A flavorless snack, time filler until "Saw III" and "Hostel 2" are served up.

A dark and deeply unsettling movie with its roots in classical tragedy.

The acting is serviceable and primarily of the stare-until-you're-uncomfortable variety, although Rampling is much more than that: She's a classic screen temptress with the aura of a melancholy spider.

As the film progresses, however, Murray becomes less and less sure of where things are heading or what it is she is trying to get at, such that the last few reels feel perfunctory and unengaged.

Smart, compassionate filmmaking that captures both the intricacies and the tragedy of contemporary adolescence.

More than characters, dialogue and lighting, here Petersen is interested exclusively in suspense of the will-he-or-won't-he-be-crushed-by-that-falling-flaming-elevator variety.

Stay as far away from Just My Luck as you can.

With the former mayor currently enjoying one of the rare second acts in American political life, Giuliani Time does a strong job of reminding us what the first one was like.

Both acidly funny and very moving.

Pollack does give a substantial chunk of screen time to Milton Wexler, Gehry's longtime analyst, who proves to be a winning, charismatic presence.

Charming and antic, Russian Dolls doesn't quite cohere in the way of "L'Auberge Espagnole" into a clever snapshot of contemporary Europe.

Hoffman is so proficient in this role that he just about overmatches Cruise and makes the wait until he speaks again in the second half of the film hard to endure with any patience.

If a more elegant and succinct explanation of what compels some people to go to art school has ever been filmed, I haven't seen it.

At times, the narrative thread slips the movie's grasp and there are flat spots in which characters just scream and thrash. Given what its ending aims for (don't ask), such interludes feel flabby and gratuitous even with Sutherland and Spacek providing gravitas to the ghoulishness.

Any charm and character ascribed to Carl Hiaasen's bestselling book have been homogenized in Wil Shriner's flat screenplay and direction.

For a film that has allegedly undergone extensive tinkering following its premiere at last year's Cannes Film Festival, Down in the Valley abounds in nagging loose ends and suffers overall from logy pacing.

Too dark to be very funny, too mushy to be pitch black.

It’s a mark of Greengrass’ unequaled gift for believably re-creating reality that, once seen, it’s impossible to get United 93 out of your mind, no matter how much you may want to.

The film strives for some type of a girl-empowerment message that equates trading one type of conformity for another with self-determination but muffs the dismount and stumbles on the landing. In other words, it fails to Stick It.

A genuinely sweet and determinedly inspirational family film that features a charming young actress in the title role. It's a successful feel-good movie, but it would make you feel even better if it didn't push quite so hard for its desired effects.

The bedraggled movie limps along to its phony hogwash of an ending, adding the ignominy of sentimentality to its previous sin of being so derivative.

A wry, robust comedy of broad, sometimes crass humor set in the ultra-macho world of a small-town German soccer team.

In an era when so many films are cynical, cash-grabbing mechanisms of global corporate culture, no more and no less, it is frustrating to come across a work such as this, in which the grasp-exceeding reach and reckless vision of its creators become the biggest drawbacks rather than the film's greatest assets.

As beautiful as it is harrowing.

The misfortune, of Michael Stürminger's low-boil melodrama is that it's entirely too familiar. Underneath the movie's cool surface beats the heart of a 1940s tear-jerker. It's a subzero "Stella Dallas."

A hopelessly muddled example of inspirational indie cinema.

As someone who was part of the Resistance, Melville knew enough to neither melodramatically glorify nor cynically devalue the heroism he presents. This is people doing what needed to be done, Army of Shadows says, this is the way it was.

Though it is undeniably bleak and pessimistic and marked by a texture of observation worthy of British director Mike Leigh, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is not as forbidding as it sounds.

Finds Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien at his most intimate and romantic. The deceptive simplicity of these vignettes, written by Chu Tien-wen, throws into relief Hou's formidable storytelling strengths and visual acuity - his way with actors, his subtlety and expressiveness.

Grant's second coming as a rake and an egotist is the best thing to happen to his career since "Four Weddings and a Funeral." He is twice as enjoyable as the preening bad guy as he was as the bumbling good guy, and Weitz makes perfect use of the new persona.

An unassuming thriller, a nifty piece of genre filmmaking without frills or self-importance. It's a throwback, if you will, to the days of B pictures, when formula movies were made with a maximum of skill and a minimum of pretense.

Works up a decent amount of solid, creep-show atmosphere in its first act before making some absurd decisions of its own in its second.

Dreamy and creepy, tender and terrifying, Somersault is a frank and visceral film that at the same time exudes an unexpected innocence.

The movie is flatly acted and extremely ill-paced, lacking any sense of urgency, momentum or fun. "Romancing the Stone" it is not.

Shot in just 24 days, the film staggers under the weight of stale gags and a meandering plot.

Wants to be an honest, earnest look at the difficulties of growing up and moving on, but it remains stuck in such a fantasy-laden milieu that the characters never feel particularly real, and their problems seem phony and arbitrary.

Stolen is about a puzzle that's resisted solution for more than 15 years, but that doesn't stop it from being a fascinating, adventurous documentary with a lively and eccentric cast of characters.

Isn't it amazing to see just how low some people will stoop if you pay them enough?

A humanist parable about how to be a good person, live a good life and make gallons of lemonade when life suddenly hands you lemons, it's predictably delightful and delightfully predictable.

Maddeningly exploitative, the film takes a provocative subject -- pedophilia -- and wraps it in a sterile, vacuum-sealed package, devoid of meaning.

Harron has said she was determined to be nonjudgmental about Page, to do justice to the woman's "mystery and ambiguity." In practice, however, that attitude plays as coldness, and Page, for all her remarkable zest, comes off as a not terribly interesting person we're given no incentive to become involved with.

A fearless movie about a fearful subject, an unusually empathetic and quite funny film that deals with death and dying in the most offbeat and casually life-affirming way. Exceptionally smart, playful and perceptive, Look Both Ways confronts things that people would rather avoid.

Schifrin wisely holds off showing the monster -- because once the creature is revealed, the already shaky film takes a turn for the worse. The costume for the monster looks like a cross between a drugstore Halloween mask and leftover molds from the horror chestnut "Leprechaun."

Possibilities ends up as a testament to only one thing: a missed opportunity to explore one of the most visionary and influential careers in modern music.

These kinds of merciless conditions lead to a culture that is stoic about life and death and a story that will surprise you by its willingness to embrace that unsentimental natural world.

As pared down, stylish and deceptively simple as the stark glass and concrete block inhabited by two of its main characters, La Mujer de Mi Hermano (My Brother's Wife) is an adultery drama that skips the big life lessons in favor of observing the mysteries of human interdependency and social behavior.

Dunn says he's been defending his choice in music since he was 12, and the film is a carefully organized and thoughtful argument for the merits of metal.

A pompous, overwrought and itchingly claustrophobic psychodrama.

You might start to seriously wonder if there's a way to get this woman to run for office here in America.

Lucky Number Slevin is an attempted cinematic sleight-of-hand that has its moments, but is finally just plain annoying, wearing its influences too broadly on its sleeve.

From the beginning to its very end, The Benchwarmers seems to be struggling to justify its own existence.

Likké should be applauded for tackling a subject that's bristling with sociopolitical thorns and that raises some provocative questions, particularly about what we find attractive in other people and why.

The result is an exquisitely calibrated hypermodern comedy of manners. A quiet but devastating ensemble piece, both acerbic and sweet, "Friends" blends empathy and a great sense of comic timing with the richness of Holofcener's trademark take-no-prisoners observations.

Sweet-natured, if somewhat familiar, On a Clear Day features fine performances by Mullan, Blethyn and Sives. Dellal and cinematographer David Johnson paint an inviting picture of Glasgow.

A self-consciously zany dysfunctional family comedy, When Do We Eat? strains so hard to be outrageous that it sacrifices characters for caricatures. They might have had something if they'd let everybody relax, be themselves and enjoy dinner.

But most important, for the adventurous moviegoer, it's more than apparent throughout this inventive, hypnotic and queasily funny portrayal of socioeconomic chaos that this director is a talent to watch.

Director Tony Vitale, best know for "Kiss Me Guido," gamely tries to keep pace with Cupo's erratic storytelling and struggles to convey the inner life of Cupo's character.

A powerful documentary that uncovers half-forgotten history, history that is still relevant but not in ways you might be expecting.

A tedious experience.

The ending, which unnecessarily veers toward lumpy, overwrought melodrama, undoes the scrappy elegance the film previously displays in fits and starts.

What this is remains mysterious after a single viewing, but not so mysterious as to inspire a second.

What we may very well be looking at here is another "Showgirls," a drag camp-fest for the "Baby Jane" crowd, fabulous fodder for future cabaret acts, and a pleasure probably best enjoyed in a crowd -- preferably a vocal one. Dead serious and stone idiotic, the only basic instinct in evidence here is desperation.

Slither is a gross, disgusting, but undeniably amusing treat laden with homages and in-jokes.

Johnson has taken a well-worn, much-revised genre, adapted to what's become a clichéd setting and transcended both in the process.

Cutting to the beat of the Beasties' propulsive rap, Hörnblowér creates an experience that is simultaneously low-fi and state-of-the-art.

Much of Craig Chester's good-hearted love story Adam & Steve is silly and contrived, but the film boasts four engaging actors.

A performer of formidable self-absorption, Johnston has inspired a film with the same trait, and the results are about what you might expect.

Farnsworth's frenetic, often hysterical first feature tries desperately to find a style, or styles, to call its own, but there's never a moment that doesn't feel as if it's been chewed up and spit out a dozen times before.

This is not a typical Iranian production. Simultaneously deeply allegorical and concretely physical, this striking film is not a typical production, period.

In three parts, the film patiently unwraps the details of daily monastic life. Observation and translation is emphasized over explanation or interpretation.

Overall, the film lacks cohesion and a true point of view. Further muddling the film's meaning is a voice-over attributed to Jiang Qing, which we learn at the end is fictionalized.

Ultimately, the scale of the production and the expectation built into the release don't entirely justify the effort.

Smartly plotted by newcomer Russell Gewirtz and smoothly directed by, of all people, Spike Lee, Inside Man is a deft and satisfying entertainment, an elegant, expertly acted puzzler that is just off-base and out-of-the-ordinary enough to keep us consistently involved.

Stay Alive spends a lot of time inside the video game system, and what will terrify the audience very early on is the realization that there's better acting in the video game than on the big screen.

Writer-director Kevin Noland effectively utilizes his fine young cast and the natural beauty and rich culture of northern Spain in amiably posing a timeless question of youth.

Ultimately, Mermin's film is a profound reminder of the things that make us human. Things that don't matter much, in the scheme of things, but loom large when taken away. Things we all have in common.

If Lonesome Jim feels like it's perpetually on the verge of evaporating, Buscemi brings to the material the boundless empathy for misfits and screw-ups he displayed in "Trees Lounge."

A thought-provoking, canny piece of filmmaking that puts flesh, blood and garish multicolored baubles on the skeleton of globalization.

The Belgian directing brothers deal with themes they have made their own: the difficulty of being moral in an amoral world and the grinding, unforgiving nature of reality for those forced by poverty to live on the margins of society. These are not easy films to experience, but they are uncompromising and unforgettable.

An affectionate tribute to the drag artist who has been a Manhattan institution for more than 20 years.

Fans of the band will likely be disappointed (its music is represented by a handful of covers), and younger audiences will wonder what the fuss is about.

You have to be a bit of an arrested adolescent to think "Larry" is funny.

A fictional look at film school life, realized in that archetypal film school style. If it were being workshopped in a seminar, some criticisms might include: awkward mise-en-scène, stock characters - and did you actually repeat that reaction within 10 seconds of first using it?

A campy, hopelessly amateurish vanity production.

The film is haphazardly structured, undercutting its potential power.

By the time you've gotten through it, you feel spent, loaded down and more than a little disoriented. Part of the problem is that the movie's big concepts - violence begets violence, absolute power corrupts absolutely, everything is connected, my terrorist is your freedom fighter, etc. - are pithy, brief and irrefutable enough to embroider on throw pillows.

So good-natured, and its cast seems to enjoy itself so thoroughly, that the total annihilation of disbelief it requires winds up feeling like a reasonable enough request.

A very smart and funny movie directed by Jason Reitman, who also shrewdly adapted the screenplay from Christopher Buckley's savagely satiric novel.

Unfortunately, the film lacks the suspense and drama to carry the psychological burden placed on it by its makers. Plot strands are dropped like so much lint, and it ends so abruptly that you wonder whether the filmmakers ran out of money, ideas or both.

A persuasive if not groundbreaking drama.

Despite a fine cast, the film feels as lost as Howard, unsure of its direction or tone.

15 minutes into it, you are spellbound, heartbroken and unaccountably cheered -- your faith and admiration in humanity restored.

As the movie turns into a shrill revenge tragedy, complexity is discarded. The characters might as well be stapled to Popsicle sticks.

Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker look and act, quite attractively, like grown-ups, and their easy rapport makes them convincing and appealing as an on-screen couple. So all throughout Failure to Launch, I found myself wishing they were in a different movie, maybe one as sophisticated as "The Philadelphia Story," which the movie references, but doesn't remotely live up to.

Strictly for the very young who will find giggles in the anthropomorphic mash-ups and won't be too distracted by the predictably mawkish sitcom plot.

Thirty years of gestation have produced a film of great beauty with unfulfilled promise - a disappointment, but with much to recommend and be glad about.

Sometimes a film about nothing can be a film about everything; a film without overwhelmingly dramatic events can delight you more than an outsized epic. The sly and disarming Duck Season is such a film.

The performances by all three children are scarily convincing. Still, it's a taxing bit of exploitation, which, although you're glad to know it's a work of fiction, doesn't exactly make a case for itself as art.