Visually striking and viscerally repellent, director Denis Villeneuve's Quebecois oddity offers a nightmarish vision of one woman's unraveling, the likes of which haven't been seen since Roman Polanski pushed Catherine Deneuve off the deep end in "Repulsion" (1965).

Occasionally melodramatic, it's also extremely effective.

The acting is similarly accomplished across the board, though it must be noted that Currie nearly walks off with the film: He's the funniest preppie seducer since Tim Matheson in "Animal House" (1978).

This is solid entertainment, and the time Caviezel and Pearce spent training for their sword fights pays off handsomely.

Wang's film offers an interesting look at the rapidly changing face of Beijing.

The creepy set pieces are repetitive and the payoff is rather unsatisfying, even though the prophecies do eventually pan out.

The look is utterly faithful to Tezuka's aesthetic -- he loved classic Disney animation, especially "Bambi" (1942) -- but it's hard to empathize with the angst of a character who looks like a Super Mario Brother.

Beautifully animated epic is never dull.

DeMeo is not without talent; he just needs better material.

Obvious and, frankly, 25 years too late.

Despite its floating narrative, this is a remarkably accessible and haunting film.

Though clearly well-intentioned, this cross-cultural soap opera is painfully formulaic and stilted.

Formulaic but not entirely predictable, it's like old-school Disney, but without Tim Conway.

The set-up revolves around a draggy love triangle, while the climax -- slo-mo leap through the air and all -- could have come out of any direct-to-video action flick.

None of this is any more fun as it sounds -- the cancer ward scenes are truly disturbing -- but to be fair, writer/director Lone Scherfeg (the first woman to make a Dogme 95 film) manages some black-humored laughs.

Formulaic but performed with some verve.

It's filled with great footage of what must have been a wild time behind the Iron Curtain, and the music itself speaks volumes.

Edward Klosinski's staid cinematography lends the film a feeling of late summer languor, a deceptive calm before a terrible storm. The spare, evocative piano soundtrack is by John Cale.

The resulting collaboration is a strange beast;

The film delivers what it promises: A look at the "wild ride" that ensues when brash young men set out to conquer the online world with laptops, cell phones and sketchy business plans.

This ORANGE is a lemon.

More of the same from Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang, which is good news to anyone who's fallen under the sweet, melancholy spell of this unique director's previous films.

This psychological sci-fi thriller was originally made as a 40-minute segment of an unrealized portmanteau picture, then expanded into a freestanding feature. That's probably why it's padded with shots of Olham running down corridors.

Fred Frith's lovely and subdued score is a perfect accompaniment.

No doubt captures some of the horror and the chaos of the actual situation, but it makes for a loud, often confusing, and always bloody two and a half hours.

Armstrong is fortunate to have the luminous Blanchett, who, along with her equally fine supporting cast, helps compensate for what the film lacks.

Penn's stark and unvarnished portrait of the challenged Sam makes even the hardest-to-swallow plot acceptable.

The widescreen photography is, however, quite beautiful, and the scenes of aerial combat thrillingly staged.

The film's elliptical character development sometimes renders the actors' work opaque; restraint is an underpracticed virtue, but even it can be taken to excess.

Such a glorious cast, deployed to such trivial effect!

It's a brilliant impersonation; Smith gets Ali's speech patterns and Louisville accent exactly right, and astonishingly convincing facial prosthetics complete the transformation. But he never quite finds the man under the enormous image; those quintessential Mann moments, during which Ali is left alone to brood, feel surprisingly blank.

Everything has a fusty, embalmed quality: Whatever gave the novel its vitality has been smothered.

Once it settles down, it becomes a star-making vehicle for Jackman, and a supremely polished example of the sort of swoony love story cherished by women who secretly hope that some day their prince will come.

Grownups who grew up on The Jetsons and children who, like the movie's heroes, aren't yet nine years old, should enjoy this film.

It's a good thing the two rappers are such utterly natural actors, armed with terrific comic timing.

A touching examination of the ravages of Alzheimer's disease, made even more so by the extraordinary chemistry between Swedish actor Sven Wollter and his real-life wife, Viveka Seldahl, who died shortly after the film was completed.

The success of this effect, which helps elevate the movie above a classy disease-of-the-week saga, rests firmly on Russell Crowe's performance, and it's a strikingly good and moving one.

That Carrey, who's a bit old for the part, always seems one facial muscle away from a smirk doesn't help matters.

The picture is nearly stolen, however, by co-star Greg Germann (of TV's Ally McBeal) in the role of Joe's company's resident corporate weasel. Germann's squinty-eyed insincerity is truly a marvel to behold, and it's an astringent corrective to the film's rather too frequent feel-good passages.

Wickedly funny, deeply disturbing, live-action retelling of an old Czech folktale.

Above all, Jackson evokes an almost palpable sense of the will to power trapped within the ring. Without this evocation of the ring's insidious ability to sniff out the potential for corruption and capitalize on it, the entire enterprise would be precious drivel.

Ichaso tells Piñero's story through a sometimes disorienting series of flashbacks and flash-forwards, fracturing the time frame to suit the film's internal rhythms, rather than any coherent time line.

It's a great achievement, quiet enough to allow room for her excellent supporting cast -- but strong enough to be felt over James Horner's omnipresent, typically overbearing score.

Thought-provoking but proceeding at a crawl, the film suffers from performances that are virtually all pitched to the same note of existential ennui -- thank goodness, then, for Rush, who's arrives like a wake-up blast of compressed air.

Precociously glib and never less than engaging.

Makhmalbaf shot this film under extremely difficult circumstances, and it sometimes shows; but it's still an important achievement.

This scattershot comedy (which might be called "irreverent" if anyone actually revered movies like AMERICAN PIE) features vulgar gags at the expense of recent youth-oriented pictures.

Crowe preserves the original film's plot twists and turns, but his version lumbers when it should be whipping along, daring you to keep up. The wall-to-wall pop music soundtrack eventually becomes oppressive, and Cruise's oily smile doesn't really constitute a characterization.

Salles is a master storyteller, and the film's pacing is flawless.

Earnest but unenlightening drama.

Actor-turned-director Campbell Scott handles this enigmatic science fiction mystery with such gloomy restraint that it barely moves. That said, it never panders to audience expectations and is exceptionally well acted. Bill Tyler.

Despite some strong performances, never rises above the level of a telanovela.

Each frame is exquisitely framed, the acting is superb -- Abedini deserves to be a star -- and the impermanence of the lives of displaced Afghans is hauntingly expressed.

This raw and raunchy drama from director Henrique Goldman offers what few feature films have ever bothered to attempt: a realistic, wholly sympathetic look at the lives of transgendered prostitutes.

Merits watching if only because it's a bracing corrective to the deeply entrenched image of Europe's Jews plodding, sheep-like, to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps.

Given the number of characters involved and the fact that the film flashes back and forth over a 40-year period, the film flows beautifully, thanks in large part to excellent casting and Kate Williams's fluid editing.

Ends on a cruel, cynical note that would surely make Billy Wilder snort with approval.

Sure, like cotton candy: It doesn't do a thing for you, but it's wickedly sweet as it melts on your tongue.

If nothing else, this utterly charming -- if ultimately inconsequential -- road picture proves that there is such a thing as German romantic comedy.

The film's tone is a matter of taste -- the more you enjoy the melancholy silent comedies of Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, the more likely you are to embrace its sensibility -- but it's undeniably the product of a singular and beautifully realized vision.

One is left with an unsettling ambivalence about the night's awful events -- there are no absolute villains here, just as there are no total victims -- and much of the credit is due to the performances.

There are few things as imposing -- or terrifying -- as the sight of the B-52, and the film is beautifully shot with an almost fetishistic passion.

A powerful, yet subtle, picture from Australian director Peter Weir, who has demonstrated quite a flair for mystical themes.

Swank is painfully uncharismatic, leaving Christopher Walken, in the minor role of occultist Count Cagliostro, to decamp with any scene in which he appears. His performance may not be historically credible, but it's hugely entertaining: Would that the same were true of the film overall.

This old-fashioned Western about the glory years of the Texas Rangers, cast with fresh-faced, telegenic young actors whose performances range from adequate to awful, is undermined by a serious lack of true grit.

The film's flashy visuals (apparently geared to engaging video game-impaired attention spans) are entertaining, but its cynicism is distasteful.

The title of the film is most unfortunate because it gives no indication of the film's stark theme. Moreau is good as the disenchanted woman, but Mann is less effective.

With virtually no music and very little expository dialogue, this is one of the rare films with enough faith in moviegoers to let them figure things out for themselves.

Everyone involved obviously had a blast, but in the end this is a one-joke movie, and the joke is stretched too thin.

The film's style is best described as utilitarian, but it gets the job done; the performances range from good to a bit amateurish.

It's all wonderfully trashy fun, but the good times come to an abrupt halt when the filmmakers, hoping to capitalize on the starlet's sensational death in 1967, cheaply dramatize the car crash that took the lives of Mansfield, her driver, her friend and lawyer, and Choo Choo.

The extremely intimate violence is more explicit than is the mainstream norm, and Dalle's mouth is the stuff of nightmares.

The film is informative, often grisly and undeniably riveting.

The film never escapes the constraints of its genre, but it's a hell of a ride.

Meticulously observed and devastatingly well-acted.

Charming, low-key ensemble comedy that recalls the films of both John Cassavetes and Woody Allen, which is to say it's a loosely structured, quasi-improvisational saga about a bunch of New Yorkers obsessing about relationships.

Brooding ghost story is rich with psychological and political implications that never obscure its fundamental creepiness.

The film, beautifully shot in widescreen by Luca Bigazzi, is surprisingly accessible and always engaging, if ultimately tragic.

Extremely well-shot espionage thriller that might have worked as an old-fashioned guy's-guy movie if the guys involved had any real, human personality and the espionage were actually thrilling.

The lame and apparently tacked-on ending (which seems to crib footage from 2000's "Gladiator"), suggests the rather terrifying prospect of a Roman-era sequel. Five words: Be afraid, be very afraid.

Even the snowboarding scenes that might have been the visceral heart of this thing are cut in such a way that we never get more than a few seconds of full-frame athletic skill; despite the real-life snowboarders doing the stunt work (including Rob "Sluggo" Boyce, Tara Dakides and Javas Lehn), it all looks like editing-room cheats.

Though generally sympathetic, the film manages (without stooping to clichéd moralizing) to suggest that being Ron Jeremy isn't the non-stop paradise his fans imagine.

The mystery is terribly plotted and the satirical elements are limited and not very funny.

It's nothing less than an examination of the very meaning of family.

Surprisingly, some of the best moments come from supermodel Crawford and singer Connick, two acting tyros not generally known for their dramatic skills.

It may be long, but it's not boring -- how could it be when jack o' lanterns float lazily overhead in the dining hall, and the venerable Maggie Smith turns into a cat?

Screenwriter and co-director West -- who works in gay porn -- evinces an easy and even-handed familiarity with the milieu, and his characters only occasionally lapse into broad caricature.

The pacing is slack, the comedy has an oddly sour tone and frankly, no matter how hard the script tries to paint Sean as a petty martinet with a stick up his butt, it's hard not to sympathize with him.

If there's a strong sense of urgency behind director Kim A. Snyder's enlightening film.

The love story is pretty conventional stuff, but Linney's finely calibrated, low-key performance as Callie goes a long way towards making it more interesting than it might otherwise be.

Something of a cop-out, lacking the courage of its convictions.

Solidly entertaining and surprisingly free of the Mamet-isms that can suck the life right out of the most tightly crafted story.

The script originally began life as a stage play, but still feels underwritten.

D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus's record of the event is an invaluable document, its technical limitations notwithstanding.

The film unfolds like a thriller: The plot moves so inexorably toward its tragic conclusion you can almost hear the clock ticking.

Pseudo sci-fi gobbledygook aside, X-Files alumni James Wong and Glen Morgan's script is little more than an excuse for Jet Li to kick his own ass, which he does energetically and often.

In the end it all comes down to Mitchell. She turns in a truly harrowing performance that will leave you shaking.

Episodic, pretentious, and more than a little silly.