I expected to emerge depressed by how long these stories have gone untold, but the speakers' courage and humanity are a shot in the arm.

Goldbacher's story is not always convincing as history, but it's absorbing as a sort of gothic romance and sensually quite potent, and Driver carries it all with grace and authority.

Undeniably provocative and reasonably entertaining, The Truman Show is one of those high-concept movies whose concept is both clever and dumb.

More entertaining than "The Spanish Prisoner" -- it also turns out to be more conventional and predictable.

The emotions are as gritty as the Edinburgh locales, and the sex is dark, urgent, and deeply selfish.

Based on a French true-crime best seller, this gory, ham-fisted hybrid of social-issue picture and horror film exerts a crude but undeniable power.

The film is funny in a way few of these toothless exercises are. The gags aren't exactly clever, but there are a lot of them, and the cutting finds a fast, effective tempo. Joe Biroc's witty cinematography gives the picture an authentically flat, artificial Universal look, and Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Leslie Nielsen, and Robert Stack are around for added iconographical persuasiveness.

It is a funny picture—not too consistently, and certainly not too coherently, but when it hits, it hits.

Even the melodramatic score can't ruin the essentially serious tenor of this old-style non-self-referential horror story, whose characterizations are unassailable--stereotypical shtick you buy because the performers are working so hard and their faces are so skillfully lit.

This features the usual slapstick, double entendres, and riffs on classic films, but what elevates it above a cheeky romp is the skilled CGI work, not only the wealth of tactile detail lavished on the parched townsfolk but also the painterly, sand-swept vistas they call home.

Fine work carved from minimal materials.

The lighting, production design, and character modeling are excellent, and director David Bowers (Flushed Away) references "Frankenstein," "Wall-E," "Transformers," and even Abraham and Isaac. But the TV series, primitive though it was, had a sweet innocence and joyfulness that made it more fun.

It's clichéd, ridiculous, and very entertaining.

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

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.

Dick focuses on a handful of women who were sexually assaulted while on active duty, but they're only the tip of the iceberg; according to the film, which draws all its statistics from government reports, more than 20 percent of female veterans have been assaulted.

It's a hell of a show, though none of the artists gets more than a single number, and most of Chappelle's comic interludes are half-baked. Funnier and more engaging are his perambulations around the neighborhood.

You know you're in for a hard-core art film when you hear more people raving about its opening shot than the movie itself.

A welcome return to the Disney tradition of 2-D animation, this lively musical spices up Hans Christian Andersen's "The Frog Prince" by transplanting it to New Orleans in the early 20th century.

In movies like "Happiness" and "Storytelling," Todd Solondz has staged some pretty horrifying courtships, but the one in this seventh feature is surprisingly gentle.

At once self-conscious and generic, this smart monster movie about smart monsters -- supersharks cleverer than the scientist who created them -- repeatedly lulls you into thinking it's paint by numbers.

Loads of fun even if it's ultimately strangled by its excesses.

Lacks the toughness of Eastwood's best work.

Powerful, haunting, but ultimately disappointing. Few American movies address abject failure as forcefully as this one, and Sean Penn delivers an intense performance as Bicke.

Wildly funny in spots, but nihilistic in the extreme.

This gritty melodrama is tempered by surreal black humor.

Typically overstuffed MGM prestige product (1940), but one that came out surprisingly well, with a minimum of Eng. Lit. posturing and some elegance of design.

Though the jokey lines seem out of place, the somber tone of this 1998 action movie makes the political subtext -- nearly obscured by the expected double crosses, extravagant destruction, and incongruous-buddies shtick -- more sincere and less grandiose than usual.