Although the story and imagery are absorbing to watch, the details of the plot are sometimes hard to follow and fully digest. But enough of it survives to make this extravagant production a delightful experience for Westerners to watch.

Sporadically, the deliberately organic, semi-improvised tone doesn't quite gel, and there are momentary longueurs that could derail the story. But Myrick's decision to keep the narrative simple, and instead concentrate on the characters, means there's always a thick strand of sympathy and tragedy at play.

Streisand's been in front of cameras so long she's thinks of them as mirrors. Luckily she has a good eye and it, more often than not, has the ability to look straight to the soul.

With beauty and talent to spare, Portman is something to behold: It's as if Elizabeth Taylor and Jodie Foster were somehow genetically melded at an early age. She's definitely a beautiful girl to watch for.

Thoroughly predictable from start to finish.

The screenplay by father-son team Jacob and Michael Koskoff, the latter of whom is also an actual trial lawyer in Connecticut, is tight and lean; even the courtroom scenes are punctuated by honestly unexpected revelations.

Director Lenny Abrahamson establishes a twee tone early that renders tinny the transition into melancholy, and it’s a shame the film so clings to Jon’s perspective. The takeaway is as flat as Frank’s mask. Bemused smile, followed by deflated feeling.

Recounting the history of nukes, mankind's seeming inability to render them obsolete, and the many nightmare scenarios that are cropping up with almost daily frequency in this grim new age of terror-on-demand,Countdown to Zero is less a documentary in the traditional sense than a scathing piece of advocacy journalism.

At times it feels like it wants to be a comedy, à la History of the World, Part I, and at others it seems solidly part of serious dramas like Ben Hur. It’s a tricky tone to balance, and The Book of Clarence doesn’t always succeed, weakening an otherwise enjoyable and entertaining film.

Although The Many Saints of Newark offers an alluring glimpse into Tony Soprano’s birth under a bad sign, it never shows the blue moon in the mobster’s eyes.

The film constantly plays against expectations. Reitman’s skilled direction of the superb cast allows the ridiculous to become poetic, the artificial to unfold naturally, the absurd to achieve a deep romantic resonance.

It’s a daunting task to mount a stage production of the play these days, given the college-lit symbolism embodied by its hapless titular bird and the narrative arcs to which today’s audiences are accustomed, much less adapt it for the big screen and still remain true to Chekhov’s delicate dramatic sensibilities. Either way, it’s an uphill climb. This film adaptation of this seminal play (the fourth, by most counts) gets about halfway up the hill.

Skate Kitchen’s mild melodrama meanders all over the place, not unlike the many skateboarders who shred the skate parks and streets, carving hypnotic, slo-mo figure-eights or outrageous triple ollies on every available surface and obstacle.

As Benny, [Driver] nudges the film out of its few valleys of smarm, making Circle of Friends a heartfelt love letter to circles of friends everywhere.

Wasted! is sure to be mind-expanding for anyone who’s never contemplated what happens when excess food is scraped off one’s plate. But the film’s real novelty lies in the demonstration of actual solutions that have already been put into practice.

One would think that a film concerning ghosts, time travel, and righting past wrongs would clearly lay out the rules, but Do and screenwriter Christopher Larsen are more interested in pastoral atmosphere than logic and with examining the emotional toll of regret, of mistakes, and how those things can follow you forever.

Like code that works but inefficiently, the length is both a feature and a bug. Mercifully, Ascher's most visually original movie to date keeps those TED lecture seat-shuffling blues at bay.

A notch above the mediocre movies that are usually made from mediocre John Grisham bestsellers. That may sound like faint praise, but it’s an endorsement for this surprisingly entertaining film.

This is an impressively realized (and, yes, occasionally, unavoidably humorous) valentine to Hollywood's sci-fi glory days – all heart, no snark, and one big eye.

You know you're watching some sort of bizarre classic when King of Trash John Waters gets half his face burned off by sulfuric acid in the first act.

There's just enough plot to keep things moving but never too much that it gets in the way of the basic fish-out-of-water gagfest. The Beverly Hillbillies' greatest achievement is its inspired casting.

Within the context of films that include the word booty in their titles, it serves up an unusually fresh, inventive and good-natured brew of pure lascivious fun.

Farrow and Walken are terrifically semicomatose as Abe's mom and dad, and Murphy – as a co-worker who takes what appears to be pity on the eternally adolescent Abe – is equally memorable. Yet Dark Horse feels like a lesser Solondz film, despite its cavalcade of misanthropy.

Makes it pretty difficult to tell the difference between good mothers and bad.

Unsettling and odd, it's the perfect film for a dreary, rainy day.

Fans of the Polish brothers and fans of inspirational movies may all depart the theatre scratching their heads: The Astronaut Farmer is not exactly the movie any of these viewers expected to see. This is almost always a good thing – even if the movie is a deserved head-scratcher.

From James Brown to Sam Cooke, the songs set a mood that lingers for some time after.

Like some sentimental fool, I allowed Johnson’s good-hearted buffoonery and Pettis’ overpowering sweetness and Millard and Price’s unwavering belief in the healing power of love to get the better of my senses and travel straight passed my brain to my heart.