The end result is "Mission: Impossible" meets "Speed": high-tech gizmos, exotic European locales, and hair-raising stunts, many performed by Statham himself, who, when he's not shirtless, looks spiffy in Dior.

A rambling but ultimately rather affecting comedy-drama by a talented filmmaker who's almost completely unknown here, this has a deft feel for lower-middle-class life in rural France that registered strongly on its home front.

Avrich offers a cogent appraisal of Wasserman's importance to the industry and duly notes the darker aspects of his empire (among them MCA's alleged ties to organized crime).

The movie offers enough good one-liners, both comic and ruminative, to hold one's interest, but don't expect much else.

The film isn't averse to reaching for Hollywood fantasies, but there's a lot of what seems to be hard-earned wisdom here about women in bad marriages.

Depp conveys his character's ambivalence and ambiguity with utter conviction, and though the annoying score tries to throw Pacino's monologues over the top, his persuasive, low-key performance puts the violins in their place.

The documentary bravely risks giving Zizek its own one-way hug.

Captures the singer, dancer, filmmaker, architect, creative genius, and great artist at work as he creates and perfects his final show.

Director-writer Steven Silver deftly juxtaposes exciting (and sometimes horrific) battle re-creations with scenes of the photographers' personal lives.

The real revelation here is Streep, who spends every moment comically negotiating her conflicted impulses.

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.

Writer-director David Twohy (Pitch Black) serves up mechanical thrills culminating in a bogus twist ending.

Director Faith Akin has skill and panache, and the lead actors are likable. But the film's high energy can't compensate for the muddled conception.

Engrossing if standard-issue prison drama.

Director Bryan Barber (known for his music videos) and his cast display so much gusto that it's hard to keep up your resistance--I wound up finding this more enjoyable than the Oscar-bestrewn "Chicago."

Bier is one of the cinema's most acute observers of intimate relations, her Scandinavian reserve muting the inherent melodrama of her material, and she draws piercing, modestly scaled performances from Duchovny, Del Toro, Alison Lohman, and John Carroll Lynch.

I can't say I remembered this 1995 feature too clearly a couple of days later; but I certainly had a good time as I watched it.

Disarming-misfit story, which combines elements of a road movie, romance, small-town idyll, and police procedural.

Mathis and Bullock are especially good, and Phoenix and Mulroney, playing out a jealousy-prone friendship as if they were Jeff Bridges and Timothy Bottoms in Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show, do a fair job with their roles.

An excellent British drama adapted by Alan Bennett (The Madness of King George) from his celebrated play.

By the film's underwater finale, director Matteo Garrone has bestowed a tragic stature on the pint-size Othello who loves "not wisely but too well."

The material is simple and irresistible, and Sydney Pollack stages it well (though without transcending the essential superficiality of his talent).

A gravely beautiful drama about the mysteries of aging and death.

Like most of his British films, Blackmail is a sign of things to come rather than Hitchcock at his height, but it shouldn’t be missed.

One reason Bright Leaves is McElwee's best film since "Sherman's March" is the richness of his reflections on this multifaceted material.

Funny, informative, and at times outrageously cheeky.

The result is pretty entertaining, though most of that entertainment derives from Katz's skillful exploitation of gumshoe formula.

The CGI is excellent, with characters whose depth and solidity suggest Nick Park's clay animations.