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.