The movie ends just when complications start to set in, which makes you wonder how invested Allen really is in the little melodramas within this comedy.

Hoffman emerges as a confident film director with visual flair and, no surprise, a remarkable ability to maximize his fellow actors' work.

A high school romp that turns a stale genre upside down with sly wit and sharp satire.

Abounding in dumb jokes that kids are bound to like but sometimes too scary for very young viewers, the movie -- also going out in 2D -- takes too long to find its footing and at best is proficient, not exhilarating.

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.

Jaw-dropping and surprisingly kind-hearted considering the circumstances.

Expertly acted, impeccably photographed, intelligently written, even intermittently touching, the film is also too parched and ponderous to connect with a large audience.

Bran Nue Dae has so much feel-good fizz that you can almost overlook its rickety construction. But not quite.

The production is over-stuffed with cutesy split screens, jarring dream sequences and a pushy score by Bright Eyes band members Nathaniel Walcott and Mike Mogis that succeed in dragging the proceedings from merely cloying to increasingly annoying.

This sporadically engrossing mockumentary, which gets better as it rolls along, must have been planned way back before Phoenix bombed on "Late Show With David Letterman."

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

Landing somewhere between a generational comedy and soap opera, the film is forgettable fun.

It's a safe bet that exposure to the film should cause audiences to make room on their iPods for some serious downloading.

The audience it manages to reach will find it as vicerally satisfying as a doc on this subject can be.

Director Jean-Francois Richet shows a career in crime with pulse-pounding moments of pure cinema, then lets you decide what to make of this homicidal sociopath.

Going the Distance is, in a way, a remarkable film: It's hard to imagine any romantic comedy going wrong in so many different ways.

The ensemble cast -- ranging from an Oscar winner (De Niro) and faded action star (Seagal) to a B-movie vet (Fahey) and tabloid fodder (Lindsay Lohan, not exactly playing against type as a drugged-out, hell-raising sexpot) -- pretty much offers something for everybody.

Among the girls, Emma Roberts has solid scenes with Rockwell.

Zhang Yimou's remake of the Coen brothers' "Blood Simple" as a Chinese period thriller-farce in a desert setting. A high-rolling but garish production with untranslatable regional ribald humor, it is aimed squarely at the China market.

Admirably resourceful, Prince of Broadway thrives in that increasingly fertile stylistic niche combining documentary and narrative aesthetics.

International audiences will be confronted by a rather predictable and highly implausible road movie that strains to achieve too many agendas.

The film is always engaging, from the boyish horseplay of the young innocents to the bravado shown in multiple encounters to the involvement of the revered king in exile to the final toll taken by the increasingly ruthless Nazis.

Nothing really adds up, and the ending is downright absurd. You would like even the most austere, doctrinaire existential movie to earn its downbeat ending. This one fails utterly to do so.

The stunt work is amazing, and the pace is breathless enough to keep one watching right up to the somewhat ambiguous conclusion.

Part One, at least, is a French "Bonnie and Clyde."

A backwoods psychological thriller delivered faux-documentary-style, with mixed results.

Centurion delivers some large-scale action but plays almost like a Roman-era Western in its depiction of a few soldiers trying to get home alive after the slaughter of their comrades.

The next time you're invited to a French dinner party, you might want to give it a pass, if the tedious proceedings in Change of Plans are any indication.