It's a hilarious comedy made even more successful because so much of the satire seems fresh.

More than confusing. It's opaque.

Doesn't allow the story's considerable nostalgia and sentimentality to overwhelm it.

This is a slacker comedy with "festival" stamped all over it, so you can bet the consequences will be quirky.

At its heart, the film is about the intense connection between Valentino and his business partner of 50 years, Giancarlo Giammetti, the brains behind the branding.

That Sunshine Cleaning was made by women is best revealed in the filmmakers' willingness to let the story breathe on its own terms, without bringing in anything extraneous, unwelcome and exciting.

The remake of The Last House on the Left breaks the template, taking the 1972 original into an interesting new direction, with bold camera angles, good actors and a script that heaps on just as much character development as carnage.

Holds a lot of promise in its first hour and never completely falls apart, but it's ultimately not the movie it might have been.

Wow, when Disney misses the "reimagining" mark, it really misses.

Kurosawa's film is heavyweight fare: disturbing, slightly over the top, but satisfying, like a rich meal with a powerful aftertaste.

Part conscious and part unconscious, Watchmen tells us of a world without hope and then makes us wonder if we're already living in it.

It's a delicate, intelligent movie about modern parenthood and the pressures that children face, and it features a cast of talented actors who were clearly committed to the movie's message.

Artful filmmaking of the old school.

For those who've never before heard fado, Fados will be a revelation - a window into a music that (like blues music) can be poetic, heartbreaking, melodramatic and redemptive, all at the same time.

An experiment that rarely works this well.

No matter how bad things get, you can always be thankful for this: You're not on trial for murder in Russia.

One must be very, very, very, very, very interested in Yorkshire, circa 1980, to embrace and enjoy The Red Riding Trilogy. And yet ... there is something to be said for an enterprise this specific and uncompromising.

A mess.

If you're a fashion insider, you may find the entire film fascinating. If you're not, you may find it way too long.

A great movie.

This is a vision of hell conveyed in a simple, documentary style, far removed from the sumptuous American Mafia fables.

As in a good European film, shots are allowed to breathe. The focus is on character and human emotion. At the same time, the movie shows an American concern for pace and story development. The result is the best of both worlds.

The reboot of the "Friday the 13th" series is a pretty big mess - not particularly scary or interesting or even gory by 21st century movie standards.

Seems more appropriate for a science museum than the Metreon, but that's not the film's problem. The problem is that oceanic movies in actual science museums are far more interesting and nuanced than this documentary.

What a shrewd achievement for writer-director Henry Selick ("The Nightmare Before Christmas"), to have made a movie that everyone will acclaim as beautiful, when perhaps the most beautiful thing about it is the sheer ugliness of it all.

Never soars, but it never flags. It remains brisk, engaging and pleasant throughout, and face it: If a movie this well made had Spanish or French subtitles, we'd all be talking about it as a searing examination of sexual politics.

The predictable script feels as if it were filmed right off the cocktail napkin it was jotted on, but at least the movie has an "Ocean's 11" sequel's worth of good actors, including Alfred Molina, Jeremy Irons and Jean Reno.

Two awful things about Push are at least interesting: The first is the way in which the story is confused. The second is that the story makes no sense.