Ronnie Scheib

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

This spectacular orchestration of visual elements seems wasted on a threadbare, inanely repetitive plotline.

Rarely has anyone embodied contradictions as happily and harmoniously as octogenarian New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham.

Despite the fine thesping seen in this innocuous piece of fluff, the whole amounts to less than the sum of its parts.

Less cohesive and accessible than "The Maid" (which the Chilean duo co-scripted and Silva helmed solo), picture nonetheless contains unforgettable scenes.

Loveless exerts a low-energy, dread-tinged fascination that intrigues rather than wows.

Nothing here -- technologically, linguistically or visually -- would not be more at home decades ago, when director Stephen Herek helmed "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" and "The Mighty Ducks."

Though the actors don't flesh out or particularly fit their roles, they seem perfectly at ease with them and with each other.

Without fully fleshed-out generic or social contexts, left-wing documentarian Philippe Diaz's preachy mix of graphic free love and polemical diatribe fails to mesh as fiction, though it does make for superior porn.

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."

Winters deserves better.

Teper buries his material in gimcrack mod trappings that trivialize rather than celebrate Sassoon's accomplishments.

This must-see expose entertains as it horrifies.

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.

As a character study and revelation of a possible answer to addiction, the docu rocks. But Negroponte's low-res video camera, trivializes the film's already crude approximations of psychedelic experiences and its recordings of shamanistic rituals.

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.

Offering a smorgasbord of violence with liberal sprinklings of sex, Russian import Alien Girl delivers wearisome brutality but little finesse.

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.

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.

Garden of Eden sends sleek, half-nude bodies glumly cavorting through lush Riviera landscapes in a paradigm of unintentional camp.

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

Family-friendly holiday fare.

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.

An edgier Richard Linklater for a less privileged generation, mumblecore helmer Frank V. Ross captures his characters' dead-end disaffection not through stasis, but through nervous activity.

Though targeted at tots, Ponyo may appeal most to jaded adults thirsty for wondrous beauty and unpackaged innocence

Scripter/helmer Sue Kramer's awkward freshman outing eventually coasts on the genuine charm of its leads. A strong vehicle for Heather Graham, who has never looked lovelier, "Gray" scores most convincingly in its reinvention of Carole Lombardian sexual screwiness as head-spinning gender confusion.

In dangerous and downright cruddy conditions, the personable Palestinians share stories, lodgings and camaraderie with the young Israeli filmmaker, whose handheld camera follows them everywhere.