Though overly long and difficult to digest, it's a feast you won't want to miss.

Engaging and perceptive.

In the end, Crash lacks a cumulative impact. It takes audiences to new places, but we've all been to similar places, and we walk out knowing no more than we did walking in.

After a month, no one will talk about this movie, ever again. Still, with a picture like this, there's really only one question: Is it any fun? Yes. Lots. Definitely.

Screenwriter William Monahan has fashioned an intelligent and highly topical epic. Director Ridley Scott has brought it home with banners flying.

Working on a microbudget, director Eddie O'Flaherty coaches solid performances from his small cast and makes the most of the handful of up-close, well-choreographed fight montages.

The film is mentally graphic, not sexually graphic.

Imaginative and immensely engrossing film.

At times hilarious and occasionally very sad, it's a cautionary tale about the lure of instant fame.

Wildly imaginative, humane, playful and deflating of all pretense.

How bad does it get? How far past the basement can one elevator go?

The sooner you let yourself go with Kim's flow, the more likely you are to come away satisfied. Think of it as South Korea's answer to "Memento," just don't think too hard.

An exceptionally perceptive film about what it's like to be 19 years old.

A hauntingly lyrical study of sexual awakening.

The material obviously had to be stretched to fill the big screen for almost two hours.

So many twists and turns, it seems like fiction.

A suspense thriller of rare intelligence.

An unfortunate casting decision, however, comes close to sabotaging a witty script.

Piles cliched character upon cliched character, and then doesn't give any of them very much to do.

The stuntwomen are also subject to the unbreakable law of Hollywood, that the advantage is always to the young and beautiful.

More than worthwhile.

Disappointingly mediocre.

This ambitious and sometimes entertaining Brazilian feature tries to pull off a tricky maneuver but doesn't quite get it done.

Its story of intergenerational conflict between immigrant parents and increasingly Westernized children falls flat.

A very human story.

The truly shocking thing about the new version is that it's not bloody awful.

Though charming at times, just misses, due to a contrived story.

The mockumentary-style delivery of a serious subject proves to be an unworkable mash-up.

Has the slapped-together, cheesy look of a porno movie. While this could be distracting, the shoddiness sets the mood for a humorous spin on the European porn industry circa early 1970s.

A surprisingly layered portrait.

Palindromes isn't a wise movie, or a particularly true movie, but it's an honest one and a singular experience.

An adventure in mediocrity that brings together some of the worst current techniques and trends.

A romantic comedy that flirts with something serious but never gets past the flirting stage.

Vivid and madcap but fails to connect on any emotional level.

Director Q. Allan Brocka loads up the screen with eye-candy for every preference -- no one keeps a shirt on for long. Think Skinemax with a gay twist. But his script overdoses on pop culture references and bitchy wisecracks that his trying-too-hard cast can't quite pull off.

It's dreadful, but it's a special kind of dreadful -- the kind designed to appeal to intelligent people on principle.

Overall, it's pretty elementary stuff, along the lines of a Disney Channel TV movie. It's uplifting, and it's in a good cause.

A marital comedy as perceptive as it is delectable.

The three films are watchable but resolutely minor works, though each has something to recommend it.

Potent.

A movie unlike any other.

There are more over-the-top moments, but they never last long. And after every groan-inducing piece of footage, a spectacular near-crash or daring motorcycle chase comes along to leave the movie's shortcomings in a cloud of dust.

A Hungarian film -- an existential thriller, one might call it -- about an intelligent man who happens to have this lowly nuisance of a job.

An engrossing new drama from France.

At its warmhearted center, Beauty Shop is a workshop in how to walk around like Oprah with a feeling of confidence and entitlement.

This nightmarish revenge drama from Korea is grueling, intense, cruel -- the very definition of extreme cinema.

A lot of frivolous but genuine laughs.

A self-conscious attempt at the brass ring.

A lumpy concoction.

At its best, the movie is a collection of entertaining memories from a group of gutsy women.

Straddles the line between dark comedy and deep drama.

It is a boilerplate action comedy.

Overly long and not especially enlightening film.

A cut above most pictures of its type.

Perfunctory, thrill- free sequel.

More accomplished, adventurous and original. Instead of Allen's usual investigation into the nature of existence, this new film looks at the way stories are created, particularly comedies.

Schizo offers not just the proverbial window into village life in Kazakhstan, but a panoramic view.

A fine example of how anime uniquely contributes to world cinema.

A pretty ugly movie in its own right.

This is a half-hearted, derivative action film with not a single honest artistic impulse behind it.

Robots never stays in the same gear for long, and the abrupt shifts in tone kill the movie's chances of becoming a classic.

Wondrous performances.

Utterly enchanting.

Lacks compelling narrative.

The directors pull off this faux documentary.

Nobody into lush melodramas dripping in sex should miss this pulsating Italian import.

A clever, atmospheric romantic drama that lacks something.

Its story meanders and doesn't build, and the pace is deadly.

It's instantly forgettable, but smooth fun most of the way.

[Brody's] mannered performance helps downgrade this picture from a middling sci-fi film to a bad, borderline-camp sci-fi film.

Unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, however, Vin Diesel shows no discernible comedic skills.

Wise and wondrous.

The best glimpse yet of what it's like to be in Iraq.

Hits a bulls-eye.

So in-depth, so appealing, so easy to sit through and so anomalously grand scale that few who see it will ever forget it.

A third-rate effort, with a weak script, cheap-looking effects and no genuine frights.

Harris and particularly Elise give over-the-top performances that bring Diary to the edge of soap opera.

uUninspired, unnecessary and formulaic.

Absurdity and poignancy merge in the carefully observed Czech film Up and Down.

An appealingly quirky thriller from Brazil.

Sad yet offering glimpses of hope.

Matthews holds his own with his experienced co-stars, and his half- talking/half-singing explanation of his criminal past is the movie's best scene.

The movie isn't hellish, because there's always hope of leaving it. It's more like purgatory, two whole hours of it.

A comedy so unfunny, it's tragic.

But the film suffers from a major and unforgivable flaw, one that grows more implausible and ridiculous over time.

The film is filled with lovely images (Kim studied painting in France), and ultimately becomes, against all expectations, quite moving.

The first great Hitler movie.

A droll, deadpan film, deliberately paced and told.

To earnest for its own good. Sincere and heartfelt, it's the kind of family film that might be at home on cable.

Very entertaining.

Thus a tightly edited, 90-minute action flick becomes a bloated, 105-minute exercise on how not to direct an action film.

Lacks even mild drama.

The less in control Smith and his co- stars Eva Mendes and Kevin James appear, the better Hitch becomes, until it's rather delightful.

Does a fine job.

An artful look at religious hypocrisy, interfamily dynamics and the way people wrestle with personal history long after the original events are over.

In traditional stories, it's saints, madmen and children who befriend wild animals. Mark Bittner, who pals around with feral creatures in the amiable documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, is just as much an outsider, though of a different sort.

Will have anyone over the age of eight squirming in their seats.

The film, winsome and tragic at once and finely attuned to the rhythms of childhood, always seems quite close to real life.