If you were among the many who thought highly of "A Prophet," the French prison drama that played here last year, you'll want to see the brutally realistic Danish thriller R.

Buck is best left to TV, where it will land soon. It's "The Horse Whisperer" that should be seen on the big screen.

There's no way to put this gently: Watching people slam their heels and toes on the boards while drifting around the floor is about as fascinating as watching the carousel rotation in your favorite microwave oven.

Basically a carefully airbrushed and authorized portrait of the Gray Lady during 14 months when there was serious speculation about the paper's impending demise.

Unfortunately for the film, it's clear from the outset this is a totally one-sided battle that well-connected developer Bruce Ratner is fated to win.

There's still no good reason to suffer through a half-baked little movie that proves indies can be every bit as boringly formulaic and artistically bankrupt as their big-budget brethren.

As Popper himself notices, his and the penguins' saga gets so endearing that it could have been narrated by Morgan Freeman.

Blake Lively doesn't have a whole lot to do as Hal's employer and occasional lover, who sometimes requires rescuing. No great loss; she and Reynolds have minus-zero chemistry.

The American Muslim comedian Ahmed Ahmed does lots of jokes about how he isn't a terrorist. How odd: As I sat through his tepid act, I could have sworn he was bombing.

A beautiful nature film, with gorgeous, multicolored shots of bees and flowers. It also is a well-made documentary about the troubles of the honeybee.

You'll want to catch this clever movie before Hollywood ruins everything with a dumb remake.

While there are some giggles in the film-within-the-film (also called "Road to Nowhere"), the artsy-fartsy direction and flat-as-a-pancake acting (including a cameo by Variety columnist Peter Bart as himself) invites invidious comparisons to "Mulholland Drive."

The kind of lush, epic romantic weepie that Hollywood used to deliver on a regular basis for packed matinees at Radio City Music Hall.

The loose feel and sense for random comedy (as when a bore suddenly starts lecturing Coogan about the geological details of the cliff he is standing on) are spiffy.

The mystery is why the filmmakers thought third-graders or anyone else would be willing to pay for this master class in tedium.

It's an enjoyable, well-acted, old-school geekfest pitting a group of middle-school students against an escaped monster from outer space.

While I have no argument with Leeson's political views, her presentation -- mostly a succession of talking heads -- is dry and uninspired. These women deserve better.

Appalachian mountains get blown up to extract coal in the documentary The Last Mountain, a film in which activists are at least as hot as the TNT.

Only rarely does the film present a genuine insight, such as the observation that many black people loved to dress up in their finest for church because, during the week, they were so often dressed as servants and manual laborers.

You would be hard-pressed to use the word "accessible" to describe Film Socialisme, and that's exactly the way the master wants it.

Except for Brolin as an unlikely born-again Jew, nobody fares well under Mulroney's ham-fisted direction.

You don't have to be stoned to watch Mr. Nice, but it might help to be in the same state of mind as its real-life anti-hero, drug kingpin Howard Marks.

The excruciating and the hilarious mingle nearly to perfection in this marvelously visualized and deeply felt British film.

Beautiful Boy ends up being an endurance test.

This superbly acted and ultimately disarming dual coming-out comedy-drama -- which turns out to be semi-autobiographical -- certainly grows on you, despite all of the twee touches.

Director Matthew Vaughn, who did last year's delightful "Kick-Ass," doesn't do witty this time around, but he does keep up a spiffing pace while making the action blaze.

If Ed Wood had directed "The Silence of the Lambs," it might have been as unintentionally hilarious as the goofball would-be thriller The Abduction of Zack Butterfield.

A chaotic mess.

If the plot of the Argentine soaper Puzzle seems familiar, that's because it's nearly identical to the story in the French movie "Queen To Play."

Camp often means a lack of feeling and generalized disdain; not so in Spork, which has as much heart as "Sixteen Candles."

A raw mix of documentary and fiction, directed by Koji Wakamatsu, a veteran of soft-core porn ("Go, Go Second Time Virgin") whose anti-war stunner "Caterpillar" just played here.

It wouldn't be right to say that, half an hour after Kung Fu Panda 2 ended, I was starving for laughs again. In truth, I was starving pretty much all the way through.

First-time writer-director Adam Reid has a lightly endearing touch as he allows the actors plenty of space to be warm without being cute.

For all its flaws, The Tree of Life is a stunning exception to the rule that you can safely check your brain at the popcorn counter until after Labor Day. That's enough to place it among the year's best movies, or at least most-talked-about ones.

They breathe originality into an oft-told story.

I found this more elaborate, play-it-safe sequel far less fresh or funny.

When disaster struck, the documentary says, the powerful corps went to extraordinary lengths to silence, discredit and punish whistleblowers, many of whose allegations were supported by congressional investigators.

Call it the rape of Carnegie Hall.

Rookie director Sean Kirkpatrick keeps stomping on the drama pedal while blowing the cliché horn, yielding scene after tired scene of predictable developments as the principals keep shoving guns into mouths and screaming obscenities.

Owen Wilson turns out to be the best Woody Allen surrogate by far.

I suppose you have to give credit to the movie for coming up with some badass killer mermaids.

The poetry has more in common with rap lyrics than Baudelaire, but that just increases the fun.

Their '50s-style comedy mugging not only don't come across to Americans, it's hard to believe even New Zealanders would care.

Not a definitive portrait of the designer, nor does it pretend to be. But it should be of interest to viewers even if there's not a single YSL label in their wardrobes.

Less than compelling as drama -- but boy is this an impressive collection of wildly ugly hairstyles, moustaches, clothing and "earth tone" furniture from 1983.

For a noir, the film is way too talky and convoluted, yet for a physics lesson, it's trash.

Legendary is an overworked adjective, but surely it applies to Jack Cardiff, the British cinematographer whose awe-inspiring resume includes some of the most beautiful Technicolor films ever shot, among them "The Red Shoes," "Black Narcissus" and "Stairway to Heaven."

If action's your thing, then the Chinese-Hong Kong martial-arts epic True Legend is your movie.

Everything Must Go is cinematic pointilism. The big picture is familiar -- busted middle-age man, suburban alcoholic despair -- yet the details are so finely rendered that the overall impression is potently strange.

Lee hasn't given an interview in 45 years, and even her 99-year-old sister (still practicing as a lawyer) only hazards a guess in Mary Murphy's old-school documentary: Her younger sister had nothing to prove, and nowhere to go but down after her astonishing debut novel.

Too bad the script is predictable at every turn.

Unlike many films that hope to be called black comedy, it does not skimp on either the black or the comedy.

By the time two hours had dragged by, I felt a lot like I had sat through a five-hour wedding.

Octubre has the feel of something Jim Jarmusch might have made in his early years -- lots of dark humor that you'll think of in the middle of the night, and laugh about.

The preachy movie is hardly worth the hassle and money required to see it in a theater. Better to download it or wait for it to pop up on TV.

The Japanese anti-war drama Caterpillar is difficult to watch. But it's directed, acted and photographed well, and it's worth seeing even if it makes you uncomfortable.

Even when scary, Murray is somehow funny, too, and he steals the show as always.

A good cast equipped with cute names is forced to muddle through terminal whimsy in this less-than-magical adaptation of Aimee Bender's adult fairy tale, sluggishly directed by Marilyn Agrelo, who more successfully helmed the delightful documentary "Mad Hot Ballroom."

An open- and-shut case, but that doesn't mean it can't also be an entertaining one.

This may be the most politically confusing movie about that conflict since "For Whom the Bell Tolls" -- I couldn't for the life of me figure out where Escriva stood.

Toggling between the tonalities of "Donnie Darko," "Ghost World" and the collected works of David Lynch, the blackly witty Daydream Nation takes its title from a Sonic Youth album.

Suspenseful though it is, the movie is quiet to the point of being sleepy, and Worthington is simply not working out as a screen star.

It's the snobs against the slobs at a Martha's Vine yard wedding in Jumping the Broom. Mostly, it's a tie: Both sides are equally irritating.

Japan's Takashi Miike has the formula down pat, but Eisener has no idea how to give violence a touch of class.

This bizarre little movie is all over the place as drama - but genuinely compelling as a one-of-a-kind piece of public self-flagellation.

It's a testament to Goodwin's skill as an actress that we almost buy this.

There's plenty of smash, thunder and brawl for the kids. But in taking a bit of Hulk and a bit of Superman while re-imagining Excalibur as a hammer, Thor amounts to putting new horns on old ideas. And the screenplay sounds like the lyrics of Spinal Tap.

Interesting but never compelling.

This mild drama plays out like one of those dull message movies that TV networks used to crank out almost weekly, but the earnestness is at times almost appealingly old-fashioned.

The movie has the feel of a weary business trip.

An entertaining, well-made plea for tolerance told from the point of view of a 12-year-old.

Earthwork is best left to TV.

Heisenberg's thriller ends with a chase across highways and through woods that will give viewers adrenaline highs of their own.

A must-see for Miike's passionate legion of fans. But even action buffs who've never seen any of his films before will be drawn in by this masterful exercise in cinematic butchery.

Parents should take their children to Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil, if only because kids are never too young to learn the important and liberating skill of walking out of a movie and demanding a refund.

As much a study of prehistoric art as archaeology, this documentary brings in experts to speculate about the mysterious artists who made these paintings, some quite elaborate and others intriguingly abstract.

So strenuously inoffensive it makes Disney's "High School Musical" look almost racy by comparison.

If you're wondering why this movie must stretch past two hours, it's because it takes that long to read every item in the cliché dictionary.

James Rasin's documentary is surprisingly the first to focus on one of Warhol's biggest attractions, the attractive male-to-female transsexual Candy Darling, best known for inspiring Lou Reed's song "A Walk on the Wild Side."

Too bad it lacks a substantial story to go along with the kick-ass combat scenes.

With Japan facing a new nuclear crisis, this beautifully composed and acted heart-wrencher -- couldn't be more timely.

This genre flat-lined a long time ago. Why won't it stay dead?

Seldom does The Bang Bang Club show much interest in the big picture of South Africa. When moral issues do come to the forefront, the big worry seems to be not questionable behavior but bad publicity.

If there's a fresh idea in When Harry Tries To Marry, I couldn't find it.

If I weren't already being paid to watch this movie, I'd feel entitled to compensation for having to sit through this many product plugs.

A kind name for this attitude is false moral equivalence, or perhaps post-imperial cringe. A less kind one is Western self-hatred, or an urgent plea to tolerate the intolerant.

Unpretentious, TV-style documentary.

Kids will love African Cats, which is full of "aw" moments. Their parents will appreciate that narrator Samuel L. Jackson keeps things from getting too schmaltzy in this true-life depiction of the circle of life.

Less fun than any circus movie I've ever seen - and I've seen lots. Maybe they should send in the clowns.

Fly Away is more situation than story, though, and the Germann character's welcoming, almost saintly vibe doesn't fit.

Relying heavily on old network newscasts, Corben introduces a collection of colorful characters who just want to get stoned.

There's little new in Armadillo.

Godardian title not withstanding, Zeina Durra's not-uninteresting slice of the downtown Manhattan demimonde is too concerned with being cool to work up much in the way of political outrage, much less narrative drive.

Though a bit stiff in the joints and acted by an undistinguished cast amid TV-movie trappings, this low-budget adaptation of Ayn Rand's novel nevertheless contains a fire and a fury that makes it more compelling than the average mass-produced studio item.

Peros probably intends Footprints to be an homage to Hollywood's Golden Age. But the script's so incoherent and the acting so amateurish that it makes the worst old-time Hollywood B-flick seem like "Citizen Kane."

Overall, however, it's sappy and predictable -- fun to watch, perhaps, but instantly forgettable.

Doesn't always deliver on its twists. But it works well enough that an American remake is in the works.

Viewers unfamiliar with the politics of the era might feel lost as the plot unfolds, and the 139-minute running time might be a bit much. But why quibble?