At the very least, some of the answers and observations offered up in this hybrid documentary/drama/thesis project will surprise you.

Under a different set of circumstances - in a different society - the development might have flourished. But The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is a documentary, not fantasy.

Fatal Assistance has few answers, and adds little clarity.

This musical should have taken center stage in Theater Camp. The dreadful story surrounding it deserves to get the hook.

In Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris does something inconceivable and, at first glance, ill-advised. He gives the US soldiers of Abu Ghraib back their humanity.

The movie stakes out a whole new arena - male social performance anxiety - and ruthlessly mines it for comic embarrassment.

The biggest problem with Where’s My Roy Cohn? is the documentary’s attitude toward its subject: not that it’s critical (an uncritical approach to Cohn would be about as interesting as a daytime visit to Studio 54), but that it so thoroughly accepts his view of himself.

A narrative feature can do what the documentary couldn’t: re-create the tightrope act in full, glorious motion, rather than editing together surreptitiously snapped photos. These dizzying IMAX 3-D visuals truly are big-screen magic.

A honey, but your response to it may depend on where you fall on life's big curve.

So despite Tcheng's effort to add a metaphysical layer to the film, it pretty much repeats the narrative seen in many other documentaries about the fashion world, from Wim Wenders's “Notebook on Cities and Clothes” (1989), to “Unzipped” (1995), to “Valentino: The Last Emperor” (2008).

It’s the cinematic equivalent of a classic-rock station, except instead of getting the genuine articles to serenade you, you’re stuck with a bunch of actors cosplaying famous folk singers.

I know it's not "Citizen Kane," but it pushes my buttons. [25 March 1994, p.47]

Only a true grinch would grumble loudly at a film that delivers its pro-environment message with a light touch that avoids preachiness.

It also bears something you rarely experience in a football movie. Friday Night Lights has a soul.

Cancer dramas are not uncommon; what lifts Ordinary Love just enough out of the ordinary is its concern with how a married couple survives the ordeal. Intimate, unsparing, and attuned to the micro-nuances of a longtime relationship, it is made special by the two actors at its center, both out-size talents who here relish the opportunity to play close and draw from life.

Like Lyon balancing looking out and looking in “The Bikeriders,” Nichols balances the mythic and mundane in this version.

A small film and, ultimately, a satisfying one.

Very much a genre picture, relying on notions of suspense, surprise, and comeuppance. Indeed, at the center of this movie is a question of whether what we're seeing is really to be believed.

Agreeable eye candy and ear candy, but it's too slight to reach as deep as it thinks it wants to reach.

Frustratingly, Carnahan barely trusts his storytelling to keep our attention long enough to get through a scene without some grisly cutaway -- a gun to the head, the writhing wounded.

A clever, affectionate, and entertaining holiday snack for sci-fi fans. Falling somewhere between slick and cheesy.

Despite the music, and no matter how the film’s editors slice it, the attempt to get a rise out of the audience by way of the endangered child device verges on emotional pornography.

What's most vexing about Portrait of Wally is its lack of nuance.

It's fair to say that a meaner documentary might have packed more punch. But it's hard to imagine Michael Moore turning out anything that feels as pleasantly nourishing.

Fitfully good.

The parts, in other words, promise a brilliant whole. So why is this movie one of the signal disappointments of the year? You have to go back to the basics: Public Enemies has everything going for it except a reason and a script.

Like many other contemporary psychological thrillers, “Resurrection” is far better at building up tension than it is in pulling together its narrative threads. It’s a little over-infatuated with its own perceived complexity, as if giving the audience any kind of conventionally plausible wrap-up is beneath its mission.

It's a solid, earnest drama of moral redemption that places old cliches in an unfamiliar setting.