It's a bloodsucker's paradise.

Casey's big brother has made a tough, taut mystery.

One reason to see Rendition is for Naor's stunning performance as the torturer who is the one character aware of the political and moral contradictions of what he's doing. Every time he was on screen, he commanded it.

George, director of "Hotel Rwanda," is better at directing actors than visual storytelling. Every time the camera tilted to suggest a character's shaken world or distorted worldview I didn't feel heartache, I felt headache.

Susanne Bier is a bomb thrower. The explosives in the films by the Danish director are emotional and provoke torrents of tears, richly earned.

For a film about suicides, Wristcutters: A Love Story is strangely life-affirming. This film about slackers stuck in limbo between life and death is upbeat in an offbeat way.

Blanchett commands the screen as she commands the royal navy. Her unforced majesty makes a so-so film worth watching.

There's a sign on the way into Norway, or at least a sign that somebody from the film crew put up: "On the eighth day, God created baseball." If amen is your answer to that, then The Final Season is the movie for you.

By movie's end, it seems like the only one giving a truly genuine performance is Bianca. Mouth-agape, steadfastly mum.

Art-directed within an inch of its life, Sleuth has the smirky gloss of a project that everyone involved with thinks is terribly good, and terribly clever. These people - Branagh, Pinter, Law and the usually great Caine (even in bad stuff) - are laboring under an epic misconception. Sleuth is just terrible.

Whatever one makes of its subject's moral code and mind-set, one has to give Terror's Advocate its due: the stories are riveting, the man is real.

At times solid and suspenseful, at times dopily implausible and woefully familiar.

Control doesn't claim to know the reasons Curtis killed himself. The act of suicide poses the question why, but rarely answers it, leaving the living to wonder, and to grieve. And there's certainly grief to be had in Control, but also joy. Really.

The Farrellys manage to have their cake and scarf it down, disgustingly, too.

After Clooney, who gives a sterling performance as a tarnished figure, the standout performance belongs to Wilkinson, a geyser of manic eloquence. Also quite fine are Swinton and Sydney Pollack.

Features entertainingly brainy musings from New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman, and comments from child psychologists, friends and Marla collectors.

It's a study in human behavior, describing how a self-confessed "emotional wreck," through accident and ambition, talent and temperament, became a star.

A movie about people who literally carry a lot of emotional baggage, metaphorically unpack it, and spiritually lighten their loads. By the end, I felt lighter. Which is closer to enlightenment than most movies get.

Trade comes off like TV-movie sensationalism, sidetracked by distracting backstories and hard-to-swallow plot twists.

As a meditation on the vicissitudes of love, on the need for people to connect, and the struggles that come by both making and missing those connections, the movie is wading-pool deep.

Ultimately, this jingo-bingo action thriller squarely hits its target, then delivers a delayed-action message contrary to everything that has preceded it. Berg heroizes the plucky Americans, but in the closing scenes of his ripping action flick, sucker-punches them. It's as if this populist Syriana frags itself.

A rich, beautifully detailed espionage thriller that captures the bygone days of Shanghai - and 1940s Hollywood noirs' romantic evocations of same - Lust, Caution is also one of those rare movie experiences: Its scenes of the trysts between Yee and Mak, from their rough-stuff first encounter to the long, tangled love-making sessions of subsequent meetings, are truly erotic.

Succeeds royally at building a sense of apocalyptic dread. It isn't quite so successful at sustaining that mood, and Fessenden resorts to blurry images of totemic spirit forces and stampeding moose specters to get where he's going. And where exactly is that? To a place designed to scare the bejesus out of us planet-pillaging consumers.

They are the only misstep in Penn's otherwise sure-footed journey to what he reveals as the heart of lightness.

Those who know Austen novels will recognize how much each character resembles a figure in one of them. Those who do not will enjoy the amusing types. Men, this means you.

A bizarre counterculture jukebox musical.

The movie would pour nicely onto a thick stack of pancakes.

The violence here is never in the service of spectacle, always of the story.