V.A. Musetto

Suffers from a lack of focus and a sitcom script.

The noise level reminds me of Canal Street in Chinatown on a Sunday afternoon.

Scott's feature debut is beautifully filmed and offers an unexpectedly shocking ending.

Beautifully filmed and well-acted, "The Gift to Stalin," directed by Rustem Abdrashev, has its schmaltzy, cliched moments, including an unnecessary finale in Jerusalem.

Sadly, with the Soviet Union gone, the art faces a new enemy: Islamic extremists.

Literate and engrossing, with excellent performances.

An enjoyable mix of tragedy and comedy.

You won't soon forget it -- if you have the guts to see it.

Perplexing but pleasing.

It's an interesting story, but the presentation is more like a home movie than something you'd pay to see in a theater.

It's also sugary and has a silly tear-jerker ending. But I found myself laughing at the film's gentle humor, anyway.

An example of style over substance. There's lots of slo-mo and jittery hand-held camera work, and references to the French New Wave (especially François Truffaut), but little depth.

If there's an awkward moment, it's the scene in which the monks take part in a sort of Last Supper, drinking wine while Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" plays in the background. You keep waiting for Natalie Portman to twirl into the room.

The dialogue is banal and the acting, especially Wortham's, is unconvincing. Even the sex and nudity, of which there is a lot, grows tiresome after a while.

Morbidly funny art-house horror tale.

Beautifully composed documentary.

A technical and performance success. The chemistry between Sosa and Lujan heats up the screen as their lives spiral out of control.

Poetry, which rightfully won the best-screenplay prize at Cannes, never resorts to exploitation. Under Lee's guidence, it is a mature film for mature audiences.

Madsen interviews experts galore, but few seem to know what's going to happen with this project in the next decade -- let alone 100,000 years.

An uplifting story to be sure, but director-producer David Swajeski doesn't do it justice.

Sergei Puskepalis (Sergei) and Grigory Dobrygin (Pavel) give powerful performances, but the real star is Mother Nature.

Kekilli delivers a perfectly tuned performance. Too bad the script is often clunky and melodramatic, as the first-time director, Vienna-born Feo Aladag, tries to manipulate viewers' emotions.

Call it "The Doom Generation II." Gregg Araki's Kaboom returns to the trippy ways of his 1995 erotic head trip.

The piéce de résistance is a "Rocky"-ish battle between bare-fisted Ip (Donnie Yen) and a racist Brit who uses boxing gloves and goes by the name Twister.

It is beautifully shot, with impeccable acting and visual detail.

Director and co-writer Martin Pieter Zandvliet draws inspired work from Steen.

Directed by C. Scott Willis, this beautifully shot documentary blends Francesca's work -- photos, videos and passages from her diary -- with interviews.

Nothing would help make this dud understandable.