Walter Addiego

This is a timeless, and nearly plotless, look at the day-to-day life of a nomadic Mongolian shepherding family. Yes, it moves deliberately, and impatient viewers will find it intolerably slow. But those who can get in track with its serene rhythm will be rewarded.

Linklater has less success telling a story; time passes amiably, but the film has no center.

Well made, but it's a talkfest that wears its stage origins on its sleeve.

Succeeds better than it ought to, largely because of the personality and prodigious talents of its director and star, the Italian comedian Roberto Benigni.

Has an impressive cast and captures some of that era's fuzzy rebelliousness and humanism, but taken on its own the picture is finally thin stuff.

The standard noir trappings are here: the femme fatale, double-crossing, fatalism, broken dreams, innocence betrayed and the rest of it. But Stone pushes it all so far and so relentlessly that it becomes absurdist comedy.

This is a nearly miraculous conjunction of director, material and actor.

Though not flawless, this is a compelling study, in Dogme style, of a wounded young woman who spends her working life spying on others.

With the exception of a couple of inspired moments, Mary Reilly is merely a curious variation of an often-told story.

The most compelling footage was taken during the uprising of August and September 2007, which put a bad scare into the government because a large number of Buddhist monks played a prominent role.

Not sure we need to know this much about his family life.

It's a bleak, fatalistic tale about rootlessness and the changing moral order in the machine age, but the wondrous details of the film trump any grand thematic concerns.

Standard-issue slasher pic.

From Juan Ruiz-Anchia's florid, eruptive photography to the pinpoint editing by Howard E. Smith that enhances it, everyone involved with The Corruptor understands that action is the bottom line - except Chow.

Director Paul Morrison ("Wondrous Oblivion") nicely re-creates the period, but puts too much weight on the sexual relationship as determining the men's artistic courses.

The picture seems to have been intended as a political satire, but only a Hollywood executive could mistake it for the real thing.

What's unforeseen in Unforeseen, a superior documentary by Laura Dunn, are the consequences of a certain mind-set about mankind's relationship to the world and, finally, to itself.

A potboiler but entertaining enough to rise above its flaws.

This nightmarish revenge drama from Korea is grueling, intense, cruel -- the very definition of extreme cinema.

A gentle comedy.

The performers don't really seem at the top of their game here.

This Belgian crime thriller makes compelling viewing out of a "you can't be serious" plotline.

Doesn't allow the story's considerable nostalgia and sentimentality to overwhelm it.

It is stark, realistic and resolutely downbeat. Yates' work is lean, and he has a nice way with action sequences. [17 May 2009, p.R28]

The acting is good, particularly by Faour, who plays the naive, zaftig heroine as warm and appealing despite her troubles. It's also nice to see veteran Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass ("Lemon Tree"), who plays Muna's sister.

You can get away with almost anything in a farce except failing to be funny, and that's what kills Death at a Funeral.

An unbroken flow of sad or nasty incidents.

Intriguing and educational. For partisans of Bertolt Brecht, it's mandatory.