Todd McCarthy

Even if the now-veteran director lays everything on a bit thick, repeatedly makes many of the same points and lets things go on too long, he's still found a lively and legitimate way to tackle urgent subject matter that other filmmakers have found excuses to avoid.

The Hudsucker Proxy is no doubt one of the most inspired and technically stunning pastiches of old Hollywood pictures ever to come out of the New Hollywood. But a pastiche it remains, as nearly everything in the Coen brothers' latest and biggest film seems like a wizardly but artificial synthesis, leaving a hole in the middle where some emotion and humanity should be.

It’s hard to detect a strong raison d’etre behind Sofia Coppola’s slow-to-develop melodrama.

A muted but nicely observed study of a Russian woman's gradual estrangement from her domineering Memphis music-legend husband.

Silk is a snooze. Vacuous, arid and terminally dull, this adaptation of Alessandro Baricco's freak bestseller hasn't a trace of real life or energy to it, and is hamstrung by a lethargic lead performance by Michael Pitt.

Both a stimulating social satire and, for thinking people, a depressing commentary on the devolution of the American political system.

Enhanced by a splendidly atmospheric recreation of the Lower East Side, the intimately focused work is anchored by another superior performance by Marion Cotillard.

Outstandingly realized on all levels.

Intense and physically powerful in the way it conveys its atrocious events, the film nonetheless remains short on complexity, as if it were enough simply to provoke and outrage the audience. It's a grim tale with no catharsis.

This is a tale that, like any number of fanciful genre outings, both pulls you in with its intriguing central dramatic situation and pushes you out with some mightily far-fetched plot contrivances.

Alive to cinematic ideas, generous to its actors and peppered with unexpected humor, this ultimately sweet-natured low-budgeter is nonetheless riddled with enough off-putting and digressive material.

A deeply metaphysical film by contempo Hollywood standards, this middlebrow trifle may engage the emotions of a certain tier of young professional women.

This middle portion of an intended trilogy will only play to the converted who have already seen Part I, and then only to the most gullible among them who will swallow mediocre filmmaking for the sake of ideology.

The story is told in a hammer-on-anvil manner that evinces no gift for social satire or sharp cultural insight.

Banal and trite where it could have been insightful and emotionally truthful, this Fox release is also notable for featuring the first disappointing performance by teen star Natalie Portman.

Mike Leigh has made one of his most modest pictures, although one that offers quite a few laughs and other quirky pleasures.

Herzog's quick visit to the front lines represents an appealing, scattershot, easily digestible progress report aimed at a general audience that's now becoming vaguely aware that we're all living at the beginning of some kind of new world that could be brave or extraordinarily homogeneous. Or both.

Character-driven to a fault, Heavy proceeds in such leisurely fashion that there are times one wishes it would shed a few minutes in order to get on with its business.

A rather ordinary account of youthful summer misadventures that goes down easily thanks to a sparky cast, more than 40 pop tunes that anchor the action in the late '80s and characters who get high both on and off their jobs at a tacky amusement park.

A flashy cast, clever script and vibrant showcasing of New York City as the ultimate melting pot are strong plusses for Spike Lee's most mainstream studio venture.

Blissful, whacked-out, inspired, juvenile, dementedly inventive, hyper-energized — all of this and more apply to music video and advertising whiz Makoto Nagahisa's first feature We Are Little Zombies.

Warm and borderline sentimental...also brimming with true and privileged moments, as well as an optimism in the face of tough circumstances that serves as a corrective to some of the more fashionably grim modern accounts of similar stories.

James Mangold's remake walks a fine line in retaining many of the original's qualities while smartly shaking things up a bit.

Fassbender cuts a more prosaic, realistic figure as the tormented, romantic Rochester than did the screen's most celebrated performer of the role, Orson Welles, in the effective 1944 version.

Lusterless trifle.

A weighty and deeply intriguing look at the many-tentacled beast that is the international oil industry. Wide-ranging and restlessly probing, Stephen Gaghan's second directorial effort uses the same mosaic storytelling technique as in his Oscar-winning screenplay for "Traffic."

The film's slender conceit is given some weight by its 11-year-old leading lady Sydney Aguirre, whose portrait of a flinty, instinctively mischievous tomboy growing up without benefit of parental guidance provides gratification even when there's not much going on.

This absorbing drama provides Denzel Washington with one of his meatiest, most complex roles, and he flies with it.