Well-told and charming, debuting writer-helmer Georgia Lee's comedy-drama Red Doors is big on heart but never sappy. Without overdoing the quirk factor or the melodrama, Lee shows a sure feel for family dynamics, and her light touch brings out the best in the ensemble's lovely, understated performances.

Filmmaker Trapero, a proponent of the New Argentine Cinema, employs a minimalist naturalism to tell what is obviously a very personal story that, at the same time, is certain to elicit widespread sighs of familiarity.

The 2006 summer movie season went out with a reasonable bang courtesy of Crank, a jacked-up, unapologetically mindless bit of ADD-prescribed escapism that more or less delivers on a nifty premise.

While director-screenwriter Preston A. Whitmore II's film is to be admired for its proponing the values of a higher education over the dream of a career in the NBA, its dialogue, characterizations and situations rarely transcend the level of cliche.

Unlikely to inspire a passionate following similar to the original, the film, which opened Friday without being screened for the press, ultimately induces more titters than dread.

A heartwarming and moving adventure that does excellent justice to the classic character.

Particularly adept at chronicling the vague existential aimlessness of a segment of postcollege young adults, Bujalski manages to make his subjects seem simultaneously articulate and socially dunderheaded.

Turning away from his highly entertaining epics "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers," Zhang Yimou goes for utter simplicity in Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, a film of much distilled wit and wisdom.

Dick's strongest points are that these raters receive no training and are given no standards by which to judge movies. Experts in child psychology or media or social studies are not consulted. Nor are they allowed on the board. The days of counting F-words or pelvic thrusts need to end, and in the film's quieter moments, Dick makes this case compellingly.

Although the film occasionally become repetitive, one can't help but be moved by the way in which these two groups of people -- who couldn't be more different in terms of background and orientation -- have found a common emotional ground.

Idiocracy, is often stingingly funny -- and an undeserving resident of the summer's-end movie dumping ground.

While there is invariably repetition and drag in [the film], it also bursts with compelling detail and extraordinary insight into an enigmatic figure about whom we come away more or less enlightened.

Beerfest is tedious and, at 112 minutes, too long to sustain a sophomoric, one-joke comedy even for the presumed target audience of older male teens and the college-age crowd.

An entertaining mess. It blends together musical styles and dances, historical periods with howling anachronisms, coy, almost childish gimmicks with R-rated sex and violence.

Boys will be happy at the mild grossness; parents will tolerate anything that entertains their hyperkinetic boys; and sisters will agree with the film's lone girl.

A neatly packaged Walt Disney Co. picture with bone-crunching football action; a nice sense of the blue-collar, male-dominated milieu that nourishes football fanaticism; and a few too many tugs at the heartstrings.

This ludicrously plotted drama of incestuous sexual abuse is only partially redeemed by its strong performances.

It's the kind of sprawling ensemble piece that screams out for a Pedro Almodovar, but in the absence of an Almodovar it simply screams out -- in persistent, tedious intervals.

While the film is made in English by a mostly Greek crew, Buzz"seems geared to foreign audiences. The film's "historians" spend too much time explaining things about Hollywood that are common knowledge to many Americans.

Rather than being self-indulgent or pretentious, however, the film comes up with many believable details and changes in direction that enrich the bittersweet central relationship of the two leads.

Fierce and tragic tale of lost hope.

While the director-screenwriter clearly has a sensitive affinity for his characters, his film lacks narrative momentum and fresh observations.

This is a coolly efficient, tongue-in-cheek horror-comedy.

After a very funny start, there just isn't enough content to fill the feature-length curriculum.

Outstanding production values and mysterious subject matter give the film a surprisingly opulent feel for an independent Sundance entry.

Even by the low standards of the genre it represents, this female teen comedy represents a new nadir.

Matt Dillon is pitch-perfect as Bukowski's alter ego Hank Chinaski.

A smart, sharply observed, highly affable look at contemporary relationships that finally injects a little life in the stagnating genre.