This sly, subtle and very French psychological drama dissects the relationship between three insecure Sorbonne students and their deeply flawed idol.

By today's standards, THE JAZZ SINGER is mawkish, crudely filmed, and full of schmaltz. Yet it remains fascinating in its historical value, not only for its technical innovation, but because director Alan Crosland took his cameras on location into New York's Jewish ghetto around Hester and Orchard streets and then along the Great White Way of Broadway, showing the colorful, divergent, and now vanished ways of immigrant and show business life.

Genuinely charming, this children's fantasy is the perfect antidote to Pokemon mania: Younger kids should be entranced, while their older brothers and sisters may just pick up on its gentle critique of a movie culture in which action figures and tie-in toys are all-important.

While You Were Sleeping is a mild romantic comedy rooted in class anxiety, but it's nice to see perennial loser-in-love Pullman ("Sleepless in Seattle", "The Last Seduction") get some. Respect, that is.

Thanks to some first-rate acting from its stars, it ranks among Perry's best.

There's not much to THE FRESHMAN beyond the spectacle of Brando gently spoofing his most famous role, but that's a pretty sizeable asset. Broderick is his usual charming self, and there are occasional moments of inspired whimsy or absurdity: Brando on ice skates, Bert Parks delivering a rousing rendition of Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm."

The story is a familiar one--Robin Hood and his band of merry men trying to save the poor folks of Nottingham from Prince John's greedy ways--but, given the Disney treatment, the legendary heroes and events seem even more romantic.

Uneven but sometimes fascinating murder mystery.

Winner of the John Cassavetes Award for Best Feature Under $500K at the 2006 Independent Spirit Awards, Henry's film is beautifully shot and extraordinarily well acted by Williams.

Although strictly standard fare, the material is elevated somewhat through Clark's skillful handling of such plot devices as obscene phone calls from the killer to the girls via the upstairs phone and a nicely handled twist ending, which provides a genuine shock.

It's beautifully shot -- the sweat-drenched jukejoint scenes are particularly evocative -- and features a terrific performance by Ricci, one that deserves to be seen by a wider audience than the one certain to be reeled in by those torrid ads.

This movie marked a virtuoso return for Dreyfuss, who is captivating in his role.

Obviously filmed on a budget, production values leave much to be desired, but the power of the performances and the claustrophobic yet exciting atmosphere caught by the film more than make up for that.

This tricky film noir entry would have been routine had it not been for Bogart's magic.

The larger message remains clear: Unified communities have more power than they realize, and the most vicious enemy of progress is learned helplessness.

Overbaked but enjoyable, and a banquet for the eyes, thanks to the visual wonder of the Minnelli-Beaton teaming.

Wildly unconventional, corrosively satirical, savagely violent and vulgar, Natural Born Killers is more self-consciously radical (in form, if not necessarily in content) than any other major studio release in recent memory.

This is one of the most popular in the series, thanks to a high action quotient (including a tensely staged space battle), a suitably campy turn by Montalban, and the shock value of Spock's death. There is some novelty value, too, in the focus on Kirk's family life back on Earth.

Nothing about it is pretty, with director Mark Robson (who'd already helmed the powerful CHAMPION) moving the story along at a frenetic pace and Burnett Guffey's stark black-and-white photography lending a grim feel to the movie. All of the performers are excellent, especially Bogart, in what would be his final screen appearance.

Charming, if slight, Venus-and-Mars romantic comedy.

Ending the film with a perfunctory run-through of Lennon's murder on the doorstep of his Manhattan apartment building, however, foregrounds an unfortunate irony: Had the INS succeeded in forcing Lennon out of the U.S., he might be alive today.

Scenemaker Dito Montiel's rough, grating memoir of growing up in a poor, violent section of Astoria, Queens, in the mid-1980s features a few too many arty flourishes, but also packs a raw power that's hard to shake.

Thanks to a terrific performance by Freeman and slick direction by Jerry Schatzberg, this is a fast-moving, intermittently riveting crime drama.

Once again, animals talk, sight gags abound, and the complementing temperaments of Hope and Crosby are mined to great advantage.

Zizek as a larger-than-life figure who manages to engage you even when you're not entirely sure what he's going on about.

A workmanlike piece of storytelling elevated by fine performances.

It's a serious and well-researched consideration of natural childbearing vs. hospital delivery that explores the larger social conditions and assumptions that shape women's choices.

This is a lean 90 minutes, packed with laughs and age-appropriate thrills -- not to mention a solid lesson for girls about self-respect.

The film is filled with sight gags and features a wonderful performance by Harris.

This remains one of the best screen explorations of mental illness and its treatment.

Director/co-screenwriter Rob Cohen shrewdly opts for a three-tiered approach to the biographical material, making DRAGON a poignant interracial love story, a thrilling kung-fu flick, and a surreal fantasy in the which the hero literally confronts his inner demons. Jason Scott Lee captures his subject perfectly, and his handling of the action scenes is particularly impressive. The result is one of the most purely enjoyable American films in recent years.

In this celebratory documentary, Agnes Varda, the wife of Jacques Demy, brings some of the players and extras together back in Rochefort for some reminiscences. In keeping with the thoroughly romantic nature of the musical, she also tells the story of how Les Demoiselles de Rochefort's extras found romance and had their lives changed by participating in its making.

An affectionate adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel that beautifully evokes the seamy side of 1940s Los Angeles via superb production design and the same period atmosphere cinematographer Alonzo previously evoked for Chinatown.

A sly, self-mocking sense of humor is apparent even in Robocop 2's title, which identifies both the film's sequel status and its hero. And what a fantastic nightmare creation Robocop 2 is.

The 'Burbs offers a delightfully complicated portrait of suburban voyeurism, a portrait taken to its absurd extreme by Dante's introduction of foreign elements among his xenophobic characters, in a devastating satire of suburban values.

Sometimes stumbles into the trap of excessive predictability. But its amiable (and largely fictionalized) heart tugging still makes for charming all-ages entertainment.

French up-and-comer Alexandre Aja's full-bore do-over is a shockingly successful update of a seminal 1970s shocker.

My Fair Lady, for all its kudos, often seems bloodless and never achieves the heights of the production that ran on the Mark Hellinger Theater stage eight times each week from 1956 through 1962.

As M, Dench knows she has a tiger by the tail and isn't fazed in the slightest. Reservations aside, the film marks the beginning of a new phase in James Bond's history, and it promises to be a gripping one.

Hamburger's earnest effort offers interesting perspectives on Jewish life in South America's most populous city as well as the fate of political dissidents during a particularly dark period of Brazil's recent past.

This violent film, typical of Peckinpah's slam-bang action movies, relentlessly depicts ruthless robbery and murder, not to mention adultery, kidnaping, bribery, extortion, and general mayhem. The vivid direction and lightning pace, however, make the film completely fascinating.

Although one of his earliest films, SISTERS still stands as director Brian De Palma's greatest contribution to the horror genre.

New songs--"Pass That Peace Pipe" and "The French Lesson"--and sensational choreography contributed to making this an impressive debut for director Charles Walters and a big hit for MGM in 1947.

Surprisingly effective supernatural tale in which there's more to fear from the living than the dead.

Not for all tastes, but produces haunting juxtapositions.

While Poirier's gentle touch is part of the film's overall charm, it's also what may lead some to find the whole journey a little draggy. Nevertheless, it's a good way to spend a couple of hot summer afternoon hours: It's often very funny, the acting is fine and the gorgeous CinemaScope cinematography manages to capture all the raw beauty of Brittany without ever coming off as pretty-pretty.

Actor-turned-first-time-filmmaker Liev Schreiber tosses out most of what made Jonathan Safran Foer's too-clever-by-half debut novel so precious, rooting out the heart of Foer's story from the precocious bombast.

Pare lacks charisma as Eddie, but the Bruce Springsteen-like music (by John Cafferty, who dubs Eddie's singing voice, and his Beaver Brown Band) was good enough to put the soundtrack album in the Top 40 charts.

Most of Cassavetes's cinema verite films as a director are invariably accused (and with some justification) of being rambling, self-indulgent, and unfocused, but it is precisely those elements that make his best work so affecting and memorable, and Husbands, though deeply flawed, is one of the finest examples of that.

Lee occasionally stumbles as a documentarian... But the material is so profoundly moving that it hardly matters.

Though SEARCHING finally ties up its loose ends a little too neatly, what comes before that is a joy; an engrossing, witty story about far more than chess, directed with a flawless eye for detail and superbly performed by some of the best actors around--including young Mr. Pomeranc.

While it remains a treat for the eyes, NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA suffers from the filmmakers' attempts to tell too much.

The performances of Caan and Richardson are excellent, and the rollerball sequences are fast-paced and interesting.

Redford and the Oscar-nominated Natwick, fresh from their Broadway triumph in the play, perform with the ease familiarity brings, and Fonda and Boyer also display the appropriate lightness of touch.

Some four decades after the birth of the gay-rights movement, the excess and sexual abandon of gay life in the '70s seems more an aberration than an accurate picture of out-and-about gay life at the end of the 20th century.

Inspired by accounts of underage vigilante girls in Japan turning the tables on Internet predators, playwright Brian Nelson's schematic tale of the hunter captured by the game, a queasy blend of exploitation-movie nastiness and blunt moral lesson.

An intriguing, if flawed mystery set in the shadowy subterranean world of undocumented Mexican immigrants.

Although the mystery itself is nothing special, Argento uses the narrative structure as a jumping-off point for his virtuoso murder sequences, which are incredibly well orchestrated and inventive.

[Jude] is bristling, muscular Victorian noir. Of the scant handful of previous Hardy adaptations, none can match its intensity.

Sounder is one of the truest examples of a family film ever made and a triumph for all concerned.

Held together by the sheer power of Klaus Kinski's performance as the vampire, Nosferatu, the Vampyre evokes several scenes (practically shot-for-shot) from the Murnau classic while slightly altering some of the original's thematic structures.

Monica Cervera's fearless performance as the homely Marieta, whose movie-made dreams of glamour will never come true, is mesmerizing.

PERSONAL BEST offers a detailed, believable insider's portrait of the world of track and field. This very different sports film isn't for everyone, but patient viewers should find many small pleasures in it.

Trust is stylishly photographed and crammed with quirky, offbeat incidents and dialogue.

You'll laugh and hate yourself for it.

Where Cassavetes often uncovered the grotesquerie underlying such desperate lives -- usually after one round too many -- Buscemi's vison is rooted in compassion and a quirky humor that's entirely his own.

That this deceptively quiet crime thriller about an ex con's troubled homecoming sat on the shelf for four years before finding commercial distribution speaks volumes about both the voracious appetite for sand/surf/summer-break cliches and Hollywood's willingness to pander to it.

A deeply moving film, marked by superb direction of its intricate story from Mervyn LeRoy, and by the strong performances of Colman and Garson.

The film does, however, assemble an amazing array of recorded conversations and vintage newsreel, and offers up enough press conference footage to make one nostalgic for the days when an uncowed, penetrating press really did serve the public interest, and the president was a smart, inspirational and often very funny figure who could think on his feet and fearlessly take on all comers.

Yugoslavian-born writer-producer-director-editor Vladan Nikolic weaves together the intersecting stories of lost souls who bring their international miseries to New York in this cool, cynical thriller.

Carefully scripted and well acted, Stand and Deliver is sentimental and utterly predictable but better than many films of this kind.

Very modest, but surprisingly sweet. The naive escapades of a group of American students studying in France for a year is given a charming, somewhat corny treatment by the authors of AMERICAN GRAFFITI--Huyck (who also directed) and Katz.

Brimming with intriguing concepts and brilliant visual effects, making it a stimulating treat for both the eyes and the intellect.

First-time writer-director Greg Mottola has a real feel for characters, a quality that's in disturbingly short supply among young filmmakers. The Malone family could easily be a one-dimensional collection of sitcom caricatures, but by the movie's end they feel like real people. He also pulls off a tricky shift of tone, from pleasant, mild comedy to something far more bitter and haunting.

Tender Mercies is an episodic gem that offers little in the way of action or melodrama but gets by on fine performances (particularly from Barkin and from Duvall, who does his own singing), atmospheric cinematography, and spare, unglamorous writing.

This is Hunt's show, and she delivers a strong performance that captures all the seriousness and absurdity of the avalanche of circumstances that comes crashing down on April's head. To say she's only half the director she is an actress is actually paying her quite a complement.

A popcorn film that aims to entertain -- nothing more, nothing less -- and it achieves that goal admirably.

Fast-paced and witty, this is Chase's best solo venture to date, and will hold almost anyone's attention for its well-edited 98 minutes. Chase underplays his wackier moments to great effect, though he isn't always quite as funny as he thinks he is. (He also isn't the next Cary Grant, which he seems to believe as well.)

Based on a French play by way of Broadway, Angels is both warm and sophisticated, combining witty, carefree humor with more unabashedly evil undertones. The charmingly hammy performances capture this feeling well: In addition to Bogart, Aldo Ray and Peter Ustinov are especially winning as his partners in crime.

For the most part, the result is a smashing success, filled with great performances and exquisite production design. But those final moments, in which the true nature of the story is revealed, are an unmitigated disaster.

The bitter-sweet story of young lovers caught up in an political struggle waged by farmers against the grain trade, the banks and the railroads, NORTHERN LIGHTS brings back a forgotten era of American history and evokes the austere beauty of the Northern Plains.

A visually fascinating rumination on the genre.

A thoroughly captivating romantic adventure in the grand tradition of the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 40s. With a plot flavored with elements from such classics as the Carole Lombard-Fredric March romp NOTHING SACRED and Frank Capra's delightful masterpiece YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU, this Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan outing is writer-director John Patrick Shanley's gift to moviegoers who are tired of films distinctive only for their excessive violence, sex, gutter language, or a combination of all three.

A crisp, well-written cast caper movie sporting some stunning landscapes and a fine core of performances.

First-time writer-director Matthew Porterfield's small-scale, 16mm slice-of-life drama has the hazy, sticky rhythms of a hot summer day and the minimal narrative of a classic European art film.

And though the new Little Princess is a far darker affair than the 1939 version, Mexican-born director Alfonso Cuaron doesn't make it anywhere near as drab and moody as Agnieszka Holland's more artistically and commercially successful The Secret Garden.

An unconventional but rewarding film.

The end result is the very definition of a summer movie: breezy, undemanding and a carefully balanced blend of the familiar and the not-quite-what-you-expected.

The young actors are charming, O'Toole commands every scene he's in, the scenery is lush, and the animals are gorgeous.

The screenplay is a distinct improvement on Crichton's one-dimensional, humorless potboiler. The movie comes closest to thematic coherence in its depiction of something nearly everyone can relate to: the office from hell.

Though the portentous title is taken from the Old Testament -- Elah is where little David took on Goliath -- the film's concerns are painfully timely and forcefully articulated.

It's fun, fast-paced, educational entertainment that's fit for the whole family -- American boys included.

Race to Witch Mountain isn't some kind of action watershed, or science-fiction milestone, but it most certainly is a finely crafted reboot of a franchise that was ripe for an updating.

Audriad's film articulates an uncomfortably familiar vision of a nation desperate enough to believe its own lies, where the copy is inevitably much better than the real thing and heroes are only as genuine as one needs them to be.

The film is partly inspired by SHANE, accentuating the close relationship of hero-worshiping youngster to virtuous gunfighter, and its exterior shooting has the look of a John Ford work, but HONDO stands tall on its own.

Newman's performance is unquestionably the best thing about this brutal portrait of humanity.

Abandoning the gritty realism of his first two films, BLUE COLLAR and HARDCORE, screenwriter-turned-director Schrader here adopted a sleek and stylish approach. The result was one of his most satisfying attempts to mesh a European sensibility and his own obsession with moral drift and emotional alienation.

Aimed squarely at little leaguers and their doting parents, Rookie of the Year is a modest fantasy that makes its comic fable appealing despite sporadic slapstick missteps.