Olivier Dahan's sprawling portrait of the life of Edith Piaf is the kind of grand, passionate historical drama that no one seems to be able to pull off any more.

A familiar but rewarding little parable.

All told, Knocked Up works more in spite of its low humor than because of it.

You may enjoy this complex, psychologically daring and visually stylish noir, which has been put together by director Bruce Evans ("Kuffs") with few dull moments and virtually none of the black humor you might expect from the premise.

Romance has little to do with the bizarre tale, part true crime and part lonely-hearts drama, of Burt Pugach and Linda Riss. While the now elderly pair may have found some happiness, that absence is heartbreaking.

The story is pure gobbledygook.

A top-flight example of cinematic storytelling, thanks in large part to the unusual narration, spoken in English by David Gulpilil.

As near as I can tell, it's the smallest-scale, lowest-budget, most experimental film Friedkin has ever made, as well as the most thoroughly unpleasant and off-putting -- though it builds a grisly, masochistic fascination as it powers along.

It's an even more tedious storytelling mess, with a plot so muddled it's impossible to accurately describe, generating zero interest in its characters and grinding on for nearly three endless hours.

Under the lingerie model façade beats the heart of a celestial Dr. Phil.

The familiar majesty of the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline is replaced with anticipation and imagination. The sense of hope and wonder is the greater for it, and the sense of promise glows from the screen.

Despite the jumble, Kon's eye-popping, surreal mastery of the Japanese dream is awakening.

A quietly, somberly effective American indie drama.

The result is a cathartic hoot, relishing its own carefully doled out carnage.

A fairly underwhelming experience for man or child -- not so much bad as just more of the same, with little of the original's novelty or freshness.

Too hip to play it straight and too cool to resort to an actual story, Hartley turns the whole rambling spy game into a puzzle box where every certainty is thrown into doubt, every character has a hidden motive, and every clue is contradicted.

A miracle of a movie that is both fairy tale and slice of life.

The resulting hodgepodge has the feel of filmmaking by committee, the look of last-minute reshoots and the whiff of desperation. Not even Braff's cartoonish smirk is distracting enough to hide that.

The mayhem is presented sparingly enough to be suspenseful, some of the sequences are genuinely terrifying and, compared with Hollywood's last zombie movie, the Robert Rodriguez half of "Grindhouse," it's a masterpiece.

In the acting contest that ensues, each star comes off reasonably well, though, surprisingly, Lohan (who had well-publicized emotional problems on the set) wins out over Huffman's comic drunk and Fonda's leathery evocation of her father, Henry, in "On Golden Pond."

While their stories are well worth telling, first-time director Ruskin fails to shape his material into the dynamic film it might have been.

It's the first Hanson movie in a decade that doesn't quite click into place.

There's nothing messy or unkempt about the beautifully, quietly heartbreaking story of unconditional love and emotional sacrifice.

The experience is fun enough that it's sure to be the summer's first blockbuster.

Ultimately less psychological thriller than polemic about the effects of living in an atmosphere of paranoia fed by daily threat-level assessments and round-the-clock TV news-channel coverage of fear-mongering speeches.

Even if you don't like the stories, the filmmakers seem incapable of finding a corner of Paris that is not photogenic.

Sweet and sour and sexy.

Jindabyne is uniquely Australian, dealing with Australian issues, and it boasts a wickedly wry conclusion that -- for everything that has come before -- is karmically just.