Even filmgoers who aren't into dance will find this story captivating because, as much as anything, Sokvannara wants to please his audience, whether in the concert hall or the movie theater. The kid is a natural.

There's a good idea behind Repo Men, not a whole lot of thinking, but at least one whole idea.

Works overtime for just a handful of chuckles and a few big yuks.

The writing is funny during individual moments, but the cumulative result is a bit depressing, with a surprising amount of negativity.

A potboiler but entertaining enough to rise above its flaws.

Jennifer Jason Leigh (Baumbach's wife) appears in two scenes, as an ex-girlfriend of Greenberg, and she's quietly brilliant, as always.

The strength and beauty of The Runaways are that it tells the truth.

You needn't have colorful Italian relatives, like myself, to enjoy this boisterous and warm-hearted film, which sidesteps cliche while embracing the hope and love in loony dysfunctional families everywhere.

Captures an artist who has decided not to burn out, but to fade away with dignity.

What this uncaring man is doing to her (Ida), he's about to do to a nation of 50 million people. And all of them will hate themselves in the morning.

From its first minutes, Mid-August Lunch establishes a special tone and quality that could only be Italian. It's a mixture of warmth and gentle farce, tender observation and absurdity.

About as close to pure mall fodder as you'll see.

Watchable in spite of Greengrass as much as because of him. The story is good enough to make viewers want to ignore the photography.

An alluring piece of work, an artful whodunit that melds shrewd plotting with resourceful camera work and sympathetic characters that are fascinatingly, morbidly off.

Not a bad film. I'm going to stick my neck out and call it a good one - a small, dense chamber study of unhappy people looking for hope in the darkness, often literally.

Its single biggest failing - an affront to Lewis Carroll and the charms of nonsense literature - is that it makes sense.

A melodrama about three cliches in search of a bloodbath.

In its small, stubborn way, the film is a love letter to traditions that have endured since cave dwellers painted the walls at Lascaux.

Represents his (Smith) first act of cinematic cynicism, his first crime against his own talent. With this action comedy, he has given us 110 worthless minutes, a bad formula movie like every other bad formula movie.

If his two previous films suggested a director dipping a few toes in dark waters, Un Prophete marks the moment when Audiard took the plunge.

Eisner has almost nothing on his mind, no political rumblings, nothing behind the urge to upgrade vintage trash.

This is an unabashedly pro-democracy message movie. Judged strictly as drama, it's pretty routine.

Harrowing and unforgettable film.

Scorsese stuffs the film with heavy-handed art direction and piles on a ludicrously ominous soundtrack. The soundtrack is a constant reminder of the movie's importance and only highlights its unimportance.

Take the worst things about independent movies - the wallowing in an unpleasantness, the narrative unsteadiness, the next-to-no story. Then combine those with a hefty dose of light comedy. The result: the big, fat tonal mess that is Happy Tears, a charmless film about two sisters who come together to care for their demented father.

Here's another thought: This old man who can't leave the house has just made the first important film of 2010.

The movie's best special effect hands down is Anthony Hopkins as Talbot the Elder, who flounces around in a tiger stole and utters his lines with such a delicious madman twinkle you might want to snack on him yourself (ahhh-ROOooh).

There are lots of cameos, as well, too many to count. However, it is worth mentioning that singer Taylor Swift shows up in a couple of scenes, playing a vapid Valley girl, and she's very funny.