This odd collection of oddballs doesn't quite play out as a satisfying movie.

Like most films in this underdog genre, the emotional manipulation of the audience is constant and obvious.

Artistically uneven, emotionally strained but at times sullenly poetic depiction of a sexually confused love pentangle.

Affleck gets the tribalism of Boston's traditionally Irish-American enclaves; it's a defining force in his character's lives. But for all their well-played grit, those characters resolutely remain types, and for all the well-choreographed action, the outcome doesn't matter nearly as much as it should.

Although wholly predictable in its every beat and featuring bland, unremarkable WASPs as romantic leads, "Life" is not without its charms.

As a thriller, The Debt performs many if not all the right moves. Where the John Madden-directed film gets into trouble is in wanting to deal with the Holocaust without being entirely a period film.

Shot in actual 3D rather than being the latest example of the horrible post-shooting conversion process, "Afterlife" undeniably looks terrific.

A feel-good flick about a serial killer who just wants what's best for her daughter. Broad and not too spicy, the London-set Indian rom-com is a crowd-pleaser.

Contains enough fascinating archival footage to make it worthy of interest.

The drive to keep alive the name of a young American woman who died beneath a U.S.-made bulldozer driven by an Israeli soldier in Palestine continues in Simone Bitton's sober documentary Rachel.

The film does achieve moments of catharsis, but it can be heavy going.

The simple but affecting film begins a weeklong award-qualifying run Friday before opening in stateside art houses Jan. 21, and is worth a look for its gutsy and commanding central performance.

The movie boils down to one character, acting under enormous pressures of space and time, racing to solve a mystery. In this case, that may be good enough.

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

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

Though it takes some time to sort out the large cast, the leads, all fine actors, eventually come into focus. As the good and bad samurai, Yakusho and Ichimura have the gravitas to take their roles seriously and perform a decisive one-on-one sword fight straight.

Taylor does capture the Jim Crow era and its anxieties well, but his characters tend toward the facile and his white heroine is too idealized.

After quite a few tedious detours and distractions, when the film finally gets down to the business of a climax at a gathering of elite European diplomats in a precariously perched Swiss mountain castle, it becomes not half-bad.

The three most important things in movies are story, story, story so the movie never comes off as the considerable achievement it truly is.

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

Director Morgan Neville does an adequate job in retracing the explosion of singer-songwriter talent out of West Hollywood's legendary Troubadour club, but makes a bad choice by starting now, not then.

A mildly diverting naughty comedy, lacking the pure comic nastiness of "Bad Santa" or the sheer audacity of "Up in Smoke."

More than the film that surrounds him, Jack Black is worth the price of admission in Bernie, an oddball May-December true life crime story that would have profited from being a whole lot darker and full-bodied than it is.

Red State is cleverly contrarian enough to get a rise out of almost any audience.

The first-rate cast cannot be faulted. Chandor has assembled an extraordinary ensemble.

Mild vulgarity and discreet nudity garner the sought-after R rating, but this effort feels forced. The real "bad" here is the sheer formulaic nature of everything. There are no surprises but for once you don't much mind.

Rodrigo Garcia's film only intermittently surmounts the limitations of the central character's parched emotional existence and restricted horizons, and the resolutions to some principal dramatic lines seem rather too easy.

The film is fresh and funny, but it is also meandering, at times vague and defiantly uncommercial.