In a nation that's stripped arts instruction from the public schools, the Hip Hop Project seems like a godsend.

Gyllenhaal turns the young ex-con into an enormously sympathetic figure, but by the end there's no denying that her need for the girl is as selfish as her addiction.

One reason this production-design vehicle is so incredibly boring is that the characters keep having to explain the plot to one another.

I'm a sucker for fantasies, but this one is so undistinguished and arbitrary that it left few traces in my consciousness, apart from the impression that the filmmakers resort to cruelty whenever they run out of ideas, which is often.

While Milani lacks an overall cinematic vision, she skillfully uses composition and camera movement to underline emotions in each scene.

In the last two decades rock documentaries have become ubiquitous on TV but marginalized as cinema; this is the rare exception that earns its place on the big screen.

DuBowski focuses on religious faith as much as sexual preference, which may be the most interesting aspect of the film.

Unlike many other purveyors of hip comedy, they're consistently clever without being contemptuous of their audience.

Coolidge hasn't made a campy, condescending comedy, but a satiric romance, in which the background gags and caricatures contribute to a sense of significant conflicts and solid emotions. It's irresistible.

Dull and lifeless.

Well-acted drama.

I wasn't bored at all by this, and Angela Bassett's action-hero charisma often blew me away, but fans of Bigelow at her best (e.g., Near Dark) may be put off by the movie's calculation, which doesn't always fit with its intellectual pretensions.

This being senior year, Burstein can't help but capture some genuine drama, but there's a stage-managed quality to the movie that reminded me of MTV reality shows.

It's like being locked in a roomful of blaring transistor radios—a lot of sound and no evidence of life.

Parts of this are screamingly funny, other parts downright stomach turning, but you have to admire the fact that, for these guys, "anything for a laugh" really means anything. And for all the moronic behavior, there are also some inspired dadaist moments.

The overall effect is disturbing yet mesmerizing.

Behind all the macho bluster stand (or, it would appear, sit) director Tony Scott, writers Michael Schiffer and Richard P. Henrick, and producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, trying (and failing) to get all the characters to behave like grown-ups.

Hysterically hyperbolic and unpleasant if still witty dissection of family traumas.

Its paper-thin characters turned into caricatures by egregious hamming, this 1996 Japanese comedy-drama about shy ballroom dancers is sentimental goo and downright interminable.

Tiresome, blood-filled comedy.

Uekrongtham handles the material with reasonable restraint, and you can't help but cheer on the hero.

A particularly timely story about civic-mindedness and the pursuit of fame. Along with a lot of potty-mouthed ass-kicking action.

This is affecting and thematically pointed but much more pat than the situation that precedes it, in which two different realities must coexist uneasily on the same screen.

You can see what an impact sound must have had in 1927, because it certainly wasn't the movie that made this production a phenomenon...It's ragged and dull until the magical moment when Jolson turns to the camera to announce, “You ain't heard nothin' yet”—a line so loaded with unconscious irony that it still raises a few goose bumps.

The imposing performances in this chess game between pointedly black and white criminals (Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne) and police detectives (Victor Argo, Wesley Snipes, David Caruso) are as impressive as ever.

Director Slava Tsukerman doesn't have any new ideas, though this 1982 feature does improve on some old ones, notably its use of a rapid parallel montage technique to enliven the ancient Warholian comedy of boredom and underreaction by cutting to different characters and different shticks.

The three parts add up to a rather lumpy narrative, and the characters are perceived through a kind of affectionate recollection that tends to idealize them, but they're so beautifully realized that they linger like cherished friends.

Pleasantly acted and moderately funny, but it lacks the genuine bile that made "Heathers" (1987) so bracing.