By keeping things simple and understated, director Chris Weitz and screenwriter Eric Eason have crafted a little gem where humanity is observed with compassion, not condescension.

Curry and co-editor Matthew Hamachek assemble the wide-ranging material into an informative, compelling story line, although details about McGowan's upbringing and early years in the environmental movement slow the narrative down and some of the footage of McGowan puttering around his sister's apartment proves too mundane to hold much interest.

For all her desk-stashed booze and inappropriately tight skirts, the movie offers Diaz a pretty bland badness.

The film's inability to illuminate the finer points of the rigid form, to define what separates the great from the good, proves frustrating for the outsider.

The result is a stylishly executed but punishing ultra-realistic thriller that might be classified as family torture porn.

The six penguins cast in this amiable family comedy steal the movie -- along with any fish they can find -- although the film's star, Jim Carrey, does manage to hold his own. Barely.

Serves up all the requisite elements with enough self-deprecating humor to suggest it doesn't take itself too seriously.

There's just not enough going on behind actor Freddie Highmore's eyes to convince us this kid's existential angst is real.

Camera stays very, very close to faces, emphasizing their humanity, and by the end of the film you feel you know something about these women.

A quietly captivating portrait of an unlikely character, Buck is as modest as its subject and wins viewers over just as easily.

The movie is fast, funny and light on its feet, dipping less into politics or religion than into cultural quirks and characteristics.

The sort of sweeping romantic saga rarely attempted on our shores these days, Bride Flight should well please art house audiences, especially of older females, starved for this sort of old-fashioned fare.

The project suffers badly from being largely improvised as the pair fall back on familiar impressions and old jokes. Lazy and indulgent, it smacks of being what the British call a "jolly," that is a freebie with no obligation to turn in work afterward.

Driven by its charismatic upstart gangster protagonist Riva, the film is one joyride that knows it will careen into a spectacular crash. Djo Tunda wa Munga captures the particular vibe released by this mixture of carpe diem and self-destructive instinct.

The film is an impressive and affecting entry in the growing body of work addressing the effects of keeping wild animals in captivity.

The Troll Hunter injects inventiveness, folkloric idiosyncrasy and deadpan humor into the overexploited faux-documentary trend. A generous dollop of "Jurassic Park" inspiration doesn't hurt either.

Like an old airplane (or spacecraft) jerry-rigged from scrap pieces and made air-worthy again, Super 8 has been patched together with 30-year-old spare parts to provide an enjoyable ride of its own.

The film wants to put on screen the sense of random play and concentrated games that fill a child's world for a few summers. In this it succeeds, but the film does not welcome others who might still retain memories of those NOT bummer summers.

It took 42 years for filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson to make !Women Art Revolution. The film, about the emerging feminist movement, is comprehensive and vibrant.

Audacious, confident and fueled by youthful energy.

Directing from the nonjudgmental script he wrote with Michael Armbruster, Ku's assured, unadorned documentary style allows his leads ample breathing room to inhabit their devastated characters.

All the movie's playfulness rubs off on the actors. Scenes crackle with life. The chemistry among all the actors is terrific.

The Last Mountain makes a powerful case against the coal mining industry in West Virginia. Films like this are largely preaching to the choir -- opponents are unlikely to go near it. But its importance cannot be underestimated.

Supplied with uniformly vapid dialogue, the characters come off like a bunch of twits.

For anyone with a keen interest in this unique American musical form, Rejoice and Shout is a must-see and see-again.

Writer-director Richard Ayoade's feature debut is witty and quirky, with a gripping performance by Paddy Considine.

This relentlessly quirky tale of a teen-age hermaphrodite displays some creativity on the part of debuting writer/director J.B. Ghuman, Jr. but not enough.

The dissected minutiae of this adultery drama unfortunately doesn't add up to a very original or moving whole.

It all moves along briskly, with a degree of visual grace and a solid feel for 3D.

Manages to deliver more laughs than most of the competition.

While Shearer admittedly makes an impassioned directorial debut, the film plays out like a data-heavy, extended investigative report with an academic emphasis on scientific findings over portraits of human suffering.

Brandishing an ambition it's likely no film, including this one, could entirely fulfill, The Tree of Life is nonetheless a singular work, an impressionistic metaphysical inquiry into mankind's place in the grand scheme of things that releases waves of insights amid its narrative imprecisions.

While Kirkpatrick does a fine job in establishing a gritty inner-city milieu and a collection of more than credible street characters caught up in an endless cycle of crime and violence, his body count reaches the proportions of the worst sort of studio schlock. Going for a shock effect, he instead strains credulity and risks unintended laughs.

This dour, uninspired, Hispanic-themed variation on the profitable "Step Up" dance movies is unlikely to similarly rouse teens.

Occasionally borders on hagiography, but it nonetheless provides wonderful insights into the book's social and literary importance as well as its author's personality.

Captain Jack Sparrow is back in excellent form for his fourth adventure in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which is more serious in the hands of a new director, Rob Marshall, and thanks to Penelope Cruz it's also a good deal sexier.

Darius Khondji's cinematography evokes to the hilt the gorgeously inviting Paris of so many people's imaginations (while conveniently ignoring the rest), and the film has the concision and snappy pace of Allen's best work.

How To Live Forever is less about how to delay or defeat death than a film about what gives life meaning.

Too dark for a very broad audience, it will flummox some viewers drawn by its cast but will strike others with its more-than-prickly approach and standoffish humor.

Chadwick strikes a perfect balance between humor and tragic gravity, and the result is that an unknown story seems certain to stir the hearts of audiences worldwide.

Without Antonio Banderas, The Big Bang would be a whimper of a movie, too awful to watch.

Informative and insightful for films buffs without sacrificing accessibility to the casual fan, "Cameraman" is essential viewing for anyone interested in film history.

The film just doesn't mine enough humor or drama from this situation. Meanwhile most of the developments are wholly predictable.

A short, dour and stodgy creature feature with average 3D effects that draws on so many film influences from westerns, action adventures and sci-fi tales that what fun there is comes from spotting the many sources.

For longtime Wiig fans, this uneven, overlong, emotionally involving and discreetly ambitious film will represent a welcome and overdue step up from her popular sketch work on "Saturday Night Live" to something sustained and searching, not to mention pretty funny.

British writer-director Roland Joffé dips a toe into explosive material - the Spanish Civil War, betrayal, sainthood, Opus Dei - but all these big themes and characters slip from his grasp.

If the degree of laughter at the wrong moments and the number of walkouts at the Toronto International Film Festival are any indication, the film will appeal only to the most fondly indulgent.

Last Night is a sex tease, but that makes it sound more exciting than it ever becomes.

A wedding comedy that grows increasingly unfunny with each passing minute.

A risky bet that pays off solidly, Jodie Foster's much-delayed The Beaver survives its life/art parallels -- thanks to its star, Mel Gibson -- to deliver a hopeful portrait of mental illness that is quirky, serious and sensitive.

A generic blast, Hobo with a Shotgun unspools like a spaghetti western but amped with enough testosterone to fill a video-game warehouse.

Doesn't so much borrow from other movies as settle into a comfort zone of raising provocative questions regarding love, commitment and marriage only to dismiss them with a brush of a hand as so much dandruff.

Film noir is combined with horror to zero effect in Dylan Dog: Dead of Night.

Oscar-nominee John Hawkes' convincing portrayal of real-life "crop artist" Stan Herd is the exceedingly quiet center of an exceedingly nonabrasive film that has all the dramatic energy of plants growing.

The movie has a cheerful good nature and a solid cast of youngsters - including Aimee Teegarden and Thomas McDonell - but any resemblance between this and real high school is, of course, purely coincidental.

One of the most obnoxious and least necessary animated films of the century thus far.

Lebanon, Pa. is a few strong moments of storytelling lost in a sea of indie cliche.

Chris Hemsworth gives a breakout performance as fallen Norse god.

Ultimately, most audiences will be left scratching their heads, wanting to know more about why this man, Hans Rettenberg, does what he does.

Audiences can either fight it, trying to make sense of the shaky plot, or flow along with the film's languid, doomed romance accompanied by the southern poetics of singer-songwriter Tom Russell.

This well-intentioned tween-friendly message movie is earnest to a fault.

Ruffalo gives voice to the film's unironic point of view.

The real key to the documentary's appeal is its writer-director Phil Rosenthal, creator of the long-running CBS sitcom.

To call this movie fascinating is akin to calling the Grand Canyon large.

Big crashes, lithe women and roiling testosterone, not to mention the addition of The Rock as a fire-and-brimstone federal agent – there's plenty to pull in the (mostly) young male audience.

The film is best appreciated as a showcase for the hugely popular titular character, with Perry tearing into the role with hugely entertaining comic gusto.

The generational mix of actors works well enough, although Campbell too often seems stranded with little to do until the climax.

Will please fans of Sara Gruen's best seller, but it lacks the vital spark that would have made the drama truly compelling on the screen.

When all is said and done, their Pulitzer-winning photographs prove more potent than this well-intended but frustratingly generic picture.

So don't tell Spurlock he can't have his cake and eat it too. In Greatest Movie, he gleefully accepts his sponsorships on camera just to show you how wrong this all is.

Although the film runs more than two hours, the story is so compelling and the production so beautifully controlled that we are gripped by the characters' quest right up to the shocking end of the story.

Zokkomon gives Indian youngsters not only their first super hero but, even more tantalizing, he is a young boy "terrorizing" susceptible adults in a small village to the increasingly delight of the town's children.

A gritty, low-key hybrid of horror film and road movie that aptly demonstrates the stylistic flexibility of this undying genre.

Fly Away is an affecting portrait of a single mother and her severely autistic daughter.

The cinematography and editing are as superb as the film's feline stars are photogenic and heroic.

Informative if selective documentary will eventually find its natural home on the History Channel.

Spans four decades of a troubled family with enough gentle pathos and sly humor to compensate for a less than original storyline.

The spotlight illuminates a well-chosen quintet of subjects, all wholesomely passionate practitioners of a readily dissed form of entertainment and each at a different point in their career.

A smart psychological thriller with the one fatal flaw that Slavic women in Italian television and cinema must be dark, tormented characters who hardly ever smile. In a criminal caper with a twist, this actually works against the story.

Haroun is uninterested in big war scenes and is best at evoking the little details of life.

One of the finest costume dramas in a long while.

While the men are Danish, there is a universality to their story and a vitality in the filmmaking that should see the documentary in demand around the world.

The supporting players are either nondescript or overact to the point of exhaustion.

The central battle between fearsomely independent corporate mavericks and hostile big government has been updated in a half-baked, unconvincing way that's exacerbated by button-pushing TV-style direction, threadbare production values and blah performances except for that of Taylor Schilling in the central role.

Voice work across the board is top-notch, with the Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am and Jamie Foxx adding sass to their smooth-talking bird buddies, and comic George Lopez solid as a party-loving toucan named Rafael.

There is little worse in the movie world than a spoof that falls flat on its over-costumed butt, but that's what you get with Your Highness.

In the end, it isn't so much that the New Arthur isn't the Old Arthur. Rather it's the anti-Arthur.

The effectively deglamorized Cattrall is terrific, investing her portrayal with a complex mixture of vulnerability, toughness and still-powerful sexuality.

A realistic slice of pioneer life that offers a disquieting alternative vision of America's most mythic location.

While Malcolm Venville's Henry's Crime is billed as a comedy it's more funny odd than funny ha-ha.

Sporadically funny though less effective at selling its melancholy undercurrents.

A portrait of the short-lived artist that will move fans while letting the uninitiated witness enough onstage highlights to leave them wanting more.

Blank City may not be groundbreaking, but it's vibrant and well researched.

A documentary about autism that's nearly perfect in doing what an advocacy documentary should do: show rather than tell, entertain rather than preach.

Hop delivers plenty of wit, verve and surreal mayhem to entice even the post-adolescent crowd into this jolly (and strangely Christmas-like) Easter egg hunt.

For all its aesthetic deficiencies and self-promotional aspects, it at least provides a valuable and important message.

A true story of courage, determination and guts that deserves a more exciting approach.

The overall enterprise, for all its intrigue and visceral impact, feels overly thought out, affected and forced in its stylization.