But the movie soars as docudrama. Niccol's model seems to have been Scorsese's "GoodFellas" and, like that film, the blitzkrieg of images and rapid-fire narration takes us on a breathtaking inside tour of a scary world. It's an extraordinary expose.

Though Wood is the star, it's Hutz who is the indelible presence.

One more good thing is that the movie doesn't overstay its welcome. At 76-minutes, it's wisely calculated to give us as much of its ghoulish whimsy as we can take in one sitting, and not a second more.

Panayotopoulou casts a transcendent eye upon her downbeat subject matter, never dodging the unsentimental truth that growing up is about learning to live with the loss of those things we have loved.

Most disappointing is the ending, which, in projecting the possibility of a saner and more hopeful world, is a bit of a cop-out.

Mostly it's tedious as we watch the photogenic but emotionally blank Chatagny bounce between anonymous sexual encounters.

A competent concoction of familiar ingredients, smothered with gothic mood and served up with a generous helping of teenagers: skewered, slashed and stabbed.

The most fascinating aspect of the film is how the point of view shifts -- each character, as seen through another's eyes, is something else entirely.

Suffers from a simplistic reductionism that suggests buying from local organic farmers might help avert the possibility of a worldwide famine triggered by Monsanto's suicide gene. It is a noble and quaint solution to a situation that won't be easily swayed by consumer votes.

Though he's foggy on the specifics, Angelopoulos makes the tides of history felt through each painterly frame.

An action buddy comedy is such an offbeat and inspired notion that it's impossible not to think of it without smiling.

Redford also deserves a lot of credit. It's not the kind of showcase that's going to earn him an Oscar, but, without too many compromises, he manages to find the soul of a difficult character and makes his emotional odyssey both believable and satisfying.

It's a pretense of even-handedness. The true story has been reduced to a case for faith. It merely sacrifices all reason to get there.

Affliction has rarely been so sensitively explored.

It becomes simply another banal gang film so familiar and predictable you have to wonder why so much potential is wasted on such a confused dramatic mess.

Fukada captures the stubborn individualism of a girl who embraces an unpopular lifestyle.

A lesson in listening.

When the spectacle turns ridiculous, the movie just becomes another big-screen video game.

Though he tries hard for bravado, hero Edward Burns is terminally wooden.

The inconsistencies and continuity errors are staggering.

Fernando Meirelles's MTV-grandstanding worked for "City of God," but it's just not necessary for, and gets in the way of, a script this literate and solid. In the end, The Constant Gardener works in spite of, not because of him.

Beautifully observed tale of high-school kids in the projects outside Paris.

It's a barrage of visual stimulation so excessive that it's hard to sort it all out. But it's often funny, its texture can be breathtaking and its pleasures likely will grow with repeated viewings.

The utter lack of tension or suspense is as dumbfounding as Hunt's blender approach to editing, which purees action scenes into incoherent mashes of image confetti.

Undiscovered promotes one of the stupidest visions of the entertainment industry since "American Idol" opened the celebrity gateway to the dregs of the karaoke generation.

There's no comic spark under Showalter's drab direction, and no good argument in the film why we should ever wonder about the guy left at the altar.

Highly entertaining.

Judd Apatow brings no cleverness or wit to his one-joke situation, and he can't give it the kernel of credibility that even a low comedy needs to sustain itself for a feature length.

With so much going for it, it's sad that Red Eye goes into such a third-act tailspin and cliched slasher-flick finale.

It's a tale with plenty of spirit and a good heart, and yet, this story doesn't so much soar across the screen as it does waddle.

Far from perfect, but it only commits minor infractions of inconsistency and zeal for every plot twist.

Park is neither glib nor pedantic as he charts the vicious circle that leaves victims in its wake, unintentional and premeditated, and takes its dehumanizing toll on his increasingly brutal heroes.

Greenstreet captures all the hubbub on film but, while he makes the point that we are indeed a house divided, he can't quite persuade us that this particular situation is a metaphoric example of our national malaise.

Pierson is a high-powered egotist with appalling tastes and a great-white-father complex, and his whiny family is about as much fun as fingernails on a blackboard.

It's far from strikingly original, but it's well-acted, skillfully plotted and moderately chilling, and it's something slightly different in the haunted-house genre.

Not that there are any actual jokes to be had. The film simply jumps to the punch lines, a non-stop barrage of crude dialogue and vulgar sight gags that passes as humor among adolescent boys. Who exactly is the audience for this R-rated film? The terminally immature?

The casting is hit-and-miss. OutKast's Benjamin and "Troy's" Hedlund are weak, but Gibson is very appealing and the movie powers along on a strong lead performance by Wahlberg, who has never seemed more confident, commanding or scruffily charismatic.

Truth be told, the film is routine: the kind of one-note war movie that Hollywood used to crank out by the dozens every year in the 1950s.

A film that takes you by surprise, refusing to relinquish its grim, fascinating hold. Better yet, it has crept up on us without much advance promotional fanfare. The less known about its twists, the better.

It's Treadwell's contradictions and controversies that fascinate Herzog the filmmaker, inspiring him to create this enthralling documentary portrait, his best film in years.

The disingenuous attempt to give the tawdry story some kind of social import only makes the tinny caricatures more insincere, while his erotic display of 15-year-old girls isn't a satire of a sexualized culture, it's just dirty.

Kurosawa leaves much of the explanation enigmatic but he fills the film with an eerie emptiness, where suicides erupt out of nowhere and mankind dissolves in an oily smudge of hopelessness, adrift between life and death.

The rough, exposed emotional candor of Cheung's singing voice carries into her performance.

Subtly suggests it may not be all that much different from the delusions by which other cultures are structured.

The bright spot is Seann William Scott ("Dude, Where's My Car?") as Bo Duke. His good-naturedly maniacal manner and early Dennis Quaid killer smile are endearing, to the point where he occasionally threatens to elevate the movie into something special.

It's a consciousness-raising personal odyssey in the tradition of such recent indie hits as "Sideways" and "About Schmidt" -- only less obviously comedic and, as always with Jarmusch, blissfully unresolved.

The result is rich, lush -- simply exquisite.

Scott, whose sensitive turn as a priest inspired by Ralph's conviction and commitment gives the film a touch of grace at the cost of revealing McGowan's drab direction of every other actor.

The few genuine moments of connection -- are as refreshing as they are out of place. They only highlight how false and affected the rest of the film is.

The performances by Davidtz, Weston, Wilson and especially Adams stand out as Morrison paints his character study with raw, true bits continually tested by the absurdities of pain life dishes up.

Both blunt and complex, Sauter's illustration of economic Darwinism at its most primal and unforgiving is a harrowing vision of human life as collateral damage in the modern global economy.

It offers a handful of funny and touching moments and maintains a level of cuteness. But it's far from original, and its star chemistry doesn't exactly light up the screen.

More silly than funny.

Makes a serviceable summer shoot-'em-up, but it's surprisingly trashy and rather stupid, and its efforts toward being a gripping military drama in the Tom Clancy tradition are fairly pathetic.

It wears thin, but also provides some insight into how comics interact and view their craft. At the very least, it confirms all suspicions that they have way more fun than you.

At times it gets lost in the backwaters, but the eccentric characters and offbeat humor make it an entertaining detour.

It makes for an unusual angle on the era, and a passionate paean to the power of books, ideas and art.

Speaks in the raw mumble of the dirty South. A regional film in the truest sense, it does for Memphis what its producer, John Singleton, once did for South Central Los Angeles.

Make no mistake: This not high art. But it does its job without insulting our intelligence or unpleasantly jangling our nerves.

This is simply another in a long line of utterly unnecessary remakes that, having nothing new to say, clutch at crassness and dumbness.

A canny but hollow pastiche.

Michael Winterbottom's erotic drama isn't so much a story of a love affair as an anatomy of a sexual relationship.

It's a rare film that gets smarter as it goes along, injecting a satisfying dash of pragmatism every time it seems ready to slip into either unearned idealism or cynical fatalism.

The story is pure speculation, Van Sant's fantasy on what may have happened during those final days of self-isolation, but he loads the film with distinctive imagery.

For all its good intentions in exploring the grace of death, November never creates a life outside of its all-too-obvious inspirations and the mystery becomes little more than a groaner.

Its heart is in the right place and it resists the temptation to junk up the story, but Depp does nothing with his character and the movie has little of the unique wit or panache that would make it appealing to an older-than-10 audience.

Each star has his moments, and the supporting cast is good, especially Walken, playing one of his less extreme characters; Jane Seymour as his promiscuous wife; and the stunning Rachel McAdams as their daughter and Wilson's love interest.

Much of the film is funny and alive.

Salles tends to explain rather than suggest, but he connects with the anguish and abandonment to give this ghost story an emotionally haunting core.

It's done with an agreeable confidence and flair, the actors all fit comfortably in their roles and the effects are fun.

The Beautiful Country has an epic bearing, but a trite and troubled script makes it more a visual tirade than an engaging odyssey.

As a sports documentary, Murderball is tame and uninvolving. It does however, offer a hard-edged and unsentimental portrait of strong-willed people.

Feels like the effort of a tired artist reworking the same themes.

The hit-and-run destructiveness of the rapacious media is nothing new, but Cordero gives his cynical take a unique setting and a queasy climax.

It's an abysmal movie.

It's a film that, by its complexity of character and mastery of tone, surpasses the original it was intended to honor.

This gory, ghoulishly funny horror goof is shameless fun in its own right.

Jia's compassion for the drifting souls struggling to create a life for themselves in such a transitory existence makes the metaphor resonant.

It's impossible to praise too highly the verve, skill and authenticity with which Spielberg brings off his alien invasion.

A film more textural than narrative, it's for viewers willing to lose themselves in a truly sensual jungle experience.

Sadly, it's a disappointment. Nicole Kidman could hardly be more enchanting in the lead, but the script is one of writer-director Nora Ephron's weakest.

The social commentary isn't subtle, but Romero delivers the goods so effectively that many won't even notice.

Although entertaining, Rize is a somewhat duplicitous undertaking.

From the floating particles of dirt that open the film to the final image of a man and woman on a beach, Yes insists that we live with our mistakes since there is no escaping them.

The director's tenacity has resulted in a breathtaking as well as heartbreaking adventure of life and death.

This coming-of-age tale is ultimately about self, not sex.

The script is as sloppy as Song's unkempt cop, sprinkled with intriguing ideas and imaginative details that, like the investigation, simply get lost in blind alleys.

The exception is Matt Dillon, who goes all-out to be arrogant and despicable. Indeed, building on his scary performance earlier this year in "Crash," he's shaping up to be quite the movie villain: definitely someone you love to hate.

Even though the supporting cast is likable and the film hits all the beats of its formula, it's weak, as if everyone has been to the well one too many times.

Themes at the heart of Heights of despair among the beautiful people are a bore.

A playfully offbeat, willfully wide-eyed tale of lonely, inarticulate people looking for connection in a disconnected world.

Pawlikowski has made a gorgeously ambiguous film -- based upon a novel by Helen Cross -- that is blessedly hard to tag; in fact, it's a compilation of genres and moods -- comedy, romance and diabolical thriller -- and that is its core strength and freshness.

Autobiographical or not, the frankness and family hysteria of this rolling therapy session gets awkwardly intimate and at times tough to endure, as much for its raw candor as for its confessional contrivance. Too bad the revelations of past mistakes are more interesting than the story played out screen.

Peter Riegert's is a labor of love film where you feel love much stronger than you feel the film.

Technically, the film is consistently impressive. It creates a grimly gothic vision of a crime-ridden and depression-ravaged Gotham City, a dandy pair of chase sequences involving the new generation Batmobile and a range of innovative visual effects.

It may be emblematic of new-millennium Hollywood that this movie has turned out to be one more emotionless, brainless, overproduced action film.

This harmless but mediocre enterprise was doomed to failure from the start. Hollywood magic can do a lot, but it can't raise the dead.

This film is satisfied merely to wallow in women in peril, cinematic sadism and the spectacle of violent death and dismemberment.