The gallery of eccentric ex-lovers provides a few yuks, but the fact that the film's trajectory sees going from sexuality-owning independence to conventional respectability as a quantum leap is remarkably depressing, even if Angela's final resolve complicates such an easy progression.

Luisito (Perez) is the only vegetarian butcher working in the Dominican Republic-which may, alas, be the only original aspect of this well-intentioned, well-worn revenge saga.

Impassioned, but wearisomely didactic, diaspora drama.

Interviewing residents from across the spectrum, Neshoba reopens the debate: How was this allowed to happen? How do we move forward? Some questions, this compelling movie reminds us, still require answers.

All of the performances are knockouts, especially The Visitor's Richard Jenkins as a damaged Texas spiritualist who steeps the movie in intimacy.

The film, meanwhile, gives Wahlberg and Ferrell beautiful opportunities to turn their anger-mismanagement-meets-milquetoast act into an absurdist version of Abbott and Costello.

It's a contemporary movie musical that makes you feel genuinely sky-high.

This highly fictionalized look at the Wild West early days of Internet porn is off-putting in almost every way, with sledgehammer stylistic flourishes (incessant shaky-cam; a Rolling Stones musical cue as ironic comment) and dialogue that sounds like it was written in a testosterone-fueled haze.

Very little gets in the way of Lebanon's apocalyptic mood; if it turns its audience even slightly away from barbarism, it might have done its job.

For a movie defined by its restraint, this travelogue is remarkably physical; as a valentine to the rueful desire of grown-ups acquainted with both joy and disappointment, the film is a true rarity.

From the moment Joel Schumacher's dour teens-in-crisis melodrama establishes its group of spoiled (and so, so unloved) Manhattan silver-spooners, you long for anything to leaven the tsk-tsk prurience.

Crisply and efficiently, we're transported to the realm of the kidnapping thriller--and if Brit writer-director J Blakeson knew how to sustain tension for another hour and change, we'd be heralding the next Jonathan "Sexy Beast" Glazer.

There's inherent drama in watching a person amble up a mountain, but it's an act of bad faith to oversell a stunt.

All that's left is to enjoy the ravishing visuals, which range from gorgeously dusky scenes of semidarkness to the sort of smeary neon palettes that Wong Kar-wai has virtually patented.

Adding hot naked men to a predictable narrative doesn't equal titillating or taboo; it just means you've dressed up a messy melodrama

How Göran and his new charge bond (party boy Sven quickly splits) is the stuff of time-tested trite melodrama.

Inspiring if straightforward, the film boasts music that makes for a pleasantly innocuous soundtrack to buying Frappuccinos.

Though the dialogue rings too chirpy ("Gee whiz!") and faintly anachronistic ("Get over it, man!"), the acting is wonderfully subtle, especially John Mahoney's turn as Bryce's grimly clear-eyed grandfather.

You get the "girl," but little else; even as a tribute to one woman's determination, this semibiopic screams botched opportunity

Galella's real crime goes conspicuously unmentioned: feeding the cult of celebrity while stoking a public appetite for empty gossip as news.

This is the kind of autumnal sentimentality that the Academy goes wild for-a (rightly) venerated performer acknowledging his own mortality by pandering to cheap-seat emotions.

The Americanized version reconfigures the plot as both a hazing ritual for corporate-ladder-climbers and a lazy hook to hang cheap jokes on.

Cue those weepy violins. Indeed, you get everything you'd expect from this mostly saccharine melodrama.

The movie you were hoping to avoid.

So it's the story of a down-and-out bigwig vindicating himself by revising his crowning cultural moment. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

Only jackanapes and jackasses would deny that the experience of war can cause psychic damage, but does that mean we have to sit through such a schematic, dogmatic melodrama about the subject?

Simply casting doubts isn't the same as making a compelling counterargument-or crafting a coherent film.

A proper profile of Hefner would start and end with sex, and not merely glance on casualties like Dorothy Stratten (and even the loveless Hef himself). The movie can't seem to get it up.

A tepid rom-com, replete with a nostalgic Bangles tune.

Jolie must eventually become a comic-book supergirl impervious to explosions and bullets, all the better to set up a "Bourne"-like franchise by the final fade-out.

Walker integrates stranger-on-the-street testimony to further her general vibe of ignorance, thus pinpointing the true target of an agitated doc--our own blithe apathy.

Director Christian Carion (Merry Christmas) establishes a low-key yet threatening atmosphere right from the start, and gets terrific performances from Kusturica and Canet.

Life During Wartime slices deeply into its characters' weaknesses.

The film clandestinely captures marauders in action while embedding itself in the imperiled home of aging farmer Michael Campbell. He's not the movie's ad hoc martyr, but something more compelling: a simple man whose fight for personal justice has matured into patriotism.

Filmmaker Victor Nunez pairs evocative locales--beatnik Bay Area, bucolic rural New Mexico--with fleeting asides of poetry (penned by the Santa Fe–based writer Joe Ray Sandoval); these meditative detours both elevate a routine story arc and tap into tangled, twisted familial roots.

One can maintain the energy and patience for donnybrooks and general insanity only so long.

The man himself stares into Davis's lens, both confident and scared; for these moments alone, the movie is key.

Inception, though, is no "Avatar"--instead, it’s the movie that many wanted "Avatar" to be. In a roaringly fast first hour, we’re introduced to a new technology that allows for the bodily invasion of another person’s dreamworld.

No one would claim that director Lance Daly delivers an Emerald Isle version of "The Spirit of the Beehive," though this scrappy film does have a knack for capturing the elation and confusion of late childhood in their ragged glory.

Director Nicolas Winding Refn, the prankster of last year's "Bronson," has never reduced his craft to such a sledgehammer of minimalism. Electric guitars drone on the soundtrack, bones crunch, and a mystical religiosity gathers around One-Eye; there's a midnight cult here for those who yearn for one.

A mess of arrhythmic editing, mopey first-person inserts and distractingly choppy narration, all making a heady topic that much more difficult to follow. To focus or not to focus should have been the first question.

Nature smiles upon Alamar, just as it did on the simple, unfussy charms of "The Black Stallion" some 30 years ago.

Other than the Pottersploitation and presence of current It nerd Baruchel, this fantasy-action-comedy might have been spat out into multiplexes any summer over the previous two decades, yet it would seem like forgettable abracadabra filler regardless of the date.

The setup is pure Looney Tunes, and indeed, Despicable Me is at its best when trading in the anything-for-a-laugh prankery that was a specialty of the Termite Terrace crowd.

The odor of musty, late-’80s nostalgia may still hover around this already threadbare brand, but you simply don’t see movies that leave both the curious and the fans who truly care this viscerally satisfied anymore.

What started as an underground goof ended up becoming a fascinating foul-mouthed curio; though it aims for profundity, Winnebago Man seems destined to suffer the same fate.

Now, with this underwhelming sequel, Spain proves it can stand toe to toe with any nation in the manufacture of unnecessary follow-ups.

Never is the material excited into the kind of playful uncertainty that Rivette all but trademarked; the inertness of the performances robs the movie of spirit.

Never quite shakes its sitcom-ish setup. The director alternates incident-laden storytelling with penetrating character moments that her terrific cast acts to the fullest.

Though play with fire she might, couldn't screenwriter Jonas Frykberg have played with a little button called DELETE? There's no reason why a two-hour movie should feel like three, nor require quite so much fidelity to Larsson's plot curlicues.

Her (Angela Ismailos) heart's in the right place, but her subjects' ruminations demand a much larger canvas.

What’s unique to Beadie Finzi’s debut feature is what it reveals about the financial, physical and emotional costs of talent.

Only "Slumdog Millionaire's" Dev Patel, as the bastard prince of the villainous Fire nation, truly gets jiggy with the fantasy. Everyone else stares off into green-screen space and waits for lunch to be called.

You brace for a certain amount of hand-wringing, lip-biting and pinup posing aimed at middle-schoolers; given the way that Eclipse initially suggests a potential for reaching beyond a preteen audience, you just wish the beefcake and cheese didn’t eventually overshadow its better qualities.

A little more in-depth insight into a person who both produced that song ("Be My Baby") and pulled a trigger might have been nice.

A marvelous thought, credited to Orson Welles: You can handle shit with velvet gloves, but the gloves only get shittier; the shit doesn't get glovier. As wondrous as the regal Helen Mirren can be, it's a sad day when her queenly demeanor gets dunked in doo-doo.

No viewer goes into this movie expecting John Cassavetes's "Husbands," least of all from soft-serve director Denis Dugan (You Don't Mess with the Zohan).

Stripped to a minimum of editorializing (but, like "The Hurt Locker," flush with sympathy), this Afghanistan-shot war documentary takes its cues from the unblinking style of cinema verité.

How perfectly perverse: In a summer crammed with sequels, remakes, '80s nostalgia and the frustrated sense of "What else y'got?" comes the most original nightmare in years.

The aural and visual overload that marks most of the director's work is here in spades--few documentaries look and sound so distinctive.

Alain Resnais's mind-bending new feature.

Watching the first hour of I Was Born, But… (unspooling with a bright, new piano score by Donald Sosin) might remind you of a subdued “Our Gang” skit, and not unpleasantly.

The Law is everything that this season’s lackluster blockbusters are not: a damn good time.

This smug and callous action-comedy is about nothing but teeth.

Clearly, Pixar’s genius for adventurous storytelling continues unabated.

All three of you clamoring for a sequel to "Wild Wild West" have got your wish: Jonah Hex--an adaptation of the DC Comics series about a Western antihero with otherworldly abilities--gives that Fresh Prince–starring disaster from 1999 a run for its wasted money.

Neither Reilly nor Tomei have ever seemed so effortlessly funny, and whoever thought to cast one of Judd Apatow's regulars as a dysfunctional, disturbed manchild should be dubbed a genius.

There’s little of the Church’s perspective in this doc, but you can’t really fault the filmmakers--Mormon leaders refused several overtures to participate. Read more: http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/film/86550/the-mormon-proposition-film-review#ixzz0r2j38wUF

Director Luca Guadagnino is having so much fun setting up the Kubrickian chill (even Barry Lyndon's Marisa Berenson is on hand) that when Emma and the much younger Antonio finally come together in warming Sanremo, their tryst almost sneaks up on you.

While her focus has drifted away from the upper middle class, Jaoui’s sensibility remains rather middlebrow; there’s the distinct feeling that she’s preaching solely, albeit with impressive subtlety, to the same bourgie choir as before.

Wah Do Dem simply mopes along before aimlessly stumbling to a halt.

Nygard’s mildly insipid, occasionally condescending tone makes you long for the bombast of early Michael Moore.

It’s a trial run that puts many of his peers’ masterpieces to shame.

The filmmakers do a good job of laying out the whos, whys and wheres through diagrams, reenactments and testimonials from veterans on both sides of the skirmish.

Alternating between stunning fixed takes and quick you-are-there camera movements, Bill and Turner Ross's portrait of their tiny Ohio hmetown (the title is its zip code) weaves a hypnotic tapestry out of everyday banalities.

Given the dreck we’ve seen this summer, it’s nice to be reminded of the virtues of clean storytelling and cultural curiosity.

Diced into hash, the action sequences are unusually painful: poundingly loud and punctuated by Liam Neeson's bark, Bradley Cooper's manic heehawing and a total lack of clarity.

The opening riot at The Rite of Spring concert sets the scene for an anticlimactic biopic, which could have been sumptuously potent had this dual portrait of artists in love been trimmed…or at least hemmed.

It's easy to think of comics, especially time-tested ones like Rivers, as mechanical laugh-generators. Stern and Sundberg allow her to reveal the deep-rooted humanity of those ever-present quips, and the effect is humbling.

Again, Granik has foregrounded a bold woman, expertly balanced between fearlessness and Ree's own private nervousness.

Focus, instead, on the perks that Nightfall does offer: You still get the criminally underrated Aldo Ray trading hardboiled barbs with Anne Bancroft (“I’m a painter.” “Soup cans or sunsets?”); Brian Keith and Rudy Bond’s giggly good-thug-bad-thug double act; and the joy of watching beefy guys in boxy suits dangle cigarettes off sweaty lips and talk tough.

The first-person sections, however, couldn’t be more clumsy or grating, and every time Diamond’s tone-deaf narration starts repeating the obvious, you can feel an eye-opening history lesson turning into a quirky, orbs-glazing travelogue.

Director Madeleine Sackler favors an agenda of advocacy over complexity, making The Lottery an effective, if unapologetically one-sided, piece of agitprop.

The intention outweighs the execution, though there are still pleasures to be had.

If you’ve seen "Species," you know where this don’t-mess-with-Mother-Nature horror show is going, though director-cowriter Vincenzo Natali has a few interesting twists up his sleeve.

When the movie remembers to be the drug-spiked, hard-R comedy you hope for, it’s more than just a fun romp (and, incidentally, superior to "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," the rom-com from which its Britpop libertine spins off).

With tinkling thriller music and dramatic voiceover narration, this modest but engrossing first-person documentary comes on like a true crime caper.

It's the wooden plotting and cornball sentimentality--and, most unpleasant of all, the full-frontal nudity of Jamie Kennedy--that truly make this AVN-themed fairy tale, ahem, hard to swallow

Documentarian Mark N. Hopkins gives us a mature look at the bracing yet very human personalities attracted to crisis.

It’s truly a milquetoast Scooby Snack for pet-friendly families who thrill to computer-generated mouth movements on real-life four-legged critters.

Like the vampires that cavort throughout it, this horror-comedy doesn’t have much chance of surviving the harsh light of scrutiny--but as a loopy, antiserious lark, it should prove plenty alive on the midnight-movie circuit.

So even though the science fair was something your other classmates did while you mastered Pitfall!, the sights in Whiz Kids will no doubt stir you.

Through all the fuzzy science, Merola sees a savior; you’ll see a dull editorial masquerading as objective reporting.

Convention plays like 11 cameras in search of drama.

It’s a neurotic treatise that simply adds to our cultural dementia instead of illuminating it.

Kutcher is surprisingly anticharismatic as a star. A smarmy grin and looking good while shirtless does not equal screen presence, dude.

A Jerry Bruckheimer–produced video-game adaptation--it has to be good, doesn’t it? (Ya, sarcasm.)

The tone this time out is primarily comic.