Lonergan has created a forceful yet extremely fitful film that teases with moments of brilliance only to frustrate in the end. Margaret is an unrealized dream, one you wish he'd gotten as right as his 2000 debut, "You Can Count on Me."

A not very good romantic comedy made somewhat bearable by Faris.

As a comedy about a young man with cancer, it needs to be serious enough to be real as well as light enough to be funny. Though it falls off the wagon at times, it maintains its balance remarkably well.

From the first moments of the eerie storm that opens the story, dread is the prevailing mood of this pre-apocalyptic drama - a film very much about this moment in time.

Abduction is just the third movie John Singleton has directed in the past decade, and it contains neither the passion nor the competence of his two previous genre efforts - "2 Fast 2 Furious" and "Four Brothers."

Warrick finds subliminal messaging in political campaigns, military operations and even in the music played in big box stores. Warrick is also rightly concerned by the power of media conglomerates to manipulate the news.

Much in this wholly absorbing and poignant documentary is familiar from numerous previous Holocaust accounts, but Mago and her quiet sense of moral obligation provides a fresh perspective.

The performances have heart, and a sorrowful tenderness courses through the self-described "fairy tale," even at its kitschiest.

Whatever the facts of the case, Berlin 36 doesn't clear the bar for dramatic impact.

This expertly constructed film follows the curious and tragic life of the troubled chess icon as he went from child prodigy to global legend to paranoid recluse.

Black Power Mixtape's contemporary audio, though it tries hard to involve us, can't hold a candle to this kind of footage. But if having these current voices on board helped get the luminous glimpses of the past back on the screen, we owe them a vote of thanks.

The picture benefits from its performances, notably Evans' roguish appeal as a guy simultaneously driven and destructive.

If anything, watching the film is like attending an old-style Southern tent revival - you want to believe in the fight against all that fire and brimstone. Heck, you want to join the righteous brigade. But when the lights go up and the fever dies down, it feels more like you've witnessed a show than a real showdown with the devil.

Starring Brad Pitt in top movie star form, it's a film that's impressive and surprising.

The insistently quirky details don't disguise the fact that the drama grows ever more predictable and precious, complete with falling-in-love montage. Screenwriter Jason Lew's character insights take the form of the obvious.

Special Treatment is a serious film, but Labrune allows a touch of dark comedy in her depictions of Alice's clients and Xavier's patients.

Summer Pasture has an earthy intimacy and compassion for its subjects that will have you thinking about their plight long after they've packed up and moved on for winter.

In making Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure, a documentary that tells the story of not just the tapes but their strange and increasingly sad afterlife, Australian filmmaker Matthew Bate faces the challenge not only of visualizing the audio artifacts but also of finding a way to position their makers and explain all that has transpired since the tapes were initially recorded.

The film is a reminder of the pleasure to be found in simple things - reading a book, sitting on a park bench with a friend, spending an afternoon with Margueritte.

A sensuous intellectual romp whose strong casting makes it involving, even when sentimentality creeps into the story or ideas present themselves in boldface.

An extraordinarily moving examination of how the AIDS epidemic both devastated and transformed San Francisco's gay community, this clear-eyed and soulful documentary brings us inside the contagion in a way that is so intimate, so personal, you feel like you're hearing about these catastrophic events for the first time.

Drive is a Los Angeles neo-noir, a neon-lit crime story made with lots of visual style. It's a film in love with both traditional noir mythology and ultra-modern violence, a combination that is not ideal.

At times, Happy, Happy is cutting comedy at its brutal best; at times, it slips on the black ice. Still, the love of life is exuberant, the pain exquisite.

Despite its grander ambitions, the film ultimately feels minor and superficial.

The scenario makes for an inept, lazy R-rated movie whose sole purpose is as a glossary of euphemisms for genitalia and sexual acts.

Though it doesn't exactly have pretensions toward the rhythms of real life, the film does nail the breezy movie feeling of a buffed-and-polished romantic comedy.

A pair of detectives lingering on the periphery of the story help provide a twist at the end that is well-handled and carries an unexpected irony, but it is really too, too little coming far, far too late.

With dependably creepy character actor Sid Haig to goose things along as leader of the locals, Creature is delightfully dopey.