Scott Foundas

A respectful, lovingly reimagined take on Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classic 1943 tale, which adds all manner of narrative bells and whistles to the author’s slender, lyrical story of friendship between a pilot and a mysterious extraterrestrial voyager, but stays true to its timeless depiction of childhood wonderment at odds with grown-up disillusionment.

This remarkable film from Australia, the debut feature of writer-director Cate Shortland, moves to the lyrical rhythms and unhurried pace of a 1970s road movie.

Coraline Jones isn't the pluckiest or most ingratiating sprite ever to take center stage in a children's film, and her (mis)adventures aren't especially novel, but Coraline is still a consistent splendor to behold.

The movie's tag line, which promises (among other things) “No stereotypes,” is one of those rare cases of truth in advertising. That Brown also happens to have captured some genuinely awesome surf footage -- often the only raison d’être for such films -- feels like a bonus.

An entertaining, affectionate documentary created by three self-professed fanboys, which proves as nostalgic for the host himself as for a bygone broadcast era, before the reality-TV explosion allowed the inmates to fully take over the asylum.

By the standards of today's bombastic "event" movies, this is a refreshingly modest endeavor—one in which the main event is the skillful holding of our attention, all the way from "Once upon a time" to "Happily ever after."

Stickler goes straight to the source, combining terrific archival footage with interviews of Tony Hawk, Stacy Peralta and others who knew Rogowski back in the day.

A penetrating and ultimately heartbreaking inventory of hard lessons learned on and off the court.

From its very first frames it exerts a powerful fascination.

Director Andrew Wagner draws topnotch work from a pro cast in Starting Out in the Evening, a wise, carefully observed chamber drama.

For the soul of Gondry's work, it seems to me, is neither its soaring flights of visual fancy nor its sometimes crude slapstick, but rather its pained understanding of a generation hopelessly tongue-tied when it comes to matters of the heart.

The result is a film chilly and externalized in all the ways that Mood was bottled up and woozily dreamlike.

The gimmick is simple but devastatingly effective: Never once breaking character or acknowledging that he’s in on the joke, the Jew-fearing, grammatically challenged reporter ingratiates himself with his unsuspecting, average-American victims before uproariously turning the tables on them.

A minor-key but eminently enjoyable work by a master craftsman.

Garbus embraces Simone in all her multitudes and contradictions — or at least as many of them as can be comfortably squeezed into a 100-minute running time.

Estes' debut feature's strength lies in its crackling intensity, ultra-sharp character insights and an affinity for teenage protagonists who look and sound like real teens.

A dense and dazzling science-fiction mind-bender unassumingly dressed up in a tech geek’s short-sleeved oxford shirt, pocket protector and safety goggles.

Becomes one of those wonderfully weird adventure stories beloved of children who don't mind getting a good old-fashioned case of the heebie-jeebies. It's kind of a blast for adults too.

Just around the halfway point, something unexpected happens -- the movie actually gets good. You can chalk that up to the delightful Alan Rickman.

Director James Gunn’s presumptive franchise-starter is overlong, overstuffed and sometimes too eager to please, but the cheeky comic tone keeps things buoyant — as does Chris Pratt’s winning performance as the most blissfully spaced-out space crusader this side of Buckaroo Banzai.

Boseman is an empathic presence, and nothing he does smacks of mimicry. He feels Brown from the inside out, the way Brown felt his own distinctive rhythms, and even when the movie itself seems to be on autopilot, Boseman never leaves the captain’s chair.

What seduces most about Ask the Dust isn't its verisimilitude, but its gloriously old-fashioned backlot sheen - the L.A. of old Hollywood movies and of our collective fantasies.

Result is imperfect and overlong, but hugely ambitious and often breathtaking.

Worms is one of those rare kiddie flicks that successfully adopt a child’s-eye view of the world, where nothing is more important than saving face on the playground and where parents are as distant and clueless as storybook giants.

The flawed, fascinating Land of Plenty is easily Wenders' most vital work in more than a decade -- a troubling meditation on terrorism paranoia, poverty and homelessness.

A one-joke movie if ever there was, but the joke happens to be a good one -- a Tracy-and-Hepburn-style battle of the sexes in which Kate can fly and blast through walls -- and director Ivan Reitman (who made Ghostbusters) feels at home with the mix of screwball and supernatural.

Even at its low ebb, the movie effuses an infectious, mischief-making joy.

DuVernay’s razor-sharp portrait of the Civil Rights movement — and Dr. King himself — at a critical crossroads is as politically astute as it is psychologically acute, giving us a human-scale King whose indomitable public face belies currents of weariness and self-doubt.

Taken on its own loopy terms, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart 2 can be a marvel, as To keeps his manic movers and shakers colliding and ricocheting in ever more elaborate permutations.

Looks with fresh eyes at a new millennium in which, seemingly, the entire world is bought and sold in neatly wrapped packages engineered for mass consumption.

The result is (no pun intended) a powerful wake-up call, not just for Hollywood but for a nation that once fought passionately for the eight-hour workday and now, ever more willingly, works itself to death.

Moments of genuine insight alternate freely with those of banal psychologizing, but even then there can be no denying that the filmmaker has an ear for a certain brand of self-absorbed discourse often overheard in restaurants and bars in the shadow of the Hollywood sign. And given the choice, I’ll take Henry’s home movies over Jonathan Demme’s any day of the week.

A warm, spacious road movie with a stirring sense of the wide-open landscapes of the American West.

This brisk, stylish and extremely heartfelt portrait of Nas’ rise from the housing projects of Queensbridge to the heights of hip-hop royalty ably stands on its own, marked by an admirable focus on the man and his music rather than hype and hagiography.

The movie is basically on one level and Faris on another -- in that exclusive aerie occupied by Judy Holliday, Carole Lombard, Lucille Ball and a few other blissfully original comedy goddesses.

Marking does an admirable job of ceding centerstage to the Panthers without letting the film turn soft or letting her subjects turn themselves into latter-day Robin Hoods.

A lively comic jamboree that’s sometimes smarter than it is funny and hits about as often as it misses, but is, on balance, a good deal of fun.

Far from a complete success: It takes too long to get to its central premise and, once there, too often meanders away from it. But Campbell is close to astonishing whenever she's onscreen.

This rare femme-centric addition to the loss-of-virginity canon (dominated by the likes of “Porky’s,” “Risky Business” and “American Pie”) hits its fair share of outrageously funny highs amid lots of so-so filler, but stays buoyant and likable throughout thanks to the winning presence of “Parks and Recreation” star Aubrey Plaza in the lead.

I’d be lying if I said that The Band’s Visit isn’t touching and uplifting and all those other audience-friendly emotions against which film critics are believed to religiously steel themselves. But in a season rife with movies (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Grace Is Gone, The Kite Runner, et al.) that aggressively pry open viewers’ chest cavities and yank on their heartstrings, Kolirin’s film is the only one that plucks at them gently, tickling the funny bone as it goes.

Fine new chapter in the long-running franchise should score well with family audiences.

Core has a touch with actors, too, and there are surprisingly fine performances here.

Sometimes a hard-hitting expose, sometimes a big-hearted crowdpleaser, Million Dollar Arm wants it both ways to be sure, but its instincts are mostly right on the money, as are its actors.

Playing something of a cipher who reinvents himself as the occasion demands, Wood is unusually well cast, but it's Hunnam, with a psychotic twinkle in his eye, who turns the movie on whenever he's onscreen.

American independent movies about awkward adolescence are never in short supply, but this highly assured first feature by commercials and music video director Mike Mills is the first since "Donnie Darko" to view the latter stages of teenagerdom as fodder for a phantasmagorical odyssey of Lewis Carroll–like distortions.

The infectious high spirits of the performers help to carry the day.

Like most of the men in the film, we would happily follow her anywhere.

The genocide of some one million Rwandan Tutsis by their Hutu neighbors remains a disgraceful and too-little-known episode in recent world history. Alas, Terry George's ineffectual Hotel Rwanda only partly rectifies that problem, taking what ought to have been a complex, powerful inquiry and simplifying it to a story about the resilience of the human spirit.

A highly enjoyable programmer about those brave young men and their rickety flying machines.

Yet even when the movie is at its most schizoid, Precious still packs a wallop.

Where The Gift toys with our expectations is in its refusal to align itself with any one character or to manufacture obvious heroes and villains.

Emerges as a surprisingly smart, gripping and imaginative addition to the zombie-movie canon, owing as much to scientific disaster movies like “The China Syndrome” and “Contagion” as it does to undead ur-texts like the collected works of George Romero.

Draft Day affords the simple but uncommon pleasure of watching intelligent characters who are passionate about what they do trying to do the best that they can.

Bell forces us to see characters from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks in a distinctly human light, neither ennobling nor pitying.

Examines 50-odd years in the life of its eponymous subject -- a most compelling character -- and in doing so literally provides the viewer with food for thought.

Marshall hasn’t made one of the great movie musicals here, but he hasn’t bungled it either — far from it.

A noteworthy piece on a difficult subject.

Turturro keeps Fear X fascinating, practically in spite of itself.

Peet is triumphant as the beguiling object of desire with wounded-bird eyes and devilish smile -- sexy and tart, then, in the space of a breath, totally, tenderly tragic. Like Oliver, we'd happily follow her anywhere.

Itself owing much to such lone-man-of-action hallmarks as “Die Hard” and “Speed,” this welcome throwback to an earlier, more generously entertaining era of summer blockbusters delivers a wide array of close-quarters combat and large-scale destruction, all grounded in an immensely appealing star turn by Channing Tatum and ace support from imperiled POTUS Jamie Foxx.

Repeatedly, Iñárritu and Arriaga stop themselves just short of suggesting that we're all going to hell in a hand basket. Had they not -- well, then Babel might really have been onto something.

Beguiling and intoxicating.

The movie is enjoyable, but not passionately engaging in the way we've come to expect from Almodóvar, and it leaves you somewhat cold in spite of the warmth of Cruz's galvanic performance.

Always good with actors, Hanson brings out a beaten-down charm in Bana that works nicely against the hotheaded authority the actor shows in the gambling scenes, while Duvall is, like the veteran card shark he plays, a master of subtle gestures. The low card here is Barrymore, somewhat awkwardly shoehorned into this boys' club to provide some romantic relief.

It’s a grandly staged, solidly entertaining, old-fashioned adventure movie that does something no other Hercules movie has quite done before: it cuts the mythical son of Zeus down to human size (or as human as you can get while still being played by Dwayne Johnson).

A fast-paced valentine to Russell and his quixotic vision so rife with underdog victors and hairpin twists of fortune that, if it weren’t all true, no one would believe it.

There's greater consistency to it, and considerably more humor, with macabre slapstick and fun-house ghoulishness that, at their best, recall early Tim Burton.

It is the point -- and the power -- of Deep Water that the vast, unknowable fathoms of the sea are rivaled only by those of the human psyche.

The strengths of Dominion, however, have been little diminished by its long shelf life and, in fact, may have grown stronger with age.

Inoffensive adolescent escapism laced with surprising amounts of genuine charm.

"Escobar” offers an odd mix of action movie, romantic melodrama and cautionary traveler’s tale, which works better than it should thanks to Del Toro’s fascinating performance and Di Stefano’s assured, muscular helming.

Hidalgo can still be a wonder to behold, especially in its dynamic racing sequences, but the movie bogs down in its midsection with a needless kidnapping subplot that ultimately becomes quite tedious.

If "Crash" grew a pair of cojones, it might look something like Larry Clark’s cheerfully defiant Wassup Rockers.

Pic makes up in strong performances and wry observation what it sometimes lacks in narrative drive. Result is a perceptive (and unexpectedly moving) portrait of lives in crisis.

"The Blues Brothers" it is not, but in its best moments, the movie feels like a comic exaggeration of the real hardships that a couple of average, decidedly unhip guys went through on their unlikely way to the top.

The major exception is Lohan, who gives one of those performances, like Marlon Brando’s in “Last Tango in Paris,” that comes across as some uncanny conflagration of drama and autobiography. Lohan may not go as deep or as far as Brando, but with her puffy skin, gaudy hoop earrings and thick eye makeup, there’s a little-girl-lost quality to the onetime Disney teen princess that’s very affecting.

Though likely to be variously praised and pilloried as a pro-choice film, Weitz’s film is really a movie about choice in both the specific and the abstract — about the choices we make, for good and for ill, and how we come to feel about them through the prism of time.

To call Shine a Light a documentary doesn’t quite nail it; it’s more of a macro-mentary, shot in such tight close-up that you can see the fillings in Mick’s teeth and the sweat stains in the armpits of his sequined magenta top.

Like a really, really high-tech version of a high school class trip to the planetarium.

Resultant picture -- one of Herzog's best and most purely enjoyable -- may lack the built-in curio factor of "Grizzly Man."

The genially goofy shenanigans, incredibly corny punchlines and Hank Azaria’s go-for-broke performance as the incompetent wizard Gargamel are very much the same ― an entirely welcome thing in a summer movie season full of so much apocalyptic Sturm und Drang.

For a movie conceived and executed in the mainstream Hollywood idiom, it has uncommon depth and honesty.

The bigger-than-big, rambunctious spectacle is way too much of a questionably good thing.

Though an admirable attempt to allow the characters to tell their own story in their own voices, docu may be a bit too freely associative, as it becomes difficult at times to identify individual characters... Picture's second half, which proceeds in a more linear fashion, is resolutely gripping.

Jimmy P. is never better than when its two leads share the screen, a relationship all the more resonant and moving for Desplechin’s refusal to make it cutesy or contrived.

At more than two hours, The Dance of Reality unquestionably has its longueurs, but on balance it is alive with enough images and ideas for several movies — as if Jodorowsky were afraid he might have to wait 20 more years before making another.

[A] loosely structured, always informative, sometimes illuminating portrait docu.

An enjoyable if never electrifying record of his Unity Through Laughter stand-up tour.

Not as insightful as "Topsy-Turvy" or "Vanya on 42nd Street" about the process of putting on a show, it's nonetheless a fascinating meeting of the minds -- between iconic New York indie filmmaker Michael Almereyda and laconic American cowboy and dramatist Shepard.

The romance that ensues between Macy and Bello (both of whom are terrific) is exactly the kind of mature, sexy adult relationship that people complain doesn’t exist in movies anymore.

A delightful if never particularly deep survey of an American comic institution.

This is exceedingly earnest stuff, dolloped with Christian goodness and solid production values.

Brings a fresh perspective to age-old human dilemmas.

It's true, of course, that Trier still hasn't set foot on U.S. soil, but it may be that he sees us, in all our virtue and victimhood, that much more clearly for it.

Johnson pulls us into his world and keeps things oddly plausible, despite the intense stylization

This is a heartfelt endeavor, given weight by Shimono's extraordinary performance, in which the actor uses the subtlest flicks of his weary brow to call forth torrents of sorrow and minefields of regret.

Cherot (who also co-wrote the script with Charles E. Drew Jr.) has made that rare hip-hop movie that doesn't fetishize lurid ghetto clichés.

Largely plays down the ethnic stereotyping to deliver a carefully observed, fundamentally human roundelay about the wonders and horrors of looking for someone to love.

Ultimately something of a softball satire, its climactic evocation of the "true meaning" of the holidays is surprisingly touching.

There's something magical about seeing a packed house of 300 Taveuni locals laugh equally uproariously, and, without a nanosecond’s worth of culture shock, at Queen Latifah in "Bringing Down the House" and Buster Keaton in "Steamboat Bill, Jr."

An improbable but very enjoyable sequel that recaptures much of the stripped-down intensity of Diesel and director David Twohy’s franchise starter "Pitch Black."

Sublimely trashy, this conceptual sequel to 1997's surprise hit, "Anaconda," doesn't expect to be taken any more seriously than its schlock predecessor, and keeps its tongue-in-cheek thrills flowing rapidly.

What does register at every turn is a vibrant sense of time and place that pulls us into Hardy’s bygone world even when the drama falters.

If none of the Hobbit films resonate with "Rings'" mythic grandeur, it’s hard not to marvel at Jackson’s facility with these characters and this world, which he seems to know as well as John Ford knew his Monument Valley, and to which he here bids an elegiac adieu.

May not be a complete success, but it is in some ways that rarest of commodities in American movies: It is a movie about sex and sexuality, in its many perversions and permutations, done without falling back on an exploitatively comic or violent scenario.

Kormakur shows he knows his way around an action movie better than most, keeping the pace quick, the banter lively and the old-school, mostly CGI-free thrills delivering right on schedule.

When most filmmakers want to say something important about cultural conflicts, they labor to bring tears to our eyes. Dabis, by contrast, makes us laugh at ourselves and, in turn, each other.

Jaglom's quickest and funniest picture in years and the most accessible.

The film's power is undeniable, as a bittersweet valentine to Buzz and the many others who came to Hollywood and found a factory that produced dreams, yes, but nightmares too.

A most enjoyable capper to director Shawn Levy and producer Chris Columbus’ cheerfully silly and sneakily smart family-entertainment juggernaut.

Has a relaxed poeticism to it; it's a sweetly naive, adolescent Hemingway fantasy with a star-making performance by Shawn Hatosy and good ones from everyone else (including Caan).

Anchored by Eva Green’s fearsome performance as a Persian naval commander whose vengeful bloodlust makes glowering King Xerxes seem a mere poseur, this highly entertaining time-filler lacks the mythic resonances that made “300” feel like an instant classic, but works surprisingly well on its own terms.

Though high-octane stunts have always been the primary selling point here, Lin and veteran “Fast” screenwriter Chris Morgan have labored to add depth, dimensionality and inner conflict to the now-sprawling cast of recurring characters — so much so that, at times, “Furious 6” plays like a glossy gearhead melodrama.

A remarkably clear-eyed look back at a moment in which real revolution seemed possible - even probable - in America's streets.

An exceedingly good-natured Z-grade creature feature.

This always enjoyable tale of mysterious magic, imperiled princesses and square-jawed men of action proves longer on striking visuals than on truly engaging or memorable characters.

Furious 7 provides both a satisfying chapter in the movies’ preeminent gearhead soap opera and a tactful, touching memorial to Walker.

The movie surely owes something to Polanski, Cronenberg, et al., in its use of an apparently placid, upper-middle-class setting as the background for perverse horrors, but De Van's fearless, high-wire performance is uniquely its own.

Dog Days is in fact a bleak but deeply felt humanism -- a yearning that we might all learn to better love our neighbors and, perhaps more importantly, ourselves.

A spellbinding, sensationally effective thriller with a complex moral center.

It’s a measure of Benson’s sure, skillful hand with actors that all the relationships in the movie — husband and wife, parent and child — feel lived-in and true, even when the dialogue strains too hard for the meaningful and poetic.

Sweet Dreams finds and sustains a delicate balance, seizing on small moments of hope in a place where the horrors of 1994 are in many ways still an open wound.

The Roost advances a nifty man-vs.-nature scenario that harks back to Fessenden's own "Wendigo" and provides a nice chaser to a summer movie season populated by cuddly penguins and benevolent cheetahs.

The pleasure of La Moustache is that it doesn't feel the need to explain itself at every turn. Part absurdist comedy about the institution of marriage, part paranoid Kafkaesque fantasy, it's a minor-key reverie on the way our own lives can sometimes feel alien to us.

It's a finely tuned Motor City engine: The action, including a nighttime car chase through a blinding snowstorm, is fast, brutal and efficient; the Motown soundtrack never cuts out; and as a gangster called Sweet, the British-Nigerian actor Chiwetel Ejiofor gives an electrifying performance.

Under Mangold’s sure if uninspired hand, the new Yuma is reasonably exciting and terse, and, like its predecessor, built around a memorable villain of ambiguous villainy.

In a boom time for movies about the scars of the battlefield, Half Moon reminds that the unending strife and religious fundamentalism of the Middle East kills not just people but culture too.

What propels the film forcefully along is Silverman, who pulls us down so deeply inside Laney’s sickness that everything else seems to fade away (much as it does in the character’s own life).

Surprisingly enjoyable, even if you'd hesitate to call it a complete success. Indeed, Figgis expects you to sit back and roll with the pleasurable moments.

This is the umpteenth movie I’ve seen this year about guys in their 30s who aren't quite sure what they want to do with their lives, and it's the only one that strikes a real chord, because it's neither an exaltation nor a condemnation of slackerdom, but rather just a sweet little fable about how sometimes the life that you think could be so much better is actually pretty damn good already.

This genuine curio gets surprising mileage from Houellebecq’s deft, self-effacing performance at the center of a lively comic ensemble.

Wetlands might have landed with the thud of empty shock value were Helen not such an innately engaging character, or Juri so commanding in the role.

Snicket's macabre tale of three newly orphaned siblings has been lavishly visualized. But for all its elaborate splendor, production pic lacks the feeling and imagination that have distinguished the best recent kidpics.

A delightfully intricate battle of wits and wills in which the question of who’s directing/seducing/torturing whom remains constantly shifting open to interpretation.

A modestly less quotable but generously funny new adventure for scotch-and-mahogany-loving 1970s newsman Ron Burgundy.

Billed as a silent film, Guy Maddin's Brand Upon the Brain! is actually closer to a live theatrical event -- a feature-length motion picture screened with the accompaniment of a live orchestra, plus Foley artists, sound effects technicians and assorted vocalists, too. Together, they provide the elaborate soundscape for a typically frenetic, Maddin-esque amalgam of the autobiographical, Freudian and willfully absurd.

The canniness of Bale’s performance (which may be the best of his young but brilliant career) is that he plays Dengler as a fundamentally kind and simple yet rather ingenious man.

It’s to the credit of the Russos that they give the characters such room to breathe in a movie that easily might have been about rushing from one gargantuan setpiece to the next.

It's not a great movie, or even a particularly good one, but it's spectacular. No expense has been spared. The technical crew reads like a roll call of Oscar-night regulars.

He Was a Quiet Man casts its own perversely funny spell thanks in large part to Slater, whose wonderfully shifty, beaten-down performance is easily his best in the 17 years.

If the movie is finally something of a failure as a romance, it's rarely less than a triumph of soulful imagination.

Art School Confidential reaches its dementedly brilliant peak in the company of Jim Broadbent.

An immensely likable, funny comedy that finds a novel approach to that familiar combo of kids and sports.

The most affable and endearing of the recent wave of films about Indian immigrants assimilating in the West.

Far from an embarrassment and a generally fine piece of work.

Like the best pulp, though, it gets its hooks into you faster than you can start to wonder why you should possibly care about what happens to any of its despicable characters, and, before you know it, you’ve been pulled deep into its Dantean vision.

As a spy pic, it has more pizzazz than the last few Bond adventures, "The Sum of All Fears" or "The Recruit."

Morlang has surprises up its sleeve that even the seasoned genre fan may not see coming.

If you cut through Lucas' thickets of self-reflexivity, metaphysical mumbo jumbo and banal potshots at media violence, there are three ace performances here by actors who can elevate and enliven even as mediocre a piece of material as this.

Moves along at a clip and provides a terrific action lead for Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson.

Manna from gearhead heaven, the third and most guiltily pleasurable Furious emits the crude thrills of a 1950s drag-racing cheapie, only with souped-up Toyotas and Nissans in place of gas-guzzling hot rods, and slinky Asian temptresses substituted for poodle-skirted teenyboppers.

The Berlin File keeps narrative coherence far down on a priority list that privileges expertly choreographed hand-to-hand combat, hair-raising stunt work...and such familiar genre accoutrements as secret rooms hidden behind bookshelves, shiny metallic attaché cases, and pens concealing fast-acting vials of poison.

As in many of his films, Jaglom establishes a striking intimate rapport with his female subjects, and as the funny and bitter revelations pour forth, an activity that many men may view as something done strictly out of necessity takes on unforeseen narcotic, romantic and therapeutic dimensions.

At its core is a most affecting portrait of two people who love each other, but may no longer be able to live as one, and it is mostly a pleasure to spend two, or three, or five hours in their company.

Blessed with a witty script (by Zobel and co-writer George Smith), a talented ensemble of little-known character actors and a Meredith Willson-like feel for just-plain-folks Americans, this is a low-key but enormously charming picture.

The happiest marriage yet of the disparate propagandistic and narrative influences inherent in the subgenre of "religious" cinema.

Both “Ted” movies are, ultimately, one-joke affairs rooted in the idea of taking some emblem of childhood innocence and vulgarizing it.... That joke, though, turns out to be a resilient one, and the chemistry between Wahlberg and MacFarlane is infectiously puerile.

Cruise is probably the most graceful physical performer to occupy the screen since Burt Lancaster, and in this sort of action role, he's just about peerless...He may not be a great actor, but to find a greater movie star would be a nigh impossible mission.

A perceptive, unsettling psychodrama marking the assured feature writing and directing debut of shorts filmmaker Kyle Henry.

Rigged toward a sentimental conclusion and overpopulated with cutesy touches (including a curtain-call finale), but there are many remarkable sights along the way.

Jokes about impotence, menopause and other middle-aged maladies reside where a screenplay ought to live.

Like most of Kaufman's work as a writer, Synecdoche, New York is a head trip that time and again returns to a place of real human emotion--in this case, to the idea that no matter how brilliant we may be or think we are, we're all looking for a little guidance (or, yes, direction) in life.

The movie isn't particularly tasteful or finely crafted -- but it grabs you by the jugular, and only during an overcooked climax does it finally relax its grip.

Even at its most purplish and highfalutin (mostly in the “Her” section), “Eleanor Rigby” always aims for something sincere, and when Benson pulls back a bit — and stops trying to show us how much Freud he’s read and how many Bergman films he’s seen — the movie becomes vastly more engaging.

MacDonald has seen enough horror movies of varying kinds to know what audiences expect, and one of the pleasures of Backcountry is how skillfully it toys with those expectations, setting us up for something like a Mumblecore “Straw Dogs” and ending up somewhere closer to a landlocked “Jaws.”

Though Lifshitz's attitude toward sex and sexuality ranks among the most progressive in contemporary movies, he doesn't belabor it; seen through his eyes, Wild Side is a love story in which love is unrestrained by matters of gender or sexual orientation or even the number of lovers.

Can a movie about global warming genuinely be called lighthearted? If so, Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand's Everything's Cool comes as close as one imagines possible, essaying yet more inconvenient truths about the potential future of our planet in the same buoyant, irreverent style the filmmakers brought to their last activist docu, "Blue Vinyl."

On the plus side, The Company is directed by Robert Altman, who's clearly drawn in by the rare opportunity of putting ballet on film, and who responds brilliantly...The rest of the time, the film fails to catch us up in the workaday intrigues of its characters (most of whom are played by real Joffrey dancers) the way Altman can when he's working in top form.

Love him or loathe him, Avrich proposes, Wasserman mattered -- which is a lot more than can be said for most of the multinationals and their MBA-bearing surrogates who came to run the studios in his wake.

This is as corny as it sounds, and yet not half as cloying and sentimental as you expect. At the end of the day, the horse may win the race, but the fate of the American heartland looms large and unresolved.

Fronted by a vibrant, deeply committed Al Pacino performance and very fine support from Greta Gerwig, this uneven but captivating film deserves to find its own audience, though doing so will surely prove to be an uphill climb.

Queen and Country lacks the immediacy of “Hope and Glory,” in part because there’s no single animating event here to rival the Blitz... But it remains a pleasure to spend time in the presence of these characters, and a third volume — perhaps focused on Bill’s entrance into the British film industry — would hardly be unwelcome.

So weirdly fascinating is the tale of the Angulo clan that one wishes The Wolfpack were that much sharper, more searching and coherently organized. Still, there is much to enjoy in director Crystal Moselle’s debut documentary feature.

There’s no denying, though, that Daniels knows how to push an audience’s buttons, and as crudely obvious as The Butler can be...it’s also genuinely rousing. By the end, it’s hard not to feel moved, if also more than a bit manhandled.

These hunks of greased lightning tell how a gearhead SoCal teen got wind of the post-World War II hot-rodding craze, crossed paths with a pinstriper named von Dutch and ended up as the automotive visionary whom Tom Wolfe famously called “a genius of the only uniquely American art form.”

What keeps Dheepan engaging throughout is the tremendous charisma of the performers.

Z for Zachariah is a handsome-looking film (shot in widescreen, on remote New Zealand locations, by veteran David Gordon Green d.p. Tim Orr) and it doesn’t lack for provocative ideas, though it never digs quite deep enough into any of them.

Pretty formulaic stuff: bland self-empowerment tinged with warm fuzzies in all the right places. But what makes this "Somebody" something is Pasquin's deft touch and understanding with the material.

Thanks to some accomplished hocus pocus and an appealing cast, this would-be “Ocean’s Eleven” of the magic world remains watchable throughout, even as it plods along without ever quite fulfilling its potential.

Southland Tales pilfers large chunks of its plot and visual style from Alex Cox’s "Repo Man," Kathryn Bigelow’s "Strange Days" and Shane Carruth’s Sundance-winning "Primer," and unlike the makers of those films, Kelly hasn’t digested his influences and made them his own -- he’s more like the slacker college kid who’s just enough of an intellectual poseur to bluff his way to an A. That said, Southland Tales isn’t entirely without its pleasures, chiefly The Rock.

A cobwebbed, mummified horror entry that makes obvious, cartoonishly grotesque demands for attention.

McKinnon's direction is nothing if not atmospheric -- his best scenes unfold with a pungent languor that suggests the power of the backwoods to turn hours into days and days into years. If only the sum total were a movie more "In the Bedroom" than it is everything-but-the-kitchen-sink.

Assembled in a straightforward, television-style presentation that gets the better of it.

Things could be worse. At the end of the day, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is nothing if not consistent -- taking care of business solidly, professionally and without a lick of the genuine wonderment or inspiration that you can find in surplus in Jon Favreau's Spielberg-influenced "Iron Man."

The Place Beyond the Pines is a much bigger canvas, and scene by scene it can be riveting...But the disparate pieces never quite jell; the movie is all trees and no forest.

Swank's character and her performance are good enough to merit a movie of their own, instead of serving as fourth wheel to this lifeless ménage à trois.

A Red Dawn for the Tea Party era, Olympus Has Fallen is pretty ridiculously entertaining—or at least entertainingly ridiculous—for long stretches, dulled only by the realization that there are many parts of the country where this will play as less than total farce.

Came alive only in the presence of a supposed dead man -- specifically, the nefarious Lord Voldemort.

It can be thrilling to watch Stander and his gang of gentlemen bandits rack up the loot without ruffling their (or anyone else's) shirt collars. The movie isn't content to rest there, though; it wants to be a caper with a conscience.

Although in many respects a more stylish, authentic, tougher-minded film than "Hotel Rwanda," director Michael Caton-Jones' respectable and well-intentioned Beyond the Gates (aka Shooting Dogs) still falls into the trap of filtering an inherently African story through the eyes of a noble white protagonist -- in this case, two of them.

If the movie never quite masters the feel of messy, grown-up life, it at least makes a few promising salvos in that direction... The actors help a lot.

Festooned with cute, mugging kids; lots of jazzy redos of beloved Christmas tunes on the soundtrack; and enough tug-at-your-heartstrings moments to make an entire theater feel warm on a blustery winter afternoon.

The problem, dare I say it, is that the movie just ... isn't ... that ... funny.

An unremarkable but entirely serviceable action quickie.

While the respectable result is a more meaningful film than just about anything Mandoki worked on during his 17 years in Hollywood ("Angel Eyes," "Message in a Bottle"), pic suffers from an overindulgence of triumph-over-adversity cliches and a meandering narrative.

McG's Marshall lies at the nexus of Thornton Wilder and Norman Rockwell -- it's David Lynch without the irony -- and if he overdoes things a touch, there’s nothing disingenuous about it.

The film's one indisputably great performance comes from Sewell, whose Marke is no mere cuckold, but a good, honorable man caught up in circumstances beyond his ken, and ultimately this Tristan & Isolde's most tragic figure.

Like this summer's other slapstick cause célèbre, "Pineapple Express," it's a comedy with as high or higher a body count as the movies it purports to be parodying, and the problem isn't the violence per se but rather the fact that neither movie ever finds a satisfactory balance between tongue-in-cheek and guts-in-hand.

Beneath the sitcom cutesiness and boldfaced sentimentality, the film manages to keep just enough reality coursing through to stay grounded.

Doesn't risk ruffling any feathers, and that's exactly what's wrong with it: It's less a satirical bite at the hand that feeds Guest than it is a toothless nibble, and it isn't particularly funny.

Pic’s monotone edges towards monotony by the end of the third act, but as no-budget calling-card features go, Frankenstein’s Army remains a grisly cut above.

A routine memory piece about long-buried family secrets that bubble back to the surface to wreak havoc.

Bruni Tedeschi holds all of pic’s myriad tangents in a delicate balance, no single one ever rising to the fore, no pressure felt to wrap everything — or anything — up in a tidy package at the end.

Less outre than "Gummo" and "Julien Donkey-Boy," Korine's most lavishly produced pic to date begins as a sweet-tempered tale of social misfits-turned-celebrity impersonators, but falls short of its ambition to say something meaningful about the obsessive nature of celebrity culture.

King Kong isn't terrible, but it's something that none of Jackson's previous movies ever was -- it's enervating.

If you haven’t come to see lots (and lots) of dance, you’ve come to the wrong place; and even if nothing in the second half of ABCD 2 quite reaches “Happy Hour” levels, D’Souza shoots and edits dance with a lot more savoir faire than most contemporary musical directors, mindful to keep the dancers’ entire bodies in frame, and cutting with a strong sense of spatial continuity.

Made up largely of vivid aerial shots of those folks doing the things they do, the film is a less philosophical, introspective look at contemporary surfing than Dana Brown's recent "Step Into Liquid," and is pitched at a smaller, niche audience.

The visual effects are predictably excellent -- sometimes, in the case of a three-man free fall through space, unexpectedly lyrical -- but most of the movie's dramatic conflicts feel strictly pro forma.

As before, there are moments, when Schneider is turned loose to do his anything-goes, creepy-funny shtick, that are crudely inspired.

There are a lot of compelling ideas afloat in “Amnesia” that never fully congeal, but the undeniable sincerity and personal commitment of Schroeder’s vision help to carry the film over its rough patches.

Glazer has always been longer on atmosphere and uncanny moods than on narrative, but the fatal flaw of Under the Skin isn’t that not much happens; it’s that what does happen isn’t all that interesting.

Paul plays the part with the flinty, tightly wound charisma of a small man who makes up in moxie what he lacks in stature. There’s something of the young James Cagney in him, and he’s by far the best thing Need for Speed has going for it.

It’s a familiar story of music-world success, failure and addiction, admirably but unevenly told by first-time feature director Jeff Preiss, who certainly knows the music and the milieu, but proves less adept at shaping the material into a consistently compelling narrative.

Attempts to delve beneath the surface of Hollywood's rampant narcissism and fascination with technology, but ultimately feels like just one more in the long line of films this year about the business of making movies.

An odd concoction: an English-language movie made by Dutch filmmakers working with an American cast on location in Russia and Mexico. That strangeness, combined with sharp casting and affectionate performances, is a big part of "Affair's" charm.

The performers are a bright bunch, especially Snow (even if she's no sane person’s idea of a wallflower), Metcalfe, who has the cocksure swagger of a young Travolta, and McCarthy, who infuses her few scenes with a haggard dignity masquerading as optimism.

This big-hearted underdog comedy from director Shawn Levy is, much like its two leads, exceedingly affable and good-natured despite being undeniably long in the tooth.

Despite the intriguing set-up, there's something unambitious and scaled-back about Star Trek Nemesis, so that most of the time it feels like a slightly suped-up episode of the "Next Generation" TV series.

Even in the movie’s most ridiculous moments, Collet-Serra keeps the pacing brisk and knows how to divert our attention with a well-timed bit of comic relief.

More often, Gatsby feels like a well-rehearsed classic in which the actors say their lines ably, but with no discernible feeling behind them.

After an hour of predictably sophomoric antics involving foulmouthed kids, compulsively self-pleasuring canines and the rampant objectification of women, Click turns into a surrealist death dream in which Sandler's masochistic impulses flower onscreen as never before.

Fascinating and frustrating in nearly equal measure.

All the trappings of an energetic, extreme-sports adventure, but ends up more of a creaky "Pretty Woman" retread, with the emphasis on self-empowering schmaltz and with the big-wave surfing that gives pic its title seemingly an afterthought.

More often than not, Two Men Went to War resembles a feature-length episode of "Hogan's Heroes," with the brave but clumsy Brits continually managing to outfox the even more bungling Nazis.

What makes the film transcend its limitations is Carell, whose square, "Father Knows Best" demeanor belies a supreme comic self-confidence and whose implacability in the face of the movie's CGI-intensive animal antics can be marvelous to behold.

The more things drag on, the more monotonous they become and, by the end, Hard Candy has devolved into a rather transparent game of one-upmanship in which Hayley and Jeff come across in almost equally repellent measure, their behaviors driven less by organic impulses than by their need to satisfy the script's elaborate series of reversals and counter-reversals.

Thank heavens — or at least the “Department of Eternal Affairs” — for Jeff Bridges, whose hilariously free-associative performance as a 19th-century frontier marshal-turned-21st-century undead lawman is like an adrenaline shot to the heart of R.I.P.D.

Features a standout central performance by newcomer Boyd Holbrook (“The Host”), but suffers from predictable plotting and shallow characterizations that keep the movie from ever transcending the obvious.

Most of the time Wedding Crashers is more genteel than it is outrageous (or funny), playing like an only slightly less benign spin on the tiresome fish-out-of-water farce that fueled the two Meet the Parents movies.

Hendrickson shot “Colossus” from a partial script, leaving room for improvisation, and the movie’s loose, shapeless feel and scenes that go on far too long are the telltale signs of a filmmaker who fell so in love with his own material that he couldn’t bring himself to kill his darlings.

Gets an ambitious, sometimes inspired but ultimately less than satisfying screen treatment from Roger Avary.

Hoot is flatly directed by talk-show-host-turned-sitcom-director Wil Shriner, but the young actors are spirited and appealing, and the movie's low-key anti-establishment posture is vastly preferable to the knee-jerk fulminations of a Michael Moore.

One of the best products to roll off the prolific multihyphenate’s Atlanta-based assembly line, largely absent the pandering humor and finger-wagging moralism that have bedeviled many of Perry’s earlier (if undeniably popular) efforts.

The longer Swing Vote hangs around, the more engaging it becomes. It's twice as smart as you have any reason to expect but still only half as smart as you wish it were.

It's a feature-length teaser for a never-to-be sci-fi franchise.

The movie cries out for the bawdy, rompy air that filled Richard Lester's "Three Musketeers" movies, and what it gets instead is the same dispassionate "professionalism" that has made Hallström a steady fixture in a Hollywood that could do with an infusion of Casanova's own virile lifeblood.

On a storytelling level, Robots is in dire need of an upgrade.

Beyond that surface grit, Intermission is still a fairly saccharine collage of self-redemptive gestures and happy endings that, true to its title, only fitfully compels.

While the entertainment value of Cloverfield is highly negotiable, it's clear that Abrams has consciously aligned himself with those filmmakers who have used the template of a grade-B monster/invasion movie -- Don Siegel, George Romero, Steven Spielberg -- as a stealth vessel for social commentary.

An unusually bright, inspired look at the perils of breaking into the acting business.

Serviceable, wholly uninspired.

It's all fitfully amusing, thanks in large part to Bouchard's richly comic performance, but the movie is never very involving, and it overstays its welcome by a good, long while.

Part dewey-eyed paperback romance, part acid-trip planetarium show, this extravagantly silly movie comes on like the second coming of "2001."

Tries to combine the suspense of old Saturday morning serials with the gusto of producer Jerry Bruckheimer's action pics. Falling short on both counts, this long, and long-winded, series of middling cliffhangers won't pump the adrenaline of action aficionados or -- the family crowd.

The Lives of Others wants us to see that the Stasi -- at least some of them -- were, like their Gestapo brethren, “just following orders." You can call that naive optimism on Donnersmarck's part, or historical revisionism of the sort duly lambasted by the current film version of Alan Bennett's "The History Boys." I, for one, tremble at the thought of what this young director does for an encore.

When it comes to Annabelle’s five or six big stinger moments, Leonetti manages to deliver the jolts, and if audiences are sure to head home complaining about how dumb and predictable it all was, many may also find themselves nursing their significant others’ lightly bruised forearms.

Put simply, this second feature by the young Austrian director Hans Weingartner is a put-on -- a glib anti-capitalist rant in which the rhetoric rarely rises above the you-too-can-save-a-child-for-less-than-the-price-of-coffee level.

A scabrous, provocative and often funny social satire about the American dream, Spike Lee's flawed but fascinating She Hate Me addresses everything from corporate malfeasance to the African AIDS epidemic, barely catching its breath in-between.

A screwball road movie set in a middle-of-nowhere town, Kwik Stop suggests "It Happened One Night" as reimagined by David Lynch or Hal Hartley.

The Chorus is sham art and questionable entertainment, but at the very least it sends you whistling out of the theater.

Though the story hardly lacks for event as it traces Khayyam's ascension from the peasantry to the royal court, the period costumes and sets look to be on loan from Medieval Times, as do most of the actors, and the boxy, harshly lit compositions make everything feel even more cardboard.

The vaporous Wonderland never moves beyond its grungily romanticized view of the past.

It’s cheesy enough fun while it lasts, but in the Harlin pantheon, it isn’t a patch on “Deep Blue Sea.” Then again, few things are.

It's a rich idea for a comedy, even if the filmmakers seem timid about making the pic the full-on satire it might have been.

Rebound is a sports comedy so by-the-numbers that you don't really have to watch it -- you can just check in on it every once in a while between trips to the concession stand and the bathroom.

It’s fun enough while it lasts, but somehow, finally, all too much and not enough. The problem isn’t that dinosaurs have ceased to impress us, but that dinosaurs alone are not enough to sustain us

Like the abominable "Napoleon Dynamite," director Jared Hess' second feature will doubtless capture the hearts and minds of 12-year-old boys everywhere, even if Nacho Libre sacrifices the earlier film's aggressive mean-spiritedness in favor of gentle slapstick lunacy.

For all its failings, there is one thing about “Long Walk to Freedom” that can’t be denied: Idris Elba gives a towering performance, a Mandela for the ages.

Between them, first-time screenwriter Carl Ellsworth and director Wes Craven don't come up with a single clever way to generate suspense, and the movie's onboard atmosphere is so phony.

As factoids do-si-do with testimonials from the likes of drinking buddy Sean Penn and fan-boy Bono, the movie all but becomes the very A&E Hagiography for which Bukowski would have had little or no patience.

A handsomely produced, deeply passionate, but seriously flawed historical epic whose reach far exceeds its grasp. Somewhere inside this overlong, sometimes engaging, often tedious affair, there may be a solid, 100-minute movie.

As both book and film, The Human Stain comes to vividest life in its extended flashbacks, which offer the most compelling exploration of Roth's perennial themes of self-loathing and reinvention.

It speaks well of The Investigator that, for much of its running time, it’s possible to lose sight of the movie’s agenda and get caught up in its hokey machinations.

Only Williams makes any real emotional connection: I'm not sure I'd call his performance good, but there's something fascinating about seeing the man once heralded as "the black Clark Gable" three decades removed from heartthrob status, heavy and sullen-looking, weighed down by the burdens of time and age.

The director of 13 Going on 30, Gary Winick, was unable to infuse this material with either the sustained screwball cadences of his earlier "Tadpole" or an emotional resonance comparable to that of his superb "The Tic Code."

While slight comic concoction is so airy it seems in danger of floating right off the screen, the pleasant retro vibe and a handful of effervescent moments carry this film no self-respecting heterosexual male would dare see except on a date.

The Giver reaches the screen in a version that captures the essence of Lowry’s affecting allegory but little of its mythic pull.