Although based on the real-life tale of nine underage underdogs from Monterrey, Mexico who swept the 1957 Little League World Series, this Cinderella sports story rings false from first pitch to last.

About as deep as a kiddie pool, which isn't to say it's an unpleasant frolic.

The running time may make you blanch, but Connie Field’s seven-part documentary about the history and eventual dissolution of South African apartheid is well worth the commitment.

The filmmaker’s irreverent directness with his subjects makes for a savagely funny and bluntly insightful portrait of those who live with disfigurement.

Pornography: A Thriller may have a few interesting things to say about porn. But thrills? Not so much.

It makes you laugh in fits and starts, but more often it feels toothless and exhausted, the kind of project that exists to give Ray Liotta work.

This is one case where there’s more life in the morgue than out.

Watching people play a board game ain’t ever going to be scary, and that’s essentially what we have here.

Bratt’s performance suggests enough subcutaneous rage to give the proceedings an edge, even when the sluggish narrative takes the slow-cruise ethos of its low-rider culture far too literally at times.

What is impressive is the filmmaker’s facility with atmosphere, plus his ripe eye for giving blue-collar bruisers just enough dimension to make them more than mouth-breathing meatheads.

Like so many Doors chroniclers, DiCillo can’t help but fall under the singer’s spell; it’s understandable, but frustrating.

Even if you can miraculously avoid comparing this take on rock & roll record maker Leonard Chess (Nivola) to 2008’s similar Cadillac Records, Jerry Zaks’s lukewarm biopic still won’t get your fingers snapping; it’d be a runt in any litter.

An eerie resurrection regains some good will, but we'll have to wait for Neshat to catch up with the art of storytelling.

These guys belong in the avant-odd pantheon. They also deserve a stronger, more penetrating tribute.

Adapted from Dimitri Verhulst’s semi-autobiographical novel with a flair that recalls the squalor-and-dazzle visuals of “Trainspotting,” Felix Van Groeningen’s highly entertaining tale is full of hilarity, horror and heartbreak (sometimes within the same scene).

The overall hipness is a little too forced--it’s damn funny when it could’ve been poignant.

Church oozes lonely-patsy schlubiness and Shue radiates crazed heat, but the movie ultimately relies too heavily on dry wackiness and goes too light on the fatalistic bleakness.

Given that Sarandon played this same role so sublimely before in "Moonlight Mile," her devolution into theatrical rending of garments and gnashing of teeth is particularly disappointing, but no one--not Brosnan’s shell-shocked–by-numbers patriarch nor Mulligan’s wide-eyed waif--comes out of this steroidal pity party unscathed.

A dumb comedy out to prove its genre-defying smarts--the title is both an onscreen-supported reference to Walt Whitman and a wacky-tobaccy allusion--Leaves of Grass is a mostly mirthless affair; not even the sight of Edward Norton portraying twins tickles as it should.

Overall, the movie has the bantamweight feel of a really long DVD extra: Little details of the director’s ancestral stomping grounds are appealing, but don’t jell into something satisfying.

Burdened with a bevy of unlikely plot twists, this is less a movie sequel than the latest installment in a big-screen soap opera.

The film lurches through narrative incidents: Battle scenes, political intrigue and a ticking-time-bomb love triangle are all pitched at the level of mundane competence and rarely get the blood racing.

Alas, it all comes off as hit and myth, mainly due to our leaden, buzz-cut hero, Perseus (Avatar’s Worthington, no Harry Hamlin), and zero sparks of heavenly-body chemistry or humor.

Maybe Douglas Sirk could have made something profound out of the pseudo-ennobling horsepucky. As is, The Last Song is what the crinkle-nosed Southern belle in all of us would resoundingly deem “Trash! Trash! Trash!”

The doc dutifully allows for these varying viewpoints, but in a mode that’s not especially captivating, despite a guitar score by Brokeback Mountain’s Gustavo Santaolalla.

The most impressive aspect of Breillat’s feature is that it agitates like the best fairy tales, seducing us with otherworldliness before sticking the knife in and permanently inscribing the moral.

Like the "Scream" series, Hot Tub Time Machine is a cake-and-eat-it-too experience; you get both a vintage Brat Pack comedy, albeit one regrettably drenched in post-Hangover raunch, and an ongoing metacommentary at the same time.

This sex thriller is trapped in a tepid zone between quality trash and pretentious psychodrama.