What's mainly missing is the sort of conviction and passion that gave El mariachi its charge; one feels at almost every moment that Rodriguez is fulfilling a contract rather than saying something he has to say. There's a lot of panache here, but not much inspiration.

Well-meaning tripe from 1966, crossbreeding Swinging London and social consciousness as Sidney Poitier tries to educate some East End ghetto kids.

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

The film is fairly tolerable as these things go: Wilder takes time off from the steamrolling plot for improvised bits with some actor buddies (including Charles Grodin and Joseph Bologna), and the project as a whole is a lot less mawkish than we've come to expect from Wilder's directorial efforts. Still, it ain't exactly state of the art.

This never rises above a date movie, but it's functionally literate.

This spiritual thriller is too wooden to be taken as seriously as was clearly intended.

The theories about sexuality and trauma artfully advanced in this previously unreleased 1975 debut of director Catherine Breillat (Romance, Fat Girl) are more nuanced and intuitive than those of most schools of psychology.

But Peter Hyams, who's both director and director of photography, forces us to constantly strain to see what isn't there, until ultimately the screen explodes in welcome light, a cathartic finale in broad visceral terms even if the drama hasn't inspired much emotion.

The gentle Wood isn't very convincing as a bare-knuckle brawler (which bodes ill for his forthcoming role as Iggy Pop), and the movie settles into a payback soap opera reminiscent of "West Side Story."

The screenplay is sharp and insightful, the period details ring true, and Martin is appealing as a dreamer conflicted about his homosexuality. But once the action shifts from the town to the festival, any momentum gets lost in a psychedelic haze.

Exciting and even moving, this robust epic is filled with action, male bonding, and a terrifying sense of wilderness.

Everything comes easy here, especially the right to narcissist complacency, but Hughes/Deutch are too busy playing Mr. Goodvibes to worry about the contradictions at the heart of their shallow moral vision.

It often seems precious and overconceived, its accumulating crosses and double-crosses as devoid of consequence as a child's backyard game.

Treacle takes over in the last act, but most of this fact-based story by screenwriters Michael Bortman and Allison Burnett takes the inspirational sports drama into unexpected and morally complex territory.

The movie is fairly entertaining, but the high production values and shticky humor invert the dynamic of the show, which was played totally straight despite the fact that the sets were always threatening to fall down.

The project would have been much more palatable as a TV special; as it stands, it's just another symptom of the American cinema's addiction to facile mythmaking.

The movie's idea of funny is giving the two lovers identical moles bordering their upper lips.

Crisp supporting turns by John Turturro (as a hostage negotiator) and James Gandolfini (as the mayor) combine with plenty of vehicular mayhem to make this a superior diversion.

Until the ghost story takes over this is a tense and absorbing war picture.

Images about imagery can be diverting, even insightful, but this painterly 1999 feature piles up studies in elaborately choreographed motion that are their own reason for being.

If you can get into the spirit of the proceedings, you're likely to find some fun.

Too preoccupied with personality and emotion to qualify as porn, but still very much concerned with the kind of interaction that goes on in such a place, this is a touching if relatively specialized chamber piece.

It preserves the peculiar machismo of Ayer's earlier projects: the alpha male dominates not only because he's the most powerful, but because he's the most jaded.

It's a failure, less because the odd stylistic mix doesn't take (it does from time to time, and to striking effect) than because Landis hasn't bothered to put his story into any kind of satisfying shape.

This moving story is full of breathtaking compositions, gorgeous spectacle, and inspiring philosophies articulated by sympathetic figures.

The results are too pretty and well acted to be a total washout, but the fascination with evil and power that gives the novel intensity is virtually absent; what remains is mainly petty malice and mild cynicism.

Sports films about underdogs overcoming long odds run the gamut from flinty intelligence (Million Dollar Baby) to mushy sentimentality (Seabiscuit). This Disney drama...falls somewhere in the middle.

Verde is too blankly amoral to sustain interest, but the film has isolated moments of haunting poetry.