Admittedly the book, an elusive, mesmeric work of associated images and ideas, surreal and analytical, would present problems for the most talented of film-makers. But Schlesinger really blows it.

Producer Val Lewton occasionally manages to evoke the wondrous effects achieved by Jacques Tourneur (who made Lewton's name as a producer) in I Walked with a Zombie. The film comes magnificently alive with the burial sequence, and with the zombie-like, white-robed woman roaming through shadowy galleries and shuttered rooms.

And though not all of Lonergan's conceits work on a scene-by-scene basis (an upper-crust womanizer played by Jean Reno skews a bit too close to caricature), the film has a cumulative power-solidified by a devastating opera-house finale-that's staggering. This is frayed-edges filmmaking at its finest.

This is hardly a symphony of terror, but it’s still a solidly composed exercise in suspense.

Carnahan knows his way around an action sequence and delivers moments of bruising brutality with impact. But the hard-boiled patter and attempts to generate pace are clunkier that a .45 Magnum thumping to the floor.

Like its title, Inevitable Defeat is simultaneously gritty and overstuffed, feeling more like the product of first-time screenwriter Michael Starrbury than veteran director George Tillman Jr., though that’s not always for the worse.

As a Stallone vehicle this is sleek, slick and not unexciting, but crassly castrates the David Morrell novel on which it is based.

It's here, in a keenly captured Forest Hills, Queens, land of low-lit bars and manicured lawns, that Roadie soars as a gently comic drama about living the dream - or trying to.

The frustratingly artless He Named Me Malala is but the latest of Guggenheim’s paeans to the global need for education

Steve Tesich's script sometimes smacks of screenwriting classes, but Yates (who worked with Tesich on Breaking Away) easily accommodates these lapses with his unfussy, medium-fast direction. Indeed, he guides his cast around the furniture better than most. The result is an enjoyable entertainment whose box-office failure was thoroughly undeserved.

Derived from assorted Hitchcocks and noir classics, the tortuous storyline of writer-director Dahl's determinedly sordid thriller has its moments, but the whole thing is fatally scuppered by the Kilmer pairing.

Sticking quite happily to the level of parody, it's full of energy, good nature, and the gross-out humour of fairly obvious targets (the tits and bums of a sexploitation trailer; the festering stiff of a TV charity appeal for the dead). The central sketch is an excellent spoof of Enter the Dragon. Great fun for an undemanding night out.

All the way back to "Donnie Darko," Jake Gyllenhaal has had an inchoate sense of evolution about him, a tricky quality that better actors can’t pull off half as well. So it’s hard to say if splitting the star into two doppelgängers — Adam, a mousy college professor, and Anthony, a rising actor with a healthy ego — is the best dramatic plan.

The script starts explaining in embarrassing memory flashes, the echoes of Easy Rider multiply, bits of mysticism and a blind black DJ called Super-Soul are injected, and the woodenness of both direction and Newman's performance becomes increasingly apparent.

For those of us with a love of actorly indulgence, though, the film is a treasure trove, filled with enough molten-gold performances to gild a thousand Oscars.

Wenders' first American movie is no conventional biopic, but a stunningly achieved fiction about the art and mystique of creating fiction.

The second in a proposed self-reflective doc trilogy, director Doug Block's embarrassingly honest follow-up to "51 Birch Street" (2005) is a neurotic, occasionally poignant rumination on his teenage daughter doing just what the title says.

While that mood is ultimately a bit too monotonous to be completely persuasive, a strong cast convincingly captures the many ways in which adulthood proves far more complicated than what's imagined at 18.

When the foot comes off the gas, the cracks become apparent.

The Informer is a film that favours brawn over brains, punching its way through any plot predicaments. A smart hairpin or two would have made it a juicier watch.

The whole film seems dead set against offering up any kind of salaciousness. Like the overly arty "Zoo" and other indie experiments, it misses the point in a disturbing way.

Finely crafted, though, with some marvellous camerawork (Franz Planer), an outstanding performance from Heston, and a vague message about violence predictably underscored by a marathon fist-fight between Peck and Heston. [31 Aug 2005]

The comedy runs out of steam when the jerk makes good, but laugh for laugh it's probably a better investment than "10".

Shallow snapshots don’t diminish the raw emotional potency of this inspiring tale, in which art provides in-need kids with both an escape from daily hardship and a vehicle for restoring confidence in themselves and the future.

Even those that have acquired a taste for Green's rigorous, super-ascetic aesthetic may find this French drama about a starlet (Baldaque) to be almost as bare as it is spare.

It's a sluggish portrait that neither captures nor replicates the dazzle, pacing and polish of an El Bulli meal. Check, please.

Fourth in the series, promisingly reuniting Edwards and Sellers with their respective careers not exactly buoyant since A Shot in the Dark ten years earlier, The Return of the Pink Panther delivers a good deal of that promise, from Richard Williams' ultra-ritzy animated credits to the four or five brilliantly timed set pieces of Clouseau-engineered mayhem.

There are memorable cameos from collaborators (Josh Homme take a bow) and a triumphant coda, but most of all, the rather melancholy sense of a visionary struggling to stay relevant.

The plot is so simple that psychological interest is needed to sustain it, and this would require stronger performances than those Widmark and Monroe give.

Emotionally charged, Last Breath offers a forensic study of cold professionalism in the face of unfolding disaster. It’s deepened, too, by a rich cast of supporting characters, including Lemons’s fiancée in Scotland, the surface crew who recall the fateful night and his teary-eyed dive leader and mentor.

To Cool It's credit and its detriment, the movie establishes that Lomborg quickly made enemies, without spelling out exactly why he's so loathed besides refusing to toe the Green Party line.

Eager to please and easy on the eyes, The Kings of Summer sails right down the middle, safely tacking between sitcom setups and grandiose MGMT-scored montages without forming its own distinctive feel.

Johnson may not quite have Lubitsch's lightness of touch, but he puts an excellent cast through their paces with great verve, and the charm is as potent as ever.

This isn't a film, it's a recording of canned ham-tasty, certainly, but creaky nonetheless.

The film’s conclusion sadly carries the taint of silly schmaltz (‘What kind of magic is this!?’ one character actually says), but like all those non-Disney takes that came before it, this Pan deserves some credit for trying something different.

This is a film equally grounded in realism and empathy, and a reminder that no two people have the same story.

The cheap 'message' of the ending fails to salvage a film that at best is well-meant but misguided, at worst, flashy and garbled.

There's one crucial lesson that Baker hasn't absorbed, however: Don't get too caught up in plotting, especially when it involves a man warming to an unwanted child.

It’s too busy pleasing itself with lame references to (among others) Eddie Vedder and Hillary Clinton that suggest the film believes old stuff is funny because, you know, it’s old.

A film about desire and its control is hardly what one might expect, but then Eastwood has always been Hollywood's most experimental star. And he's still one of the best.

Following up on Paperhouse, Rose stages the suspense and horror with skill and panache, making this one of the best sustained horror movies for some years.

Besides a smattering of good gags, David Webb Peoples' script touches on numerous intriguing questions (notably, what constitutes heroism?) while piling irony upon irony. But while Garcia waxes credibly sincere, Hoffman hams, and Davis simply looks lost: small wonder, given Frears' leaden direction, which contrives to scupper suspense and comedy through sluggish pacing and misguided camera placement.

You sense the Demme-esque working-class comedy that might have been.

On an afternoon as wet as those on the island, the film would pass the time agreeably, nothing more.

Some of it comes off well, and Newman is superb. But the film shows tiresome signs of its origins as a stage play (by Arthur Kopit), and the good moments aren't quite enough to make up for its overall predictability.

Cliché piles on cliché to the strains of a garbled '60s soundtrack, but the movie's ending goes some way to recognising its failure. Fonda is magnificent.

There's the usual array of school stereotypes (the lecher, the stoned surfer, the hustler), a rock score, and endless attention to the rituals of dating and mating. Taken purely on this level, it's a relatively witty example of its kind, with an enjoyable performance from Penn as the stoned surfer, and some good lines. But it lacks the frenzied energy which allowed Porky's to beat all competitors in its field.

Where Loving Vincent imagined the great artist’s world in the style of his paintings, The Peasants lacks that same clear purpose. Instead, it’s an animation that feels like a live-action film in disguise.

There’s still plenty here to make you shiver, but in letting events out of the basement this sequel has also released much of the tension.

By paring down to the bare processes of the pair's work, The Observers creates a haunting sense of people engaged in an otherworldly duty-huddled over incomprehensible charts and dials, they seem like they're busy maintaining the clockwork mechanism of the world itself.

Bluth has rediscovered the ingredients of quality mainstream animation: depth and movement are more in evidence, and the action sequences are expertly staged, notably a harrowing train crash.

The happy surprise, however, is that McKay has seasoned the meat in satisfying ways, salting it with wince-sharp performances and an almost experimental style of editing that creates an apocalyptic whirlwind. For those reasons alone, Vice feels particularly timely.

It’s hard to say if Faith works better as part of a whole instead of a triptych’s single panel until the trilogy is complete, but the unconverted may find this too much of a cross to bear.

Spacek herself is given free rein, and turns in all that you'd expect and more, including a number of marvelous little insights from her own Texas childhood. Something as slight as this could never have got off the ground without her, but she makes you glad it did.

Ocean’s 8 sticks to the formula, though Ross never quite matches the breezy vigour of the Soderbergh-directed trilogy, but the jokes land and there’s a satisfying twist to bring down the curtain.

Leigh does a stellar job of showing how these events seep into the unaware girl's everyday existence - almost all of the film's sequences are photographed in precisely composed, inherently surreal single shots.

This being a François Ozon film, there's beaucoup simmering sexual tension, as well as the prolific French director's usual thematic preoccupations: death and grief, familial animosity and female awakening.

Sluggishly paced, stodgily scripted and curiously edited, it’s not so much a bullet ballet as a creaky dance across an abandoned saloon.

Gil's alternative history gets one thing bang-on right: If Butch were to live into his senior days, he'd absolutely have to be played by Shepard. Wrinkled, leathery and densely carpeted in a salt-and-pepper beard, the 67-year-old playwright and actor still exudes intellectual mischief and hard-stare sex appeal; his self-styled ruggedness is a perfect match for an infamous gringo living incognito.

This is no family-friendly "Peanuts" special.

The one real takeaway here is not that things are tough all over, or that movie stars equate slumming with authenticity; it’s that no actor should be asked to do a sexy dance to Crazy Town’s “Butterfly.” Ever.

Sturges turns in a tired study of Cherman and Oirish accents, and little else.

Delivers Moore’s usual grab bag of ironic kitsch, gotcha clips and infotainment-journalism.

Lane, experiencing her career heyday, is sweet enough to have you rooting for her, even if her journey to the winner's circle is an odds-on favorite.

Harry Dean Stanton provides some much needed humour, but the film's celebratory attitude towards a dangerously wild love that defies logic and convention lacks depth and genuine insights.

A first-person Faustian detective novel presents quite a problem to the screenwriter, and Parker's alterations to William Hjortsberg's Falling Angel slacken the cunning weave of strands.

The near-incomprehensible plot (something about French and American agents trying to find out more about a Russian undercover group, directly involved with Cuba and working within the French security network) might appeal to devotees of Le Carré et al, but it certainly doesn't make for dramatically exciting cinema, especially given Hitchcock's flat, seemingly uninterested direction.

It might be significant as an early independent movie made good, but Poitier got better when he got angrier for In the Heat of the Night four years later.

None of it makes any sense, except within the high-octane logic of blowing stuff up onscreen. And, in case you’re wondering, sometimes that can be entertainment enough: Slack-jawed euphoria shoots like nitro through the film. (Please be careful in the parking lot afterward.)

The film's numerous idiosyncrasies - virtues at the outset - ultimately suffocate it.

The film lacks background and cultural context, a surprising choice considering the rich history of the art form. But the interviewees are so compelling that their stories stand on their own.

Where the movie truly comes into its own is in its boldly framed, heart-wrenching coda.

Slow, a mite predictable, and rather verbose, the film nevertheless has an elegance (thanks to long, sweeping takes) and a poignant romanticism that looks forward to Hitchcock's more pessimistic account of human relationships in Vertigo.

Extract, for all its surface reminders of Judge’s 1999 cult hit, "Office Space" (it’s set around a suburban bottling plant), shows its maker taking the smallest step toward lesser comic matters of infidelity and bong abuse. It feels slightly beneath him. That’s not to say you should skip it.

There’s comfort to be had in executing on such a durable formula, and—life lessons accompanied by Coldplay’s treacly “Fix You” aside—Abominable usually resembles the swift adventure it wants to be.

At the end of the day, it’s not really Hamlet, it’s something new that uses the words from Hamlet. But at its best, it’ll still hit you with all the force of Shakespeare's existential masterpiece.

Given that the entire show and film is dedicated to McGarrigle, you wish this exquisitely made, undeniably moving family album featured even more of the singer herself.

The film’s Antarctic framing device (wait, what?) feels unearned and distracting, regardless of its veracity. But there’s plenty to behold, including a killer Gâteau Saint-Honoré.

The monochrome photography and pseudo-documentary interpolations can't disguise the basic Harold Robbins material, and the good performances (Hoffman and Perrine) stand little chance against Fosse's withering direction: the subject matter needs far defter psychological handling than it gets.

Underwater shots of spherical midsections floating past the camera prove that they understand the beauty of bodies in motion, even if their storytelling feels a little stillborn.

There are sufficient question-marks inserted to lift it out of the routine: Eastwood's preacher man seems to carry the stigmata of a ghost; and he arrives as the answer to a maiden's prayer. Furthermore, his care for the landscape puts him in the Anthony Mann class. It's good to be back in the saddle again.

There’s a whiff of inconsequence to Reitman’s take, fizzy and watchable though it is. It should be about the stealth weaponization of outrage (and of women)—a tragedy that’s leagues more sophisticated that this.

Unfortunately, Kim nearly wrecks the film's observational acuteness with a climax that shamelessly steals from Bob Rafelson's classic blue-collar drama "Five Easy Pieces," and this faux-gut-punch finale feels haphazardly sutured on rather than arrived at organically. Guess that ham-fisted opening shot was a sign of things to come.

It’s weird, in the year 2025, that it seems timely to point out that the Nazis were bad. But Nuremberg, an old-fashioned and satisfyingly complex morality tale in the guise of a courtroom drama and spy thriller, does that job in impressive style.

Taking a page--or rather, several chapters--from the Eastern European art-house playbook, Hungarian filmmaker Kornél Mundruczó works this stock tale into a deliberately paced parable of desire and dread.

A typically lax late-period Ferrara work, far from the glories of "King of New York."

Francophiles understand that Vincent Lindon's presence in any film is a bonus, as few actors know how to translate sad-eyed, macho gruffness into so many different flavors.

This ballad of destruction reveals itself as one of the most exciting, enjoyable and moving of them all.

Incredibly bloated remake, with Mrs Chips an ex-showgirl (allowing for some vacuous songs), a continental holiday (allowing for a travelogue wallow), and Herbert Ross (his first film as director), trying to match Wyler's choreographed camera movements on Funny Girl but failing to make them serve any meaningful purpose.

The story beats are as familiar as they come, and there are a few halfhearted stabs at redeeming Roberts’s clueless character when it would have been better to push her feeble-mindedness to Anna Faris–esque extremes.

It is shamelessly sentimental, and could well send the hardboiled home to kick the cat.

Solid performances lend weight to the flakier elements, with Liotta turning crazed excess into something wild.

The two stars are a pleasure to behold, particularly the genially dizzy Holliday, a telephone answering-service operator who can't help involving herself in the lives and hopes of her clients. And old Mr Nonchalance Martin sidles through his part as a doubting, drunken playwright with his customary charm. But their material just isn't up to the mark.

Maybe because the band enjoyed raves for its daring 2004 psychodrama, Some Kind of Monster, an experimental narrative is shoehorned in, involving a roadie (Dane DeHaan) doing bloody battle in a deserted city. Your heart sinks with every cutaway.

The results of this technological bonanza are pretty mixed.

Watch the director's 1976 "The Tenant," and you'll know he can do more with less.

A brave stab, nevertheless, with a finely executed finale as Peter sets about his ironic salvation.

The film plays like something Boyle could kick out in his sleep, all his supercool devices listlessly deployed in service of a mediocre wet dream.