This sweet, lovingly passionate story is nonetheless a charmer. Anderson's technique -- jaggy, product-testimonial close-ups; eerie still-image insertions -- is arresting, but this is an actors' showcase.

Smith's unrepentantly juvenile sense of humor leans heavily on elementary pop-culture parody, a particularly tiresome and parasitic form of humor that depends on an audience of smirking know-it-alls who can be trusted to snicker whenever they get the reference.

Scenes are woefully under-rehearsed, and much of the obviously improvised dialogue would seem entirely random if it weren't so repetitive.

A lifelong baseball enthusiast, director and co-producer Mike Tollin -- persuaded many real-life baseball figures to make cameo appearances.

Hard though this antic farce tries to be outrageous, its satirical jabs at American culture are obvious and juvenile, as is the use of Jimmy's plastic bubble as a goofy metaphor for fear of life.

This charming and funny film may be one of the last of a rare genre deservedly named after a person -- the Woody Allen movie.

The result is often quite funny, without ever managing to say anything especially new or perceptive about fame and the culture of celebrity.

A beautifully acted, intensely felt story.

Only Sol and Sara even approach being real characters; the supporting players, Black and Jewish alike, are shrill stereotypes.

Despite its scant 48-minute running time (which many viewers will find frustrating), the film sets up a provocative equation between vampirism and American involvement in Asia.

It's a raw, haunting experience.

The able cast brings these emotionally complex characters to life, while making Shawn Slovo's occasionally lyrical dialogue sound perfectly natural.

While movies like "The Long Riders" (1980) and "The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid" (1972) aim to be serious considerations of the outlaws' lives and legends, this picture just wants to have fun.

For every inspired bit -- Templeton playing chauffeur to 40 I Love Lucy-era Lucille Ball impersonators -- there's one that falls spectacularly flat.

The cast is similarly impressive; they're American through and through, and thankfully refrain from affecting anything remotely resembling a British stage accent.

One conclusion is inescapable. You have really seen something you don't see every day.

Though the electric organ score is unnecessarily ominous in clearly comical scenes, this is a fascinating early interpretation of what has become a classic tale.

This modest picture is distinguished by some marvelously bitchy dialogue.

This lively and nicely timed comedy has plenty enough, farce, slapstick and even drawing-room humor.

While there's no denying that the film's animation is technically impressive and is sometimes quite clever, its inventiveness is frequently at the service of gags so distasteful that gag is the operative word.

The glammed-up Kinski looks the same age throughout and only has three expressions: angry, wistful, and someone's-killed-my-dog.

The climactic revelation is a real disappointment, humdrum rather than chilling.

The big surprise is so obvious that it makes the deliberate pacing seem painfully slow, and Kidman's prissy accent and tight-lipped performance are more than a little grating.

Swinton lends Margaret an air of grace under pressure, and fleshing out feelings of domestic dissatisfaction -- a key element that otherwise remains buried in the subtext.

Somewhere beyond the extremes of "Fatal Attraction" and "In The Company of Men" festers this elegantly composed, outrageously violent psycho thriller.

The story is slight and would probably be better suited to a short subject, but first-time feature filmmaker Pierre-Paul Renders gives it a striking formal twist: It's told entirely in the first person.

Abel Ferrara's gift for getting actors to dredge up the ugliest muck in their souls and bare it onscreen is used to strong effect in this psychological thriller.

Ridiculous, yes, but in an eminently watchable way. Most of the plot twists work surprisingly well, and the frequently naked leads work up some genuine chemistry.

A touching coming-of-age story from Sweden, made interesting by the fact that the protagonist is a lonely, middle-aged farmer rather than an adolescent.

Should please undiscriminating fans. But it in no way improves on the clichéd formula.

Fluffy, candy-colored and aimed directly at tweens -- girls between the ages of 10 and 12.

It's a mixed blessing, in some ways even richer and more atmospheric than the original version, in others attenuated and logy.

This film is pure, empty (if gorgeous) spectacle, and the decision to loose the tongues of the ape planet's humans (they were mute in the original) undermines the contrast that lies at the heart of the story's power.

The plot itself isn't really strong enough to stand alone. And that leaves the film an essentially conventional whodunit, if one with a rather unconventional sleuth at its center.

Despite the inaction, the film culminates in a scene some viewers will no doubt find shocking.

Characters' eccentricities feel contrived and the wackiness seems forced, though the film's amiable ambling does keep the viewer intrigued, if not charmed.

The result is somewhat confounding, but utterly spellbinding.

Resembles the giggly teen romances that saturate the Japanese market with a coolly alienated French twist.

This dogged journey of self-delusion is interrupted periodically by snippets of footage...that promise a dark revelation that would give an edge to the otherwise tedious goings-on but, sadly, never materializes.

Most of the scenes fall flatter than a lead soufflé, and the film's sight gags -- Andy dumping campers' bodies by the roadside, Gene humping the refrigerator -- are outrageous without actually being funny.

It's hard not to be charmed by scenes like the one in which Briggs gives his posies a little pep talk, assuring them that just because they sprouted behind prison walls doesn't mean they can't compete with those hoity-toity flowers at Hampton Court.

Characters find themselves in absurdly complicated situations, but respond with sardonic cool rather than hot-blooded hysteria.

Delivers some powerful emotional wallops alongside the chopsticks-up-the-nose violence, and manages the remarkable feat of making venerable American genre conventions seem eerily alien.

While the film delivers some sharp dialogue, overall it's soft and slightly unfocused.

Ever hear of a rock musical that actually rocked? John Cameron Mitchell's glorious adaptation of his acclaimed Off-Broadway show might be a first.

This mordantly funny, emotionally piquant depiction of post-adolescent angst also has its roots in the graphic novel format.

While kids of all ages will want to see it, the movie is loud and occasionally brutal, and while the body count is relatively low, it's still pretty scary stuff.

As a piece of cinematic art, this meandering, shambolic film isn't much to speak of, but as a time capsule, it's priceless.

With its dream cast, standard story and heaps of class, this is the kind of sophisticated heist flick that could be just as easily at home in 1951 as it is in 2001.

The film's a trifle, but a beautifully crafted one.

Witherspoon turns in yet another stellar, nuanced comic performance.

Unpleasant stuff, and Clark pounces on the material with his usual relish and a discomfiting combination of moralizing and prurience.

Beautifully filmed, but extremely painful examination of the African slave trade takes a difficult position: Rather than focusing on the white European superstructure, Ivory Coast director Roger Gnoan M'bala focuses on African complicity in the capture and selling of African people.

The movie exists only as a showcase for the animation technology known as hyperReal, a photo-realistic simulation of space, figure and movement that hopes to one day erase the line between animation and live action once and for all.

Sometimes seems as noisy and unrefined as Jean himself. But it has just as much heart, and builds up to rousingly "Rocky"-like climax.

The story is formulaic, but this brutal, fast-paced thriller makes excellent use of Li's martial arts prowess.

The fact that this is somebody's real-life story up on there the screen doesn't necessarily guarantee it's an especially fresh story.

This sleepyheaded atmosphere, augmented by the languid songs of Lou Reed and Arab Strap, hangs so heavily over the film that the viewer is lulled into a state dangerously close to unconsciousness.

Piper Perabo is a revelation -- and Barton is maturing into a sensitive, subtle performer with a marvelously expressive face.

Delightful mix of swinging '60s style, road movie conventions and age-old romantic comedy tropes that coasts along on little more than charm, and does it delightfully.

Inconsistency of tone and internal logic plagues the film throughout.

A satisfying hatchet job on the spooky -- or as the Wayans see it, kooky -- world of supernatural pictures.

This underrrated shocker has developed a cult following since its scattershot 1973 release, but deserves a wider one.

For most of its running time, this lunatic euro-thriller is creepy, stylish and occasionally suspenseful.

As a visual counterpart to some of the most sublime verse ever written, it's often thrilling.

It's amusing more often than it isn't, largely because the cast is so nonchalant and, well, French about everything.

Acouple of well-earned laughs but ultimately overstays its welcome.

Numbingly predictable.

A slickly crafted fable, however dark, but it's shot with haunting poetry.

A moody, subtle drama that has more in common with the tragedy of "Endless Love" than "Where The Boys Are."

Utterly enthralling even for viewers unfamiliar with the Congo's complicated political history.

Superbly acted by everyone involved (Rhames does his best work since "Pulp Fiction"), the film is really more about character than plot, though frankly, at more than two hours, it could have used a bit more of the latter.

Characters are undermined by the inexpressive animation that mars the majority of animated films: Their haunted inner lives are clearly meant to take center stage, but their faces are blank and two-dimensional.

Froemke and Dickson's film opens a window onto rural poverty so dire it's almost inconceivable that it exists in 21st-century America.

(Tykwer's) unpredictability has become predictable, and the only thing genuinely uncanny here is the unsettling — and unintentional — sense of déjà vu.

What's surprising is how bright and engaging these kids are, and for once you're left wanting more.

This testosterone-driven, car-crime picture evokes the testosterone-driven, surf-crime picture "Point Break."

Overall it's a funny film, but parents should decide if the anti-gay and misogynist elements are worth the laughs.

The film doesn't provide any narration or go out of its way to identify the participants, so it's left to the viewer to make connections and draw their own conclusions.

Smith relies on the audience’s memory, anger and sense of community to explore a wide range of conflicting facts and emotions. The ambivalent trust forged between performer and audience as they journey through Newton’s story is kinetic and revealing of both sides.

The only criticism that can possibly be leveled at Black's film is its narrow focus, but it's not hard to extrapolate.

Lurches queasily between ghastly broad gags and oddly engaging, character-driven laughs born of clashing cultures and expectations.

Screenwriter Matthew Tabak's directing debut is carefully plotted, well acted and surprisingly free of cheap thrills.

Sectioned neatly into chapters with titles like "Mon petit frere" and "Ma mere," the film is perhaps a little too rigid, even by the conventions of road movies.

Musically it's often breathtaking.

In a film mercifully free of the usual warm and fuzzy movie sentimentality, director Maggie Greenwald and her fine cast shatter most hillbilly stereotypes.

It's all about action and ogling -- Jolie's boobs, butt and thighs get so much screen time they deserve their own credits.

Production values are low -- though, mercifully, the sound recording is clear -- and overall the project smacks of juvenile hijinks.

Perfect introduction to a remarkable career, and a moving memorial to a remarkable filmmaker.

The main event is the Mamet-esque battle of foul words between vintage hard-case Ray Winstone and the seething sociopath played by Ben Kingsley.

The result is an interesting hybrid of neorealist grit and star-driven melodrama, in which very real concerns about poverty and social injustice are mixed with a romantic subplot.

None of this is funny, the surreal touches are ridiculous and the final fantasy sequence, in which the nameless ghosts of the murdered Wiener family smile on Josef, is simply nauseating.

Noisy and obnoxious, this flashy action picture is so hell-bent on seeming smart that it fairly forces you to think about how fundamentally stupid it is.

Everything about Takashi Miike's brilliant and blood-soaked crime thriller comes as a shock.

A few funny bits float the film for a while -- it's always nice to see Peters onscreen, no matter what she's doing -- but it's really as showcase for Marcus, who also wrote the script.

The story isn't much -- the ever-evolving aliens are better served by the cute-but-icky effects than the simplistic script -- but it skims along on the cast's chemistry.

It's a good thing that Cummings and Leigh have such talented friends: They may overstay their welcome, but it's the entertaining guests who end up saving this poorly planned party.

The character designs, however, are much less impressive. Except for the oddly naturalistic Sinclair, the rest look like cartoony characters from one of Disney's '60s films.