There are some inspired off-the-wall moments, but they are more than offset by a pervasive aura of tedium and the lack of any sense of the forward momentum necessary to sustain an adventure of this kind.

Opens explosively and never lets up.

Alternately witty, caustic, tender and endlessly imaginative and unpredictable.

It's hard to imagine many films surpassing or even equaling the effect of this supple, breathtakingly direct, small French film.

As David Rakoff once wrote, "Youth isn't wasted on the young. It is perpetrated on the young." Exactly how is brilliantly captured by Andrew Bujalski in his debut feature, Funny Ha Ha.

A subtle artist and a sharp observer, Martel manages a large cast with an ease that matches her skill at storytelling, within which psychological insight and social comment flow easily and implicitly.

It is a pleasure from start to finish.

It is the kind of superbly crafted, intelligent entertainment — a classic suspense thriller — that nowadays is as welcome as it is rare.

Moving from tragedy to tragedy, the film teeters along unsteadily, showing events we've seen countless times before and then imploding under the weight of its ridiculous ending.

What results is an intimate, chatty film, both cheeky and thorough, the kind of high-class historical gossip you might get if an eminent Soviet historian like Robert Conquest or Richard Pipes went to work for the National Enquirer.

An amazing achievement of personal filmmaking.

Yes, this could be a better film, but the good qualities it does have are rare enough to hold our interest on screen and off.

If the script isn't as well-structured as it could be, the dialogue is refreshingly natural. Kutcher is surprisingly well cast as the awkward, somewhat dorky Oliver, and Peet is charming and charismatic without being cloying or artificial.

Lifeless and laughless.

Fascinating, highly entertaining.

It's a chilling, completely fascinating documentary.

Despite strong performances by Gerard Butler and Wes Bentley as the leaders of the two factions and crisply directed soccer action, the movie lacks a powerful central presence to carry the drama.

Benefits from Caviezel's ability to project earnestness better than nearly any actor currently working, but its near-comic predictability, "What else could go wrong?" plotting and cliché-ridden screenplay sink it.

Two movies in one, but it's no bargain. A charming romantic comedy... transforms awkwardly into a hedonistic crime thriller, with the two genres violently butting heads.

The film toys with the grand themes of love and death as it understatedly moves toward an unsatisfying denouement. Although the narrative is not always compelling, Lu subtly conveys sensuality without nudity in the sex scenes, and something about the boldness of the exercise keeps you watching.

The film is a terrific scare show, fast and furious, made with a lot of style and energy, packing plenty of jolts yet never lingering morbidly over horrific images. It is anchored in strong characterizations, and its plot develops with chilling psychological suspense. It's such a skillfully made entertainment that its plunge into the supernatural is persuasive even for the skeptical.

A film that takes a steadfastly gentle look at some of life's harshest moments while not overlooking its joys, House of D deserves a chance to find an audience.

The cartoonish movie might have made for a funny half-hour short or sitcom pilot but runs out of track well before its conclusion.

Grounded by a gutsy, over-the-edge-and-back performance by Paul Kaye as Frankie, It's All Gone Pete Tong takes the long way around before finally redeeming itself.

It's a bawdy farce done with real delicacy, a charming adult comedy that ends up with unlooked-for emotional heft. If that doesn't cover all the bases, it certainly comes close.

Provides little insight beyond hanging out with its super-sized star and would not be out of place as halftime filler except for its nearly 90-minute running time.

As depressing as it is hard to watch, Palindromes is also consistently, horrifyingly funny and sharp-witted, and the darker and more well-observed its humor, the more it belies the director's unsentimental, even grudging empathy for his fellow DNA monkeys.

Breck Eisner, son of former Disney mogul Michael and something of a protégé of Steven Spielberg, for whom he directed an episode of the miniseries "Taken," guides Sahara's big action set pieces with assurance, but would have been better served by a tighter script.

Sweet and often hilarious.

Brilliantly choreographed and shot, Kung Fu Hustle is often grisly, visually spectacular and unabashedly silly, sometimes all at once.

Eating Out might just make it as an amusing trifle, but on the big screen it's merely tedious and silly.

Sternfeld's approach is rigorously minimalist, which is a plus since the Winters family is in no way extraordinary or distinctive.

Smile is like a dose of cod liver oil: It may be good for you, but it's no fun.

If this strikes some as some kind of gallingly blasé, ostentatious Parisian sophistication, it's far from it.

It's hard to imagine "The Wild Bunch" having the depth and grace it did without Peckinpah having this experience to draw on, and for that masterful film alone we're grateful to have Major Dundee back among the living again.

The only real reason to catch Eros is to see Wong Kar-Wai's beautiful opening piece, "The Hand."

A thoughtful, provocative exploration of the ways poets have dealt with the experience of battle throughout history.

An elegantly told tale of obsession that, in failing to take on any larger meaning, rapidly becomes depressing to watch.

For a relentlessly violent and exploitive noir knockoff, Sin City is mystifyingly flat and static - cartoonish, even, if you want to get tautological about it.

Like his father, Brown inserts himself into the action via folksy narration. His husky, laid-back voice sounds something like Kevin Costner, lending a regular-guy aura to the reverential treatment he affords his subject.

Kontroll is in fact an allegory, but one that oozes a gritty, dynamic realism.

What makes Look at Me such a deeply satisfying experience is its ability to combine insightful character portraits like this with wickedly funny situations that slyly skewer all-too-human weaknesses.

For all the vivid, amusing characters that surround Gina, Beauty Shop rightly belongs to Latifah, who comes into her own as a star and an actress in this film.

It says something when you come out of a film as weird and fantastical as Oldboy and feel that you've experienced something truly authentic. I just don't know what. I can't think of anything to compare it to.

Director Kevin Rodney Sullivan milks the film's one joke for all it's worth - which isn't much - before settling into the rote rhythms of a buddy picture.

Powered by an exceptional performance by Daniel Day-Lewis, this artfully disturbing film is a compelling, imaginative look at the potent emotional bond that forms not between romantic lovers but between fathers and daughters.

For an unabashedly silly spoof of a girly action flick, D.E.B.S. is unexpectedly fresh, thanks mostly to the sweetly exuberant love story at its center.

What makes Lipstick & Dynamite its own animal is that, intentionally or not, the director has allowed something else into the mix, a glimpse of the unvarnished and the unsanitized.

Has too much depth, too much freshness and imagination ever to be adequately described in any of its aspects as merely "quirky" or "off the wall."

As awful as the original was inspired.

An entertaining film that is neither stuffy nor pretentious.

Although this is the kind of entertainment designed to send its audience home happy, Ice Princess has its share of stinging moments and has a good deal more edge than one might have expected.

The movie is as side-splitting as it is creepy, especially when it ventures into surrealistic nightmare imagery.

Allen's view of what's "deeply real" feels ever more deeply bogus as the movie progresses, his trademark wit having calcified into pastiche and unintended self-parody.

Schizo is an ugly name for a dark and lovely piece of work, but maybe that's the point. The world this film depicts can be a casually pitiless one, half modern and half tribal, but it can also offer compassion and beauty.

A stunning-to-look-at film marred by a less than searing pace and some narrative incoherence.

The force of the film is not as profound as Shakhnazarov clearly intended, and The Rider Named Death is easier to respect than enjoy.

Made with energetic flair and no small dose of violence, mercifully handled with discretion, Hostage exemplifies taut, confident filmmaking.

The animated tale has flashes of brilliance but seems assembled from cultural flotsam.

A squarely suburban movie with a distinctly bourgeois-shaped window on the world, but it's genuine and exceptionally well observed.

Despite being a pure fantasy that relishes not making literal sense, Millions retains a conviction about what it's doing that makes us believe and enjoy.

Boorman's stars Juliette Binoche and Samuel L. Jackson are valiant - even impressive - but they cannot rescue this grueling film or its mechanical plot.

A wickedly funny satire.

There's considerable universality in Black Cloud's plight, yet Schroder makes it personal and deeply felt. In a direct, unpretentious manner, Black Cloud expresses most effectively its hero's struggle with himself.

has a rich, lyrical sweep and floats between past and present, reality and imagination, with ease. It is a richly satisfying experience.

First-time writer-director Matthew Parkhill prefers to lean on clever plot devices, amp up the roles of the movie's sideline jesters, crank up the static noise and fail to notice that his engaging little romance has broken with reality and veered into hollow pastiche.

Where Fabled flounders is when it attempts to reconcile the many contradictory story elements.

The bleak absurdity of its predicaments cries out for a tone of pitch-dark comedy to stave off the unintended laughter that it is virtually certain to elicit.

It takes a rugged survivalist mentality to sit through 108 minutes of Off the Map, a self-consciously loopy and mystical drama about a family that lives off the map, off the grid, off the land and mostly off their meds in the mangy desert of New Mexico.

Although Travolta is as smooth as ever, the picture is a bust, a grimly unfunny comedy with no connection to reality, and worst of all, running on and on for two dismal hours.

Intermittently compelling but unavoidably improbable.

Has sufficient mayhem to please Diesel's action fans while allowing the star to reach out to family audiences.

Dear Frankie's surprises are few and low-key, but the story wraps up nicely.

No amount of goodwill can rescue Face from its painfully literal script and acting that's all about projecting recognizable attitude rather than drawing in viewers.

A striking new documentary that shows the war in a way it's not been seen before: from the ground up.

The new Israeli film Walk on Water is complex and paradoxical, at times frustrating but always involving. Something like the country that produced it.

Those who see it will, quite frankly, not believe their luck. It is that satisfying, that engrossing, that good.

Outdoes recent releases such as "Boogeyman" in the fright department, but the "Dawson's Creek" sensitivity and unsatisfying effects undermine the lupine anxiety.

These characters, which Perry worked into the narrative from other stage performances, may have been entertaining in those venues, but they undermine the film.

God-natured comedy.

An unsuccessful concoction of sincerity, camp and crassness that is more interested in its parade of D-level celebrities than developing its characters.

Buoyed by an unreserved humanism and a cheerful sense of the absurd.

Spritely, tender and unpredictable.

A mildly amusing comedy about the vicissitudes of shooting porn that has little of the grit, sleaze and uncertainty that is the lot of the veteran pornographer striving for professionalism more often than not against all odds.

Too sophomoric to be believed.

Ghobadi uses the lack of resources and the surfeit of drama that had been the lot of the Kurds throughout Hussein's dictatorship and both Gulf wars much in the way De Sica and Rossellini used the European tragedies of the '30s and '40s,

Never quite works as a film. The failure to create appropriate cinematic metaphors reduces it to "happiness is a warm puppy" superficiality.

Keanu Reeves has no peer when it comes to playing these sort of messianic roles -- he infuses them with a Zen blankness and serenity that somehow gets him through even the unlikeliest scenes with a quiet, unassuming dignity.

It's astonishing how dull a movie that packs so much visual overstimulation into its frames can be.

What begins, rather promisingly, as a visceral yawp against class difference in contemporary South Korea slowly devolves into a prolonged exercise in pointless sadomasochism.

This heartfelt valentine to the stage leaves no cliché unturned. If it has anything to recommend, it is the loving portrayal of the camaraderie of those who participate in art for art's sake who, to quote Cyrano, "work without one thought of gain or fame."

The reality it confronts is so gripping, we cannot turn away. This may not be the most sophisticated retelling of what happened while Berlin burned, but what a story it is.

An engaging and forthright documentary.

Simply too tedious and stretched out to be amusing. Had Schorr brought in his picture at 80 or 90 minutes Schultze might have been a different story.

If there's a theme to this group of films it's the richness of imagery gathered from a variety of forms including hand-drawn, computer-generated and hybrid work. Ink, pixels and clay are brought to life with equal parts darkness and light to evoke stories and moods that are anything but conventional.

It's a display of phenomenal dexterity and nimble grace that's a joy to watch. That, friends, is entertainment.

Aside from the singing and dancing, it is the color and pageantry of India as filtered through the work of cinematographer Santosh Sivan that captivates us.

Romantic comedies have become so cannibalistic lately that Hitch stands out for what seem like major innovations by comparison.