I suppose you have to give credit to the movie for coming up with some badass killer mermaids.

The poetry has more in common with rap lyrics than Baudelaire, but that just increases the fun.

Their '50s-style comedy mugging not only don't come across to Americans, it's hard to believe even New Zealanders would care.

Not a definitive portrait of the designer, nor does it pretend to be. But it should be of interest to viewers even if there's not a single YSL label in their wardrobes.

Less than compelling as drama -- but boy is this an impressive collection of wildly ugly hairstyles, moustaches, clothing and "earth tone" furniture from 1983.

For a noir, the film is way too talky and convoluted, yet for a physics lesson, it's trash.

Legendary is an overworked adjective, but surely it applies to Jack Cardiff, the British cinematographer whose awe-inspiring resume includes some of the most beautiful Technicolor films ever shot, among them "The Red Shoes," "Black Narcissus" and "Stairway to Heaven."

If action's your thing, then the Chinese-Hong Kong martial-arts epic True Legend is your movie.

Everything Must Go is cinematic pointilism. The big picture is familiar -- busted middle-age man, suburban alcoholic despair -- yet the details are so finely rendered that the overall impression is potently strange.

Lee hasn't given an interview in 45 years, and even her 99-year-old sister (still practicing as a lawyer) only hazards a guess in Mary Murphy's old-school documentary: Her younger sister had nothing to prove, and nowhere to go but down after her astonishing debut novel.

Too bad the script is predictable at every turn.

Unlike many films that hope to be called black comedy, it does not skimp on either the black or the comedy.

By the time two hours had dragged by, I felt a lot like I had sat through a five-hour wedding.

Octubre has the feel of something Jim Jarmusch might have made in his early years -- lots of dark humor that you'll think of in the middle of the night, and laugh about.

The preachy movie is hardly worth the hassle and money required to see it in a theater. Better to download it or wait for it to pop up on TV.

The Japanese anti-war drama Caterpillar is difficult to watch. But it's directed, acted and photographed well, and it's worth seeing even if it makes you uncomfortable.

Even when scary, Murray is somehow funny, too, and he steals the show as always.

A good cast equipped with cute names is forced to muddle through terminal whimsy in this less-than-magical adaptation of Aimee Bender's adult fairy tale, sluggishly directed by Marilyn Agrelo, who more successfully helmed the delightful documentary "Mad Hot Ballroom."

An open- and-shut case, but that doesn't mean it can't also be an entertaining one.

This may be the most politically confusing movie about that conflict since "For Whom the Bell Tolls" -- I couldn't for the life of me figure out where Escriva stood.

Toggling between the tonalities of "Donnie Darko," "Ghost World" and the collected works of David Lynch, the blackly witty Daydream Nation takes its title from a Sonic Youth album.

Suspenseful though it is, the movie is quiet to the point of being sleepy, and Worthington is simply not working out as a screen star.

It's the snobs against the slobs at a Martha's Vine yard wedding in Jumping the Broom. Mostly, it's a tie: Both sides are equally irritating.

Japan's Takashi Miike has the formula down pat, but Eisener has no idea how to give violence a touch of class.

This bizarre little movie is all over the place as drama - but genuinely compelling as a one-of-a-kind piece of public self-flagellation.

It's a testament to Goodwin's skill as an actress that we almost buy this.

There's plenty of smash, thunder and brawl for the kids. But in taking a bit of Hulk and a bit of Superman while re-imagining Excalibur as a hammer, Thor amounts to putting new horns on old ideas. And the screenplay sounds like the lyrics of Spinal Tap.

Interesting but never compelling.