Every so often, you get the gift of watching an under-the-radar actor bloom into a critical-mass phenomenon before your bloodshot eyes: Franka Potente in "Run Lola Run," or Christoph Waltz in "Inglourious Basterds." Add Noomi Rapace to the list; what she does with the title character of this Swedish thriller-cum-pop-lit-adaptation will spawn cults of swooning Rapacephiles stat.

When Stiller indulges in moments of unfulfilled rage, this has real desperation.

The 20-year-old Hubble Space Telescope--whose repair mission is the subject of this chronicle--turns out to be a bit of a stage hog, and audiences expecting a blissout of swirling galaxies will wonder why so much time is spent on astronauts sweating over screws and bolts.

Mark Young’s bargain-basement thriller is as witless as the captor’s motive; to paraphrase another well-dressed Madsen psycho, this little doggie barks, but it has no bite.

The filmmaker strikes gold in her varied selection of defectors, especially the military man fed up with the myopic chain of command.

This is Young in his playroom, grabbing his toys at random while indulging his every antimelodic whim, and Demme’s off-the-cuff approach makes for the perfect aesthetic complement.

There's lots of volume in these tunes--the soundtrack is killer--and at least everyone gets their rocks off.

Almost as an afterthought to the ringingly true performances--and Marco Bellocchio’s unusually approachable direction--comes a deft analysis of fascism, likened to lovesickness, insanity and a gust of orchestral strings. It’s all of that and more, not to mention a lousy matchmaker.

Writer-director Minos Papas channels both David Lynch and Dante’s "Inferno," but Shutterbug lacks the poetry--or precision--of a true phantasmic freak-out.

Thankfully, the actor-director prepares this potential recipe for hokeyness with all-natural ingredients, casting four of the feistiest biddies he could find, who are all the more endearing for being unadorned.

Bong is so concerned with whodunit that his creaky genre mechanics diminish Kim's determined performance.

Not since a Nam-scarred Sly Stallone asked, "Do we get to win this time?" in "Rambo: First Blood Part II" has an American action star been deployed to rewrite history so thoroughly.

When you have an actor as suggestive as Kazan, swallowing up the lens with allure and complexity, your writer-director becomes superfluous.

you sense that "The Hangover" loomed large over this production. Still, Eve has a true flair for zingers, and the movie’s heart survives intact.

Aside from an uncomfortable-looking Carlos Mencia, who seems to actively cower before the camera, the cast is robotically efficient--though that’s not the same thing as coming out of this lifeless mess unscathed.

Bless you, R.Patz & Co., because this gloriously steaming pile is officially in the bad-movies-we-love pantheon.

Stolen’s major flaws result from writer Glenn Taranto’s screenplay, which keeps piling on plot twists at the expense of anything resembling character development.

Though it’s divided into three chapters--“Voices,” “Recollections” and “Innocence”--the film takes a largely free-form look at a dying community that’s more reminiscent of Frederick Wiseman’s nonfiction case studies than the usual sociopolitical hand-wringing.

Like the big-budget thriller “Green Zone,” which is also opening this week, Kristian Fraga’s documentary catapults us back to the chaos of Iraq circa 2003. But instead of action figure Matt Damon, we get garish, staccato images and hard-bitten voiceover from First Lieutenant Mike Scotti.

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.

Children of Invention seems furiously scribbled in shorthand, undermining what it has to offer in contemporary resonance.

Unlike Carroll’s perversely idealized protagonist, Burton’s Alice is just another anachronistic feminist tearing down Victorian patriarchal norms. Even her—[shudder]—Avril Lavigne–blared theme song is a skin-deep grrrl-power accessory.

Antoine Fuqua’s second-rate retread of his own "Training Day" is a bloated, multithread drama concerning three burnt-out cops at the end of their seemingly unconnected ropes.

The movie isn’t quite suitable for the extremely young, but its apocalyptic tint may be catnip for smart preteens. They’ll breathe in the chilly air of a mysterious forest--the way forests should be.

It’s impossible to believe these three clashing personalities would put up with one another for whatever loose change they could split as Washington Square Park buskers. You’re better off giving your money to a real street performer.

Still a mystery: Harlan’s own sense of guilt. But there’s plenty to go around.

Desperation oozes from every frame of Cop Out, which front-loads its best joke -- then spends the rest of its running time endlessly spinning its wheels.

Unlike Romero’s film, what’s missing is a trenchant sense of connection to our historical moment.

Why do we care? Because never before have the steps to thugdom, as depressing as that destination may be, been so rigorously detailed, neither romanticized nor negated. Don’t miss.

Despite the unsubtlety of the movie’s stance, a dizzyingly complex portrait emerges: that of pissed-off museum neighbors, arrogant critics and even the NAACP’s dignified Julian Bond, articulating a racial component.

The dialogue is blandly speechified and the film’s pro-Taiwan agenda seems to have taken precedence over our enjoyment.

Instead of pushing deeper into any psychological dilemmas, this dirty-laundry doc gets lost in a sensationalistic flurry driven by a serious emotional unraveling.

It’s a shame that Toe to Toe adheres so stridently to Indiewood clichés.

Even though the Bello-Hurt thread is unconvincingly brought up to date at the end, this inside-out movie gets good mileage out of letting us watch characters watch each other.

Geraghty’s performance is harrowing: Clinging to the phone and tortured by his ecstasy, he weaves empathy out of a flawed loner’s dysfunctional fetish.

Shutter Island is slumming: minor but enjoyably nuts.

You can’t deny the inspirational qualities of the story or Parker’s screen presence, any more than you could accuse the film of subtlety or of masking its conspicuous pro-Christian agenda.

Polanski has made a genre piece with a verve and vitality that’s in sadly short supply.

Such passé testosterone worship might have been passable if the filmmaking weren’t so amateurish--every emotional exchange is accompanied by insipid, high-volume pop songs--and the film’s self-satisfied chest-thumping didn’t extend to its creator as well.

This film will make you cry tears. They won’t be happy ones.

Offers not just a rare portrait of urban septuagenarians, but one without a hint of dewy-eyed nostalgia.

Kleine forgoes good-old-days nostalgia in an effort to examine a generation that braved the new America sans a rule book. But it’s the central mystery of Cindy’s own life--did Phyllis ever love Harold?--that turns this sociological examination into something profoundly personal.

Sly and suggestive, Lourdes is a cosmic black comedy that bumps up against the metaphysical.

Speed can be a virtue, but there’s something extremely off-putting about the way The Wolfman, Universal’s latest horror classic redux, races through its opening scenes.

Mirthless, episodic fantasy saga.

The surprising thing here is how smoothly this over-iced cake goes down.

Jersey Shore may be the hyped example of trashy onscreen “reality,” but this portrait of an upstate working-poor family forsakes guilty-pleasure exploitation and simply wows you in every other way.

Stunning, eerily atmospheric.

Roberta Torre’s debut takes true incidents from the Mafia wars that plagued Palermo in the late ’80s and kicks them into a deliriously gaudy farce.

His own worst enemy, Finkelstein has both trouble and tragic writ large on his brow.

"Chocolat" director Lasse Hallström’s tastefully old-fashioned melodrama has exactly one objective: yanking gallons of cathartic tears out of your face by any means necessary.

Somewhat underwhelming sequel.

John Travolta breaks the braggadocio meter in the latest tightly wound actioner from "Taken’s" Pierre Morel.

Better to defrost "Alive" or "The Edge" from the video icebox.

The film is vigorous exercise for those who prefer their mysteries knowing and knotty.

Call it "Brokeback Talmud"--not just for its taboo-busting depiction of a gay affair between Orthodox Israelis, but because it adopts Ang Lee’s slow-burn seriousness almost to a fault.

Sontag’s true talent was for the printed word; behind the camera, her limitations come more harshly to light. Upon Promised Land’s release, she recounted her experiences in Vogue--an all-too-appropriate forum since her film is mostly chic posturing.

Ajami is Israel’s submission to the Oscars, and like the gritty "City of God" before it, it takes harrowing, tricky circumstances and illuminates them with Scorsesian snap.

There’s no room for such soul-searching uncertainty with Gibson. After a few rapidly ticked-off minutes of gloom, the mission is clear: Get the sons of bitches, and make ’em pay.

Keep your coin far away from this toxic fountain of crap.

All the retroactively enlightened symbolism gets monotonous, and reaches an absurd apex with the introduction of a party-line newspaperman played by that scowling emblem of Teutonic depravity, Ulrich Tukur.

Initially succeeds at accounting for the formation of this unlikely family unit, but as the subject’s life starts to unravel, cut-rate cable TV techniques (trifling montages, an overactive string score) deaden the full impact of her crisis.

Though the credits include an impressive roster of names, this low-stakes poker hand feels like an undiscovered relic from the early ’90s, and that’s not a good thing.

Playing smarter and smoother than the plot, Cisneros uncorks an antimacho performance that deviates from type. His unconventional hero is worthy of a more original treatment.

Strangely enough, our knowledge of what’s to come makes Word Is Out that much more affecting, because it shows that there were—and are—pockets of peace amid the brutality of an ongoing civil-rights struggle.

Too on-the-nose to resonate past the end credits, this slickly produced film still deserves praise for being progressive-minded, as Tarek isn’t a hateful man but a product of his circumstances who is only trying to help his family. It’s frustrating to see such a humane movie suffer from oversimplification.

Still Bill gives the onetime R&B superstar ample space to air his tough yet warmhearted worldview, and to demonstrate its daily application.

Often resembles a prime John Carpenter thriller--call it "Assault on Manger 13"--until an overcaffeinated angel-fu climax significantly lowers the intelligence quotient.

There are sparks here that suggest the smarter movie a more scientifically minded director--say, David Cronenberg--might have made.

Sadly, “Get out of my lab!” is not the new “Get off my plane!”

For those of us who’ve been fans of Dequenne since her role as a blanc-trash Belgian waif in "Rosetta" (1999), her subtle portrayal of the pathological perpetrator proves that she’s monumentally talented.

Medina is simply content to let the film’s sub-Jarmusch vignettes slow-fizzle to their finishes.

Even if you’ve seen this footage of the sit-ins at Southern diners, the Selma-to-Montgomery marches and Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral before, you can’t help but be moved to your core.

Hollow as a cavity.

So while his live-action scenes leave much to be desired, Khrzhanovsky fills the margins of A Room and a Half with glorious doodles: yawning cats penning love letters to former flings; spectral violins floating high above the city; spiky silhouettes pouring out of a truck to bring violence to the ghetto.

If you’re not already a member of the “Johnny’s Angels” fan club, you might wonder why other equally outrageous athletes weren’t bestowed with their own cinematic tributes.

For a few brief moments, the film becomes something close to Greek mythology, as opposed to graphic-novel imitator. What a feeling!

The little action here will disappoint fans; it’s way too choppy.

The cast to die for is almost entirely wasted in this machismo-marinated slab of Brit-crime nastiness.

A grimy kitchen-sink melodrama with an Ajax cleanser script: The muck is all surface, the turmoil cleanly shallow and contrived, though never less than gripping.

A darkly stylish horror film.

Why, pray tell, do we not get a four-year break between generic, charmless and sexist rom-coms like this on our side of the pond?

It’s a kick to see Cera cut loose from his patented befuddled-nerd routine, even if the film’s caricatured performances and fish-in-a-barrel scorn are sure to be monotonous for some.

This reverential, sentimental and occasionally bittersweet film only erratically illuminates his (Eric Kandel) ideas. Rather, Petra Seeger prefers to honor Kandel’s boyhood remembrances as a Jew in Nazi-era Vienna.

The film spends too much time following a Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land, limiting most of the substantive material to the last act.

Credit Broderick and the cast for putting across the fey Indiewood bullcrap with committed, nearly convincing effort.

The White Ribbon comes dangerously--wonderfully?--close to playing like an evil-kid flick.

To her credit, Howard’s performance as a class-obsessed Southerner is decent enough to keep things from completely devolving to community-college level. But such weak work needs strong hands all around to guide it, and one pair isn’t enough.

Na keeps pulling the rug out from under us, and his brawny genre exercise doubles nicely as a scream of social anguish, since most of the twisted screwups occur at the hands of bumbling or corrupt cops.

This is the ultimate sin of the film, generically helmed by lad-auteur Guy Ritchie: Logic seems to be thrown out the window in order to make room for clashes on a partially completed Tower Bridge. It’s way too elementary.

It’s bad enough that Nancy Meyer’s latest conventional romcom is blessed with a title so bluntly unimaginative as to seem facetious; the rub is that it’s not even a truthful assessment.

The real drama in Parnassus comes from the troupe of sideshow performers, led by a terrifically morbid Christopher Plummer.

This colorful, cranium-bursting film isn’t about one specific tale so much as the endless ways you can present narratives; it’s nothing less than a kitchen-sink deconstruction on the art of storytelling.

Shockingly dull.

Blending CGI and live action, this “squeakquel” to the witless 2007 kids’ film proves just how dangerous such technology is when placed in the wrong hands.

While the movie isn't "Witness," you know that comic scenes of target practice are going to make sense around the bend.

The question lingers as the movie comes to its triumphant body-swapping close: Is this a pro-environment parable or a prophecy of virtual realities yet to come? Cameron's new world may very well be a verdant Matrix.

Let’s not dance around it: Nine--is a dud.