The performances are strong without calling attention to themselves--which is more than I can say for the occasionally hackneyed use of rock on the sound track.

Scott Speedman gives a piercing, intelligent performance.

The rudimentary 2-D animation doesn't allow for much character nuance, and the story isn't exactly fresh. But directors Fernando Trueba (Calle 54), Javier Mariscal, and Tono Errando conjure up some vibrant set pieces.

Engrossing documentary.

As a comedy duo Nicholson and Sandler pose no threat to the legacy of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, in part because Sandler is so outclassed, but mostly because everyone involved is playing it safe.

The behind-the-scenes revelations are thoroughly convincing.

As in the first movie, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart are trotted out periodically to add a little gravitas.

What Scorsese brings to the table, having created more than his share of rascally villains, is a renewed sense of horror and despair at the power of evil.

The best thing Mann brings to his picture is a strong sense of time and place.

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.

The movie flames to life whenever Donald Sutherland moves into frame as the young ladies' relaxed, humorous, and magnificently rueful father.

Intending to study the degree to which social class would determine the subjects' destinies, the series actually documents something more filmable--the degree to which the subjects believed social class would determine their destinies and the degree to which they believe it has.

Moving documentary.

Animation fans will find this worth the wait.

With all these safety features built in, this 1985 film is too well padded to qualify as genuinely radical wit, but in an even-toned, TV sort of way it's mildly amusing and inventive throughout.

Even if you can't accept all the movie's left curves, you might still be amused.

Disney's retelling of the popular Chinese folktale, may seem its gutsiest choice yet, but on closer examination it's obviously less a matter of guts than careful calculation.

Their inexperience with thrillers is evident here in the cluttered exposition at the beginning and wholesale revelations at the end. In the middle, though, there's a pretty suspenseful stretch.

The tone is bright and the action brisk, and there are fun turns from Edmund Gwenn (as the priggish elder Strauss) and Fay Compton (as the younger Strauss’s matron and would-be seductress).

In its embrace of human imperfection the movie recalls with elegant formal simplicity the populist threads of 30s French cinema.

More impressive than entertaining.

Jack Hill directs for maximal suspense, violence, and voyeuristic appeal (which Grier certainly embodies).

While Hanon's film stints on character development, he convincingly portrays the events that foster redemption and forgiveness, as over time the Waodani shed their culture of violence.

Tom Courtenay is quite good in the title role, and Julie Christie makes a memorable early appearance .

A wizard at manipulating time, Kitano introduces staccato elements that interrupt the meditative pace even as they help set it.

The picture gets to you more through its intensity than its craft, but Hooper does have a talent.

The message, unspoken but inescapable, is that a little sharing might feed wealthy and poor alike.

Like "Mystery Train" and "Night on Earth," this feature by Jim Jarmusch is a short story collection, but it's funnier and more formally adventurous than either--also ultimately greater than the sum of its parts.

Handsome and agreeable 2009 documentary.

The incandescent Doona Bae (The Host, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance) gives a daring performance as the toy-turned-woman,

They often seem more bent on titillating or harrowing us than on helping us understand the characters.

Among the many offhand virtues of Julie Delpy's first feature as solo writer-director is the fact that she's as attentive to French foibles as American ones.

In the finest tradition of adolescent identification figures, he's not only ruthless, dispatching numerous baddies with hair-trigger shots to the head, but profoundly desexualized, brushing off the insistent come-ons of a slinky prostitute (Olga Kurylenko) he's taken under his wing.

Coogan delivers a winning comic performance as the pompous impresario, but his story has little dramatic momentum of its own; he functions mostly as a pedantic narrator, imposing some cultural significance on the endless party and pointing out more intriguing personalities.

It's worth seeing for the tightly coiled plot, well-realized characters, and novel take on rapacious teen culture.

Zbanic's story of an ordinary life stained by extraordinary cruelty cuts deep.

The interviewees are good storytellers--particularly the eccentric research scientists who tested the effects of nicotine on rats in the early 80s--and the editing keeps their stories moving at a lively pace.

He makes a good job of it, though the wider aspirations to contemporary relevance seem dubious. Stone seeks large lessons in the experiences of ordinary men in battle, but it isn't clear Vietnam has anything new to offer: war is hell and somebody inevitably gets shafted, but the uniqueness of this conflict lies away from the military arena: in politics, psychology, and history. For all the purported naturalism, the film seems resolutely schematic, and the attitudes shaping the drama are far from open-ended.

Few directors are capable of this kind of structural experimentation so late in their careers, and Hitchcock deserves much credit for his audacity.

Bowdon makes a compelling argument against the defensive maneuvers of teachers' unions and in favor of vouchers and charter schools, but his documentary is no exercise in free-market cant. It merely explodes the fiction that funneling more money into the same highly bureaucratized and politicized system will fix our deepening education crisis.

As a director, Singleton shares with Furious a didactic streak. Singleton is no demagogue, but his fast-action style tends to erase the nuances of interracial dynamics.

Chen Kaige clearly intended this Chinese fantasy-action spectacle to top Zhang Yimou's "Hero," and I must admit that I prefer it to the earlier movie: the digital effects are sometimes excessive, yet Chen's story of a loyal slave, his master, and a wealthy, seemingly doomed princess is more affecting, especially in the closing stretch.

Screenwriters Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne stick to Clancy's sure-fire formula -- building tension from the political infighting behind a worsening crisis.

The epic poem Beowulf gets an imaginative, low-budget workout in this 2005 Icelandic feature by Sturla Gunnarsson.

A rare example of a successful documentary in the mode of Frederick Wiseman made outside the United States.

Eddie Murphy strikes the right balance between silliness and pathos in this screwball family comedy.

An impressive piece of filmmaking, with lively and suggestive depictions of pre- and postrevolutionary Cuba (shot in Mexico).

This fascinating video documentary covers a nine-month rehearsal of Shakespeare's final play by inmates at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in La Grange, Kentucky.

Despite the thick Scottish accents, filmmaker Andrea Arnold kept me intrigued, but beyond a certain point the movie's ambiguity fades into indifference.

This nicely made 1994 comedy-drama could be described as an Australian "Easy Rider," with Sydney drag queens instead of bikers and no apocalyptic ending.

A spirited crowd-pleaser.

Ron Howard directed, with outstanding support from Kevin Bacon as Jack Brennan, Nixon's fierce chief of staff.

Honest curiosity and observation are what make this work, and in this respect Christina Ricci (as Wuornos's lover, Selby Wall) is almost as good as Theron.

I tend to approach green documentaries with all the enthusiasm of an unemployed logger, but this hard-charging digital video about genetically modified organisms kept me on the edge of my seat with its lucid exposition and frontal assault on Monsanto.

Provocative but also infuriating, this alarmist documentary argues that the levying of a federal income tax in 1913 was unconstitutional and set America on the road to fascism.

This video sequel to the gay comedy "Eating Out" (2004) is funnier, lighter, and faster paced.

With one of these two alpha males anchoring nearly every scene, Scott really can't go wrong, but the lead characters are pretty thin, a fact highlighted by generic subplots.

The film tackles more than it can master, but it's never less than fascinating, and all three leads are exceptional.

This shocking, violent, and unsentimental (albeit sensationalized) drama about a second-generation drug dealer (Turner) and the callous world he lives in, produced by "To Sleep With Anger's" Darin Scott, is terrifically acted.

Conceived like a sports movie, this delivers passion, nuance, and historical insight along with unnecessary hokum.

Challenges us to reconcile its snapshots of earnest entrepreneurs, colleagues, and fans with its long takes of her disillusionment.

The deft arabesques of cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak juice up the suspense, and if you're not too put off by the sheer ridiculousness of the story you won't be bored.

As long as Miller simply crosscuts between the machinations of the three mothers, the sociological and psychological parallels are intriguing, but when they're forced to share the same story line, the contrivances and coincidences begin to seem fussily elaborate.

It plays exactly like a Will Ferrell comedy, but better, because Ferrell's not in it.

One of the few white vocalists to play the Apollo, O'Day does fabulous things with her hands as well as her voice when she sings. Her talent and will to survive (in the late 60s she kicked a 16-year heroin addiction) are reasons enough to see this film.

Funny, smart, and complacent.

This meticulous restoration dazzles with crisp, formally rigorous black-and-white images and a complex sound mix, as its minimalist story of three families of manual laborers unfolds against a harsh, barren peninsula.

Reeves often displays moderate to little affect onscreen; here his reserve suits the story, as the experience of acting helps the reticent loser find himself. Vera Farmiga crackles as the feisty star of the play, while James Caan, as the hero's accomplice, proves a most charming rogue.

Funny, scary, and exuberant, Kaboom delivers the goods as both a generational marker and a tale of things to, uh, come.

Bujalski has a knack for the genuine moment.

A casually assembled Burt Reynolds vehicle, sloppy and loose in an amiable way.

The outcome is never much in doubt, but Salvadori artfully choreographs the endless table turning, and the Moroccan-born Elmaleh capitalizes on his striking resemblance to Buster Keaton with a similarly comic composure.

Aside from an exhilarating opening and a gruesome climax, the movie isn't all that rich emotionally; all the visual razzle-dazzle winds up serving a pat lesson about people needing other people.

Even as a hagiography, though, it's pretty interesting: Fishbone predated-and outlived-the early 90s "alternative" boom that provided it with a brief marketing hook, yet the band truly embodied alternative music's underground ideal, challenging listeners of all races and musical persuasions.

Mickle's observation of a devastated working-class America is so sharp that the horror elements, though effectively handled, come to feel like an afterthought.

For all its implicit misogyny, the original 1966 film version of Bill Naughton’s play remains durable because of Michael Caine’s career-defining performance as the cockney ladies’ man, not to mention the memorable title tune (sung by Cher) and driving jazz score (written and performed by Sonny Rollins).

Feels a little soft and boomer-indulgent with its 10,000th rehash of the Nixon years and its soundtrack of trite 60s anthems.

Magic vies with technology in this exuberant adventure comedy, which unfolds achronologically in a series of zany, effects-laden vignettes.

This wryly mordant film achieved many firsts for the illustrious father of African cinema.

The characters--their motives at once obvious and obscure--are almost painfully fascinating.

This began as a one-man show, but Lepage has transferred it beautifully to the screen, where its cosmos of ideas hangs weightless.

This adaptation of Robert Ludlum's third and last Bourne thriller doesn't have much story left, so director Paul Greengrass has to keep it moving all the time.

Brian De Palma's 1992 thriller borders on incoherence and irrelevance as plot, but as a chance for De Palma to perform stylistic pirouettes around a void, it's full of sleek and pleasurable moments.

Understated but affecting.

This friendly, briefly exciting story (1998), inspired by John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, achieves a nice balance between caricature and nuanced characterization and even manages not to be cloying.

Ehrlich and Goldsmith carve out their own little place in the canon by focusing on the ethical journey of one man who refused to shrug off his own responsibility for the war and atoned for it with a seismic act of civil disobedience.

Dramatization is often a questionable tactic in documentaries, but by picturing Leopold (Elie Larson) on trial like Adolf Eichmann, Peter Bate adroitly compares the colonial genocide to the Holocaust.

The swashbuckling first hour is superior to the second, which bursts at the seams with backstory, but a rousing climax makes this the most potent piece of agitpop in years.

Structurally and dramatically this is all over the place, but stylistically it's gripping, and thematically it suggests an oblique response to the end of Hong Kong's colonial rule.

By the end the story is more satisfying than you might expect.

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

Writer-director Raymond De Felitta has crafted a pleasant, low-key script that's full of small surprises, nice turns, and engaging, naturalistic dialogue, and he keeps the big, emotional family scenes, which often render this sort of material cliched and hackneyed, to a minimum.

Solid, agreeable entertainment, this basically consists of plentiful gags and lighthearted satire spiked with Dante's compulsive taste for movie references, humorously scripted by Charlie Haas but without the darker thematic undertones and the more tableaulike construction of the original.

Vulgar, spirited, and neglected director George Sidney meets his match with this 1964 Elvis Presley vehicle: Presley, Ann-Margret, and Las Vegas itself are all ready-made for his talents, which mainly have to do with verve and trashy kicks.

In archival photos Petit seems to float between the towers, a tiny black figure against a vivid blue sky; the images are all the more poignant for the unstated fact that Petit is still around when the buildings aren't.

The sepia-toned palette gets a little wearying, but the dialogue is hilarious, the violence is crunchy, and cameos by Tom Waits and topflight Brit character actor Michael Gambon are worth the ticket price alone.

This 2005 British feature by writer Anthony Frewin and director Brian Cook, both former Kubrick assistants, uses Conway's unlikely saga to mount an appreciative send-up of a certain style of gay extravagance.

It's especially good in its handling of actors and its sharp feeling for characters who can't even describe their own problems, much less analyze them.