Ronnie Scheib

Shady mood-piece profits greatly from enigmatic performance by Emmanuel Xeureb.

Directed by the pseudonymous Deagol Brothers, the film invests in spacey horror tropes one moment, plunges into absurdist adolescent angst the next and begs questions every step of the way, but just about holds together with its strong compositional sense, killer atmospheric lighting and wall-to-wall music track.

Veering wildly between paranoia (being judged by "12 people who voted for George Bush") and self-aggrandizement (modestly comparing himself to Da Vinci, Bach and Galileo), Spector makes a fascinating subject.

Though no "Love and Diane," this modest film nevertheless reveals the fragility of hope in survivalist mentalities pre-programmed to expect the worst.

Rollicking story of a rich kid whose wildly successful bid for popularity has him playing drug-distributing shrink to an entire high school boasts pitch-perfect faceoffs between upstart Anton Yelchin and alcoholic principal Robert Downey Jr. that could fuel a chemistry lab.

Endearing documentary, winner of Tribeca's audience award, should delight devotees and intrigue nonbelievers.

Likable but lightweight slacker comedy.

Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel's New World Order is less about an international cabal seeking world enslavement than about those who fervently believe such conspiracies exist and who crusade to defeat them.

Slicker, funnier and more professional than its predecessor, State Property 2, with Damon Dash at its helm tones down the original.

Fascinating glimpse into wholly different body of laws, engrossingly evolving script and standout performances.

This worthy follow-up to Kosashvili's brilliant "Late Marriage" should delight auds worldwide.

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.

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.

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.

Gini Reticker's lucidly impassioned film, filled with strong, eloquent spokeswomen, garnered Tribeca's docu award.

Does a superb job of condensing an overwhelming mass of documentation, archival imagery and artistic representation into a concise yet passionate history lesson whose relevance could not be timelier.

Whenever Sutherland comes on scene, any inadequacies in the film's depiction of the well-to-do become irrelevant.

Some viewers will doubtless argue over Ismailos' choices or balk at her adherence to a romantic single-vision theory of a highly collaborative art. Still, her eclectic pantheon weighs in with entertaining anecdotes and illuminating comments, illustrated with well-chosen samplings of the artists' work.

At several points, Chang is the only thing standing between his event and total chaos, as frustrated ticket-holders rush the gates.

Even Sandler diehards may pass on this mostly derivative paean to compulsive computer geekdom and male sexual dysfunction.

Competent but unimaginative horror entry.

Beginning promisingly enough, "Handsome" soon turns monotonously angst-ridden, with all humor and personality falling by the wayside.

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

Its extremely narrow focus on the death throes of an art form, rather than the art itself, limits its appeal.

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 rogues gallery of flamboyant gangsters paint an anecdote-rich portrait of the drug trade, while a steady stream of cops, coroners and crime reporters furnish social commentary.

Despite a comic Yiddishe mama turn by Meryl Streep and a sensitively nuanced performance by Uma Thurman in a convincing changeup from her recent kickass action roles, Prime remains an oddly juiceless older woman-younger man romance, with a Freudian twist.

Excerpted interviews with WWII and Vietnam veterans suggest that every war is hell, yet it is the specificity of the Iraq War combatants' reminiscences that makes their writing resonate so profoundly.