For those of us who fell in love with “Rocky” and have stuck with him, it’s pure documentary gold when Sly recalls how the film was shaped.

Fear of a Black Hat, which treats rap with the same droll dubiousness that This is Spinal Tap provided for heavy metal, is not as fearless and sharp-edged as it could be - but it provides a lot of laughs, and barbecues a few sacred cows.

Fright Night is not a distinguished movie, but it has a lot of fun being undistinguished.

This small film (virtually all of it filmed in Tobi’s New York apartment) is a real gem. Stewart is the main draw and he doesn’t disappoint one bit. Gugino delivers a richly layered performance, tricky as the part calls for supreme subtlety. Lillard is a major revelation here.

Watching the movie is an entertaining exercise in forensic viewing, and the insidious thing is, even if it is a con, who is the conner and who is the connee?

The movie operates at the level of a literate sitcom, in which the dialogue is smart and the characters are original, but the outcome and most of the stops along the way are preordained.

Murder on the Orient Express is a splendidly entertaining movie of the sort that isn’t made anymore: It’s a classical whodunit, with all the clues planted and all of them visible, and it’s peopled with a large and expensive collection of stars.

This is a good film, involving and wonderfully acted. I was drawn into the characters and quite moved, even though all the while I was aware it was a feel-good fable, a story that deals with pain but doesn't care to be that painful.

I don't know what I was expecting from Back to the Beach, but it certainly wasn't the funniest, quirkiest musical comedy since Little Shop of Horrors. Who would have thought Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello would make their best beach party movie 25 years after the others?

Thanks in large part to the empathetic and layered performances by the terrific cast, we believe in these characters, and we’re hoping all will work out, even though we know that’s probably not going to be the case.

Developments unfold according to the needs of the characters. The movie is not about springing surprises on us, but about showing these people in a process of discovery. The performances are not pitched toward melodrama; the actors all find the right notes and rhythms for scenes in which life goes on and everything need not be solved in three lines of dialogue.

The subjects of their comedies are defiantly non-P.C., but their hearts are in the right place, and it's refreshing to see a movie that doesn't dissolve with embarrassment in the face of handicaps.

This is a simple film, but a special one.

Sara Forestier is uninhibited in the role and has great comic energy. She won the Cesar for best actress for this performance.

It is great for an hour, good for about 25 minutes and then heads doggedly for the Standard 1980s High Tech Hollywood Ending, which means an expensive chase scene and a shootout.

Doesn't quite click.

The documentary visits elderly women who, then and now, can best be described as tough broads, and listens as they describe the early days of women's wrestling. What they say is not as revealing as how they say it.

Begins as an ominous rumble of unease, and builds to a shriek. The last 20 minutes are searingly intense: A paranoid personality finds its mate, and they race each other into madness.

As for Madchen Amick, a stunning beauty with an edgy intelligence, Kazan has given her a role that grows more interesting as it deepens.

Although “The Cursed” milks its relatively thin storyline a bit too long and engages in some heavy-handed (albeit valid) social commentary about 19th century colonialism perhaps one too many times, this is an effectively creepy and often bone-crunching horror gem with some striking visuals and a first-rate cast.

The acting, practical and special effects and production design are all superb. The script is repetitive, tedious and a whole lot of ho-hum.

This is the movie to seek out.

A feeling movie, a mood movie, an evocation of the kind of interaction we sometimes hunger for.

Even if the ending doesn't entirely succeed, it doesn't cheat, and it comes at the end of an uncommonly absorbing movie.

Five minutes into the film, I relaxed, knowing it was set in the real world, and not in the Hollywood alternative universe where Julia Roberts can't get a date.

Perhaps this movie was so close to Egoyan's heart that he was never able to stand back and get a good perspective on it -- that he is as conflicted as his characters, and as confused in the face of shifting points of view.

Odd and intense, very well acted, and impossible to dismiss.