Grueling vanity piece.

The movie seems to think it's building up massive suspense by not telling us our hero's back story, but given that the wife and kid aren't around and he keeps telling people who ask that he's not divorced, it's obvious they're dead. The only mystery, then, is what exactly happened to them. The answer is: nothing interesting.

The issues are complex and not easily solved. But no matter which side you are on, you'll be moved by this intimate work.

Pink Ribbons, Inc. viewers looking for an evenhanded discussion may be disappointed.

Slight and unremarkable.

A lame stoner comedy.

The nearly two preceding hours often feel like three, as the patchwork script keeps introducing characters and subplots and dropping them, all while rushing characters through eye-popping environments.

Disarmingly sweet.

Through it all, Clayman struggles to keep himself, and OC87, on track - and it's easy to cheer his ultimate triumph.

If you can overlook Andie MacDowell's Mitteleuropa accent as a Jewish Holocaust survivor (I know: big if), the cinematic roman a clef Mighty Fine has some quiet charms.

Despite its themes, Oslo, August 31st is an exhilarating film, with impeccable direction and pitch-perfect performances that make the bleakness worthwhile.

This essentially good-natured movie, a massive hit in France, is more likely to strike American audiences as trite than offensive.

This one's a thoroughly campy exercise in teen melodrama and Grand Guignol gore (how gory? it's one of Quentin Tarantino's favorite movies), the other (The Hunger Games) a straight-faced action picture.

This only mildly bloated and convoluted action comedy has enough inspired moments to wipe out memories of the abysmal 2002 first sequel as surely as one of the black-suited heroes' neutralizer.

His late father directed "Rambo: First Blood,'' but Panos Cosmatos' debut feature couldn't be more different - this would-be cult classic is the movie equivalent of gazing at a lava lamp for nearly two hours.

Mansome is basically a reality-TV episode, with similar production values and precisely the same depth of perception.

While recollections of the participants in the rescue are often riveting, the subject of Jonathan Gruber and Ari Daniel Pinchot's film remains elusively out of grasp.

A would-be piece of pulp fiction about a parolee trying to go straight, The Samaritan proves that even Samuel L. Jackson can be boring.

While never exploitative, Polisse can be extremely disturbing. Is it possible for a parent to mistreat a child in the ways shown here? Sad to say, the answer is yes.

Gore is always with us, but when it comes to horror, there's nothing like a haunted house. And Lovely Molly has a humdinger.

Nadezhda Markina is splendid as Elena, who speaks little but still manages to make her thoughts and emotions crystal clear.

American Animal is a wildly experimental debut for D'Elia, who uses hand-held digital cameras and lots of jump cuts. It is well-acted and features witty repartee.

Alcoholics Anonymous founder William G. Wilson, known mostly as Bill W. before his death in 1971, was played by James Woods in a fine 1989 made-for-TV biopic. But the drama didn't have room for some of the darker corners of Wilson's life, fascinatingly explored in Kevin Hanlon and Dan Carracino's documentary.

Black loses control of Virginia as it lurches from political satire to unintended black comedy to mom-and-son melodrama. But the performances and the movie's sheer crazy audacity make it watchable.

If director Tanya Wexler occasionally wanders into excess cutesiness...she makes up for it with a surplus of eye-opening historical details and a refreshing warmth for all her characters, even the ones whose views are clearly on the way out.

While it certainly isn't good, Expecting isn't as charmless as you might have feared, largely due to a cast working furiously to sell every scene.

It makes "Top Gun" look like the work of Orson Welles. At least the Tom Cruise movie remembered to cast actual actors.

As for Baron Cohen, he's a great comic but his acting can still use work - most of his funniest lines appear to have been dubbed over other actors' reaction shots in post-production.