While the movie meanders a tad too much and suffers from J. Ralph's wretchedly literal-minded folk-rock soundtrack, Wretches succeeds in communicating both the daily struggles and the determination of its autistic subjects, whether American or international.

A gonzo, if somewhat gimmicky, approach to advocating healthy living; it's like Super Size Me in reverse.

Schwimmer is so committed to telling grim truths about modern living (whither goes humanity in the age of Twitter and sexting?!?) that he abandons the film's tantalizing slide into B-movie exploitation.

Skip this one, even if your hipster significant other whines a blue streak.

To the movie's small credit, there's very little grasping for larger significance: It's a dumb horror film, complete with a sexy female lust object (Kaboom's Mesquida) undraping for a shower scene.

Queen to Play does slightly buck convention by depicting intellectual development (rather than lovey-dovey triumph) as the key to reshaping identity, as well as a form of class advancement and spiritual enlightenment. Such notions, however, are drowned out by deafeningly creaky conventions of cutesy self-discovery.

While Bier doesn't offer easy partisan answers, she still dilutes a social issue down to the level of soap-operatic background noise and back-patting platitudes. It-and we-deserve better.

It's simply one wearisome '90s crime-cinema cliché after another.

Circo zeroes in on the interpersonal strife within this collapsing clan - an angle that only occasionally lifts the film above confessional exotica.

None of this is particularly well wrought, and only a bizarre gas mask worn by the séance leader counts as an inspired (if slightly silly) touch.

The various plot threads-E.B. is pursued by a trio of ass-kickingly cute long-eared operatives; a disgruntled worker chick (voiced in emphatic Telemundo tones by Hank Azaria) orchestrates a coup d'état-mostly get lost amid all the allusions. Even Hugh Hefner pops up because, you know, Playboy Bunnies.

What begins as a tense, inventive suspense film becomes, to paraphrase Doctor Who, a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, mushy-wushy mess. That's decidedly NOT fantastic.

The director races far too quickly to get to his ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust punch line. This is the film of a pretender, not a believer.

Its only remarkable quality is how much less appealing our wimpy hero seems when lifted off the page.

Begins in the land of lunacy and ends up somewhere on the far side of deranged.

Atmosphere and acting can't save a script filled with easy-target irony ("Who ever heard of gettin' rich from workin' with computers?") and a plot that telegraphs every left turn miles in advance.

The laughs are purely surface; the film's women's-lib pretensions seem grafted on as if to lend significance to a story that would benefit from a lighter, less cerebral touch. Still, it's hard to resist La Deneuve's charms.

Only Wilson acquits himself, finding a few insightful layers in his black-sheep stereotype and working up a sweet chemistry with Taraji P. Henson as his sassily devoted lady-friend.

A perfectly boring movie from Julian Schnabel - is it possible?

Lovingly designed, but dramatically inert.

Even as it stands as a cinematic monument to mass suffering, Korkoro can't help but swing, strum and celebrate life for as long as it lasts.

The movie's true brilliance comes from its portrayal of how the world curls around you in the grip of heartache-every song on the radio, every face you see, every story you're told reflecting only what you've lost.

Illegal has caused a stir in Belgium, and the sincerity of the movie can't be denied. But there's little emotion to hold on to, apart from a mother's impotent concern about her wayward teenage son (Gontcharov), still on the outside.

Bal's familiarity doesn't breed contempt. It does make you wish, however, for something above and beyond the usual high-art-cinema catnip.

Thus comes My Perestroika's most sophisticated idea: Day-to-day family struggles have a way of trumping even the most profound political change. Don't miss this.

The historical tragedy that's dramatized is heartrending; the movie itself is merely one cliché piled atop another.

No matter how predictable his arc is, writer-director Thomas McCarthy (The Station Agent) never loses sight of the difficulties of cashflow and making one's weekly nut. You'll want to give his movie-and his secret weapon, the lovably neurotic Bobby Cannavale, as a recent divorcé hoping to co-coach the team-a pass for sweetness.

The title character himself is also an unimpressive digital creation-Rogen might as well be performing his stoner-from-another-world shtick during a wee-hours movieoke session.