Ach, Klaus, das ist funny! But Beerfest goes on too long. Take out 20 minutes of nonfunctioning jokes, and it would have given you a comedy buzz like four tankards of Lowenbrau.

It's basically a series of music videos - a few quite good - strung together over two long hours and loosely connected by a weak story line loaded with anachronisms.

The star is Luke Benward, a dead ringer for the young Kurt Russell.

It has grit.

A repugnant little indie black comedy, poorly acted in hideous-looking digital video, guaranteed to send audiences fleeing for the nearest shower.

There's potential here, but the script is entirely too, shall we say, Hollywood. There's even a dog-poop joke.

An impressive supporting cast can't save this painfully unfunny, ham-fisted mockumentary poking fun at reality TV shows.

Nonprofessional actors and convincingly dingy details give Fratricide a harsh documentary quality, and its "Midnight Cowboy"-style ending is bitterly powerful. Devotees of seamy '70s cinema should give this little film a look.

Joe Swanberg - who directed, edited, lensed, co-wrote and played one of the lovelorn characters - has done wonders with a nothing budget and a personable cast of nonprofessional actors. For viewers so disposed, there are several arty shots of nude women.

Starts as a serious examination of the two women's lives, but it descends into a mushy melodrama complete with schmaltzy music and dewy cinematography.

The film failed to be frightening, suspenseful or dramatic but accidentally succeeded in being absolutely hilarious.

A campus comedy that's as dull as bong water, Accepted is like the product of a community college filmmaking class, remedial division.

Deserved an end-of-the-year prestige release, is a true work of art in a marketplace filled with velvet paintings. It's positively magical, the reason we loved movies in the first place.

There is plenty of blame to go around for this laughless mess.

Each scene stumbles onto a detail of inspired absurdity or a crunchy bite of dialogue that encapsulates Chinaski's weird flavor of self-destruction.

A better than adequate date movie.

Solid cast notwithstanding, 10th and Wolf is a generic, direct-to-video-grade gangster movie.

[Refn] mixes jittery hand-held camerawork, improvised dialogue and available light to create a nightmarish world of sex, drugs and horrific brutality that will turn off many viewers while delighting others.

[Refn] mixes jittery hand-held camerawork, improvised dialogue and available light to create a nightmarish world of sex, drugs and horrific brutality that will turn off many viewers while delighting others.

It's brilliant work.

Pulse bears more than a slight resemblance to a 1994 American horror called "Ghost in the Machine." They didn't screen that stinker in advance for critics, either.

The teen dance drama Step Up seems like it was not only inspired by a Janet Jackson video but entirely written during one.

A kid comedy that's been zapped by extraterrestrial suckiness rays.

Too bad there is only about half an hour's worth of story here. Mostly, we just watch the teacher get high, and his classroom talks about civil rights are nothing but filler.

Director-co-writer Fabrice du Welz has taken a clichéd premise and infused it with a stylish perversity that should have horror fans squealing with delight.

Plot? Who needs a plot? Certainly not neophyte director Matt Porterfield, whose Hamilton gets along just fine without one.

Ricardo Della Rosa's sumptuous, wide-screen cinematography takes full advantage of the sandy vista, complementing beautiful acting by Montenegro and Torres.

Tucker's message is sometimes on target, even if his film isn't.

A physically impressive, well-acted, sometimes emotionally powerful - and mostly apolitical - re-creation of that awful day that has some conservative pundits praising Stone as some sort of born-again patriot.

Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis de Sade (interesting combination, no?).

A British indie as tepid as yesterday morning's tea.

Easily the summer's scariest movie.

If you want to punish your kids, send them to bed without dinner. If you want to disturb, frighten and depress them while making sure they fail biology, take them to the animated feature Barnyard.

This Sundance dud is a turgid gay soap opera with a limp twist, showcasing Robin Williams at his maudlin worst.

For the first half-hour or so, this thing works like white lightning.

The film flawlessly glides along as bodies start piling up. The finale brings to mind another Hitchcock film, "Psycho."

Even on that happy 2005 election day, which was so successful that it led to a December round of elections in which the Sunnis did participate, Poitras takes a break to show us a close-up of someone slitting the neck of a rooster.

Quinceañera isn't a work of art, nor does it want to be. But it is a crowd-pleaser.

A lively and poignant comedy with lots of laughs and juicy roles for a roster of seasoned performers who should be seen more often.

I wouldn't have thought it was possible to make a prison picture as utterly boring as Jailbait.

The autobiographical script meanders and the acting never solidifies. Besides, the leads look too old to be in high school - maybe even college.

Miami Vice isn't an action flick but a neo-noir: tough, quiet, moody and hard.

A marginally funny comedy at best, recycles themes, scenes and even lines from Allen's own old movies - like many of Allen's later efforts.

A slumber-party classic that belongs on the same shelf as "Bring It On" and "10 Things I Hate About You." This high-school comedy should do for its 20-year-old star, Brittany Snow, what those movies did for Kirsten Dunst and Julia Stiles.

This generic exercise in computer-generated animation may provide passable entertainment for very young children, but adults will be less than enchanted by its preachiness, talkiness and Communist Party-line political views.

Starts slowly but builds, Hitchcock-style, to a terrifying crescendo. And don't fool yourself into thinking you know what's going to happen.

A fabulous and often hilarious variation on "American Pie" that substitutes quiche, gerbils and various sex toys for apple pie.

"This Is Spinal Tap" took the mockumentary up to 11. Brothers of the Head brings it back down to about four.

Using a hand-held microphone, Mahurin captures the burly, middle-age, salty-tongued cook philosophizing nonstop as he individually prepares mouth-watering high-cholesterol meals from a 900-item menu over a stove he has put together himself.

A smart, dark road comedy.

When it comes to magnetism, the Rolling Stones have nothing on Amma, the Indian mahatma ("spiritual guide") chronicled in Jan Kounen's handsomely photographed but one-sided documentary.

The film is generic and uninspired, better suited to public TV than the big screen.

A couple of years ago, a disaster like Shadow boxer - with the hapless Cuba Gooding Jr. scraping below the bottom of the barrel - would have gone straight to video or been buried on an obscure cable channel at 3 a.m.

Kevin Smith's Clerks II doesn't take much notice of anything that's happened since the 1994 original. It's occasionally clever and gets a few points for originality.

A charmless, unscary, fatuous and largely incoherent fairy tale.

The house itself - which walks down the street in one impressive scene - is memorably voiced by Kathleen Turner.

Uma Thurman plays a flying hero who might as well be called Not Funny Woman.

The story is superficial at best. And the movie is too long.

There's a lot happening here, perhaps too much. At times, the movie threatens to implode under its own weight. At others, it's wickedly funny.

Sexual and toilet humor plumb new depths in Keenen Ivory Wayans' Little Man, which will stink up theaters like several gross of dirty diapers.

Uncompromisingly mediocre comedy.

It's always enjoyable watching Depardieu and Deneuve, but they deserve better material than they've been given by Techine.

Comes about five films after writer-director-star Ed Burns should have found another career.

Aa saucy as a belly piercing, Mini's First Time is a black comedy that puts the soul of "Heathers" in Lolita's bikini.

Despite this seemingly surefire premise and cast of veteran comedians - there's even a cameo by Liza Minnelli as a masturbation coach - The OH in Ohio just lies there, without a single laugh.

Time to Leave just might be Ozon's best work yet. He tackles a sensitive, off-putting subject with a dignity that will put viewers at ease. Poupaud connects as the dying man and Moreau is - Moreau, a French national treasure.

It may be too bleak for most.

A chilly, pretentious and talky drama.

This chest is overfilled with exposition and physical comedy, without a doubloon's worth of the scary suspense that made the laughs in the first one such brilliant comic relief.

Doesn't quite live up to the promise of its opening sequence, but it's still an audacious offering during a season of brain-dead blockbusters.

Beowulf & Grendel has its moments, as well as its debits. Among the later is the grating Canadian accent of Sarah Polley, who plays a witch named Selma.

The movie itself is a powerful cocktail of not just sex and love but race, poverty, colonialism and jealousy.

As Lydia Lunch of Teenage Jesus & the Jerks puts it, "They seem so desperate to be liked, desperate to have their music used in the next car commercial."

Once in a Lifetime, which is being released at the peak of World Cup fever, is the sort of sports documentary that will appeal even to nonfans. It's a quintessential only-in-New York story.

If you can tell the difference between a mule and a pump, attendance at The Devil Wears Prada is mandatory. You might have to reach back to "Funny Face" to find a fashion movie so on-trend.

Despite some remarkable unembedded footage, Andrew Berends' is yet another disappointingly superficial, unfocused and one-sided documentary on the conflict in Iraq.

Bryan Singer's super, soulful and very expensive new resurrection of the venerable big-screen franchise, ups the ante with must-see results.

Michael Kang makes an impressive feature directorial debut with The Motel. But the person to keep an eye on is Jeffrey Chyau, a student at the Bronx High School of Science, who is a delight in the lead role.

The plot of the indie feature Room is, shall we say, sketchy. But that's a minor annoyance thanks to a gutsy performance by Cyndi Williams and vibrating cinematography by P.J. Raval.

The Amy Sedaris comedy based on the failed TV show isn't the least funny film of the year - but for that it should send a thank-you note to "United 93."

Paine doesn't hide his liberal mind-set, but he lets all sides - from GM suits to Ralph Nader - have their say. By the closing credits, there's little doubt who killed the electric car.

At the Professional Bull Riders championships, a rough animal is called "rank." In this skillful documentary, you can almost hear the cracking bones as brave and/or stupid riders attempt to stay on these snorting 2,000-pound monsters for eight seconds.

Could have been a spiky culture clash. When it tries to shock us with its alleged realism, though, it is entirely a bore.

Rarely have I wanted to fast-forward through a movie as much as Click, a treacly and not-funny-enough Adam Sandler comedy.

Slow-witted and occasionally unintentionally hilarious.

Laughless, pointless and downright creepy, Say Uncle is a would-be black comedy.

It's hard to say what's worse in the strange Portuguese drama Two Drifters: the insufferable wordless stretches, or the sudsy dialogue.

Bears more than a passing resemblance in story and form to "The Twilight Samurai," but stands on its own as a pleasant, if unremarkable, romance.

The Road to Guantanamo is a missed opportunity. This is a subject that deserves a more thoughtful documentary or docudrama, not a hastily thrown together amalgam of the two.

In the future, more and more filmmakers will do exactly what The Great New Wonderful has done: conceal their lack of ideas by bringing up 9/11.

You're either going to love this film and run out to see everything Majewski has directed, or you're going to be bored silly. I'm hoping for the former.

Sparse of dialogue and plot (think Andrei Tarkovsky), the import - named best first film at Cannes 2005 - has to do with Sri Lanka's unending civil war and it's devastating effect on residents of a barren no man's land.

If you're going to make a documentary about Leonard Cohen, the singer-songwriter, you should have him perform some of his better-known melodies, like "Suzanne."

The movie teaches us that you can flip your car down a mountain 15 times and walk away from it with two Tylenol.

Kids should see Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties. It'll help prepare them for a lifetime of mediocre entertainment ahead.

A glacially paced, extremely moist, terminally gloomy and cliché-laden romantic drama with a supernatural twist.

Hess' deadpan dorks are strange, really strange. As in the Christopher Guest movies, there is a distinct comedy architecture you recognize from the opening minutes.

Though Fiennes has done (far) better work, the blurry story seems almost profound when seen through his eyes. To the extent the movie works at all, it works best when it's just the camera and Fiennes in a bleak white room.