Sean Axmaker

Deyfus' haphazard filmmaking dissipates a potentially fascinating mystery into one long diversion.

Zambrano shows an impressive sensitivity toward his actors and their characters and never allows hopelessness to quash hope in this lovely film.

With a title like Chaos Theory, one might expect a little runaway energy or a dash of wild spirit under the antics, but there's little punchy anarchy in this controlled experiment.

More reinvention than remake, this black-humored, blood-soaked adventure is a colorful if impersonal audience pleaser done up in a showy, fluid style with a tongue-in-cheek flair.

Hip-hop is not the beat I dance to, but you don't need to be immersed in the culture to understand the heartbeat it sets in the lives of Brown Sugar's main characters.

A delight, a vigorous, vibrant romantic comedy that mines emotional desperation and frustration for all its comic potential, but never at the expense of its temperamental heroine.

No more or less than it appears to be: a paean to the benevolent fate we'd like to believe watches over us.

It's almost too devastating for words, yet never less than compelling and heartbreakingly affecting.

Tired and glib, it tries to milk humor from the sniping, sass and simple disrespect of its unpleasant traveling companions.

A disturbing, and disturbingly funny, twist on adolescent love, and Shiota captures the emotional avalanche with understanding.

It's still too shrill and silly to take seriously, but the high spirits and naïve message of tolerance and pride is oddly, innocently winning.

There's nothing messy or unkempt about the beautifully, quietly heartbreaking story of unconditional love and emotional sacrifice.

Secret Ballot is an education hiding in a comedy, a parablelike portrait of the irresistible forces of modernization and democracy meeting the immovable inertia of tradition, culture and power relations written in the blood of the past.

Ultimately this soppy Pacifier sucks.

It's great to see action stars cast for their moves -- their grace in motion is thrilling -- but they also have the charisma to pull off the characters.

Ultimately feels hollow and slapdash.

A grueling and deeply affecting human drama.

It makes for one of the best and most haunting of the recent Asian horror films.

It's a bracing reminder that before Hitler took power, it was handed to him. The lesson resonates long after the credits roll.

Wholesome, warm and energetic -- if predictable.

At its best, Company Man hums from one piece to the next, a harmless, good-natured, often silly spoof with a few cutting barbs and a comic showman's love of the well-executed gag.

Playful, predictable and more than a little precious, this entertaining if slight romantic farce makes it's hard not to mourn the loss of the adult romantic comedy.

It's so earnest it hurts.

Whether Mann's film will make a difference, however, is another question. He devotes little time to really exploring the issues, leaving the film a patchwork of assertions that, while they may be true, have to be taken on faith.

It becomes a dreamy study in stillness broken by suicide fantasies, flashbacks, and the hired killers, but even the violence has a meditative even melancholy quality to it, as if it's all been processed through the eyes of its Zen hero.

Opens on a display of humiliation and human degradation at its worst and then rewinds, like a video surfer zipping back to replay a favorite scene, to the nominal beginning of the spiral.

The real gift of Elf is the simple pleasure of a sweet and funny comedy that genuinely embraces its message of holiday cheer and still has fun goofing with it.

Hot Fuzz is something all too rare in movie comedies: a story rather than a string of disjointed skits, with hearty characters behind its caricatures.