It's not entirely satisfying, but there's plenty to savor in Chicken With Plums.

Part muckraking nonfiction film, part performance piece, it is a nervy documentary guaranteed, depending on who you are, to enlighten, disturb or offend. Which is what you might expect from a man who describes his work as "a strange mix of Borat and the Economist."

A better-than-most fright-time tale.

Just good enough to engage audiences, but it falls well short of remarkable, leaving viewers wishing for a dawn that never breaks.

For a movie about moonshine, something so imaginatively made, mood-altering and once violently sought-after, it goes down way too blandly.

For the sake of the children, The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure should be allowed to quietly float away.

With its harrowing restraint, Compliance is potent filmmaking that's not easily forgotten.

With an ensemble led by Marion Cotillard and François Cluzet, the French hit has personality to burn, and squanders most of it.

Everything about Robot & Frank is as unlikely as it is irresistible. Charming, playful and sly, it makes us believe that a serene automaton and a snappish human being can be best friends forever.

The action is inventive, extensive and exciting, a bang-up job by cinematographer Mitchell Amundsen, one of the town's hot new shooters.

In truth, the film fizzles as much as it fumes.

A strange, but strangely entertaining combo of drag racing machismo, slapstick silliness, raunchy riffs, politically incorrect rants and sweet nothings.

Why Stop Now? feels trapped in the limbo between comedy and drama where many indies gamely venture, but from which few emerge with any resonance.

Somehow all that testosterone-infused blow-'-em-up craziness turns out to be kind of a kick.

It is a disappointment coming from writer-director David Cronenberg, who has proved such a master at mind games. Cronenberg is perhaps too faithful to the book. The topic is provocative and certainly timely, but the film never achieves the incisive power of his best work, "A History of Violence" for one. Even an A-list ensemble that includes Juliette Binoche, Samantha Morton and Paul Giamatti can't save it.

It may be the most fun you'll have with ghosts and zombies all year.

The Awakening just meanders like an aimless ghost.

Not only is the story dreamed up by producer Ahmet Zappa even odder than the title indicates, its execution gets increasingly irritating as the film goes on.

It sounds like a throwback to an earlier, more traditional style of Israeli filmmaking but it instead provides a view of that country that's as satisfyingly eccentric and unexpected as anything we've seen.

It all remains remarkably free of memorable comic situations, dramatic tension or emotional insight. Adolescence may be bruising, crazy or normal, but it's rarely this staid.

Complex, unexpected and dazzling, alternating relentless tension with resonant emotional moments, this is an exemplary espionage thriller that has a strong sense of what it wants to accomplish and how best to get there.

The most compelling aspect of The Green Wave, however, is the extensive footage shot clandestinely by amateurs using cellphones. What they recorded shows us the reality of what went down in a way nothing else can match.

Like the relationship she has chosen to dissect, the film is promising, disappointing, touching or frustrating, depending on the moment.

Rude, rowdy and raunchy, The Campaign gleefully skewers the current sad state of American politics. With a target that tempting, it's not surprising that this cynical and funny film hits more often than it misses.

Strictly for fans only.

An unusually intelligent cut at the relationship game.

A movie with a location named Snake Island should deliver more fun than this.

The documentary Craigslist Joe fulfills its unique premise - without providing much in the way of stakes, obstacles, tension or, frankly, greater meaning.