Mixing soap-opera melodramatics with pithy one-liners, the film never achieves a coherent tone, with the uneven performances by the ensemble adding to the problem.

Even with all its ups and downs, there are more than enough bawdy laughs and truthful emotional moments to put this over as a mainstream audience pleaser during a holiday season short on good comedies.

A cast of young actors is uniformly strong, as is Lance Gewer's photography.

Some thrillers are described as taut. Talaash isn't taut, but loose and messy, the better to allow life's jagged edges to disturb the muscular, controlled world that its protagonist, Surjan "Suri" Shekhawat, has created for himself. When those inevitable cracks appear in Suri's world, the film grabs on tight and doesn't let go.

The comedy just isn't that funny and the enterprise never finds an exact tone.

Remakes of '80s-era cult-favorite horror flicks seem to be all the rage these days. But they have to be better than this formulaic effort to replace the already not-so-great originals.

It's problematic, however, that we learn very little here that wasn't more stirringly conveyed in the earlier film. In its mesmerizing, propulsive drive, "Tarnation" was a heartfelt scramble to make sense of messy lives. Walk Away Renee is an occasionally illuminating patchwork.

There is surprisingly little emotional resonance with the well-drawn and acted characters, making it a tiring two and a half hour trek for filmgoers who don't have a stake in the history it recounts.

A small but scrappy road-tripper whose solid sense of place and sure-handed blend of poignancy and unsentimental humor should earn it fans on the arthouse circuit.

Say what you will about the confused narrative, blatant borrowings and wildly over-the-top gory violence of Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning -- at least you can see what the hell is going on.

While the idea of a German romantic comedy may seem like an oxymoron, What a Man proves an amiable diversion that at least has the distinction of not starring Katherine Heigl or Kate Hudson.

Tonally, Deadfall seems to be aiming somewhere between Sam Raimi's "A Simple Plan" and the brilliant Pine Barrens episode of "The Sopranos," with a classic Western showdown at its climax. But the pedestrian writing holds it back.

The romantic dilemmas suffered by these twentysomethings may be universal, but their naive attempts to address them are hard to buy.

Frequently slaughtered for consumption in Europe, their inhumane treatment as revealed here will surely prompt outrage among animal lovers as well as those concerned with health and environmental issues.

Unfortunately, the Collector simply isn't a very interesting screen villain. Clad in a black mask that reveals only his eyes and mouth, he mainly communicates by heavy breathing. It makes one yearn for the perversely witty chatter of Jigsaw.

Sadly, this film's POV conceit -- in which all scenes are shot by the characters, whether they have a plausible reason to hold the camera up or not -- quickly becomes as grating as Kelly herself.

Aggressively quirky but lacking any real wit - unless you consider a lengthy monologue about the taste of semen to be side-splittingly funny - the film based on David Gilbert's satirical novel is a non-starter.

The film never achieves any real depth in its unabashedly admiring portrait. What might have made a mildly interesting short feels vastly attenuated even with its brief 72-minute running time.

A very sympathetic turn by Colm Meaney both lends box-office appeal and helps Byrne pull back from the saccharine possibilities inherent in the premise.

If the dreary Mystical Laws was designed by its creating organization as some sort of recruitment tool, then they clearly have a lot to learn from the Scientologists.

The film's power steadily and relentlessly builds over its long course, to a point that is terrifically imposing and unshakable.

One of rock's underheralded pioneers gets his due in Beware of Mr. Baker, an affectionate but unfawning portrait that finds the drummer of Cream still keeping the beat despite hardships both institutional and self-inflicted (heavy on the latter).

Thorny, blood-boiling and finely made.

The minor-key film benefits from Robert Carlyle's soulful performance in the central role, bouncing back and forth between dulled resignation and self-destructive anger.

This is a good premise for a comedy, but somewhere along the way, it got diluted and turned into a sappy, feel-good story of family togetherness.

Few true-life stories are as inspiring as that of Darko Kralj, the subject of Dejan Acimovic's new documentary The King.

The only film ever to be released with the promise of a reward--$50,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the bomber--Who Bombed Judi Bari? is an engrossing account of the case.

Ra'anan Alexandroricz's documentary uses a simple framework - a starkly photographed series of interviews with nine retired judges and lawyers instrumental in administering the often arbitrary laws - to deliver a provocative examination of the nature of justice.