Much of the film is as strange and oddly beautiful as one of Arbus' own photographs, bold in its attempt to find new ways of cracking the biopic chestnut and sensitive in its portrayal of a 1950s woman who, like so many of her contemporaries, finds herself imprisoned in a "Good Housekeeping" nightmare.

No new narrative ground is broken, but there's a lived-in, musical feel to this tale of a fiercely independent, thoroughly screwed-up building contractor (Ashley Judd, in a pleasing return to the directness of her first significant role, in Victor Nunez's "Ruby in Paradise").

The Cave of the Yellow Dog has an abundance of gentle humor, much of it provided by an adorably scruffy toddler, but there's also impressive strength and wisdom in the family's uncomplaining, shoulder-to-the-wheel approach to the world.

One is left yearning for the overheated melodrama of Bernard Rose's 1994 Beethoven biopic, "Immortal Beloved," which was trashy, but fun.

Intelligent, moving film.

Profound and joyously silly at the same time.

Like a lot of recent queer-themed cinema that aspires to be politically charged, Maple Palm takes a hot-button issue (here, it's homophobic U.S. immigration policies) and reduces it to dry sloganeering and shameless emotional manipulation of the audience.

They do deliver on the gore and nudity fronts, and you don't often see such things in 3-D. The familiar title helps with the marketing, but hurts by inviting comparison with a classic; as a 2-D remake, it wouldn't pass muster. (Tom Savini's 1990 redo is far more respectable.)

The gimmick is simple but devastatingly effective: Never once breaking character or acknowledging that he’s in on the joke, the Jew-fearing, grammatically challenged reporter ingratiates himself with his unsuspecting, average-American victims before uproariously turning the tables on them.

This is all really a big waste. At least the out-takes at the end are actually funny.

The movie is enjoyable, but not passionately engaging in the way we've come to expect from Almodóvar, and it leaves you somewhat cold in spite of the warmth of Cruz's galvanic performance.

It doesn't help that the level of acting in the film brings nothing but accidental humor to the mix.

A nice counterpoint is the soundtrack, with psychedelic trip music and bottleneck blues by noted wild-ass guitarist Elliott Sharp. It’s good to hear people talking about openheartedness without irony.

In DiNovis’ butterfingery hands, the movie tumbles into a pedantic anti-death-penalty rant that's about as funny as a firing squad.

Director Simon Brand channels both "Saw" and "Reservoir Dogs" (good influences, both) to propel his main story forward, and even gets nicely twisty when the climax comes, but it's hard to escape the feeling that the B-story was added in to pad the film's running time.

If this terrific documentary doesn't adjust your idea of what it means to have a hard life and a good attitude, you haven’t been paying attention.

Needless to say, this is one odd concoction, which should find its primary audience among college potheads who like to watch ’70s Hanna-Barbera creations on the Cartoon Network late at night.

The less rosy message of Catch a Fire is that aggression breeds aggression.

That may not exactly thrill those who admire the Saw films only for their splatter quotient, but all told, this is a more affecting study in grief, guilt and human frailty than "Babel."

Repeatedly, Iñárritu and Arriaga stop themselves just short of suggesting that we're all going to hell in a hand basket. Had they not -- well, then Babel might really have been onto something.

It's something of a family affair -- only this time, instead of casting his relatives in the leading roles, Ceylan has cast himself and his real-life wife, Ebru, as Isa and Bahar. And if, in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, such a decision might foster a mood of lurid home-movie voyeurism, both Ceylans are such commanding and subtly expressive performers that any charges of nepotism here are as erroneous as in the storied collaborations of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands.

Beyond a lack of enthralling characters or convincing plotting, though, what's most glaringly missing in this self-promotional marketing tool is, of all things, God, who gets only a bit role as Walsch's muse in a few scenes.

Kopple and Peck went on and off the road with the band for the three years of waffling, agonizing and defiance in between Maines’ mouth-offs.

Cocaine Cowboys' pulpy entertainment value merely lures us into a grim, kaleidoscopic look at how one city was both destroyed and, ironically, eventually saved by some of the worst human beings to walk the Earth.

Wilson is articulate and ironic, and Otto-Bernstein mostly shields us from his tantrums and critics.

The result is an attractive, well-intentioned film that is surprisingly dull and uninvolving.

Precious little history of any kind shows its face in Marie Antoinette. The omission is strategic.

One expects neither subtlety nor surprise from a scenario boasting a household pet named Freud. If there's any reason at all to see Running With Scissors, it' Bening.