A thoroughly amateurish effort at capturing clued-in and smartass teens.

Love in Space is just what movie fans have been waiting for: a romantic comedy from Communist China.

All of the actors are enjoying themselves, and the movie is stuffed with history, atmosphere and vivid characters. What's in short supply, though, is laughter.

The latter is played by Parker Posey, who looks baffled throughout. As well she should.

This new movie features stylishly filmed and choreographed battles. But in between the set pieces is a lot of sentimental blather that slows down the film. More action, less talk should be the order of the day, but it isn't.

A great-looking but wearyingly cliched and confusing vanity production.

Arriving two days before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Steven Soderbergh's Contagion is a serious all-star thriller about the rapid worldwide spread of a killer virus that's easily the scariest of the disaster films that have followed the attack.

A cheap exploitation picture wrapped in miles and miles of stale would-be Oscar scenes.

Brings to mind "Working Girl" and "The Devil Wears Prada" -- but it has delightful differences only the French could conjure up, plus a musical soundtrack from jazz saxophone great Pharoah Sanders.

The narrative easily goes back and forth in time; despite its Oedipal subtext, it avoids exploitation. Stellar performances by Rottiers and Cattani help keep the movie on track.

The real mystery is this: Even if you find this guerrilla art project utterly fascinating, why would anyone bother to release an incomplete film about it?

All this is loads of fun, but after a while sensory overload sets in, dulling the mind. Even in a kung-fu flick, more isn't always better.

Seven Days in Utopia obviously isn't targeted at us cynical New Yorkers. But it goes down more smoothly than you'd imagine thanks to Duvall and an excellent supporting cast.

Chlamydia, gonorrhea and Jason Sudeikis are three reasons to stay well clear of A Good Old Fashioned Orgy, but they're not the only ones.

While an iconic figure in France, Gainsbourg isn't a household name here in the States. But that shouldn't stop audiences from enjoying Sfar's good-looking, fanciful film.

A bit more context about some of the topics the witnesses discuss would have been welcome, but Whitaker's stark, unshowy style is probably the most effective way to approach 9/11.

The collection is a mixed bag, although there are no clunkers.

Family Tree, which seems to have been written using indie-film Mad Libs, devolves into way too many quirky subplots.

Markopolos repeatedly tells us he was scared for his life -- accompanied by hokey archival clips and music -- though nothing actually happened to him.

Spanning two decades in a little under two hours, Higher Ground is a well-acted if slow-moving drama that will reward adventurous audiences with fine performances and a thoughtful approach.

Graham Greene's guilt-and-gangsters tale "Brighton Rock" gets an even more melodramatic telling than in the 1947 film version courtesy of first-time director Rowan Joffe, whose histrionic adaptation screams "student film" with practically every frame.

There are superb performances by Iranian-Canadian Nikohl Boosheri as Atafeh, the more rebellious of the two women, and French-born Sarah Kazemy as the less-privileged Shireen.

Harks back to a 1960s idea of what a horror film should be.

So this bourgeois-bohemian movie is, in a way, as serene in its obliviousness to the exterior world as its man-child subject. It's not essential, but it is endearing.

Luc Besson keeps ralphing up scripts about beautiful lady killers, but that doesn't mean you have to keep seeing them. Case in point: Colombiana...[a] dull cable-TV-quality item.

A dumbass "Kick-Ass," the superhero comedy Griff the Invisible sits on the screen like a steaming lump of Kryptonite.

Mozart's Sister had a much smaller budget than "Amadeus," but Féret makes good use of his resources, even getting to film in the splendid halls of Versailles. The cast is excellent, be they relatives of the director or not. And the music, though not by a Mozart, is beautiful.

Gentle, tender and very French, The Hedgehog is cinematic poetry -- too bad about that prosaic plotting.