If you don't mind the telegraphed punches of Ruth Epstein's script and Harvey Kahn's direction, this should carry you along.

A small but achingly authentic piece of kitchen-sink realism, this might never have made it across the pond without babe du jour Keira Knightley, excellent in a supporting role as a smacked-out waitress. But the real wonder is Parker, whose vulnerability and wraithlike beauty are devastating.

The premise is patently ridiculous, but the target audience of 12-year-old girls will be too charmed by the genre requisites to care.

This strange and beautiful Macedonian feature is a welcome reminder that national cinemas still exist.

This is brisk and fun to watch, thanks to the actors...But once you catch the main drift of the plot, it becomes awfully ho-hum.

These characters are touching and sympathetic to the extent that they're lonely, and that's what most of them are most of the time.

So fraught with unresolved issues of class, sexuality, and spiritual need, and so carefully observed by Pawlikowski, that it opens out like the movie's West Yorkshire countryside.

The most poignant performance comes from Allen, a retired stock analyst who clings to his masculine pride even though his body's falling apart on him.

"Soppy" doesn't begin to describe this 2004 drama by Quentin Lee.

Riegert and his cowriter, Gerald Shapiro, breathe some fresh air into the material with their credible characters.

There are strong turns by Michael Caine as Alfred the butler and Tom Wilkinson as a ruthless crime boss.

Atypically lame, this is more for spiritual tourists than admirers of "Aguirre: The Wrath of God."

A deeply stupid and offensive action comedy-romance.

Plays a bit better than it sounds. I miss the show's mangy, minimalist sets, but the slapdash narrative construction and good-hearted schmaltz survive intact.

If old-fashioned jolts are what you're after, this nasty piece of merchandise delivers. But so does electroshock.

Charmingly low-tech fantasy.

The movie's dreamlike spaces and characters are sometimes worthy of Lewis Carroll.

Austere and formally complex, the drama may nevertheless be Ozon's most accessible film due to the physical attractiveness and vitality of the intelligent couple.

Hou's best film since "The Puppetmaster" (1993). It's also his most minimalist effort to date, slow to reveal its depths and beauties, and it marks a rejuvenation of his art.

Ron Howard, an exemplar of honorable mediocrity, reunites with actor Russell Crowe and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman of "A Beautiful Mind" for this epic treatment of a seven-year stretch (1928-'35) in the career of New Jersey boxer James J. Braddock.

Excruciatingly narcissistic.

Engrossing and frequently hilarious.

Reasonably entertaining but predictable.

The episodic structure prevents any real momentum, but Byatt and Fothergill give a visceral sense of the sea's violence and vividly capture the riot of color to be found on the ocean floor.

Not bad to look at, but consistently unedifying.

This dyspeptic 2003 coming-of-age story from Italy often seems on the verge of nervous collapse, veering from giddy adolescent romps to adult shenanigans and shrill political discord.

Except for one manipulative deathbed scene, Ken Kwapis directs with sensitivity, steering the multiple story lines toward a satisfying conclusion.

Insofar as they're implicitly the spoils of war, this movie seems to be meditating on the whys and hows of the spoiling process -- raising more questions than can possibly be answered, and in this sense, at least, far from dogmatic.