Walter Addiego

There's some amusement in watching Michael Cera play an unalloyed jerk, but in the main this trifling film shuffles by with a few low-key jokes and observations, building to an abrupt moment of seriousness.

Because he made "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004), there will always be high expectations for a new film by Michel Gondry. But while his new movie The We and the I, is intriguing in fits and starts, it isn't in the same league.

The movie deals with themes of secular and religious love, of how they may intersect and diverge, that are suggestive of Bergman or Carl Theodor Dreyer.

The best of the longer segments is "Steve," a piece of Pinter light starring Firth as a passive-aggressive neighbor from hell who repeatedly turns up at the door of a bickering couple (Knightley and Tom Mison) to register a series of baseless complaints.

The movie examines the possibility of maintaining one's humanity in a truly oppressive society.

Like Someone in Love is best suited to viewers already familiar with this extraordinary filmmaker's better work.

The film bolsters its case with plenty of facts, charts and expert testimony - evidence typical of this sort of advocacy documentary. But what makes the movie compelling is its focus on a handful of victims, who make the statistics painfully real.

Heavy-handed dialogue, flurries of melodrama and a silly ending make the whole enterprise sink like a stone.

A long documentary that's very hard to watch - at times, it's harrowing.

Sound City is Grohl's first effort at filmmaking, and if it doesn't break any ground as a documentary, it's a heartfelt testament to a place he considers among the most hallowed halls of rock.

If you stare at it too hard, In Another Country, an exercise in drollery from South Korea's Hong Sang-soo, simply evaporates. But if you take the film as the bauble it is, you'll be entertained by its lighthearted wit, social observations and resolute sidestepping of profundity.

Despite a super-dark noir plot and respectable cast, Deadfall is a thriller that never quite delivers on its promise.

His personal efforts are praiseworthy, but if glacial melting is in fact the "canary in the climate coal mine" (his words), the movie might have given us a bit less of Balog and a bit more of the startling sequences he produced.

You might hope for a bit more depth on the kids Dellamaggiore profiles - perhaps she could have homed in on, say, two of them - but this is really nitpicking. The film is well made and genuinely inspirational.

The real acting laurels go to Klein, who is both an adult and a child - by turns smart and not so smart, brave and fearful, caring and full of disdain.

There's no getting around it. Though it's not without virtues, The Loneliest Planet may try the patience of even the most dedicated lovers of art film.

Lévy gets expectedly strong work from the veteran Devos and outstanding performances from Sitruk and Dehbi.

Don't fault Thirlby, who does as much as she can with the material. Krasinski is pretty good, and DeWitt and Ennenga are outstanding. The direction is decent, and the film is handsome. But it's finally frustrating, enigmatic in a way that suggests emptiness more than mystery.

The film doesn't see any contradictions between the man and his work, which is folkloric, mostly upbeat, often humorous. Both art and artist are outsized and entertaining, and that's about all that Bel Borba Aqui has to say.

It's a sumptuously mounted melodrama that aims to make a big statement about big themes, but a stilted quality in the filmmaking drags it down.

That the movie largely sidesteps partisan politics will no doubt irk some viewers, but may just be its greatest strength.

Nostalgia for the groves of academe weighs heavily on Liberal Arts, which both exploits and undermines romanticized memories of campus life.

The Eye of the Storm is performed with zest by a fine cast and offers some nicely biting moments but, in the end, falls short of its large ambitions.

The film is implicitly advocating a New Age or holistic perspective, with a dollop of Eastern religion added for good measure. (The title is Sanskrit meaning "wheel of life.")

If nothing else, The Inbetweeners Movie proves that raunchy comedies about horny teens aren't just an American quirk.

Goodbye First Love doesn't badger the viewer into drawing conclusions. It's interested in showing, with great compassion, how Camille comes to a fuller understanding of the world and herself, without the sort of prefab lessons more often found in films than in real life.

The film's sense of intimacy, its closeness to real people and painful events, allows it to reach a deeper place than more conventional pieces of political rhetoric.

As an indulgence in creative verbal abuse, the film offers some nasty fun.

I liked this movie somewhat, even if I'm not sure exactly what it means. Possibly it has something to do with arriving home, in the broadest sense. But in a Maddin film, uncertainty comes with the territory.

By the time the women pull off their climactic stunt, the film's been undone by its ungainly mix of heavy-handed comedy and melodrama.

A film that's hard to watch and hard to recommend.

My main quibble is that the ending is a bit softer than I might have hoped for, but don't let that dissuade you. Headhunters is a well-oiled, nasty machine.

The movie is probably best appreciated by devotees of the cult director, who has made some good films and some interesting ones (and some that are both): "King of New York," "Bad Lieutenant," "The Addiction." "4:44" isn't quite in that company.

The film is much enhanced by the performance of Labed, whose work capturing Marina's moods and contradictions won the best actress award at the 67th Venice Film Festival.

An understated story of coping with emotional blows that offers a compelling portrait of a decent man.

This Is Not a Film isn't just a film, it's a strong one. It's also an act of political defiance, a moving personal document and a meditation on what film is and can be.

The film is full of low-key but telling observations, mostly about Gianni's plight but also about modern life in general.

A mostly compelling documentary about that rarest of breeds, an appealing politician.

The image that finally lingers is one shown repeatedly: a close-up of fingers gently pressing a piece of fish onto a handheld oblong of rice, painting it with a single brushing of sauce and laying it on a plate, after which the preparer steps back. We're left to contemplate the pristine creation and envy Jiro's lucky customers.

The New Zealand feature Boy almost pulls off the trick of merging cartoonish humor and '80s pop culture with a story glancing at deeper family issues. The film has an appealing 11-year-old hero, but in the end feels half baked.

Good chemistry between the lead actors and nice supporting performances help Friends With Kids survive a formulaic story and just-OK filmmaking.

The nonprofessional cast is convincing, especially Lacej, whose Rudina registers more strongly than Nik.

If nothing else, you'll surely relish the extravagant rhetoric used by Ali Mahdavi, the club's artistic director, to describe what is basically a tasteful nudie revue.

For Tim and Eric, what's funny is what's odd, ultra-cheap, pathetic or scurvy - and what's funniest of all is that some people just don't get it.

There seems to be a pretty good film lurking around inside Bullhead, which makes what we actually see on the screen all the more frustrating.

A lot of what takes place in Roadie feels overly familiar, and the film could have been a wallow in pathos except for the performances, especially that of Eldard.

With a handful of blackly humorous jolts and some game performances by a good cast, Thin Ice is a watchable, if not terribly original, piece of Midwestern noir.

The film boasts an original score by Cuban pianist and composer Bebo Valdés, who was featured in "Calle 54."

The documentary Hell and Back Again may be the closest most civilians ever get to the reality of the war in Afghanistan.

There are some compelling performance moments, and it's sad to watch these talented and basically nice people drift apart. But overall the film seems like a collection of bits and pieces, and it's hard to see how it could have much resonance for non-fans.

Bala, by the way, means "bullet." Laura Zúñiga, the real-life beauty queen on whom the film is loosely based, was called "Miss Narco" in the Mexican press.

The film's subject, a whistle-blowing research scientist who played a key role in the fight to regulate tobacco, deserves to be celebrated.

Affecting at times, but finally feels overblown and heavy-handed.

A breezy account of a man whose obsession began early.

It's impossible to listen to Francesca's parents, deadly serious about art as a higher calling, without feeling both saddened and disturbed.

A fly-on-the-wall look at the inner workings of the famed Spanish palace of avant-garde gastronomy that closed its doors in July. If you're passionate (and open-minded) about food, you'll be fascinated.

The plot is somewhat pedestrian and the dialogue needs more zip. But it's amusing to watch the Bayaka poke good-natured fun at the gangly Larry, who has only their best interests at heart.

Campbell's admirers will probably enjoy the documentary, but I don't think it will do much for anyone else.

The curdled Norwegian comedy-drama Happy, Happy, which dissects a pair of poisoned marriages, is sometimes heavy-handed (like its title) but has much to recommend it.

Your heart will go out to Shlain, who clearly adored her father. But other parts of Connected may remind you of an Al Gore lecture.

We are told at the film's beginning that we are about to see a "diary of suffering," and it is that, but the effect, after four-and-a-quarter hours, is exhilarating.

The film is morbid and mawkish, and packed with enough forced whimsy to make you scream.

The film takes its time detailing his mundane activities, often withholding the kind of information audiences usually expect, and it's Puiu's talent to transform it all into a highly disturbing portrait - both of an individual and a society.

The film perhaps shines brightest when it depicts two telling relationships Nannerl has outside her family. The first is with Louis XV's 13-year-old daughter, Louise...The other relationship is with Louise's troubled brother, the dauphin.

The movie is anything but flawless. There are flourishes that seem plucked from Errol Morris' work but aren't as good, and some re-creations of past events are hokey. It's the film's content that packs a punch.

An intense and chilling documentary.

Filmmaker Doris Yeung tries to mix a whodunit with a story of explosive family dynamics, but the effort succumbs to a weak script and a one-note lead performance.

Perhaps the film's greatest strength is the performance by Kwanten, who appears in HBO's "True Blood" and may be familiar from his lead role in the big-screen Aussie thriller "Red Hill." Dermody also does well.

In Amigo, a story of the Philippine-American War, veteran filmmaker John Sayles allows his political convictions to get the better of him. The movie is a heavy-handed attack on U.S. imperialism with little to compensate in the way of character interest and genuine drama.

No target is too obvious for Salvation Boulevard, a farrago of cheap shots aimed at Christian fundamentalism. It's a blunderbuss satire that criminally wastes a talented cast.

Depressing. So is director Marshall Curry's avowal in the press notes that the film will leave viewers with "a more nuanced view of the world."

If you've sworn off movies about adolescent misfits, I don't blame you, but make an exception for Terri. This modest comedy-drama declines to take the easy way out, unlike many examples of the genre.

A fast-moving Congolese crime thriller loaded with graphic sex and violence - basically an exploitation picture. But it's hard to surrender to the gritty flow because the story is stitched together from such crushingly familiar bits.