This may not seem to be the stuff of comedy, but a comedy it is, and a compelling one too, laden with hot sex and standout performances.

A beautiful and timeless achievement, Conrad Rooks' 1972 adaptation of Herman Hesse's appropriation of East Indian mythology still entrances.

Not just another disposable romantic comedy, but an ambitious, overreaching mess.

This nearly perfect confection never takes its action more seriously than its comedy.

Utilizing lots of complicated, well-choreographed steadicam shots, La Salle directs with confidence -- this may yet be his true calling.

Sharp, smart and robustly engaging film.

The film is overwrought, slow, and portentous, with confusing surreal elements and a narrative time scheme that's impossible to keep track of.

Which leaves Witherspoon, that delicious pastry, to heave the movie on her small shoulders and carry it home. The load is light -- the movie weighs no more than a glass of flat champagne -- but even she can't withstand the burden.

The film takes an incredibly wrong turn when it shifts to the courtroom trial -- It all but kills any goodwill Silberling has engendered up to this point.

You can see all the jokes and heart-tugs coming a mile away. But writer Joseph A. Ciota and director Frank Ciota have a light touch. And they have a real find in their leading man, Eddie Malavarca.

Another disposable kidnapping thriller.

Released in 1962, it was pretty clearly the most intelligent spectacular within living memory. On its 40th anniversary, it's even better.

Here's a fervent, G-rated version of contemporary life in which the divine overcomes the earthly and miracles are commonplace. It's aimed squarely at the emerging Christian market.

It has its moments, but they never add up to a record you'd want to play again and again in its entirety.

Has a lot to offer as grand entertainment, from surprising battle sequences (plenty of terror, virtually no gore, brief and tasteful digital enhancement) to fine performances.

The problem with Secretary isn't that it is offensive or unnerving -- although you get the idea the filmmakers hoped it might be at least one of those. The problem is that the story is slow-moving and dull.

The predominantly amateur cast is painful to watch, so stilted and unconvincing are the performances. Poor Roth has nobody to play against and flounders in trying to keep the ship upright. Herzog aims for a kind of operatic sweep that he fails to achieve.

The plot can be really tough to follow, in part because Banderas' accent, rarely a problem in recent years, is surprisingly hard to understand at crucial moments, and partly because it's tough to keep track of just who's working for whom...and why...and even where.

It's pretty safe to say that claustrophobic, gay-themed murder mysteries haven't been this much fun since "Deathtrap."

Probably like nothing you've ever seen before. In a cool world, it would be guaranteed not only the Best Animated Feature Oscar, but Best Picture as well.

En route, we also get a chance to examine the nature of the self and the responsibilities of science. Das Experiment has all this and more, excitingly packaged as a prison movie featuring superb performances and high emotional tension.

Don't go to this movie looking to be actually scared, but as a gothic romp it's surprisingly effective.

Despite some savvy camera movement, the production values obviously can't match American action films made for a hundred times the budget. Still, Hatamikia has put together a gripping drama that balances visceral suspense and interesting ideas.

As Bundy, Michael Reilly Burke (Octopus 2: River of Fear) has just the right amount of charisma and menace. It's his performance that makes the movie, giving a relatively shallow script more depth and character nuances than likely existed on the page.

Steers' film will likely polarize the audience, which, if nothing else, gives it rare resonance; at least it makes you feel, where many similar indie efforts make you sleepy.

Isn't as funny as it should be. Cedric's speech impediment only goes so far -- he's actually funnier in Serving Sara, without having to rely on a big wig to do his acting for him.

Beautifully made, deeply upsetting drama.

No one in a McCulloch movie is ever normal -- most of the humor comes from characters saying or doing the weirdest thing you could possibly come up with in any given circumstance, and if that kind of humor's your bag, there's frequently a lot to enjoy in the bizarre antics of Green and Jason Lee,

What do you get when you cross a passé "swinger" (Will Stewart), an exhausted "lost in L.A." setting, a sloppy "screenplay" and dull "direction" (by Paul Duran)? This!

While it's crucial to preserve and make available every bit of available footage of such an earth-shattering event, it must be said that Rosenbaum's film manages to become slack and uninvolving after a while.

Nominal comedy has a few bright spots but never seems to find its rhythm.

We so often hear the lament that Hollywood films don't have characters we can care about that it's a real pleasure to note that all the people in this one feel fully developed. It'd be nice if there were more of a plot to go along with them.

Rarely does an established filmmaker so ardently waste viewers' time with a gobbler like this -- it's pretty shocking that this thing isn't even artsy. Barring a few brief moments of instantaneously fizzling inspiration, it's merely fartsy.

Every plot point is obvious a mile away to anyone who's ever seen a film, and made even more obvious by the fact that the camera blatantly points out clues shortly before they're put to use.

The film feels like a violation of the festival's philosophy of "participants only, no spectators": Who, after all, is going to sit in a theater to see this but a spectator? It is fun stuff to look at, though.

If sudden loud noises, relentless strobe lights, digital hallucinations and mutilated corpses make you jump, and you feel that nothing more is required for a good time at the movies, welcome to Feardotcom.

At 75, Aranda can still make his actors sizzle on the screen as well as he did 10 years ago in "Lovers." The explicitly hot bits here may be few and far between, but what there is of them is choice.

If only director Walter Hill and his coscreenwriter David Giler had scribbled a punch line for all these punches, this rage-in-the-cage redux would be more than merely a limp showcase of machismo so passé as to embarrass your average Australopithecus.

The pleasure is in watching veteran star Bouquet and the versatile Berling go at it -- they even seem to look alike.

It's inspiring and consistently exciting to the eye, mind and heart, as the plentiful formations -- global, but most of these English -- stimulate the imagination with their incredible beauty and complexity. Marvelous work all round.

A teen-anxiety movie that leaves no doubt where it stands on "family values" and moral absolutes: It approves. The shock troops of the Cinema Without Limits army are unlikely to buy many tickets, but those who do will probably see the thing as sanctimonious pabulum -- even for its target audience of adolescents.

There is something distinctly self-satisfied about Amy's Orgasm that rubs the viewer the wrong way. The film should come with a warning label: Vanity project ahead!

Numbingly feeble -- The dialogue is witless, the situations are lame, the humor juvenile and the chemistry between the stars nonexistent.

That's not to say Simone doesn't offer a good time. Shove aside its self-righteous agenda and it's a deft kick, a light comedy whenever it's not trying to play heavy. And it's bolstered by Al Pacino in a lively performance.

The nuances of the performances -- in dialogue and dance -- and the rich, organic feel of the locations mark Amari as a director of significant promise.

Robin Williams just may have found the greatest role of his career. Playing beautifully both to fans and haters, Williams' Sy is a character you don't know whether to hug or go vigilante on his ass, a balance Bob Hoskins couldn't quite capture in "Felicia's Journey."

Only Quaid, as a semiretarded horny robot, and Cleese as a fussy chauffeur hologram seem to get it. Even Murphy, as the titular nightclub big shot in outer space, forgets to be actually funny until the climax.

By movie's end what began as an occasionally tragic comedy has slowly and effectively become a grand metaphor for the journey of life.

It's a visually poetic style, and likely to find hardcore devotees, especially among the ranks of Terence Malick and Marc Forster fans. Others will just find it painfully slow.

Unless you count "Lilo & Stitch," this is the first of several surfer-girl movies out of the gate, and it seems clear that in the rush to put it out there, a script was the last thing on Universal's mind.

The cold distance that LaBute brings to the material keeps the viewer at arms' length.

Enormously appealing romantic comedy-drama.

The confusing, demanding role finally brings the actor home, and us with him.

The film is a whirlwind blur, a kinetic thrill ride through the industrial backwater that was one of punk and post-punk's most fertile Promised Lands: Manchester.

There are no stunning revelations herein, but then, that's not why you're going to go see it, is it?

An occasionally funny, but overall limp, fish-out-of-water story.

Argento knows how to work her stuff, and the result is by turns saucy and grody, a fat lasagna of yesterday's "extreme" behavior dripping with Euro cheesiness.

Doesn't hit a home run on every action sequence -- an early bit set in Colombia is too long and too disjointed -- but there are one or two bits in the movie's latter third that are guaranteed to hook action fans.

The film still delivers the goods, in part because of Eastwood's iconic presence and in part because of Daniels' scene-stealing work in what could have been a hokey role.

Offers both a gentle humor and a sly but unmistakable optimism about what life in Iran might one day be.

Arteta targets Middle American ennui with wit, compassion and no shortage of ornery malaise.

It's far more than merely disappointing that Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams lacks the charm and wit -- and humanity --of its predecessor. It's dispiriting.

That's all Full Frontal is: a brilliant gag at the expense of those who paid for it and those who pay to see it.

Not strong enough to stomach this leather-clad jerk-off session, which Miramax dumped onto Paramount in a rare case of common sense.

It's the usual struggle of growing up and growing old, but Muccino's twists are plucky and revealing when he's not suffocating us with heavy-handed mortality and pathos.

Signs blessedly displays a sense of giddy dark humor absent from Shyamalan's previous outings. It appears for much of the film he's merely having fun with the genre, goofing on its paranoid roots.

Mostly this happy train wreck feels like a longer, better movie that was chopped up and reassembled by retarded monkeys; what should have been a rush instead feels rushed.

The film is a masterpiece of nuance and characterization, marred only by an inexplicable, utterly distracting blunder at the very end.

It's either the world's greatest infomercial for fame (and its omnipresent companion, notoriety) or the saddest eulogy of all.

what we've got here is a little propaganda film. A mild one, certainly, but the cliché of DIY hopefuls (band) versus the Big Machine (music industry) foments the same tedious struggle of art versus commerce.

The result is a lovely piece of writing brought to life by a terrific cast, a vivid sense of place and, not incidentally, some perfectly chosen pop tunes by such as Bree Sharp, Leona Naess, Smog and Tin Star. As for Lauren Ambrose, her big-screen debut is a revelation.

What it lacks are solid performances, save Slater's game attempt to take everything seriously.

This film is just too damn weird to pass up, and for the blacklight crowd, way cheaper (and better) than Pink Floyd tickets.

The movie will leave you smiling forgetfully on the way out, and Myers will have done his job.

It manages to be sentimental without seeming trashy.

Filled with sharp observations and interesting, often subtle, bits of visual trickery, much of it evoking the technique of Douglas Sirk's American domestic melodramas. Still, the very simple story seems too simple and the working out of the plot almost arbitrary.

Schnitzler's film has a great hook, some clever bits and well-drawn, if standard issue, characters, but is still only partly satisfying. The problem may very well be one of cultural translation.

Does a masterful job of combining digital imagery and voice performance to create totally believable animal characters.

Lansdown has a pretty good score by Atli Orvarsson... Nope, nothing else nice to say.

Of all the A-list men playing dedicated authority figures, Star Wars alums Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson remain among the most amusing and pleasing, which is why K-19: The Widowmaker glides along engagingly rather than sinking.

Overcomes its visual hideousness with a sharp script and strong performances.

This thing's all in fun. It's just a perfect movie for people who like to shout at the screen, so have at it.

The next time Irwin wants to make a feature, however, he should find a director who knows how.

Fans of convoluted narrative in the manner of Christopher Nolan and David Lynch are likely to be intrigued, although Medem has a far stronger streak of sentiment.

The beasts are employed to splendid metaphorical effect, which may be lost on viewers perceiving nothing but an action romp.

This movie would be worth feting in any season. It's wrenching but never manipulative, stoic but never dull, exhausting but never wearying.

There's an eerie coolness to this film that's quite unsettling and un-Oshima-like. Rather lengthy, it requires patience. But adventurous moviegoers aren't likely to mind.

Audiences are advised to sit near the back and squint to avoid noticing some truly egregious lip-non-synching, but otherwise the production is suitably elegant, a fine retreat from summer cinema overkill.

Thing is, movie's 100 percent mystery-free, but mildly creative, mixing Psych 101 with cynical Hollywood in-jokes with Tylenol-sponsored grainy-cam footage. Best revelation is source of Myers' superhuman strength: eats big rats, apparently.

This is not exactly original, but Schaeffer and his cast manage to make it tolerable.

There is more anxiety than loving humor in the proceedings, and a noticeable lack of charm.

Captures David Bowie's meticulous identity quest with all the frenetic energy (read: slop) of a wildlife documentary on drugs.

The film was shot with six cameras simultaneously and the images are projected on six split screens, à la Mike Figgis' "Time Code." While the subject's appeal is limited and the film's 106-minute running time excessive, viewers who do respond to the pic will find it raw, real and cathartic.

Audiard keeps things shaky, grim, claustrophobic, doomed. His film has the feel of documentary, as he follows Clara through the daily grind that pulverizes her. We're in her head, literally.

Delivers a quick buzz, lots of stuff to look at, and a totally nonnutritious joy that can only be attained with the aid of artificial flavorings and Yellow #5. In a nutshell, it's the perfect summer movie.

I liked when they had the paint fights and the pillow fights.

A piquant entertainment and zeitgeist reflector designed to embolden little thrashettes.

Filmed by director Lorene Machado on direct video, it's a visually primitive affair. But you're not likely to care, given the chance to witness Cho's often incisive, but never hectoring, take on life as she's lived and observed it.