Before it descends into dull sadism and general incoherence in its third act, Turistas is a mostly effective exploitation picture, the kind of movie that would have been proudly displayed on the marquee of a '70s-era grindhouse.

This critic found much to digest (pun barely intended), with thoughts of FDA politics and standard practices, the ritualism and sacrifice of our own species, why baby animals are considered protectable innocents (and inversely, grown steaks-to-be just a fact of life), plus, on a meta level, how people's dietary philosophies will inform their reactions to the work.

As it happens, each one of these tales is also a love story, and The Fountain is Aronofsky’s profession of faith concerning love’s place in the idea of eternity. It’s a movie that’s as deeply felt as it is imagined.

Although the science fiction element had the potential to drag the story down, it's kept to a minimum and left somewhat buried in techno jargon.

Under the clichéd spell of rock-and-roll promiscuity and pills popped, Seigner shows astonishing range as the detached superstar who still fixates on her ex-boyfriend and has mood swings like a manic-depressive on fast-forward.

There's no one today writing English dialogue as sharp as Bennett's, and hearing it delivered expertly is a pleasure worth sitting through some dodgy montages for.

Surprisingly light on fab gadgets, there are, of course, double crosses, fast cars, and lots of gunplay.

It's a movie that keeps flirting with greatness, but settles for being above average.

Ledger turns in another stellar performance and Cornish is heartbreakingly good also in this well-crafted film. But once that first plunger is pushed, the surprises are few.

What sets Fast Food Nation apart from other recent multi-character studies like "Crash," "Bobby," and "Babel" is that Linklater doesn't set up a single incident that ties all the story strands together.

From the beginning, something doesn't feel quite right about their latest romp. The characters are sketchier, the situations more contrived and the laughs are fewer and far between.

Alll in all, however, Estevez has pulled together the best political drama, fiction or otherwise, in recent memory.

Finney, only seen in these flashbacks, is pitch perfect.

The film is ultimately so repetitive, un-enlightening and lacking in substance, even Drew Carey seems bored by the end when he asks, "When are you guys going to make the 'c*nt' documentary?"

Borat is, in many ways, an heir to the same kind of subversion of American norms that the transvestite Divine perfected in John Waters’ early films.

Though Flushed Away certainly aims to please viewers of all ages, it’s the anglophiles of all ages who are going to get the most out of the film.

Each scene is lovingly crafted, with bright colors and the beautiful scenery of La Mancha, the mellifluous cadences of Castilian Spanish, and of course the faces, young and old, of each actress.

Right off the bat, Catch a Fire distinguishes itself from other recent international productions about Africa (including The Constant Gardener and The Last King of Scotland) in that it is actually told from an African perspective.

While you can never completely put the fact that you are watching Pitt and Blanchett out of your mind, they both give charged, emotional performances.

Technically, it rewards with nothing less than painterly cinematography and a seamless surge of organic soundscapes, but the story is entirely predicated on a weather metaphor so obvious that even an unplugged Doppler radar could detect it.

There's no question that Death of a President fulfills its objective as a conversation starter, but as a movie, it's sketchy at best.

Cocaine Cowboys might work better as a miniseries for television; as it is, the two-hour running time is fatiguing and some of the later material gets lost in the onslaught.

This is one movie that's guaranteed to linger in your mind after you leave the theater, whether you want it to or not.

Marie Antoinette churns a symphony out of a single note, too light and hermetically sealed in the minds of Coppola and her queen to transcend its artfully cared-for fluffiness.

For the most part, Murphy is pitching somewhere between "American Beauty" and "The Royal Tenenbaums"; indeed, the characters Bening and Gwyneth Paltrow play in Scissors are, in a sense, inversions of their roles in Beauty and Tenenbaums, respectively.

Flags of our Fathers really loses its way in the final half-hour, when the point-of-view abruptly shifts to James Bradley (played here by Tom McCarthy), who takes on the role of narrator, informing us of what happened to each of these men after the war ended and their names became yesterday's news. It's a jarring switch.

One casting wild card is the country singer Tim McGraw, and he's very solid in the role of Katie's horse-rancher dad, the kind of guy whose hard-headedness can't mask the size of his heart.

If The Prestige is something of a let down as a magic trick, it's more successful as a tale of obsession. The rivalry between the magicians is brutal and bloody and Bale and Jackman do their best work when they're plotting each other's downfall.