An amusingly preposterous last act keeps you guessing, or maybe keeps you ducking, as it lets rip an avalanche of startling revelations and double-crosses. Nothing is what it seems - unless it seems cheesy.

In his later years, Smith, who was also a gifted photographer, largely abandoned films in favor of performance art - and his art apparently included deliberately contracting the AIDS that ended his life.

There are a few decent jolts in Disturbia, but overall this ultra-predictable thriller doesn't live up to the hype.

To get to the best part first, Tarantino's adrenaline-pumping "Death Proof" is actually a good movie that - unlike Rodriguez's "Planet Terror," - rethinks its genre in ways that say something to contemporary audiences. And it's got some of Tarantino's best dialogue since "Pulp Fiction."

Hugely entertaining because director Lasse Hallstrom and screenwriter William Wheeler have greatly embellished the "truth" in Irving's book about the hoax.

Satire is merciless; it demands that mocker be superior to mockee.

Like a Canadian "Six Feet Under," the indie dramedy Whole New Thing mixes characters (teen and adult, gay and straight, married and single) who seem both completely plausible and capable of anything.

Director Lisandro Alonso is content to leave much to viewers' imagination. That he is able to do so and still hold our attention is a tribute to his talent as a filmmaker and an authentic performance by nonprofessional actor Argentino Vargas as the ex-con.

This stuff is strictly run of DeMille.

While the latest installment avoids the nonstop parade of potty jokes, it never rises much past the level of mediocrity.

There's too little dog and too much fire house in Firehouse Dog, a mild kid comedy that turns into a flaming arson mystery with some scenes that could be too scary for little ones.

On the one hand, Black Book has the artiness of subtitles, the dramatic weight of history, and the desperate heroics of Jews hiding from Nazis. On the other hand, it has Paul Verhoeven.

You know those one-joke "Saturday Night Live" sketches that start to age after six minutes? Blades of Glory is one joke that lasts 93 minutes, costs $11 and could involve sitting next to a guy who retells the movie into his cellphone.

Combines the sweet strangeness of "Fargo" with the existential panic of "Memento" and some Elmore Leonard tough talk. It all creates a cinematic tummy ache.

It's hard not to like a PG-rated 'toon that works in references to "Pulp Fiction" and "Fargo," even if Meet the Robinsons, a delightful, quirk-filled riff on "Back to the Future," proceeds in fits and starts.

After the Wedding is full of enough plot twists to supply a whole season of "Desperate Housewives."

Not an easy movie to watch, and it's far from perfect - but it does have an artsy integrity and a fascinatingly intense performance by Paul Giamatti.

These people are so selfish and self-absorbed you may not want to spent even 72 minutes with them.

The effect is informative and moving, even if the film has an attack of the gooeys at the end.

The result is entertaining but hardly memorable.

A vivacious film that is a treat for eyes and ears.

The paranoia is as thick and luscious as that Reddi-wip, and it's served from both left and right.

The mutants are brain-damaged; the filmmakers don't have that excuse to justify this movie, which is the kind of thing the sergeant would call "a stunning display of individual and group stupidity."

An unexpectedly disarming, extremely well-cast little variation on "E.T."

It follows exactly the same path as both "Glory Road" (except that was basketball) and "Gridiron Gang" (football).

It's not exactly a surprise the makers of Reign Over Me feel compelled to manufacture a happy ending for a story that really has none. Pity.

The movie pretty much exists to sell tie-in products, and it's about as entertaining as watching little kids playing with their toys in the sandbox.

Great fun for the first 20 minutes - which include Kubrickian tracking shots and music from "2001" and "A Clockwork Orange" - but seems long at 86.

It's déjà vu all over again for Aussie actor Guy Pearce, returning to motel rooms in the American Southwest to sort out metaphysical issues in the thriller First Snow, to somewhat less original effect than he did in "Memento."

The story is good-natured, but Panahi's message is serious: That ludicrous rules turn Iranian women into third-class citizens. And what better way is there to get that point across than through sports and laughter?

The battlefield sequences unfold with surreal horror, while the human bonding in the foxholes emerges tenderly. On the downside, Bauer - who makes no pretense about where his heart lies - tacks on a melodramatic coda that lessens the momentum of an otherwise praiseworthy film.

Stieve and Glosserman may yet strike a vein: This thing screams out for a Hollywood remake with, say, writers from "The Simpsons."

While the film has impressive 18th-century trappings and vivid battle scenes, the plotting and acting are rudimentary.

The dialogue isn't ridiculous, and sometimes it's witty: A cynical cop (Donnie Wahlberg) doesn't buy Jamie's theory that the doll had something to do with the murder: "The mystery toy department is down the hall. This is the homicide department."

Rock appears to have edited I Think I Love My Wife with a roulette wheel.

When you awake, it may all seem like a bad dream - but why is your wallet missing $11? Scary.

We may not need another IRA movie, but even so, Ken Loach's Brit-bashing historical drama The Wind That Shakes the Barley, winner of the top prize at Cannes last year, raises hard questions about Ireland's uncanny ability to kneecap itself.

The characters are too cliched to be funny, and Jensen's script can't stay focused long enough to make an impression. Where is Lars von Trier when we need him?

The ineptly made Animal Cannibal isn't remotely convincing as reality, and worse, isn't remotely entertaining as fiction.

The surreal images lack narration and talking heads, which is no problem. In fact, the device makes the shocking footage more compelling.

Unfolds as meditatively as a game of go. Cinematographer Wang Yu shifts easily from tranquility to violence, and he is able to turn something as simple as a man walking outdoors into a visual feast. Chang Chen, a star of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," provides a strong yet understated portrayal of Wu.

Sensory gluttony is reason enough to see a movie, and few epics overstuff the eyes like this one.

The film is occasionally heavy-handed, and the priest character is almost absurdly saintly, but there is an awful power to scenes such as one in which the Europeans are evacuated on trucks.

A fantastical genre-buster.

All the film provides is this bulletin: Lefties are angry about the things Lefties are angry about, chiefly corporate profits.

Overall, this gorgeously designed and photographed movie artfully depicts the immigrant experience in ways that transcend its setting, melding Hollywood and Bollywood storytelling techniques to weave a tale a large audience will relate to.

More watchable for secular audiences than the handful of earlier films released under the Fox Faith label, this one actually has a sense of humor, a politically progressive point of view and a solid cast including the ever-reliable James Garner.

The script is fresh and accessible - even for folks who don't know Croatia from Cambodia - and it is put over by solid acting and direction.

Brisseau obviously aims to shock - and he does. Now shocking is A-OK with me - but only if it's part of a something bigger. Exterminating Angels is beautifully lensed and acted, but it lacks substance.

They go on a biker trip from Cincinnati to the West Coast because they are tired of being bored and would prefer to bore us instead.

This movie sends you into the night thinking, maybe even a little afraid. Bravo, Mr. Fincher.

Mirikitani is a colorful character and talented artist, and his story tugs at the heart. Problem is, Hattendorf insists on inserting herself in what seems like every other scene, a device that dilutes Jimmy's story.

Brewer, who romanticized the world of pimps and ho's in "Hustle & Flow," is obviously out to push some politically incorrect buttons with this ludicrous - yet, in the end, sweetly involving - Southern Gothic pulp yarn.

The overwhelming silence is broken mainly by chanting and the ringing of the monastery bells. Call it life in the slow, slow, slow lane.

The low-low budget ($50,000) coming-of-age drama, shot on high-def video, is nothing if not daring and innovative.

The Astronaut Farmer stalls narratively in the third act, but rest assured it finally achieves liftoff. See it before it disappears into the ether.

The gags vary - a tattooed-breast mystery kinda sags - but there are lots of laughs.

This is the British way to mingle ideas and entertainment.

There isn't a remotely believable moment in the script here, and Kramer's leaden direction only helps strand a capable cast headed by Heather Graham in an hour and a half of virtual laugh-free tedium.

Shifting the self-deprecating japery of "High Fidelity" from a record store to a quiz show makes Starter for 10 a sweetly endearing date movie.

The director is, you won't be surprised to learn, Tsai Ming-laing, whose deadpan humor and minimalist lensing has made him a god among film geeks.

A tad too long, "Tea" is nevertheless touching and funny, with charming performances. You might say it's as calming as a hot cup of green tea.

Movies about addicts are a dime a dozen, but Cocaine Angel does its own thing, mixing humor with bleakness and resisting the too-common urge to romanticize addiction.

Though it's being dumped in the wastelands in February, Breach is better than many of the pack of so-called prestige movies that were released at the end of last year.

Has buckets of gentle sincerity. Since there aren't any dumb jokes or hip visuals, it's easy to get caught up in the simple messages: Be good to your sister, don't be a bully, use your imagination in a pinch.

The movie's last words are "This is how legends are born." Make that stillborn, because when the makers of this one pitch the sequel, the only answer is going to be, "Ah HA HA HA!"

The chatty killer and the nervy atmosphere are both so depraved that the film, though it contains hardly any explicit violence, is like stepping into a blood Jacuzzi, and there is a biblical severity to the ending.

A lightweight French comedy worth watching only for Cecile de France. The gamine actress - decked out in short reddish hair, black tights and a thigh-high mini - is charming as Jessica.

Mirjana Karanovic (Esma) and Luna Mijovic (Sara) give powerful performances as Zbanic imbues a simple story with a powerful commentary on the Bosnian war's devastating impact on the innocent.

Billed as a comedy about a single dad with three girls, the movie is essentially another sudser about the plight of upscale black women in Atlanta.

Grant hasn't had any real chemistry with a female co-star since Julia Roberts in "Notting Hill," but Barrymore works so hard at it and is so charming that you might be fooled.

Credit Sissako for entertainingly blending serious international issues with the daily comings and goings of village life. A bit more Glover wouldn't have hurt - but you can't have everything.

Dull and dreary prequel.

While there are some scattered laughs, the flimsy and nonsensical script - combined with the sledgehammer direction by Brian Robbins, make the similarly themed "Big Momma's House" look like Noel Coward.

The cast includes Oscar winner Louise Fletcher (Nurse Ratched herself) and Henry Thomas of "E.T.," and the special effects look like they were executed on somebody's laptop.

Like warriors themselves, you will be left to sort through a jumble of emotions: pride and sorrow, bitterness and gratitude. [09 Feb 2007, p.43]

Burning Annie has funny moments, but it suffers from an overflow of characters.

There are touching interviews with a couple of former inmates...The most riveting part of The Decomposition of the Soul is their return to the prison, which was closed in 1989 and turned into a memorial to its victims.

Thirty years after "Annie Hall," the beloved actress is scraping below the bottom of the barrel with this desperately unfunny farce, in which she mugs and pratfalls in the worst performance of her entire career.

It's nicely photographed but slow-moving, dull and utterly predictable.

Dividing its loyalties between documentary and fictional narrative, it lacks the advantages of belonging to either side.

The film, made by two Cuban-American exiles (and produced by their friend, Charlize Theron), makes an ironic point about Cuba: This is a land where the grandparents are revolutionaries (or at least say they are) but the kids are yearning for capitalist globalization.

Would that somebody had fired Gurwitch before she could have finished Fired!

Rulfo adds punch to his material with speeded-up visuals and an eye-popping, six-minute helicopter shot of the entire 10-mile project - which alone is worth the price of admission.

Woody Allen certainly hasn't managed anything remotely this funny lately.

Williams appears to be having trouble keeping his eyes open, and the audience will, too.

So why does the Democratic Party hate him so much? The answer, as this valuable (if blatantly pro-Nader) documentary makes clear, is hypocrisy.

As for the script, a wittier director would have spotted the absurd elements and delivered a horror-comedy instead of a straight-faced bore.

The chick comedy-drama Catch and Release may look bland, but it's not. It's worse. To rise to the level of blandness, it would need to have a few gallons of Tabasco dumped into it.

This spoof of "The Da Vinci Code," "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Harry Potter," "The Chronicles of Narnia" and other recent blockbusters piles up sex gags, toilet gags and make-you-gag gags.

In the hands of the formerly promising director Joe Carnahan, this stylish, nihilistic, hugely derivative mash-up of Tarantino and Guy Ritchie (before wife Madonna ruined his career) is fun for roughly half an hour.

The biblically themed Seraphim Falls moseys along very slowly, climaxing with a lengthy series of flashbacks and an appearance by Anjelica Huston as a medicine woman who may or not be the devil.

Colpaert makes nice use of blue and green hues, and he makes some valid points about the Iraqi war. But the script lacks coherence and ends with a 180-degree flip that lessens the impact of what has gone before.

Peled was harassed at every turn by Chinese officials, but he managed to get this shocking film made. That's just one reason China Blue is worthy of praise.

German guilt gets a vigorous workout in the penetrating and symbolically important documentary Two or Three Things I Know About Him.

The Hitcher is the Jessica Simpson of psycho killer flicks - cheerfully in touch with its own brainlessness.

At heart, The Italian is a Dickensian tale that paints a vivid portrait of post-Glasnost Russia en route to a four-handkerchief ending.

Mafioso starts out as a comedy of manners before turning into a mob thriller that brings Nino to Bergen County, N.J. When he gets there, look for a man reading The Post on a street corner.