Mixes comedy and melodrama to a typically baroque degree. Like his "Oldboy" and "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance," the film displays an audacious visual and narrative style, often sacrificing credibility and coherence along the way. But there is no denying its originality.

Aspires to the poetic but falls short because of a lack of dynamism.

Soulful performance by non-pro Pape Sidy Niang as the bicycle-riding police officer Z, gives the film a poetic tone, but cumulative impact is diffused rather than enhanced by the fractured form.

In this deep probe into modern-day medicine, the old guy is shuttled from hospital to hospital in a surreal, horrifying ordeal of errors, missed diagnoses and institutional malaise. At two hours and 34 minutes, we, seemingly, also endure his agony -- part of this Romanian film's power and, also, its Achilles heel.

Three Times offers a careful examination of the changing ways people have reacted to each other during the past 100 years. As such, it's an interesting essay but certainly a minor work from a master.

A film with none of the heart that has characterized Weitz's best work and none of the freshness of his most successful.

A slick enough thriller about a presidential assassination attempt. It is also a rather mechanical, soulless affair that avoids politics or anything else that might clearly define who these characters are and why we should care.

Witless, soulless and joyless, it displays its video game origins throughout.

With Somersault, filmmaker Cate Shortland has expertly served up a vivid and touching tale, one told many times before, but in this well-realized mounting, one that sparkles with fresh awareness.

Sets out to be a baby "Big Chill" but plays out like an unsold Fox pilot.

Provides a treasure trove of outrageous characters, rampant speculation, personal obsessions and a glimpse into the rarefied world of art collecting. Instead of spinning off in so many directions, the film actually pulls together into an engrossing meditation on the value of art in our lives.

The humor emphasizes quantity over quality, but the batting average isn't too bad. And where else can you witness Leslie Nielsen do a nude scene?

The film is a relentlessly loud and ultimately exhausting exercise only partially leavened by the usual heavy doses of wisecracking humor and visual gags.

To pull this kind of thing off you need exceptional performances, and the two leads rise commandingly to the challenge. Wilson, best known for his work in the screen version of "The Phantom of the Opera" and HBO's "Angels in America," keeps his true colors effectively muted throughout the bulk of their face-off, but it is Page who astonishes.

While Gretchen Mol delivers a delightfully exuberant lead performance, the film itself seldom goes beyond skin deep.

The best Australian film to hit local screens in more than a year. Although lacking any internationally renowned actors to win more than limited release, the film's energy and stylistic daring mark it as a true original.

The movie, which opened last week in Seattle and opens Friday in Los Angeles, isn't so much getting a release as an escape. The movie is directed, shot, acted and outfitted with special effects -- such as that guy (Michael Deak) in the monster suit -- so as to make American International horror films of the late '50s and '60s look like sophisticated gems.

The project is not without insights into Hancock's career and musical philosophy and holds moments of inspiration with these stars. Yet the result does feel a bit promotional as the focus is on a particular CD and not on the sum and substance of this keyboard legend's extraordinary career.

It is a grimly exciting film that is picturesque and brutal by turns.

Essentially a telenovela with cinematic pretensions, La Mujer de Mi Hermano (My Brother's Wife) is a vapid slab of soap depicting a love triangle among three remarkably uninteresting characters.

An unconvincing psychosexual drama that tries to reconfigure the classic romantic triangle but winds up looking like a preposterous pretzel.

Lifeless and irredeemably sour. It is difficult to imagine much of an audience embracing it, despite a cast of well-knowns and up-and-comers.

Call this one "Brother Act." Instead of Whoopi Goldberg's Reno lounge singer in "Sister Act," Preaching to the Choir has a hip-hop star hiding out from a gangsta record producer in his estranged brother-minister's Harlem church.

The film is stylish as hell with sharp dialogue, a tongue-in-cheek plot and visual and editing razzle-dazzle.

You have to credit the filmmakers for at least acknowledging their level of dreck during the final credits, when Lovitz rhetorically asks, "This was a complete waste of time, wasn't it?"

The writing is rudimentary and the direction often awkward, but Mo'Nique would confound a veteran director.

Things hold together longer than they would have without Banderas' commanding, committed performance.

A pitch-perfect ensemble comedy that burrows deep into the mind-set of white, upper middle-class Angelenos, anxious to strike the right balance among career, family, love life and money but never quite pulling it off.