Pierce delivers everything the role requires except serious menace, while the less-seasoned Crawford improves as his handsome face bares more of the evening's scars.

Trapped inside the German film Vincent Wants to Sea there's an affecting father-son drama, an amusing road movie, a quirky romantic comedy and a non-patronizing take on mental illness. What we actually get - a homogenized movie-of-the-week set against the Alps and punctuated by anodyne English-language pop songs - brought out the cynic in me.

For more experienced viewers, the tired terrain is badly shot and haphazardly assembled into an audience-testing feature that appears to have no idea how unlikable or unprovocative it is.

There hasn't been such an egregiously self-congratulating piece of Communist propaganda since, arguably, the peak of '60s Soviet musicals, but Revival is so repetitive and po-faced that there's no kitsch value to be had.

The timing is right for this remarkable and riveting family drama which puts a human face on the hot-button topic of immigration in such effective and emotional terms that you may never look at the subject in the same way again.

All you need to know about this low-budget farce is that Amy Sedaris costars (yippee!) and New York pol Anthony Weiner would feel right at home with the sexting subplot (eeeuw!).

Formally, everything's in order-it's an attractive film with some ingenious action sequences-but the problems overwhelm the pleasures, leading to the conclusion that this film's trouble is under the hood.

More than just a jocular account of a musical comedy revue, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop is a snapshot of a unique man's psyche at a very peculiar moment.

Instead of a topic documentary, If a Tree Falls becomes the personal story of a well-intentioned man whose passion for the environment leads to serious consequences.

Bad Teacher is a worthy successor to the benchmark black comedy "Bad Santa" (without being at all the same).

An awkward stew between "American Beauty" and "Harvey" that only touches a nerve at the eleventh hour.

Pleasant is an underrated value in moviegoing, and pleasant is a word that describes director Sue Bourne's look at the world of amateur Irish dance competition in spades.

A refreshing, hilarious and heartwarming movie for everyone.

Whether Rossi's cautious optimism about the future of a legendary but troubled journalistic institution is justifiable is a story yet to be written, but Page One assures us that if the paper goes down, it will go down swinging.

The film, released in both 2D and 3D, delivers lots of freshly minted CGI'd action (eventually) but none of it grabs you. There's just something too synthetic about the whole enterprise - it's fantasy tipped over into fakery.

It takes from American gangster classics ("White Heat" and both "Scarface" films come to mind) but its unique setting and underlying themes give it distinction.

What makes this movie truly special is that the source of Buck's uncanny gift is actually an acute childhood sorrow.

A formula picture made by someone who doesn't even believe in the formula - he knows it all has to work out, we know it all has to work out, and he can't even muster an ironic wink for our trouble.

The equally simple and profound take-away from One Lucky Elephant is that the best thing we can do is let Flora be Flora.

As entertaining as it is educational.

This ho-hum offshoot of Megan McDonald's book series earns negative "thrill points" as it chronicles the mirthless backyard shenanigans of a suburban Pippi Longstocking.

Beautiful Boy is a discerning film lover's off-season tonic, regardless of where, when or how it's seen. What matters most is simply that it be seen.

Trachinger clearly has the wit and the talent to do thought-provoking and challenging work. All she needs is a producer with similar aspirations, and she'll be well on her way toward fully achieving the promise on display here.

An historical drama so swamped by its soap opera crescendos, no resonant story can survive the wet.

The film has a narrative grip and pitiless portrait of idealism run amok that's hard to resist.

Devotees and the curious may find it mildly diverting, otherwise this effort is not for the faint-headed.

Troll Hunter may be a relatively low-budget fantasy but the film looks epic in all the right sequences.

Mr. Nice is hampered by tonal timidity and the inability to find a sufficiently entertaining through-line in Marks' life story.

Abolishing obvious innuendo and employing a deft handling of script and character, the film has all the fixings to play like a sleeper in arthouses.

Sweet moments of subtle comedy and straightforward family drama mix perfectly with Mike Mills' trademark artfulness in Beginners.

It's in the moments Abrams attempts to combine emotional payoffs with popcorn-style thrills that the film rings most false.

An auspicious, controlled and altogether droll debut film that resembles Wes Anderson's "Rushmore" without being derived from it.

Some of the performances in the film (from Mahalia Jackson to The Clara Ward Singers) are deeply affecting and the historical context the film provides is as impressive as the music itself.

It's by the book advocacy docmaking at its best.

Bloodworth is a true southern gothic. There is nary a smile nor chuckle to be had throughout and ultimately things end badly. The density of the drama will draw some audiences and repel others, and those who come may find it all a bit too dramatic for plausibility.

All of this is silly, none of it is funny and it's not long before the whole film stops making sense altogether.

This is a quirky, imaginative and outrageously funny little movie that will speak to more of us than any of us would like to admit - even if we aren't sporks, persay.

What the film does well, however, is grasp the tone and rhythm of the original comic books.

A fun and surprisingly affecting little adventure, Kung Fu Panda 2 ranks among the best films DreamWorks has ever done.

The price for an invite to Stu's (Ed Helms) Thai nuptials is fewer laughs and an air of menace and mystery that won't endear Part II to escapist-hungry audiences.

Rather than take a broad-brush approach director Muntean boggs us down in the detail of an adulterous affair. There are some similarities with his previous outing "Boogie" in that the main character is a man having a premature mid-life crisis.

Arguably the best creative decision Jacobs and Siskel make in the film is choosing their talented subjects.

Aggressively impressionistic and unapologetically spiritual, Malick's long-gestating meditation on the meaning of life is, if nothing else, a singularly original and deeply personal film - a growing rarity in American cinema.

Watching even the most tossed-off gag is worth whatever shortcomings Make Believe has, including its lack of real drama.

Much of the film is taken up with Wexler's musings about his own mortality and physical, shall we say, decomposition.

A conventional portrait of an endearingly unconventional sister act-with roots in music halls and the dairy farm on which they were raised (and became expert yodelers)-The Topp Twins is a piece of hagiography.

Bridged by rude comedy familiar to veteran viewers of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, True Legend is refreshingly unpretentious in comparison to the pompous nationalism of recent Chinese war spectacles like "The Warring States."

Even given narrative license, South African-born screenwriter Ann Peacock has trouble cobbling together a truly compelling plot that deals with Kenyan history, including tribalism, in a detailed way.

This is the perfect summer movie and perhaps the best Pirates of them all.

Woody Allen's time-travelling comedy Midnight In Paris is a valentine to Paris and an absolute delight.

In an era where monster mythology has become raw material for all sorts of mediocrity, Priest is one of the best examples of a broad-scale vampire blockbuster.

Essentially a sexually charged two-hander with blunt allegorical implications, Kôji Wakamatsu's one-note follow-up to United Red Army is a disappointing affair, visually indifferent and thematically simplistic.

Burns captures the look and spirit of the times with perfect detail.

Akin to a stroll through a gallery, L'amour Fou is meditative and magically eye-opening.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt dominates this slight, worth-a-watch dramedy.

This is strictly talking heads fare, broken up with movie clips, stills and home movies; fortunately, Jack Cardiff's ephemera are better than yours.

The glossy Manhattan footage, as hermetic as Woody Allen's rendition of New York, is engagingly expensive-looking at least, but the cast is barely given anything to work with.

Viewers will find its emotional arc obvious and familiar, although the summoning of those emotions is where the movie derives its power.

It's a movie about a life, and life can be kinda funny and kinda poignant, even when it's full of ordinary things, like age, sickness and loss.

Smarter than expected, even if it's too ragged to truly resonate.

The film is terrific: smart, sexy and funny.

Stake Land is the movie "The Road" should have been.

Unfortunately, the committee-designed script never finds a consistent balance between building characters, delivering action and pushing the story forward.

From its baldly overwritten dialogue to its claustrophobically stingy use of locations, Dragons is underdone in every way.

Hobo is trash cinema through and through and gives fans everything they want from a drive-in throwback. That's something that doesn't happen often.

Andrea Dunbar's portrait here is unforgiving; comparable to Joan Crawford in "Mommy Dearest" or Tobias Wolff's brass-knuckled dad in "This Boy's Life."

A breakthrough comedy, a four-square piece of populist fun that ranks as quite possibly the best mainstream American comedy in years-at least since "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."

Dylan Dog feels like its ideas were stolen from western entertainment-a mash-up of sexy vampires, burly werewolves, and comical-gross zombies-which Hollywood then stole back from the Europeans, forgetting that other movies have explored that evil terrain thoroughly, exhaustively and better.

Writer/director Chris Ordal's debut feature is not a documentary nor is it precisely a biopic. Instead the drama captures the artist at a pivotal moment in time.

Italian audiences are bound to like it and the broadness of plot and appeal suggests casual fans of foreign film should, too.

Panettiere's performance has the straightforwardness of a jumbo crayon.

A highly entertaining original movie that's funny, touching and real.

It's difficult to imagine a more fascinating case of sociopathic, obsessive-compulsive behavior, or a more disciplined, engrossing study of it. And yet a vital ingredient is missing.

Fans of the filmmaker should thrill at the prospect of a new project, but the film's lackadaisical pacing and preoccupation with pulling the rug out from under the audience.

The look is appealing, but the dark third act and heavy themes may alienate family audiences.

The resulting distillation is brisk, light and engaging with none of the cheap shots that usually accompany any discussion of ventriloquism. If anything, Goffman is too gentle, refusing to pursue his charges into their darker corners.

With his (Herzog) idiosyncratic blend of serendipity, bluntness and mischievous irony, he's able to get at deep questions like no other documentarian.

It's pithy and funny in that continuous smile kind of way that you don't notice until you're half way through it.

David Lowery's St. Nick provides plenty to marvel at.

Features some of the most exhilarating action sequences the screen has seen in years.

So satisfying and surprisingly fun.

Spurlock is at his trouble making best throughout the film, especially when he persuades longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader by offering him a free pair of Merrell shoes.

Waltz is the highlight of this glossy but plodding drama, a live wire in a movie that sorely needs a jolt.

Azabal is superb, conveying Nawal's fiery presence, determination and mounting bitterness. The impressive cast includes non-professionals from Jordan, where Incendies was filmed.

Pleasantly old fashioned, with plush period sets of '20s Shanghai and actual hand-to-hand combat.

Lifeless as entertainment and incoherent as ideology.

With perspective firmly confined to the soldiers, Armadillo has inevitably invited many comparisons to "Restrepo," last year's Oscar nominated documentary about Western forces trying to gain ground in Afghanistan. But "Restrepo" is by far the better film.

Directors Keith Scholey (who also wrote the narration) and Alastair Fothergill spent nearly three years capturing this remarkable footage, and have edited it judiciously with an eye to entertainment.

If you're a fan of upper-crust New England intellectuals or one of them yourself, Ceremony is probably your perfect movie.

This handsome period piece should develop a strong afterlife on DVD and in schools.

It's easy to get depressed by much of the behavior depicted in Phillip the Fossil, yet the talents behind the picture are a cause for optimism. The last thing they appear to be is hypocritical.

The first half-hour is as evocative as (and more specific than) Claire Denis' "White Material," a similarly broad treatment of post-colonial chaos. The rest, sadly, falls apart, but Haroun's formal skill confirms his continual promise.

If there was ever a horror film that made fans of the genre feel old, it's Scream 4.

The barely coherent Footprints seems bent on erasing any nostalgia one might have for Hollywood's heyday.

The twists and turns in The Double Hour are not arbitrary; rather, they are well considered and effective, right down to the last frame.

The script does not provide that much illumination, yet the power of the acting and the quality of the visual imagery carry us along.

Both emotionally charged and at times extremely funny, with humor emerging naturally from the characters' predicaments, Meet Monica Velour has the feel-good factor without comprising its ideals.

While it matches "Pygmalion" and "Educating Rita" in topic and pedigree, Queen to Play merely hints at plot points and character development, which leaves it to coasts on the reputations of its stars.