Playwright Adam Rapp, making his feature debut as writer-director, details the family dysfunction to the point of hyperbole, but over the long haul he rewards one's observation and intelligence and a more interesting story emerges.

In a novel twist, the movie's dumbest element--joke commercials for racist consumer products--turns out to be the most provocative when end titles reveal the products were all real.

George is suitably adorable, wreaking the kind of havoc that gives tykes a guilty thrill. Yet the movie concludes with the specious moral that reading is inferior to experiencing life firsthand.

If you've seen any of these, you know that the hero is always killed for her trouble, a final stroke of mordant wit.

Harrison Ford carries this talky, formulaic thriller by virtue of his authority, culled from years in front of the camera, but his performance can't obscure the obvious plot machinations.

The mirthlessly sadistic gags tend to target people in wheelchairs or hospital beds and betray a mild if all-encompassing disgust for the source material and the audience.

Unprecedented in its intellectual ambition, this is endlessly stimulating; it probably tries for too much, but it shames many other contemporary essays that try for too little.

The awful crank comedy "Spun" (2002) still ranks as the most dehumanizing youth picture of the decade, but this New York drama by first-time director Hunter Richards is a close second.

Given what Young charges for concert tickets, all his organs could be gold. So I was even more grateful for this documentary of his August 2005 shows at the fabled Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, expertly directed by Jonathan Demme.

Graham Greene's screenplay is centered on the pivotal moment when a child first discovers sin, but the boy's perspective is neglected in favor of facile suspense structures and a thuddingly conventional whodunit finale.

Director Mike Barker elicits a marvelously agile performance from Hunt, who's well matched by Tom Wilkinson as her new admirer.

This remake takes an alternate tack from the original feature, expanding the story of "The Sitter" to a full 83 minutes, but the result is dull and painfully generic.

This pleasant romantic comedy is essentially "Far From Heaven" with the races reversed.

Fun, lively, and a tad superficial.

Starting off as a low-key psychological drama, this suddenly turns into a murder mystery that's resolved awkwardly and ambiguously, but the fascination of the characters and milieu remains.

May be a good showcase for James Franco, who's in every scene, but it's a disappointing choice for director Justin Lin.

This is funny mostly for its brazen disregard of common sense.

Highly recommended if you want to see a distinguished cast of British character actors tarted up in garish Victorian costumes and badly executing a Three Stooges-style cake fight.

Strains so hard to be upbeat you can almost hear gears shifting.

Writer-director Karin Albou nicely balances intellect against spirituality but is defeated by the sex scenes, which are tinged with an Orientalist exoticism; the result is a bodice-ripper for the art-house crowd.

Lars von Trier is back, so to speak--he's never visited the States, which makes his snide anti-American allegories even more infuriating to some….But the story holds up well enough to deliver a pointed critique of establishing self-rule at gunpoint.

Butler deftly intercuts real footage with CGI, heightening the drama, and the film becomes especially compelling once the robots are launched into space.

This farce eventually runs out of steam, devolving into a protracted docudrama about actor Steve Coogan (who plays the title hero as well as his father), but until then this is a pretty clever piece of jive.

The extraordinary child actress Ana Torrent (Cria) made her debut here at the age of five. Much in the film is derivative, but Erice excels in precise evocations of childhood feelings.

Henry Hübchen is dynamic as the title character.

Brooks' film is especially welcome now because it frankly admits that most Americans are ignorant about Muslims and have a lot to learn, in contrast with the few other Hollywood movies dealing with Muslims -- "Syriana," "Munich" -- which seem to suggest that non-Muslim viewers can emerge knowing the score.

Despite Jarecki's varied success in bringing these six people's stories to life, their stories personalize our current geopolitical predicament and remind us that in a democracy no one can shrug off responsibility for the war.

While Hanon's film stints on character development, he convincingly portrays the events that foster redemption and forgiveness, as over time the Waodani shed their culture of violence.