The film should also wow fans of Herbert Wise's "I, Claudius" and Franco Zeffirelli's "Jesus of Nazareth" alike.

If you're a Cole Porter fan you might like the songs in De-Lovely, but as a portrait of an unusual marriage it's de-lumbering, de-liberate and de-cidedly flat.

As producer, writer and star of his first movie, Ray Jahangard gets points for confidence and nerve, but at the end of the day, it must be said that not everyone is meant to work in the movies.

The problem with Fahrenheit 11/9 is that it’s Trump’s Fahrenheit 9/11 rather than Trump’s Roger & Me.

The Lives of Others wants us to see that the Stasi -- at least some of them -- were, like their Gestapo brethren, “just following orders." You can call that naive optimism on Donnersmarck's part, or historical revisionism of the sort duly lambasted by the current film version of Alan Bennett's "The History Boys." I, for one, tremble at the thought of what this young director does for an encore.

For a movie with a lesbian theme, My Mother Likes Women is absurdly coy about gay sex. It may be the most heterosexually minded film about lesbians ever made.

Has no stylistic flair and little forward momentum, yet nearly every scene contains an amusing bit of business, much of it off to the side of the main action.

Stephen Frears has had more downs than ups of late, but I would never have thought the man responsible for "My Beautiful Laundrette" and "The Grifters" capable of stooping to pap as pappy as this unbearably chipper take on the real-life story of Laura Henderson.

Withdrawal From Gaza lacks both the nuance and the muscle of Yoav Shamir's excellent 2005 "5 Days," which probes far deeper into the relationship between settlers and the soldiers who came, on the orders of supersettler Ariel Sharon, to remove them.

It's all fitfully amusing, thanks in large part to Bouchard's richly comic performance, but the movie is never very involving, and it overstays its welcome by a good, long while.

Surprisingly wan film.

Put simply, this second feature by the young Austrian director Hans Weingartner is a put-on -- a glib anti-capitalist rant in which the rhetoric rarely rises above the you-too-can-save-a-child-for-less-than-the-price-of-coffee level.

The best thing about Committed, though, is Krueger, a filmmaker who's not only willing to lead us into the well-traveled terrain of romantic comedy, but able to show us something new there.

It ends up sagging into a pleasantly undistinguished pudding. The big news is that Matt Lauer, playing himself, can act. A little. Hardly at all, really. But he’s a jolly good sport, and quite handy with a fire extinguisher.

It's a soulless and dull bit of showmanship, but it sure sounds profound.

A lot here is genially entertaining, but it doesn't make for interesting or vital filmmaking, because while Levinson might honestly prefer rye, he makes movies the way Wonder Bread bakes.

The Chorus is sham art and questionable entertainment, but at the very least it sends you whistling out of the theater.

If Novocaine fulfilled the promise of its premise and cast, it could be great. As it is, the film is sabotaged by writer-director David Atkins' failure to set a consistent tone and follow through.

Yu’s filmography includes dozens of pictures between 1965 and 1994, but with its nonstop flurry of fighting, ersatz bloodletting and incidental hilarity, this remains his signature work.

A capable, soulful thriller with a love story as steamy as is possible when its lead characters are Orthodox Jews.

Too lazy (and, it seems, cynical) to give his audiences any more than he thinks they want, Perry appears to have given up on making a coherent movie altogether.

Chopped down to 40 minutes, this could be a wickedly cool short; as is, it’s a passable slasher that’s still nowhere near the interspecies smackdown we geeks have long imagined.

With little in the way of story or spectacle to offer nonbelievers, the film itself just preaches to the choir.

There's not a single surprise or moment of dramatic tension in Uncle Nino, which has already proved itself a hit as a self-distributed film in the Midwest.

Garner is no more than serviceable as the tightly wound Gray.

At times the picture feels like an affectionate parody of recent Iranian films.

A debut film that's more well-intentioned than funny.

Excusez-moi, but I'd rather see Omar Sharif punching out croupiers in a casino than dispensing comfort and joy in this sugared-up tale.