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.