Fast Food Nation has the dramatic flatness and willful lack of personality of some documentaries -- or at least how Linklater thinks a documentary should be. The movie nonetheless feels like both a work of investigative journalism and an immense human-interest story, veering into muckraking, horror, teen comedy, and what passes for "Twilight Zone" science fiction.

As amusing as it is, the comedy here consists mostly of predictable potshots.

Their film is a fiendishly detailed toy -- the sort found at the back of a forgotten museum -- and while the shadow play it presents is an old and eternal one, you never cease to hear the whirr of the gears.

The Aura is richer and less showy than "Nine Queens," and it lifts off from the gangster genre to contemplate deeper mysteries.

A shamelessly enjoyable retread, an ode to la belle vie that has been well turned on a factory spindle.

The real problem with Harsh Times is Jim himself. Bale goes at the part with his usual intensity, but the character still seems like a psycho without psychology or a soul.

As B-level suspensers go, though, The Return isn't actively awful -- just slow and cursed with a lead who acts with her t-shirt.

Watching the movie made me long for the big , risky ideas and entertainingly fearless filmmaking in David O. Russell's "I Heart Huckabees " and Spike Jonze's "Adaptation ," which Kaufman wrote. Both were similarly conceptual escapades, but they let it all hang out.

Longley takes us through that country without a map; he's an artful, optimistic empiricist who believes what we see matters infinitely more than what we're told.

In theory, there's nothing wrong with this unorthodox approach to Arbus -- attempting to explain her from the inside out. (In its way, Harmony Korine's freakfest "Gummo" is a better Arbus movie.) The trouble is that Shainberg and Wilson don't connect their conceit to anything artistically enlightening, erotic, or truly deviant.

Like an old college wrestler, Harris saunters through this toasty little piece of biographical fiction in love with the part's fixins'.

Part detective story, part coming of political age saga, and all teenage identity crisis, Captive is the first film written and directed by Gaston Biraben , who has worked steadily as a Hollywood sound editor since the early '90s. That professionalism shows in the polished filmmaking as well as an occasional tendency toward shallower melodrama than the situation deserves.

Despite the appearance of numerous free-speaking conservatives, the movie's partisanship leans nakedly to the left.

As directed by Nobuhiro Yamashita , the sluggish haze between extracurricular activities is exquisitely captured and framed, then patiently edited. Every shot feels like a gift.

A comic put-on of awe-inspiring crudity and death-defying satire and by a long shot the funniest film of the year. It is "Jackass" with a brain and Mark Twain with full frontal male nudity.

Parents will while away the time in moderate boredom until the film unexpectedly springs to life in its midsection, then just as abruptly goes back to sleep.

The bad news, for those looking forward to The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause with anything like enthusiasm, is this: Bernard the Elf is history.

Volver brims with personal and cinematic allusions, but no one hungry for a well-told tale from a master storyteller is required to understand them.

A slick but dull new shoot- ' em-up from Jamaica, doesn't penetrate the mysteries of high-rolling, high-risk thug life.

Unknown is punchy and entertaining. Maybe not the sort of thing you'd want to spend $10 plus a mortgage for popcorn on, but a nifty surprise on DVD several months from now -- or on pay-cable on-demand right now.

The musician is candid about his own demons and gives the filmmakers access to his wife, two very different daughters, and, for a nicely done montage, his family photographs.

Babel is a ziggurat of brilliant pieces built on sand. It's also this season's "Crash," a movie you know is Important because it never stops telling you so.

In Catch a Fire Noyce has caught the holy spirit. The movie is a thriller that wants to lift you up.

Television is a state of mind. And the makers of Saw III have delivered the most despicable episode of "One Life to Live" ever.

It's one of the great movies on the vicissitudes of love, commitment, and attraction.

Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck's film is a fascinating look at the intersection of commerce, celebrity, and controversy.

Turns out to be rather less than the sum of its headlines.

Absolute Wilson may not be original, but Wilson absolutely is. And for the glimmers of that originality that shine through here, the film is worth watching.