Happily, Jamie Lee Curtis gurning through a guitar solo (she is Lady Spinal Tap, after all) while her floundering ‘mother’ mimes on stage is amusing.

The cast are terrific, but byt he end, the film is struggling to stay together as much as the family it depicts.

William H. Macy is a scream as the composite radio announcer whose hyperbolic racetrack reports are not only hilarious, but illustrate the impact of radio in creating a mass culture and how it was instrumental in making sporting events a nationwide obsession.

Lushly photographed by Andrei Zhegalov and impeccably played, it’s a long-overdue corrective to the kind of wildly patriotic war film produced in the Soviet era.

Every tiny aspect of the universe here comes from the filmmakers' imagination, and while this occasionally leaves us bemused, the film as a whole is a magical, otherworldly trip into undiscovered areas of cinema.

Delivers an effective double-sting ending.

Ultimately, this potentially intriguing character thriller loses its direction when it turns into a mean-spirited stalk-and-bash actioner.

Jarecki's film brilliantly illustrates the fallibility of memory, the slippery nature of 'facts' and even people's invention of events that may never have taken place.

This arty approach may dismay hard-core horror fans, but it captures the dark grace of the original with wit and style.

Ultimately make no more than a cosmetic effort to disguise its stage origins.

Considering the ignominy of its path to British cinemas, it’s hard not to approach the film with caution, but after a few minutes in the company of an unusually low-key but typically world-weary Al Pacino, it begins to win you over, dragging you deeper into the sleazy political underworld it describes.

Louis Sachar's compelling children's classic is about as Disney as Freddy Krueger. It's got murder, racism, facial disfigurement and killer lizards.

Improv comedy at its best: subtle, hilarious, excruciating and affecting in equal measure.

The dialogue is intelligent, but the humourlessness -- and the fact that most of the cast could use a good slap -- results less in involving drama and more in the viewer being held hostage in a 90-minute therapy session for the well-dressed and narcissistic.

Has something for everyone.

Yes, it’s offensive, stupid and loud, but its cartoonish, macabre wit should be evident to anyone with a brain in the first ten minutes. Whether it’s funny or not, though, is another matter entirely. Approach with extreme caution -- and/or rubber gloves.

Like a late ’60s satire played embarrassingly seriously.

If your anti-Apartheid musical knowledge only goes as far as The Specials’ Free Nelson Mandela, this is a toe-tapping, thought-provoking education.

25th Hour proves that big ideas and an indie sensibility can still flourish inside the studio system. One of the more entertaining and thought-provoking Spike Lee Joints in a long while.

The fact that Miyazaki and his team hand-draw the images before they're digitally coloured and animated gives them an artistry that has been woefully lacking from so many recent American features.

Sadly, though, all this arthouse exploitation fails to reveal as much about contemporary Korea as, say, "Texas Chainsaw" did about the States.

Not dire, but you can’t escape the feeling that there’s a good movie in here trying to get out.

Writer-director Jill Sprecher doesn't have the deftness or sad humour that P. T. Anderson uses in his similarly contrived group portraits, but the cast are, at least, individually fine.

A fable that leaves us unenlightened at the end, it is a curious, worthy failure.

Curiously uninvolving. It never comes to life -- even after someone is found dead. Nevertheless, there are pleasures to be found in the performances, particularly in Eddie Izzard's lovelorn Chaplin and Edward Herrmann's paranoid Hearst.

It may lack the fine-tuned inventiveness of Toy Story or the knowingness of Shrek, but it still delivers solid laughs and thrills wrapped up in an infectious sense of character.

It may not scale the heights of Heat or The Insider, but this is riveting stuff and reconfirms Mann's status as a master of the medium.

A neo-realist fairy tale that charms without losing sight of its key themes of exploitation and truth to one’s self.