Sean Axmaker

As action movies seem to get more complicated and convoluted with international conspiracies and technological concepts, the "Transporter" franchise is refreshingly simple.

The language and the landscape is French, but the sensibility and style is unmistakably Eastern European.

In this brand of comedy, nothing succeeds like excess, and this film is seriously deficient.

An honorable and often enticing piece of personal filmmaking.

When Plympton's freak flag flies, Hair High delivers the same whacked-out weirdness of his shorts. The rest of the film simply stretches out the simple premise and marks time between his ideas.

The perfectly dressed surfaces couldn't be more lovely, but the long fashion show to the finale smothers the emotions under the length and the look, and Lee's insights into the messy feelings that simmer and stew in the hothouse of sex are, frankly, fairly mundane.

It's all about the sheer visceral rush of mega action.

But as an artist, von Trier's contempt for humanity is becoming harder to hide with stylistic flourish. He doesn't even try here, and his arrogance is topped only by his misanthropy.

After all of these years playing smug street thugs, cocky idiots and patsies, can you blame Dillon for giving himself an elegant girl (Natascha McElhone), a devoted guardian angel, and a little redemption?

The biggest surprise for Miike fans and musical lovers alike is that for all the black humor of this deliriously bizarre fantasy "Happiness" is a warmhearted film about sacrifice, support and four generations of family togetherness.

It's hard to call it thrilling -- these aren't characters you actually care about and De Palma isn't as concerned with building tension as playing visual games -- but it sure sparkles.

Carrera's direct, unadorned style has none of the searing imagery or cinematic imagination of "Y Tu Mama," but it bristles with passion, anger and a palpable sense of betrayal.

More than simply a raw-nerve success-gone-sour story. It's a revenge tale, and the directors come out on top.

It makes for a sweet and heartwarming story even as it celebrates and justifies the entire ridiculous phenomenon that Deruddere has been spoofing all along.

For a film that uses race, class and sexual stereotypes as the starting point, this is disappointingly skin deep.

Some audiences will find it an endurance test and Reygadas doesn't make it easy with his confrontational imagery, but he provokes emotions not often explored on screen.

This a film where men on both sides of the line are seasoned and efficient. Men after Mamet's own heart.

Anderson is a hopeless romantic in a cynical world, and for a brief moment he makes the case that true love is the only power that can crack time and space.

Ultimately feels hollow and slapdash.

The texture of Manic feels honest and the chemistry of the kids is well observed, but even the modest breakthroughs are dramatic conventions that favor the symbolic over the genuine.

It's more theatrical pageant than action movie, with the showy but rudimentary martial-arts action coming off like just another ritual with the players going through the motions.

For all the clumsy scenes and cloying performances, director Patricia Riggen puts her adults through tough choices and hard consequences.

There are no surprises in this match, but director Fumihiko Sori makes the games visually thrilling.

There's not enough insight to the social phenomenon presented onscreen, but that doesn't make the utterly human horror of this thriller any less unsettling.

The plot is often bewilderingly complex and the dense layers of subterfuge hard to follow, but by the climax the fairy tale has been twisted into a fascist fable of realpolitik mercenary opportunism.

It's not sleepy, it's comatose, and writer/director Josh Sternfeld never wakes it up with anything as crass as a plot.

It lacks both complexity and compromised characters. While the cultural backdrop is intriguing, the story is frustratingly conventional and familiar.

Not as cool as the first.