Monumentally terrible but far too bizarre to be boring.

In the sense that everyone is interesting once their lives are sufficiently unpacked, Burt and Linda's story is not boring -- but beyond its tabloid sensationalism, it's not especially significant either.

For all the vampires and blown-up cars, you'll see no sadism for the hell of it, only an oddly sweet-tempered mix of hyperbole, understatement and profoundly Slavic philosophizing about guilt, freedom and responsibility.

Like most television directors, Shergold is good with actors. Jowly, impassive and rigid with righteous dignity, Timothy Spall makes a wonderfully meticulous Pierrepoint.

Our traumatized soldiers deserve better representation than this irretrievably ridiculous drama, which will do nothing to revive the flagging fortunes of the man whose career lay down and died after "The Exorcist" and "The French Connection."

This debut feature from writer-director Shonali Bose has a powerful finale, in which the filmmaker uses imaginative camera angles and a vibrant sound design to re-create the turmoil and terror of the riots.

This loopy anime from director Satoshi Kon ("Millennium Actress") isn't a movie that's meant to be understood so much as simply experienced -- or maybe dreamed.

The film sniffs mightily at Milos Forman's "Amadeus," but even if you found that film over the top and off the wall, you might find yourself wishing for a little more "Volfie" and a little less Saint Wolfgang.

For a movie aiming to play like some 1970s throwback, both in sound and spirit, the most depressing thing about The Wendell Baker Story is how messy and impersonal it feels.

The film arrives at a familiar conclusion -- that war is hell -- but the getting there is made uniquely unsettling by Dumont's relentlessly anti-psychological disposition.

Pascale is the movie’s most defined character, and its most repugnant. Whatever sympathy we can muster for her boils down to Huppert’s richly layered portrayal.

The Last Time seems even more hapless than the Midwestern rube it's skewering.

This heartfelt tale of disintegration and acceptance, seasoned with family devotion, will both raise and soothe the anxieties of those of us who regularly ask ourselves why we came into the kitchen two minutes ago.

Once feels handmade in the best sense, an impressionistic feast for the senses cobbled together from lovely grace notes and a warm palette of reds and yellows.

You could make a case that any movie in which Mexicans and rednecks become best of friends is a net positive for society. But to do that, you'd have to ignore the severe boredom that sets in about halfway through this comedy.

With such rich material about dreams deferred, it’s disheartening that co-writer–director Desmond Nakano’s nobly made but patchy drama mires itself in nostalgia tropes and storytelling clichés.

A nicely contemplative documentary about actors and their ambivalent relationship with that intimidating space.

Unfortunately, syrupy music, reductive characterizations and bland cinematography turn her case into an earnest feminist fable that plays like an afterschool special for grown-ups.

Though Akel and Mass share writing credit, Chalk was actually shot in a loose, improvisational manner in the mode of Christopher Guest's films, and its best set pieces are like devastatingly effective pinpricks puncturing the Hollywood hot-air balloon of inspirational teacher/coach melodramas.

Bettauer means for Arthur and Joe's adventures to be a fable about empathy and hope, but her tone shifts awkwardly between silly and ponderous.

An amateurish mashup of "The Butterfly Effect" and "The Family Man" (talk about unholy hybrids!) that strains patience from the get-go.

The movie charts a journey from belief to despair with occasional touches of humor, but by the end I was so deadened by its minimalist style and method, I could barely summon the energy to ask why.

Always good with actors, Hanson brings out a beaten-down charm in Bana that works nicely against the hotheaded authority the actor shows in the gambling scenes, while Duvall is, like the veteran card shark he plays, a master of subtle gestures. The low card here is Barrymore, somewhat awkwardly shoehorned into this boys' club to provide some romantic relief.

The satirical jabs at celebrity culture smell like rotted leftovers from "The Fantastic Four." The token ruminations on the tension between a superhero's public and private lives seem flown in from Bryan Singer's "Superman Returns" (to say nothing of Raimi's own, superior "Darkman"). Most egregious, though, is the way Raimi and the writers reduce Spider-Man 3 to the very sort of abject distinctions between virtue and sin that the series has heretofore studiously avoided.

A feather-light comedy about losing emotional baggage and finding love in upper Manhattan.

The concept here holds more promise than the execution.

Its 104 minutes of lukewarm-’n’-fuzzy comfort food will no doubt satisfy some, but those looking for deeper insight into our nation’s peculiar mating rituals will feel left out.

Washed in a honeyed 1950s glow, Waitress has a mildly puckish way with outlandish baked goods and pert dialogue, but the movie is memorable largely for the contrast between its innocent sweetness and the savagery of its maker's premature death.