It's hard to think of a deadlier shotgun marriage than Jacques Tourneur's poetry of absence and Spielbergian uplift, but Shyamalan has patented the combo, adding pretentious camera movements that are peculiarly his own--even the jokes are pretty solemn.

The three neighborhood kids who venture inside this toothy trap are wittily conceived (as are other characters, like a goth babysitter), but though the overall conception suggests Hayao Miyazaki's "Howl's Moving Castle," the frenetic pacing seems as American as an apple pie in your face.

A lot of superwimp gags executed by Luke Wilson grow out of this premise, as do some tacky 50s-style special effects. The movie's too slapdash to keep its characters consistent, but this has its moments.

The tone is bleak and the comic-book violence relentless, but the wirework and Yuta Morokaji's stunt choreography are impressive, culminating in a breathless showdown between the title character (Aya Ueto) and 200 foes.

The slapstick is funnier for the nifty CGI, and the script gets in some sly digs at racist cops and multitasking soccer moms.

Working with a shapeless script, directors Anthony and Joe Russo (Welcome to Collinwood) can't figure out what they're making. They lunge in several directions, but fail to get around the central problem: most of their actors have little flair for comedy.

Volatile and sometimes daring performances by Catherine Deneuve, Gerard Depardieu, Gilbert Melki, Malik Zidi, and Lubna Azabal (as twins) contribute to the highly charged and novelistic experience.

Director Billy Kent seems to have instructed most of his actors to behave like robotic sitcom characters; the principal exception is Danny DeVito, who simply behaves like Danny DeVito.

2005 French feature by the highly uneven Francois Ozon (Swimming Pool, Under the Sand), who doesn't have much to say about his subject that's fresh.

Disappointing adaptation of Mamet's 1982 drama.

This highly stylized portrait of a loveless marriage at the beginning of the 20th century merges a claustrophobic theatricality with dazzlingly cinematic wide-screen compositions (the sumptuous cinematography is by Eric Gautier).

I was worn down by the excess: Depp's fruity impersonation of Keith Richards (or William F. Buckley) as pirate Jack Sparrow; too many bottomless chasms on an island with too many jungle savages (after the fashion of Peter Jackson's King Kong); Bill Nighy playing too squishy a villain with a beard of too many crawling octopus tentacles; too much violence, pop nihilism, and sick humor.

The casting of Reeves in the lead role is inspired: who better than the star of "The Matrix" and its sequels, a trilogy that borrows heavily from Dick's sensibility and obsessions, to play a personality split through overindulgence in drugs and manipulation by outside forces he barely recognizes?

The epic poem Beowulf gets an imaginative, low-budget workout in this 2005 Icelandic feature by Sturla Gunnarsson.

The film tackles more than it can master, but it's never less than fascinating, and all three leads are exceptional.

Crary struggles to explain the eruption and influence of the extreme rock underground that began with the late-70s "no wave" scene and eventually generated acts like Swans and Sonic Youth.

Despite the title, this is less a soccer documentary than a corporate hagiography along the lines of "The Last Mogul" or "The Kid Stays in the Picture"; its real hero isn't Cosmos star Pele (who wisely declined to be interviewed), but Steve Ross, CEO of Warner Communications, which owned the team.

An agreeably shallow comedy.

Singer draws heavily on the 1978 hit that launched the Warner Brothers franchise, with Brandon Routh dully impersonating Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel, Kevin Spacey getting all the good lines as the villainous Lex Luthor, and stock footage of Marlon Brando proving that death isn't always a good career move.

There's little originality in the joy rides, first kisses, and clashes with bullies, yet this 2005 debut feature by writer-director Michael Kang captures the small triumphs of a boy becoming a man.

Packs a punch in its first act with a passionate lead performance by Cyndi Williams and a painfully concrete sense of modern life closing in. But gradually it slips into the indie paradigm of an alienated soul rushing into darkness, climaxing with a semiabstract montage sequence that's more rhetorical than dramatic.

Smirky, gum-in-your-hair humor dominates this dreadful 2005 feature.

Nihilistic greed was the major factor when GM terminated the car in 2001, though Paine is also careful to note the passivity of the general public.

The stilted performances are especially unfortunate when one considers what a fine documentary Clark might have gotten out of the same material.

This comic fantasy is the best vehicle he's (Sandler) ever had, a high-concept goof that gradually darkens into an emotional nightmare reminiscent of Capra.

The film is compelling to the extent that the subject is, but also unimaginative and unsurprising.

Tries way too hard to be clever and shrewd.

Jayasundara dispenses with conventional story pacing to alternate long, static scenes with moments of revelatory lust or violence; as a press release states, the movie is "composed of uncanny set pieces portraying sex, death, and waiting," though its aesthetic achievement may lie in making all three feel like the same thing.