Among the disconnected scenes are a few that are downright hilarious, and the actors do their best to rise above disjointed material.

Neither cheerfully naughty nor suffused with gauzy prurience, it evokes a time of turbulent (and often ugly) emotions with disquieting intensity.

Tthough it comes wrapped in a stylish French mantle of feminist rage and sexual empowerment, the picture ultimately belongs squarely in the tradition of rape revenge pictures.

While the film's exploration of Irish religious intolerance takes it to many familiar areas, the specifics are unfamiliar and fine performances -- especially those of leads Cunningham and Brady.

(Valli) brings an ethnographer's eye for detail to a plot that amounts to little more than the good old generation gap.

The result is an interesting, if slightly unbalanced, hybrid: a social problem film with the warm heart of a deeply felt love story.

Clearly, neither screenwriter Randall Wallace nor director Michael Bay ever met a cliche he didn't embrace.

Ricci brings her trademark gravity to the wary Suzie, but Blanchett's role is the dazzler.

The movie sticks with you as few do: It's rewardingly authentic and emotionally real.

Yet another of Israeli-born filmmaker Amos Kolleck's pointless, meandering tales of eccentric New Yorkers navigating the treacherous waters of love and survival.

Tame as can be by today's standards, but will charm fans of vintage erotica.

Fun for a while, but soon turns grating before ending on a startlingly tragic note.

The best parts of the film come when he (Doillon) just lets the camera roll and lets the kids be kids.

Wrapped in a layer of psuedo-spookiness that leads viewers to think the story is going somewhere it isn't.

Colossally entertaining.

Never boring, often excruciating and occasionally transcendent.

It may not be as epochal a piece of work as "Mean Streets," but packs what feels like a real-life punch none the less.

The story of the business is historically interesting, but the story of a friendship tested to the breaking point is timeless.

Stiffly animated and featuring uninspired songs.

wWhat doesn't entirely succeed as convincing psychodrama makes one hell of an acting exercise (it's great fun to see great actors purposely mangle the Bard's immortal words), and Levring's cast -- McTeer in particular -- run with it.

This brazen mix of old and new is undermined by the predictable story, shallow characterizations and a dopey sense of humor.

The film, like its subject, is a hoot, both shamelessly entertaining and bursting with personality.

Sweet, likable and consistently engaging, if so insubstantial that it's always on the verge of blowing away.

The premise is pretty simple, and at two hours the murky sound, muddy low-light images and frequently dreadful acting are a little tough to take.

The locations and production design are breathtakingly beautiful. But though cast largely with Chinese actors, it was shot in English, which no doubt made business sense but almost certainly accounts for many truly awful performances.

It's never dull -- beautifully acted and handsomely shot in sepia-toned Cinemascope.

So crammed with plot twists that it's hard to follow, simultaneously ludicrous, sappy and casually dismissive of all the things Hollywood holds dear.

The film ends with a return to the beach, and one of the most psychologically chilling and expertly photographed shots imaginable.

The film's one saving grace is 18-year-old Ellen Muth, who gives one of the screen's most natural, non-Hollywood portrayals of a child.

It works its gilded butt off to give you your money's worth.

Director Scott Kalvert returns to wring every last cliché out 1950s juvenile delinquent movies, without adding anything particularly fresh to the formula.

The downside is that many of these characters are hastily sketched and their stories unsatisfactorily developed.

This flashy fright flick doesn't break any new ground, but puts an attractive gloss on genre conventions.

Maybe such cloddish sight gags as dipsomaniac priest chug-a-lugging from the communion chalice or an apparently straight-laced yuppie in full S&M drag just aren't very funny.

So bewildering it's almost entertaining, this comedy of fiftysomethings and their extramarital affairs is one of those films you can actually see flailing for life.

What is grating is the filmmakers' perennial tendency to underestimate their audiences; their lack of faith leads them to drive home each nuance with a hammer.

The action is lightning-fast and balletically staged, living up to the choreographic potential often claimed--but seldom truly realized--for martial arts pictures by their highbrow admirers.

Meeske does offer insight into a way of life that may be finally gone for good.

Though the storyline moves in unconvincing fits and starts, Carax gets good performances from his hip young stars.

This noisy, time-wasting spectacle is crammed with what purports to be characters, except that not one of them has any more depth than will fit into a one-line description.

This sleek and cleverly assembled film is a brutally honest portrait of an obsessive personality, a woman whose mania for control over her weight and the world around her fed her demons and fueled her art.

Fans of the genre are in for a wickedly entertaining treat.

The film is a dispiriting experience.

Hogan returns with what feels like a feature-length vanity project.

The film's dark heart is Valentinov's mephistophelean scheming: He sets about sabotaging his former protégé's game for no apparent reason except sheer malice.

With its artfully artless hand-held cinematography, haphazard focus, non-diegetic dialogue and what sounds like a largely improvised script, Thraves's film is all about style, but contains a surprising amount of substance.

It's a conspiracy theory worthy of "The X-Files."

To be fair, this is hardly the worst gross-out comedy ever made; it's nowhere as misogynistic as, say, "Tomcats," and in the end, it probably won't leave you in a state of utter nihilistic despair.

Wang's film doesn't really have anything more to say about power, manipulation and the wild unpredictability of sexual energy than "Last Tango" did 30 years ago.

Film feels like a parody of Mamet mannerisms, and the trouble lies with the play, which Mamet first penned some 25 years for an Actors Equity showcase.

A mystery that's filled with genuine sorrow and capped off with a denouement that may take even seasoned mystery buffs by surprise.

The plot soon dwindles down to little more than a flimsy, Austen-esque comedy of circumstance.

Gets off to a pretty intriguing start before degenerating into a series of routine action sequences.

While handsomely mounted and generally well acted, the film is undermined by long stretches of awkward, obvious dialogue and by the vagueness of Lisa's revolt against the status quo.

This tightly structured, often exciting film is among the boldest in a series of increasingly explicit movies.

This sentimental comedy is generally sweet natured.

That rare film aimed at teenage girls that's still enjoyable for grownup viewers.

Chanteuse Toni Braxton, making her feature film debut as Juanita, a snobbish Slocumb relative, delivers a scene-stealing turn.

Bana's performance is nothing short of electrifying.

Not clever. Not scary. Not funny.

Seductive, funny, whip-smart and ultimately tragic.

If Michael Wincott -- who under normal circumstances can chill your blood just by breathing -- can't make the villain compelling, you know the movie's in trouble.

A film for fans of this alternate universe of movies that flourished as soon as the 1934 Production Code effectively excised most prurient, violent and otherwise titillating material from Hollywood films and withered in the '70s as mainstream movies finally caught up with the indies.

Would be more appealing if the women's behavior weren't alternately moronic and venal.

A bold, vibrant piece of filmmaking.

Unfortunately, the result is little more than a glossy parlor trick, a stripped-to-the-bone "Of Human Bondage" recast with two women.

Glacially slow going.

Exciting and well-shot.

Heartfelt as Reno and Applegate are here, the film strands them with an impotently blustering, straw-dog villain and a limp, directionless story.

Allowing for the fact that any Pokemon movie is essentially a feature-length commercial designed to make little kids want Pokémon stuff, this one has its moments.

Unfortunately, Hu and her army of co-writers saddle the story with a tired romantic subplot and fail to develop meaningful characters.

Wildly entertaining and a visual delight.

Concise and well-researched documentary does a fine job of presenting a complicated issue clearly while maintaining a fairly objective middle ground.

A cut above the preposterous action spectacles that now pass for espionage films.

Often thrilling, if overwhelmingly brutal, trio of interconnected short stories.

The high-profile cast -- play their roles with just the right mix of seriousness and tongue-in-cheek self-awareness.

Criticism seems irrelevant at best.

Sexist, plot-hole-riddled movie equates women with cows and men with bulls.

Clever and offbeat.

The cast is strong and work together flawlessly, and romantic comedies that take an unabashedly male perspective without being relentlessly vulgar or misogynistic are rare indeed.

The filmmakers don't shy away from discussing their frustrations with censorship or the depiction of women, but their work raises interesting questions about the ways in which restrictions can sometimes facilitate artistry and lead to a deeper consideration of the film's subject.

While in her earlier movies Jennifer Love Hewitt made an impression by spilling out of her tops, in this one she spills out of her clothes at both ends. This could, if one were feeling charitable, be construed as a broadening of her range.

Maybe gross-out romantic comedy is a shallow well, and it was simply Rogers's misfortune to find himself with a bucket full of sludge.

Fascinating, if slightly unfocused, film.

Photographed as harsh spectacle in brown and gray with unfailingly overcast skies, the story is affecting and suspenseful enough when focusing on Vassili, the humble peasant youth, and his patrician adversary playing a chess-like game of cat-and-mouse.

The script is often obvious and much of the acting is amateurish (Rakesh's comic sidekicks are just dismal), though Purva Bedi is a shining exception — she's got star quality to burn.

Enthralling or infuriating.

The cast is wonderful, the soundtrack features a well-chosen array of bouncy period pop tunes, and Graeme Wood's cinematography makes the most of the stately beauty of the dish itself.

The film is relentlessly peppy, often quite funny, sometimes a bit too convinced of its own adorableness and ultimately as smoothly reassuring as a TV sitcom.

If you're charmed from the outset, this is an enjoyable trifle; if you're not, it never gets any less mannered and convinced of its own wit.

Though the film ends on a surprising and genuinely magical note, it takes its own sweet time getting there; some viewers will have lost patience before the denouement arrives.

The film is filled with a languid air of decadence and decay, and a touching sympathy for people whose lives are crushed in the shadows of progress.

Anonymously titled and packaged like a vulgar teen sex comedy, this candy-colored trifle is so precious it nearly floats away on a cloud of fairy dust.

Herzfeld's sophomore movie is one long howl of rage over the relationship between criminals, journalists and thrill-hungry audiences.

It's a humbling way of life, and one that, as Varda discovers in this wonderful, 80-minute essay, has survived in surprising ways.

The result is formulaic, shamelessly manipulative and surprisingly watchable.

Overall it's a frustratingly uneven movie, delicate at one moment and bluntly obvious the next.

The movie's mimicry of reality TV clichés is eerie, from the use of re-creations and supplemental footage (especially the experimental video Dawn and Jeff made together for a high school art project) to the smarmy commentary.