Understated but affecting.

The most powerful and telling image is a black-and-white still of Kerry burying his face in his arms after he threw his ribbons onto the Capitol steps; it's a moment true enough to cost him the presidency.

At the time, its way of wringing thrills from genre conventions at the same time it mocked them seemed imaginative and original; but in the light of Carrie (1976), Obsession (1976), and The Fury (1978), it seems more like a dead end—the mark of a superficial stylist unable to take anything seriously, including his own work.

The movie overall may be routine, but Donner gives it some spark and polish.

Toledo is very funny, and there are some hilarious comic bits, but writer-directors Dominic Harari and Teresa Pelegri drag in several distracting subplots, turning this 2004 Spanish comedy into a scattershot affair.

As in "Amores perros," Iñarritu and Arriaga slice and dice the chronology, which helps distract from the warmed-over story elements and focus attention on the superior performances.

It's a masterful succession of images, tickling the viewer's curiosity with the characters' curiosity. The fantasy emerges little by little—through hesitant, feline steps, if you will—until the floodgates open.

The most telling moments in this 2003 video documentary aren't the statements of the neo-Nazis, a tiny minority who get way too much screen time, but the lies and bigotries of the ordinary citizens.

Subplots involving the heroine's resentful husband and rebellious teenage daughter never amount to much, though the story builds toward a satisfactory, if formulaic, climax when the woman dares to compete in a tournament against a succession of smug bourgeois men.

Harrelson returns in Moverman's second feature playing a similar character, a bullheaded LAPD officer whose long career with the force is unraveling amid a succession of brutality complaints, and although the role offers the same macho quotient as the earlier one, it's counterbalanced in this case by funny, observant scenes of his gyno-centric home life.

The cast is OK, and LaBute still has an eye, but the uses they're put to seem contrived and arty.

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 original antimarijuana film, offering the true inside story of the devil weed that drives men to savage lusts and women to unspeakable depravities, along with a little bit of dumb fun.

Concise and thoughtful.

The film comes closer to working than it has any right to, given the curious casting (Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel) and director Ridley Scott's inability to sustain dramatic tension or build a coherent scene.

Director Ron Underwood (Tremors) does a fair job navigating all the key changes proposed by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel's script, and with the actors' help he makes this a diverting if bumpy ride.

If not all the gags work, the overall irreverence and all-American anomie are fairly contagious.

There's a brooding, agonized quality to the violence that almost seems subversive, as if Verhoeven were both appalled and fascinated by his complicity in the toxic action rot.

Although the results are a bit overextended, the film is still something of a rarity nowadays: an evocative, poetic horror film without a trace of gore (and in this respect, closer to a Val Lewton film of the 40s like The Curse of the Cat People than any contemporary models).

It doesn't come off, despite a dazzling color design and imaginative sets, perhaps because Demy's extremely rarefied talent for fantasy needs to be anchored by a touch of the real.

Hitchcock was still marking out his territory at this point, and the film is heavy and vague around the edges. But it remains a crucial insight into the development of one of the cinema’s greatest artists, and so, essential viewing.

Maybe the self-consciously stoopid humor works better in microbursts, but at 75 minutes it's a total drag.

Huston simply films the plot of Malcolm Lowry's modern-day gothic novel, turning a fevered interior vision into a cold, distant, exterior one—a documentary on the death of a drunk. As the tortured consul, Albert Finney has moments of technical brilliance, but Huston's direction gives him no inner life. The most impressive artistic contribution is that of cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, whose painfully sharp images suggest something of what the novel is about.

Shot in July 2003, this collectively made video documentary is by far the most comprehensive account I’ve seen of how Iraqis view the U.S. war and occupation.

Soderbergh's treatment of the Internet turns out to be the most provocative aspect of Contagion. Like the virus, which destroys any cell it encounters, misinformation spreads rapidly online and tends to cancel out information that might save people.

Compels questions about Kinski's bravado and artistry, and suggests that it might not always be easy to distinguish his from Herzog's.

Subtly profound love story.

Patricia Clarkson is wonderfully acerbic as April's cancer-afflicted mom, and the finale is surprisingly subtle and sweet, but the rest of this DV feature is as contrived as a sitcom.