Common wisdom suggests bakers are sour because they reserve the sweetness for their work. But these competitors' kindness in the face of adversity-at one point, a well-established chef breaks down in tears while his colleagues comfort him-is what sticks with you the most.

Is Joaquin Phoenix putting us on? After watching the terrifying, near-brilliant exposé I'm Still Here, in which the Oscar nominee's public and private unraveling becomes a sick joke, the question doesn't matter.

The only thing that remains a mystery is why anyone thinks they can pass off a poorly made, predictable-to-a-fault movie as inspiring entertainment.

It ends where you want it to begin.

A worthwhile portrait of a genius who made beautiful music, and a case study for how to tragically, epically self-destruct.

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.

Here's a film that definitely wants to play Hollywood dress-up.

Gould is as much of a mystery at the end as at the beginning. You get the feeling that's the way he'd have wanted it.

There are riveting moments, especially in tastefully shot interviews with former captives, who quietly describe their physical and psychological torture.

Alexei Kaleina and Craig Macneill's proudly minimalist affair favors ambiguity over soap-operatics, evoking the inescapable heartache of a loss so great, it cannot be uttered.

The movie will make you tap your toes; don't expect much for your head or your heartstrings.

It's Gruber's own remembrances (and a wealth of accompanying archival photos and film footage) that best mark her life as a case study in pioneering feminist courage, ambition and individualism.

While the film's interviews with students, parents and educators tend toward the repetitious, the hammering of the same bullet-point ideas time and again only lends greater urgency to this exposé of an increasingly rotten system.

Anderson makes often-inspiring use of the 3-D effects.

The Virginity Hit is elevated by its cast of very funny young actors who match good comic timing with relaxed spontaneity.

Just because you tart up a typical romantic comedy with trash talk doesn't make it edgy or real.

This is the kind of movie in which it's considered the zenith of meta-wit to have a slumming Robert De Niro (as Machete's racist politico nemesis) drive a taxi.

Taken on its own fun-over-philosophy terms, this is an exercise in tone-shifting virtuosity.

The attention to visuals is above and beyond what most vérité is capable of; doing double duty as the film's cinematographer, Fan demonstrates a pitch-perfect photojournalistic eye.

The girls are worth rooting for, but their pursuit is secondary to one sorry-ass dude's redemption. That's a win?

Simply skip the first part entirely: "Killer Instinct" bulges with a disconnected jumble of nightclub attacks and fence-clipping escapes you've seen better elsewhere. Yet a tide change happens with the superior Public Enemy No. 1, which takes the subject's raging ego as its cue.

It's a winning farce, if one that's far too broad.

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.

Despite the subtitles, it's basically a slice of formulaic Hollywood-style mythmaking, writ large and woefully empty.

The film's mood is so somber and minimal, it might be confused for deep. Had the plot (meager and one-last-job-predictable) zipped along, that wouldn't feel like such a problem.

A smart horror film will fatten its pigs before the slaughter, and the mock doc The Last Exorcism feeds its prize hog nicely.

It's prime B-movie material put through the Ridley Scott Cuisinart.

This disappointing dramatization, mounted with generic blandness by Jean-François Richet, makes no case for the man's larger significance, nor does any emotional digging at all. Such detachment was no doubt considered artistically shrewd-it's a big mistake.