A movie for people who value heart and earnestness over technical filmmaking skill, and consider unpredictable plot turns a betrayal.

At times you may be moved as by no other foreign film this year - and then 10 minutes later be leaning forward in the seat just to stay awake.

Best of all, the filmmakers know when to pull the plug. Date Night clocks in at 88 minutes and would not have been as funny at 89.

So many horror conventions are at work in After.Life that either the filmmakers are parodying them or couldn't come up with anything better. I'm betting on the second choice.

It's an impressive achievement: The film reveals things about each person's inner world, and how it looks to the other, without making us feel as if we're lost in a house of mirrors.

The mixed report on La Mission is that writer-director Peter Bratt doesn't really know how to make pictures, but he does know the central character in his movie.

The Square really tightens the screws - it's so skillfully made it makes you shift uncomfortably to the edge of your seat. It's a binge of cringe.

When You're Strange is a remedial Doors class, taught by a professor who sounds as if he's doing voiceovers for car commercials.

Has compelling stretches, but the film's formal concerns overwhelm the storytelling.

The documentary is interesting as a human story. And anyone who loves the Kuchar brothers' films or underground cinema in general will take extra pleasure in it.

Brosnan has never been so opened up, so emotional and yet so precise in his work. It's a lovely performance in a film that only sometimes deserves him.

Fans of this film will some day wear out their DVDs and Blu-rays playing that fantastic battle scene again and again.

Breaking Upwards has its amusing and touching moments, but we're left wondering just what we're supposed to make of it all. In the end, the relationship at the film's core is less absorbing than the filmmakers imagine.

No matter how you dissect it, Clash of the Titans will never, ever be a serious motion picture.

The bottom line here is that Cyrus is ghastly in The Last Song, bad not just in one or two ways, but in all kinds of ways.

Most of its screenplay is far too vulgar to recount. To paraphrase Mary McCarthy, every word is an obscenity, including "and" and "the."

The success of Chloe is largely due to the contribution of screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson.

With apologies to George A. Romero and the impending zombie apocalypse, The Eclipse may be the most realistic film where something dead comes to life and tries to feast on human flesh. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/15/MVST1CTGJ4.DTL#ixzz0lDuetYGS

The multiply authored screenplay is based very loosely on Cressida Cowell's popular children's books, but it owes just as much to "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" and the John Lennon songbook.

The movie turns from good to great as the layers are peeled away and director Hahn provides an insider's look at the creative epicenter of the studio.

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.