The movie, which leans too heavily on the metaphorical value of the two historic events, dives from heady romance into heavy moralizing.

This mild 1984 comedy about a mermaid (Daryl Hannah) who falls in love with a New York City yuppie (Tom Hanks) isn't at all hard to take (John Candy, in a supporting role, is hilarious and original, and Hannah has a pleasant naive charm), but its appeal is based almost entirely on regression—a thematic regression to infancy (now endemic to the American cinema) and a stylistic regression to the most lulling kind of TV blandness. No wonder it's relaxing: it's a lullaby.

Americans desensitized to senseless violence may find the subject matter almost banal, and the interspersed news footage of armed conflict from around the world feels like a rhetorical device. But the coldly telegraphic structure--a series of 71 blackouts following the four strangers to their deaths--yields some striking moments.

Scenes of harvested frogs provide an apt metaphor for Brazil's miserable have-nots, so apt that Kohn can't resist beating it to death.

This intermittently effective UK horror thriller carefully establishes the psychological relationships among the women, then squanders this calibrated and generally plausible setup with a series of crude, implausible, and scattershot horror effects.

Given the tension dogging her every step, I wondered if this would end in bloodshed, but Abu-Assad opts for a more hopeful conclusion, making his film -- strange as it may seem -- a comedy.

If you can tolerate 79 minutes of joggling images you’ll probably find this entertaining, though writer-directors Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza overplay their hand with a late-breaking back story that rips off one movie too many.

Compared to their first movie, "The Yes Men" (2003), this one focuses on many fewer hoaxes, but they're more elaborate and potent.

A grisly extravaganza with an acute moral intelligence. The graphic special effects (which sometimes suggest a shotgun Jackson Pollock) are less upsetting than Romero's way of drawing the audience into the violence.

Many of the plot points seem belabored because they're introduced in the voice-over, then ploddingly dramatized, then analyzed by the family over meals.

Comparisons with Michael Mann's recent Dillinger biopic "Public Enemies" are inevitable, and mostly flattering to this project: director Jean-Francois Richet and screenwriter Abdel Raouf Dafri take advantage of the additional screen time (about 100 minutes more than Mann had) to flesh out their protagonist, who fancies himself an honorable thief and even a left-wing revolutionary but ultimately turns out to be something much simpler: a man who loves his work.

This quirky 2004 documentary ends with the Shopsins' forced relocation after 32 years, an uprooting made all the more poignant by Eve's death during filming.

Kelly is a supple and courageous storyteller, boldly free-associating as he mixes parody and satire with earnest psychodrama and coming up with plot points no one could anticipate.

Sensitive, intelligent, enlightening, and sometimes surprising.

The film is ferociously kinetic and full of visual surprises, though its gut-churning reputation doesn't seem fully deserved: if anything the gore is too picturesque and studied, an abstract decorator's mix of oozing, slimy color, like some exotic species of new-wave interior design.

An evil twin to "The War Room" (1993).

Universal's classic from 1931, directed by Tod Browning. The opening scenes, set in Dracula's castle, are magnificent—grave, stately, and severe. But the film becomes unbearably static once the action moves to England, and much of the morbid sexual tension is dissipated.

Andre de Toth’s 1954 noir is gritty, powerful, and economically told.

Posh meets prole in this period drama elegantly directed by Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons, Prick Up Your Ears).

Not great filmmaking, but indispensable to students of 40s pop culture.

Schrader is no Faulkner and no Gillespie, but in his third silly attempt to appropriate Bresson's form of story telling and his second misguided effort to remake Pickpocket, he has arrived at a pretty good offscreen narration.

I wanted to like it more than I did, but it'll do.

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

There's little originality in the joy rides, first kisses, and clashes with bullies, yet this 2005 debut feature by writer-director Michael Kang captures the small triumphs of a boy becoming a man.

Despite the mostly static setting, director Eytan Fox keeps this 2002 Israeli feature surprisingly lively, gracefully balancing the various story lines and making good use of an excellent ensemble cast.

Despite the gimmicky direction and a disappointing climax, this is a distinctive and unsettling comedy.

The clunky plot is set in Santa Fe, and includes a foil character who might as well wear a sign on his forehead.

Ridiculous enough to be hilarious, but this didn't prevent me from thoroughly enjoying Philip Kaufman's silly romp.