A schmaltzy, smutty and mean-spirited quasi-satire.

Despite the lingering aroma of Victorian rot shrouding 1961, An Education is excitingly young.

Barely watchable, despite the presence of such pros as Michael McKean and Jane Lynch.

Tom Hardy gives an amazing performance as Peterson, who took on the nickname Charlie Bronson, after the "Death Wish" actor.

As the two coaches head for a faceoff in a climactic live TV interview, writer Morgan starts to seem like a rip-off -- of himself.

About the only question not answered by Good Hair is whether Michelle Obama wears a hair extension (most come from religious ceremonies in India) or straightens her hair.

You know a low-budget indie has problems when it's less emotionally honest than a studio-backed project like "(500) Days."

Strip away the alt-country soundtrack, though, and you've got a Bette Davis fallen-woman-redeemed picture from 1937.

I'm not sure why it took 50 years for Araya to reach New York, but let us be thankful to Milestone Films for giving life to this forgotten film.

Hilarious.

Zombieland is still the funniest broad comedy since "The Hangover." Its yowling, marching, munching corpses are as scary as grad students and as hilarious as the plot of "G.I. Joe."

Turns out to be a dour, shouty atheist manifesto. With a change of scenery it could have been called "Godless in Seattle."

Sweet without being sticky and funny without getting silly, Whip It introduces Barrymore as a director with a keen eye, a good ear for tone and an inspired touch with actors.

May not have the starry casts of the Coens' more recent films, but it has plenty of heart and soul.

Like one of those five-minute featurettes on star athletes deployed to soak up time on the pregame show -- expanded to a paralytic length.

Makes little attempt to be credible or original. And the acting is poor.

Though thin on story, the film shows poise and vision, using bleak cinema-realité techniques with chilling effect. Campos promises to be heard from again.

Rambles a bit, but it's a real slice of New York history.

It could be set during the war in Iraq, but the brutal French film Intimate Enemies takes place in 1959, at the height of the Algerian struggle against French rule.

Unfortunately, Angelou's detached and often superfluous narration lessens the film's impact.

The story is nothing if not uplifting, but it unfolds in a conventional, uninspired documentary style better suited to the small screen, where it soon will reside. Wait.

The cowardly producers have banished the grit and darkness of Parker’s original.

The movie is neither an affecting romance (Coco even considers marrying Balsan because "I'd achieve social status") nor an inspiring success story. Chanel sold herself to one guy, happened to get customers through him, and took a start-up loan from another lover.

Among cheesy sci-fi movies meant to make you think, I'll take Surrogates over "District 9." Both are highly derivative, but in the course of recombining the basic chromosomes of "Blade Runner," "The Matrix" and especially "I, Robot," Surrogates nudges the robo-thriller in an interesting direction.

Set in a bar that echoes the far superior "Big Night," this labored two-hander plays more like an acting exercise than an actual movie.

An uneven quasi-weepie.

A blast from the 1980s, when the idea that men were essentially rapists and women rapees was a popular way to score chicks on campus.

Like legendary producer Val Lewton in the '40s, director Oren Peli, who shot "Paranormal" in seven days in his own home, understands that what's most frightening is what you don't see but merely suggested.

Adams and the school's students and teachers deserve an A-plus, although the film rates a much lower grade. It unfolds lifelessly, as Binzer parades a contingent of talking heads before the camera in what could pass for an infomercial.

Shouldn’t Moore run his yellow crime-scene tape around the White House instead of Wall Street? Anyway, President Obama said this month that in cases where the government has fully sold its TARP bank holdings, it has gotten back its money plus 17 percent. Damn those capitalist barons, breaking into our treasury and filling it with their filthy money.

Has some witty dialogue and sprightly performances by Karen Black, Andrea Marcovicci, Victoria Tennant and others.

What made Ludwig such a great musician? The documentary In Search of Beethoven, directed by Phil Grabsky, answers that question reasonably well.

It's the Food Network meets The Weather Channel meets . . . the Scary Doomsday Preachers Channel.

More amusing than laugh-out-loud hilarious, but is never boring.

Love Happens is a weepie about the grieving process, mainly my own.

The “Transformers” hottie undergoes her very own transformation here, thanks to satanic possession.

The tales mostly drift along and wrap up unresolved. If this is an accurate slice of Paris life, I'll take the relative excitement of Topeka.

Here the characters aren't compelling enough to ask viewers to give their brains a workout to determine exactly what's going on.

I cannot tell a lie. I derive great satisfaction watching John Malkovich act.

Denis -- who has called the film a tribute to the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu -- keeps dialogue to a minimum as she delicately examines how immigration is changing the face of France.

Catnip for the art-house crowd.

The would-be noir Beyond a Rea sonable Doubt has an absurd story, but on the plus side you can hardly see what's going on because the photography is so murky.

The film makes little sense (the couple refuses to ride subways, but Metro-North is OK), but it's a diverting conversation piece/freak show.

Gogol Bordello plays a mix of punk rock and Gypsy music that recalls the work of the Serbian No Smoking Band. Onstage, Gogol Bordello puts on a visually outrageous show that one member describes as "kick-ass."

IF you ask me, Shane Acker's post-apocalyp tic animated film 9 is better than the live-ac tion flick "District 9." Beyond their similar titles, these sci-fi social commentaries are both expanded from shorts under the sponsorship of a world-class director.

Like its subject, a lawsuit that is expected to go on for another 10 years, Crude has no ending. This is the perfect ending for this Goliath versus Goliath documentary about powerful personal-injury lawyers taking on a powerful corporation.

A disappointingly superficial treatment of a fascinating historical incident.

White trash meets white collar in Extract, Mike Judge's workplace comedy -- which contains more reality than the last five documentaries I've seen.

Grotesquely unfunny comedy.

This small gem takes a basically optimistic view about the struggles that generations of immigrants have endured.

The Japanese whalers are clearly in violation of international law, but no government is willing to take action. That leaves it up to ragtag groups such as the Sea Shepherds to do their best to shut down the whalers. The planet owes them a big "thank you."

Superb Noo Yawk attitude, dialogue and performances (including one from the essential Kevin Corrigan, now well into his second decade of being indie movies' dirtbag on demand) keep the movie lively and tart.

There is only one joke here, milked endlessly.

Beaded with amusing moments.

Bad in ways that are almost endearing, St. Trinian's does offer the spectacle of Rupert Everett mincing around in drag as a headmistress bedeviled by Colin Firth, as an education minister and former lover who wants to shut down her out-of-control school.

Seldom has any movie shown so much geriatric sex and full-frontal nudity (male and female). But, thanks to Dresen, it is all done with taste and sensitivity.

While Fienberg's direction is no great shakes, the film showcases its veteran cast.

At times Halloween II dances on the line between alarming and disgusting, and it doesn’t all hold together — I couldn’t figure out what the goblin banquet was doing in this movie. But if it was meant to freak me out, it worked.

Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock achieves an amazing feat: It turns the fabled music festival, a key cultural moment of the late 20th century, into an exceedingly lame, heavily clichéd, thumb-sucking bore.

The movie is as lumpy and misshapen as a giant booger.

So swaddled in good intentions that it's like taking a very short journey cushioned on all sides by air bags. That are stuffed with cotton candy.

May be the most fun you'll have at the movies this summer.

The title of the overlong Fifty Dead Men Walking refers to lives saved by Sturgess' character, who is still in hiding years later.

Basically canned musical theater, but this is one Tony-winning Broadway show that's well worth preserving and seeing.

A tad too long, and takes its sweet time to get to the point. But its twisted heart is in the right place.

Demonstrating that an hour and a half of stunts doesn't make a movie, this feature is X-treme only in its multidimensional dullness.

Koreeda, talented director that he is, never allows the story to sink into soap-opera melodrama, and he refrains from pointing fingers.

The movie falls into the same uneasy category as "Eight Legged Freaks": too tongue-in-cheek to be thrilling, not funny enough to be a comedy.

This environmentally themed, very loose version of Hans Christian Andersen's "Little Mermaid" is never going to be mistaken for Disney's musical of the same name.

The movie doesn't really begin or end. Whether the lights have just gone down or the credits have begun to roll, things are pretty much the same for Henry.

Jeremy Piven's infamous "sushi defense" for skipping out on a Broadway role is easier to swallow than his performance as a scuzzy auto liquidator who sees the light in The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard.

For rock fans, hearing many Led Zeppelin and U2 classics on a theater sound system is worth the price of a ticket.

Fairly entertaining, if hardly surprising, results.

A witless homage to "Shampoo" and "American Gigolo" that's brain-dead on arrival.

Despite its stomach-turning images (and maybe because of), it is a daring, provocative work by a talented helmer who gets off pushing the envelope. He should be supported, no matter how outlandish he gets.

Although it has affecting moments, the film can't quite decide whether it's about aging or about the effects of war on the home front.

Formerly a real American hero, G.I. Joe is no longer a hero (it's a group) or American. (It's a multinational team of military superstars, though the way it does business, you'd feel safer with the Croatian navy on your side.)

There's very little doubt in my mind that somewhere, culinary legend Julia Child is fuming about being consigned to a double bio-pic with a whiny, self-centered cooking blogger.

Paper Heart is like a really special five-minute YouTube clip that goes on for an hour and a half.

Twohy serves up a hard-to-swallow second-act twist and an unconvincing back story, but the slightly overlong A Perfect Getaway recovers with a pulse-pounding climax.

As Mark Twain didn't say, reports of the death of mumblecore are greatly exaggerated. As proof, I offer Andrew Bujalski's wise and wondrous Beeswax.

Giamatti tries very hard to put over Cold Souls -- some of his reaction shots are priceless -- but it's going to leave some people, well, cold.

Genre fans will definitely get off on I Sell the Dead, but outsiders might be less enthusiastic.

Turns out to be one of the most absorbing films of the year. Plus it has lots of wiener jokes.

Two fins up for The Cove, a documentary that whales on evil Japanese fishermen who kill dolphins for lunch meat.

As directed by Ole Christian Madsen, the thriller features well-choreographed shootouts and assassinations. But the script is too melodramatic and complicated for its own good.

A chipper documentary sure to please seniors.

The androgynous Dobroshi is in nearly every scene. She has an exceptional screen presence that brings authority to her portrayal of a woman seeking redemption. As for the Dardennes, they prove yet again that nobody does human frailty the way they do.

You might not want to watch all of "The ABC of Love and Sex Australian Style," "Turkey Shoot" or "The True Story of Eskimo Nell," but the clips on view in "Not Quite Hollywood" are a hoot.

The beautifully crafted Adam offers no pat or easy answers.

Andersson has a one-of-a-kind style that not all viewers will appreciate. His humor is not at all like Hollywood’s. His is leisurely and cerebral — two words never heard in La La Land.

This is the sort of comedy that requires you not only to suspend disbelief, but your sanity as well.

Thanks to an unexpected twist and a clever motivation lurking in the back story of the super-villain, G-Force has enough going on to more or less maintain grown-up interest, and there's plenty to please the kiddies.

The film mangles its twist and fails to deliver an interesting coup de grace or a sharp line of dialogue.

Brutally banal chitchat about life and love ensues.

In the Loop is certainly the smartest and funniest movie inspired by the Iraq war.

Starts promisingly, but Jonas Pate directs his fine cast straight into a swamp of schmaltz as every loose thread of plot gets patly resolved.

It's the oldest bittersweet story in the book, of course, but music-video director Marc Webb approaches his feature debut with great confidence, flair and a minimum of schmaltz.