Operation Homecoming at first seems like a modest enterprise, a document of a few guys' paths to personal catharsis. But the sense of damaged intensity found in all these men's writing -- and found in war lit since the classical age -- builds to a powerful crescendo, and the haunting poem that ends the film, in which the ghosts of American and Iraqi dead confront each other on the banks of the Tigris, is a showstopper.

Gandhi’s direction brings out superior performances in the film’s cast, particularly in Terrell, whose imitation of Obama’s singular ways of speaking and mannerisms is nearly flawless.

There’s so much delusion and so much delight in Noah that I have trouble distinguishing one from the other, or determining whether its most outlandish flourishes qualify as mistakes or as strokes of genius.

Tells the story of a love affair and a new family, and reminds us that even billionaires are not omnipotent.

It's an intriguingly murky B-movie that should satisfy genre buffs.

So, yeah - even if In Time descends from its gripping and thought-provoking premise into a mediocre chase thriller before it's over, it's still pretty damn satisfying to watch in the current climate.

As crafty and compelling as Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell's Until the Light Takes Us is, it may go too far in its understandable desire to correct the bias and prejudice of mainstream journalism.

What filmgoers get is a satisfactory mainstream entertainment, with a handful of major actors in juicy minor roles tossed in for good measure.

It’s shot through with sadness and beauty, with dry humor, with the certainty that even things meant to last forever actually don’t.

Lake and Epstein are not in fact trying to stigmatize other women's choices about how and where to give birth. Instead, they're trying to introduce an entire universe of history and information that should inform those choices, and that the medical establishment has virtually erased from American memory.

Honestly, one can only wish that Hollywood made movies for non-teenagers and non-comics fans with this much care and reverence. Are superhero movies dying? Well sure, but you and I and the planet may die first.

Tracking down Rebney proved to be no easy task. But Steinbauer found him, living on a mountain in California, and spends much of the film trying to get Rebney to reckon with his unsought celebrity, which Rebney had only recently become aware of.

Along with Sheryl Lee, Morton is probably the best actress to have emerged in this decade.

Lazer Team is a pastiche based on a beloved pattern; it understands its own limitations but seeks to maximize its potential. All the characters are presented with immense affection and offered the chance to grow and develop, by which I mean to be gifted with inexplicable superpowers, to be repeatedly struck in the groin area by projectiles and to be mocked by others for their moments of vulnerability.

Jane Horrocks saves the annoyingly noisy Little Voice.

A breezy, uncomplicated, unapologetically broad comedy.

A lot of this is compelling, after its didactic and heavily thematic fashion, but if you strip most of it away, along with Roger Deakins' handsome cinematography, you're left with the conflict between Jack and Bobby and something like "Shop Class as Soulcraft: The Movie."

The Sessions should be taken for what it is, a sweet but minor fictional parable about the strange possibilities of love. You may find it significant, moving and even profound, but it has a limited connection to the real world and the real life of Mark O'Brien.

I appreciated and admired the craftsmanship of Jellyfish more than I loved it, and I found its whimsical, magic-realist touches a bit cloying. Just as I began to appreciate that it had depths I hadn't perceived, it was over.

That a movie can run on empty and still be so obscenely enjoyable is a pretty slick stunt in itself.

What emerges in the end actually is surprisingly consistent and coherent, if you pay close attention to the most important passages of Kirk’s self-serving narrative and steer through all the denials and reversals and irrelevant tangents.

I'm sure some people will be driven mad by the deliberate ambiguities of Somersault, and by its characters' near-total inability to understand themselves or express themselves. But to me, that makes it uncannily true to life.

[An] evenhanded and carefully crafted documentary.

It's an impressive, intelligent, compact piece of filmmaking...But Téchiné might be one of those directors whose work is best appreciated by critics and other filmmakers.

Blade in no way resembles a good movie, but its combination of music-video bombast, goth-rock sensibility, high-tech industrial production design, cold-blooded glossy magazine visuals, high-fashion club culture, horror movies, blaxploitation movies, Hong Kong movies and comic-book nihilism make it diverting trash.

Grade-B blockbuster.

This is a dense and sophisticated work about mortality, materialism, madness, jealousy and pity.

The morbid and gripping war film Blessed by Fire, from the Argentine filmmaker Tristán Bauer, is well worth a look.