Ronnie Scheib

Comes off as a painfully old-fashioned, flatly directed exercise in passionless historical reenactment.

Inevitable comparisons to Quentin Tarentino's femme-centered carnage extravaganza "Kill Bill" are not unwarranted insofar as both films featurefeature an abstract, self-conscious, and decidedly post-modern approach to a moribund genre.

Both subscribes to and somewhat departs from the bare-bones improvisational formula established by the mumblecore movement, sometimes sacrificing ambiguity for the sake of broader, telegraphed, one-note laughs.

Suliman (“Paradise Now,” “The Attack”) dominates the screen as Khaled, utterly compelling in and out of jail, his magnificent perf tying up cinematic loose ends.

A bathetic TV-movie-type "learning experience" that provides about as much insight into teenagers as 40s westerns did into Indians--it's all in the costumes and customs.

Even if Matteo Garrone's "Gomorrah" hadn't dramatically raised the bar for mafioso movies, The Sicilian Girl would have repped a mediocre entry in the Cosa Nostra canon and a waste of an extraordinary true story.

Once Heifetz becomes a household name, Rosen struggles mightily to milk drama not from his musical genius, but from his relatively unremarkable personal life.

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.

Knockout performances by John Cusack and child actor Bobby Coleman help legitimize a whimsical but sententiously moralizing script.

Gay Gotham farce written, directed and starring veteran actor Craig Chester ("Swoon," "Kiss Me Guido") delivers plenty of well-timed slapstick, a brace of oddball zanies and a couple of show-stopper musical numbers. Material is uneven, but rhythm and pacing keep action moving smartly.

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.