Fonteyne doesn't have much use for words. He prefers to tell his story via facial expressions and body language, much as filmmakers did in the silent era.

Tackling serious issues with humor and understanding, the film portrays Mona's woes as a microcosm of the entire mess in the Middle East.

Train wreck.

Basically "Jumanji" in outer space -- and even without Robin Williams, this is still a singularly loud, charmless and overbearing family movie that could use a hit or two of Ritalin.

This weekend, forget "Jarhead" - two hours of guys playing grab-ass in the shower and no chicks. If you're lucky, you can con your girlfriend into seeing Pride & Prejudice.

F-A-I-L-U-R-E.

Naomi Watts is the only explanation for the existence of the student-y digital video feature Ellie Parker.

Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic works best when this equal-opportunity offender is on the stage.

A charming if overlong romantic comedy.

Combining a thoughtful script with splendid acting -- especially by Sansa -- Bellocchio has fashioned a tense thriller that is both understated and powerful.

The tragic victims in "City of God" are played by actors while those in La Sierra are flesh-and-blood real.

The erstwhile crack dealer born Curtis Jackson may be a prot‚g‚ of Eminem, but this shapeless and derivative gangsta saga is no "8 Mile."

It's "Saturday Night Fever," Johannesburg-style.

Heavy on celebrity voices, pop culture references and rock tunes and low on memorable characters or imagination, Chicken Little is on a par with such mediocre but popular CGI films as "Madagascar" and "Shark Tale."

Marines did not play football in full anti-chemical suits in 112-degree weather; men would have been collapsing and perhaps dying because it was so hard to breathe in the gas masks. Do I quibble over details? Details are all the movie offers. There isn't a story.

Fails to dig out the dramatic meat, despite a yeoman performance by Danny Aiello.

The heavily symbolic The Dying Gaul doubtless worked better as a play, but the film is worth seeing for its peerless cast.

The conclusion is that in this bare-chested band of brothers, what really matters is camaraderie. "Having friends," remembers one guy, "that was the best part." As he says this, the décor behind him features a pair of handcuffs.

Cinema vanité.

Wal-Mart's home office in Bentonville, Ark., can rest easy: Greenwald, as usual, is hysterically preaching to the choir.

You don't have to be crazy to sing like Larry "Wild Man" Fischer -- subject of Josh Rubin's reverential documentary Derailroaded -- but it helps.

There'll likely be more Z's in the audience than on the screen.

The sort of movie where all of the best jokes are in the trailer, but these days a romantic comedy with anything worth quoting at all is something of an accomplishment.

Jigsaw is a wickedly fun villain, if you can put aside the implausibility of a guy who likes to saunter away from his deathbed to kidnap younger, stronger people and devise medieval torture chambers.

Meet American Beastly, perhaps the most bitter studio film of the year.

Your baby is near death. Instead of dropping everything to save his life, you make sure the video camera keeps rolling.

Kane was nicknamed "Killer" because of his playing style -- and New York Doll has a killer surprise ending that may leave even hard-core punkers reaching for the Kleenex.

Propaganda is terror's best friend, but Paradise Now is clever enough to make that buddy work for our side for a change.

The three-part anthology opens with its best shot, Hong Kong fruitcake Fruit Chan's "Dumplings," photographed by the great Christopher Doyle.

The documentary traces the fiery history of Ballets Russes -- which for a time consisted of two warring companies.

Basically a deadly dull rehash of "Resident Evil," which in turn was a third-generation clone of "Aliens."

Thebest sports movies aren't really about sports. Dreamer has a few thundering horse races, but its finest moments are beautifully still ones, like the one in which a little girl peeks through a fence to give a lame filly a Popsicle.

Like Truffaut's heaviest work, it's less interested in what brings people together than in what keeps them apart, and it achieves a painful truth you won't find in dating comedies.

A trite, incoherent and pretentious bomb.

One of the season's most delightful surprises.

Exploring the lives of several wrongly convicted men exonerated by DNA evidence, the documentary After Innocence makes a reasonable case that compensation is due them.

Bate is to be congratulated for reminding the world of Leopold's wickedness, even if he does OD on re-enactments.

Ten percent of Ghana's 20 million people are disabled, yet the film makes little attempt to explain why.

One of the oddest, most perplexing -- and delightful -- films to come along this year. And last year, too.

The director, American-born Paula Fouce, has a passion for the holy ways of the East, and it shines through in Naked in Ashes.

Would have benefited from a tighter focus. There are too many interviews with crazies - and Levin's failed attempt to get Jewish entertainers to discuss "The Passion of the Christ" should have ended up on the cutting room floor.

Filmmaker Josh Stolberg claims to have been inspired by real-life events, but mostly he ineptly rips off other movies and wastes a cast that includes Rosanna Arquette, Adam Arkin and Elizabeth Perkins.

Proceeds along familiar genre lines. But the denouement comes as a surprise, the five women are great screamers, and the cinematography and music add to the general feeling of menace.

On paper, Ushpizin (Aramaic for "holy guests") looks like a hard sell. It works, however, thanks to a witty script and believable performances from real-life husband and wife.

That rare documentary whose first half could have been written by Rosie O'Donnell, the second half by Pat Robertson.

Among the year's ultraviolent pulp movies, "Sin City" was prettier and "The Devil's Rejects" more focused.

Rambling, schmaltzy romantic comedy.

I was held in suspense throughout The Fog, aching to learn the answer to its central riddle: Why would any one remake such a crummy movie?

Terrific performances by Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth as a comic duo clearly modeled on Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin get swallowed up in Atom Egoyan's muddled murder mystery.

A classic social drama in the proud tradition of "Norma Rae," "Silkwood" and "Erin Brockovich."

Mandoki never passes up a chance to increase the schmaltz level, but that doesn't lessen the impact of this harrowing account of a hellish childhood.

This movie takes its sweet time wrapping together three related tales set in various regions of North Carolina -- to ultimately devastating effect.

Nine Lives hands the viewer a lot of work -- learning a whole new set of characters every few minutes -- for a disappointing wage. The bad stories waste your time, and the good ones leave you unsatisfied.

An uninspired gay coming-of-age import from Germany.

Take the real-life 1979 assassination of Park Chung-hee, the despotic, hedonistic, seal-testicle-loving president of South Korea, and stage it as if the Marx Brothers were running the country, and you might get The President's Last Bang.

Excruciatingly bad.

Includes insightful and often hilarious archival interviews with Langlois and dozens of associates, as well as wonderful footage of Langlois.

Has a few too many coincidences and tends to be sugary, but it has an important precautionary message in this age of terror.

Vividly re- creates TV news icon Edward R. Murrow's historic face-off with Sen. Joseph McCarthy in devastatingly low-key detail -- is the right movie at the right time.

The gospel according to The Gospel is this: There's a party at God's house, and you're invited.

Cameron Diaz redeems her reputation somewhat in In Her Shoes, Curtis Hanson's schmaltzy, but reasonably entertaining dramedy about mismatched sisters.

A sloppy and ridiculous movie that Pacino makes oddly entertaining.

Those endless end credits reveal that McKittrick previously worked at Steak & Ale, Roadhouse Grill and Friday's. He may well need to return to his line of work after a debut as dismal as this one.

The Aggressives has plenty of character but no story; it would have done better to structure itself around a competition it briefly visits in which lesbians, in costume, compete to win prizes for looking masculine. That way the film would have had a direction.

Gansel based the film on the memories of one of his grandfathers. The acting is believable; the photography, atmospheric; and the moral, unmistakable.

It's easy to spot a failed tearjerker, though: All the characters are sobbing all over each other while the people in the audience check their watches.

This painfully unfunny mockumentary about obsessive collectors of frozen-food entrees takes potshots at anti-abortionists, Christian rockers, aversion therapy for gays and the disabled -- and misses almost every time.

Any way you slice it, A Tale of Two Pizzas is so ineptly written and directed that it's pretty soggy entertainment.

A sweet comedy with a bright cast and few surprises, the film did well in China, where it was aimed at teenagers. Since Hilary Duff isn't in the cast, its success probably won't cross over to America.

With its dry wit and all-star household, Baumbach's movie resembles Wes Anderson's "The Royal Tenenbaums" without the heavy whimsy.

If animated dogs were eligible for acting awards, the Oscar would go to Gromit.

Whether you're looking for a love story with a little gore or a horror movie with a little romance, Zombie Honeymoon will suit your taste.

And how good should we feel about this match anyway? Absolutely anyone, we learn, can win the 1913 U.S. Open. Except blacks, Jews or women.

There are far, far worse ways to spend two hours than watching Jessica Alba in a skimpy bikini - as well as other natural wonders photographed in the Bahamas - in the airheaded underwater adventure Into the Blue.

If you can't be original, why not borrow from something no one has seen, like Ben Affleck's last five movies?

A cheesily amusing prequel to the 1993 film which starred Al Pacino as a Puerto Rican drug kingpin in Spanish Harlem, in one of his most entertaining performances. This time around, Jay Hernandez delivers a serviceable impression of a much younger version of Pacino.

A remarkably assured feature debut by Bennett Miller, a longtime director of commercials (and the documentary "The Cruise") whose no-frills style trusts that the powerful material and the uniformly excellent performances need little embellishment.

Comes as close as any film to explaining what the deal is with women and shopping.

As in Allen's films, the extensive shooting -- mostly at locations in and around Central Park -- takes place in a whitebread world where the only person of color is Rosemary's nanny.

Too strange and disjointed to attract much of an audience, but its astonishing visuals showcase a major new talent: first-time feature director and book illustrator Dave McKean.

This maudlin, fact-inspired and anti-feminist dramedy is no "Far From Heaven" or "The Hours."

Chillingly realistic but deeply repellent, The War Within is a film that should not have been made.

Okuda's debut behind the camera, Shoujyo, is a dirty old man's delight: schoolgirls galore in short skirts or, in Yoko's case, nothing at all. That may be enough for some viewers, but not for those who insist on a story that gives substance to its characters.

A well-written and -acted drama that's also unrelentingly grim.

Painfully unfunny spoof.

Rip Torn gives his best performance in years.

Absurdity has a new name: Flightplan.

For most adults, and kids raised on "South Park," the painfully earnest story won't hold much interest. And the comedy is tame.

Seriously flawed - and choppily edited in the worst Harvey Scissorhands style - but there are enough good moments to anticipate a second film from writer-director Katrina Holden Bronson, whose parents were Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland.

A satirical blast at America's gun culture. But it's so entertaining that even a die-hard NRA member might be impressed.

The rest of the cast is uniformly awful, including Carmen Electra and Kathy Griffin as a wacky medium who asks, "What do I look like? A comedian?" Not from where I'm sitting.

Eschews the heavy sexual content (and most of the clichés) of so many gay films -- it also has a lot of heart.

Solid entertainment value for the money, but those who think it's saying anything new or profound are kidding themselves.

A painfully sincere indie drama that isn't content to evoke only the misery of 9/11 -- it has to reference TWA Flight 800 for extra grief.

Adults will be more than passably entertained by this short, patriotic feature, and kids will be entranced.

Misleadingly billed as a Fallujah documentary, Occupation: Dreamland covers a six-week period when not much was happening there.

Dickens was a sentimentalist, but even his happy endings are more nuanced than Polanski's brutal anti-sentimentalism.

The director, Queens-born Adam Watstein, who also edited and co-produced, deserves credit for making a film with modest resources.