Made for the BBC, this travelogue of America's southern backwoods is both blessed and cursed by its fascination with the colorful--lively alt-country sounds and fancy word spinners like novelist Harry Crews.

Favors character development over rude scares, though given the narrow parameters of the genre, it's not really a worthwhile trade.

Michael Chiklis (of the cop show "The Shield") steals the movie as the agonized Thing.

The script, by newcomer Sabina Murray, is occasionally cloying as the naive hero falls for a bitter prostitute (Bai Ling), but its epic tale of two cultures tragically entwined is anchored by deep and elemental emotions.

Exhilarating.

The performances are perfectly distilled, but the traits I dislike in Bergman are all here -- self-pity, brutality, spiritual constipation, and an unwillingness to try to overcome these difficulties.

The ironic twist at the conclusion of this chilling drama underscores the vagaries of human nature--and of the media.

The funny-looking kids steal every scene from Lawrence, simply by virtue of being funny-looking kids.

It's more than a simple improvement, inverting some of the original's qualities so that the impersonal, well-crafted filmmaking remains lucid throughout.

The title of Jia Zhang-ke's 2004 masterpiece, The World -- a film that's hilarious and upsetting, epic and dystopian -- is an ironic pun and a metaphor.

Newly updated but shamelessly hokey, Steven Spielberg's version of the 1898 H.G. Wells yarn about murderous invaders from outer space starts off as a nimble scare show like "Jaws."

A spellbinding, beautiful, enigmatic film with a mysterious, allusive two-part structure.

The special effects, for once, are witty rather than overblown, and director Nora Ephron, writing with her sister Delia, handles the material with some grace and confidence.

Romero's fourth entry, turns out to be his most conventional as an action thriller--though it's every bit as gory as the others and more clearly class-conscious.

Emotionally charged but not entirely honest documentary.

Beautifully composed and deftly delivered, it becomes the libretto to Potter's visual music, creating a remarkable lyricism and emotional directness.

Some of the eggs fail to hatch and some of the chicks die, and the parents' cries are painful to hear, though what they're really crying for is the future of their species.

Both lead actors are wonderful, and director Ziad Doueiri (West Beirut) artfully addresses the cultural and even spiritual dimensions of the story without losing sight of the lovers' tenderness and confusion.

Avrich offers a cogent appraisal of Wasserman's importance to the industry and duly notes the darker aspects of his empire (among them MCA's alleged ties to organized crime).

Matt Dillon almost runs away with the movie as a preening, conniving NASCAR champ who may be dumber than a box of rocks but realizes there's something up with the VW.

If you don't mind the telegraphed punches of Ruth Epstein's script and Harvey Kahn's direction, this should carry you along.

A small but achingly authentic piece of kitchen-sink realism, this might never have made it across the pond without babe du jour Keira Knightley, excellent in a supporting role as a smacked-out waitress. But the real wonder is Parker, whose vulnerability and wraithlike beauty are devastating.

The premise is patently ridiculous, but the target audience of 12-year-old girls will be too charmed by the genre requisites to care.

This strange and beautiful Macedonian feature is a welcome reminder that national cinemas still exist.

This is brisk and fun to watch, thanks to the actors...But once you catch the main drift of the plot, it becomes awfully ho-hum.

These characters are touching and sympathetic to the extent that they're lonely, and that's what most of them are most of the time.

So fraught with unresolved issues of class, sexuality, and spiritual need, and so carefully observed by Pawlikowski, that it opens out like the movie's West Yorkshire countryside.

The most poignant performance comes from Allen, a retired stock analyst who clings to his masculine pride even though his body's falling apart on him.

"Soppy" doesn't begin to describe this 2004 drama by Quentin Lee.

Riegert and his cowriter, Gerald Shapiro, breathe some fresh air into the material with their credible characters.

There are strong turns by Michael Caine as Alfred the butler and Tom Wilkinson as a ruthless crime boss.

Atypically lame, this is more for spiritual tourists than admirers of "Aguirre: The Wrath of God."

A deeply stupid and offensive action comedy-romance.

Plays a bit better than it sounds. I miss the show's mangy, minimalist sets, but the slapdash narrative construction and good-hearted schmaltz survive intact.

If old-fashioned jolts are what you're after, this nasty piece of merchandise delivers. But so does electroshock.

Charmingly low-tech fantasy.

The movie's dreamlike spaces and characters are sometimes worthy of Lewis Carroll.

Austere and formally complex, the drama may nevertheless be Ozon's most accessible film due to the physical attractiveness and vitality of the intelligent couple.

Hou's best film since "The Puppetmaster" (1993). It's also his most minimalist effort to date, slow to reveal its depths and beauties, and it marks a rejuvenation of his art.

Ron Howard, an exemplar of honorable mediocrity, reunites with actor Russell Crowe and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman of "A Beautiful Mind" for this epic treatment of a seven-year stretch (1928-'35) in the career of New Jersey boxer James J. Braddock.

Excruciatingly narcissistic.

Engrossing and frequently hilarious.

Reasonably entertaining but predictable.

The episodic structure prevents any real momentum, but Byatt and Fothergill give a visceral sense of the sea's violence and vividly capture the riot of color to be found on the ocean floor.

Not bad to look at, but consistently unedifying.

This dyspeptic 2003 coming-of-age story from Italy often seems on the verge of nervous collapse, veering from giddy adolescent romps to adult shenanigans and shrill political discord.

Except for one manipulative deathbed scene, Ken Kwapis directs with sensitivity, steering the multiple story lines toward a satisfying conclusion.

Insofar as they're implicitly the spoils of war, this movie seems to be meditating on the whys and hows of the spoiling process -- raising more questions than can possibly be answered, and in this sense, at least, far from dogmatic.

This 2004 video documentary by Werner Herzog arrives in town while his hair-raising "Grizzly Man" is still playing, and it's a fascinating companion piece even though his manipulations are more obvious.

The new jokes all seem like discards from a Rob Schneider comedy, but for the most part director Peter Segal (Anger Management) and screenwriter Sheldon Turner play a good defensive game, sticking close to the original film's story.

The whole thing feels throwaway, but some of the gags are funny.

Like Costa-Gavras's "Amen." (2002), this German drama uses a true story to examine the Catholic church's response to the Holocaust, but it focuses less on institutional politics than on personal conscience and responsibility.

It abjectly collapses into feel-good nonsense.

Contemporary footage of sea creatures, reptiles, and insects serves to illustrate various chapters in our journey from the ocean floor to the megastore, and though the film's science isn't exactly rigorous, its photography and music are splendid.

The result is TV flavored, less a narrative than a haphazard succession of vignettes populated by crude stereotypes instead of credible characters.

Ken Hanes's witty script shows its origins in his stage play, with the repartee often a bit too thick and fast for the screen.

Two prequels' worth of scene setting pays off in the politically resonant Revenge of the Sith.

This is a deeply engaging portrait of a remarkable man and a brutally frank indictment of the West's moral cowardice in the face of a tragedy it could have prevented.

It did give me plenty of jolts and surprises.

There aren't any big laughs, but there's a steady supply of small ones, and with his overgrown-kid persona Ferrell seems more comfortable in a family comedy than, say, Eddie Murphy.

To boost this movie's rating to "worth seeing" would make me feel like a publicist or simply a dope.

Pierre Morel's diving, spiraling camera keeps pace with Yuen Wo-ping's rapid-fire fight choreography, all smartly directed by Louis Leterrier.

So clinically detached it borders on absurd.

A colorful cast whose combined energy lifts the story off the ground.

Arnaud Desplechin's best movie to date.

The elder Wexler keeps insisting that he won't sign a release for the film unless he approves of the finished product, so he must have been pleased with its brutally honest assessment of him as a gifted filmmaker who never realized his true potential.

Formulaic but fairly well-done.

Thoughtful and impressively mounted.

Isn't really a satire of Hollywood so much as a chance for Short's wealthy showbiz buddies (Steve Martin, Kurt Russell, Kevin Kline, Whoopi Goldberg) to poke very gentle fun at themselves and stick it to the press.

The result is flawed but frequently haunting.

It's a terrific story -- part mystery, part farce, part legal nail-biter -- with a last-minute reversal so bitterly ironic it could have been scripted by Billy Wilder.

Danish director Susanne Bier elicits wonderfully intimate performances from her actors, and this 2004 drama has so many genuine, low-key encounters it manages to overcome a contrived and familiar plot.

Pivots on the characters' racism and xenophobia, playing tricks with our own biases and ultimately justifying an extravagant array of coincidences and surprises.

The singing dolphins opener is a giddy prelude to an imaginative romp that's helped along in the slow patches by mind-bending visuals.

Of course the movie's real raison d'etre is watching Ice Cube tear up government facilities and blockades with a tank, spout Schwarzenegger-style kiss-off lines, and commandeer the kind of babes and high-tech cars that James Bond usually plays with.

The illicit lovers in this eerie South Korean drama communicate whole worlds without ever speaking.

Elon's documentary is fascinating precisely because its high moral tone is compromised by self-interest.

Absorbing thriller.

Bujalski has a knack for the genuine moment.

As Martel points out, the movie is about the "difficulties" and "dangers" of "differentiating good from evil," and it requires as well as rewards a fair amount of alertness from the viewer.

This movie will hardly set the world on fire, but it's a worthy vehicle for the two old troopers; Smith has the stiffest upper lip in the business, and Dench is heartrending as the naive, lovelorn sister.

Five people worked on the script; if there was ever any inspiration behind it, there isn't now.

This interminable contest between two narcissists, stretched out over many miles and years, is supposed to have something to do with romance.

The more interesting woman is Epper, who comes from a highly respected family of stunt doubles and at 62 shows no signs of slowing.

To my taste the only serious distraction and ethical lapse is Gibney's sarcastic, cheap-shot use of popular songs like "That Old Black Magic," "Love for Sale," and "God Bless the Child" to underscore certain points; it seems almost to celebrate the shamelessness of the creeps being exposed.

Tends toward the generic, and Jim Caviezel is hopelessly bland in the lead. Among the bright spots are Mary McCormack as the hero's wife and Bruce Dern as the wise old motorboat guru.

It's uneven, but still pretty charming, and director Jorge Furtado's whimsical visual touches keep things lively.

Melissa George's performance has more Lady Macbeth in it than Kidder's.

Forgettable coming-of-age story.

Australian mockumentary offers plenty of cheap laughs early on.

Camara and Peña are perfectly cast as the bewildered couple, and early on Berger gets some laughs from the one-note premise. But the material grows increasingly stale as the film drags on to its unintentionally creepy finale.

Engrossing.

Flaky, funny, and sexy.

Most comedies start with a straight story and hang jokes on it; Solondz begins with a cosmic joke and takes his characters by the hand as they suffer through it.

Directing real-life street kids, Tan abruptly shifts focus from one character to another, as if mimicking their impatience and short attention span, and like Godard he playfully subverts his own material by having actors address the camera directly, spouting cultural and political asides.

I'm no boxing fan, but there's something admirable about fighter Johar Abu Lashin's love of his sport, chronicled in Duki Dror's tautly constructed 2002 documentary.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the historical premise for this Indiana Jones knockoff.

To call this "Farrelly brothers lite" may be a little redundant, but aside from the odd vomit gag, it goes relatively easy on their usual working-class taboo busting.