Deftly realist character study.

Never seems to find its tone.

The movie is truly an open text--its generous poetry inspires free association rather than predictable emotion.

The wonderful Richard Farnsworth plays the lead, and he was clearly born for the part...a highly affecting and suggestive spiritual odyssey.

This exercise in mainstream masochism, macho posturing, and designer-grunge fascism is borderline ridiculous. But it also happens to be David Fincher's richest movie.

Nobody ever shuts up in this schmaltzy, mannered drama.

Humorless, lugubrious, and interminable.

Though complicated, the plot has an interesting payoff, the slow burn of an understated but surprisingly erotic love story that crisscrosses 40 years.

A highly enjoyable and offbeat thriller.

This is why movies were invented.

Contrasting the erotic with the disgusting is usually provocative and can be funny, but not in this underdog comedy.

A powerful piece of social protest, skillfully written, directed, and acted...Hilary Swank as Brandon and Chloe Sevigny as his girlfriend Lana are especially fine.

On the very edge of coherence -- but I find its decadent erotic poetry irresistible.

The final image, a minimalist evocation--perhaps a compromise for an unmarketable ending--puts an intriguing spin on everything that's come before it.

Elmo's obsessive reaction is never examined, compromising the ability of this rambling minor spectacle to put across its obvious lesson about sharing.

Its charm and humor will be overshadowed for some by the exploitation of gay stereotypes--which is ironic, since their arch usage ultimately allows the movie to be progressive, if only slightly.

Nothing's wrong with this movie--the hockey footage is exciting, the characters quirky, the subplots idiosyncratic--but nothing's special about it either.

This buddy movie grows on you.

Impressively nuanced.

The visuals are wild, the sound track has the audacity to underscore the subtext instead of just echoing the obvious, the comedy is irreverent and occasionally slapstick, and the metaphorical details are consistently strong.

A rare example of a successful documentary in the mode of Frederick Wiseman made outside the United States.

In this inept thriller...the script is a coloring book, and the director's careful to stay within the lines.

The material is powerful--one boxer has been accused of a crime and the trial conflicts with a crucial competition--but much of it feels predigested, the themes inadvertently one-dimensional.

I enjoyed this while it lasted, especially for the cast.

Honigmann assembles a mosaic of the postcolonial diaspora that populates the crowded ethnic enclaves of Paris, and the emotional, lovingly captured songs seem to turn the City of Light into a bazaar of world music.

Pales in comparison to the controversial "Life Is Beautiful"--a more provocative fiction, if only because it's even less realist.

This frantic tale seems at once preachy and incoherent, collapsing into a more or less random collection of disconnected, unfocused scenes.

Partly because the seducer's technique is methodical--as a former conquest explains to the naive heroine--the movie's answers are too easy.