwise stodgy re-creations of this true odd couple’s stormy relationship.

Covering familiar ground from an unfamiliar angle, Ted Woods' oddball documentary White Wash examines the history of African-American disenfranchisement from a black surfer's viewpoint, in the process countering the racist myth that black people don't swim or surf.

The movie belongs to thesps Jacobs and Meester. Jacobs fully inhabits her less-than-completely-sympathetic role with warmth and just the right touch of unconscious entitlement, while Meester luminously expands the film’s affective core.

Burns' always impressive sense of place lends authenticity to the pals' perambulations, and the stellar cast brings a welcome overabundance of personality to regrettably one-note roles.

Safer, more conventional and closer to broad TV sketch humor than Christopher Guest's comedies of manners, The Grand never quite recoups in laughs what it loses in spontaneity.

This inordinately likable and consistently funny boxing saga-cum-romantic comedy doesn't so much ridicule the "Rocky"-type inspirational sports fable as gently deflate its heroic overdrive.

Greif obviously ascribes to the Blake Edwardian school of comedy, laying out gags with commendable topographical precision. But, unlike Edwards' unique mixture of sophistication and slapstick, Funny Money falls squarely in the tradition of pure farce, itself an anomaly in this age of aggressively abrasive personality comedies.

A magnificent performance by Sarah Polley illuminates every frame of this relatively upbeat melodrama.

Sharp dialogue, idiosyncratic characters and a wickedly brilliant structure that subtly derails expectation make Laura Smiles a rarity among mellers.

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

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.

Deftly sidestepping both melodrama and family-values messaging, Poppe imbues the film with enormous emotional resonance, brilliantly grounded by his leading lady.

The result is Sam (Mark Duplass, "The Puffy Chair" and "Humpday"), a 34-year-old unemployed rocker whose mediocre musicianship is matched only by his abysmal people skills; he's like Jack Black without any energy or confidence.

Collectivist in spirit, this mostly entertaining film lacks an official host or voiceover narration, which first works swimmingly but eventually becomes too diffuse.

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

Happily, "Upwards" picks up immeasurably when three legit luminaries (Andrea Martin, Julie White, Peter Friedman) enter the picture as the couple's parents.

Hearing the majestic iambic pentameter rendered in the sharply rising and falling cadences of colloquial Yiddish proves wackily charming, but the lack of correlation between the two plots makes the result feel unfocused.

A skillfully crafted, highly entertaining documentary.

Craig Rosebraugh’s docu Greedy, Lying Bastards covers ground well-traveled by environmental exposes from “An Inconvenient Truth” to “The Island President.” Rosebraugh, however, focuses less on the issue of global warming itself and more on the deniers and their big-money backers.

Israeli helmer Dror Sahavi's well-meaning but simplistic terrorist melodrama, gingerly counterbalancing religious fanatics on either side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, utilizes a lyrical "Romeo and Juliet"-type encounter between a reluctant suicide bomber and a Jewish escapee from Orthodox closed-mindedness to plead mutual tolerance.

A strong cast, formal visual style and cynical voiceover that propels the action help elevate this Seattle-set gay romp from the ranks of the stereotypical.

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

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