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

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.

Will probably please hard-core action fans who have become inured to plot idiocies, but it remains a terrible waste of talent.

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.

That Osmosis Jones plays like a sloppy hodgepodge is no surprise: The live-action scenes were done by the Farrellys, the animation by Sito and Kroon (whose names sounds like bodily functions), and the script was penned by another first-timer, Marc Hyman. Nobody seems to be on the same page.

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

It's refreshing and unusual to see clever strategy trumping ritual honor in a film of this genre, even if one of the tricks seems gratuitously brutal.

The film feels like what it is: an improvised comedy bit that two friends came up with.

Except for a few slow patches, the movie is compulsively watchable: You keep waiting to see just how sick things are going to get.

Sharp, smart and robustly engaging film.

What's somewhat ironic about Bread and Roses is that it's bound to be more interesting to people outside of L.A. than in it.

All manner of superstitions, religious conspiracies and insurrections are aired, resulting less in awe than bewilderment. However, taken as an exciting and expansive cultural bridge, the film is a roaring success.

Whatever Dark Blue World lacks in pyrotechnics it makes up for with richly drawn characters, high drama and pointed historical ironies.

Smart, wry and awesome, all at once.

You'll laugh a lot, but not without a sense of animal desperation.

As the story plows toward its finale, the cultural dislocation problems become worse, until by the end they almost defeat the whole film.

Thoughtful and somewhat languid adaptation of Anton Chekhov's 1904 play finds its beauty in the heady performance of Charlotte Rampling.

Startlingly, this is not the trite beer commercial one might expect.

It's a feel-good movie for people tired of paying to feel bad. Bring it on.

When it's all over, one is less compelled to applaud than to give each "character" a sympathetic hug.

For those partial to sublimely happy endings there won't be a peep of complaint. Only us recalcitrant souls will be left wishing Punks had just a tad more spunk.

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.

The big-screen surround-sound effects are nice; too bad they're the only aspect of the film that's ready to rumble. And parents, be warned: There's an astonishing amount of bloodletting for a PG-13 film.

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!

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.

As stirring as it is slight, as effective as it is familiar.

It's a feel-good movie that happens to have a lot of feel-bad in it. The gratuitous violence sucks, and the pat conclusion prompts one to shout don't believe the hope!.

The new documentary Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy shows, all is not quite as it seems.