After nearly a decade of duds, Wes Craven reasserts his claim to being a master of suspense with this solid little airborne thriller.

If this brutal tale of crime and corruption within the upper ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department feels like an updated retelling of "L.A. Confidential," there's good reason. Both stories spring from the dark mind of American crime writer James Ellroy.

The movie's performances, especially Lathan's, are strong enough to balance out the sometimes-clichéd script.

The movie's physical violence isn't gratuitous -- it's the emotional violence that makes this a movie for grown-ups, not kids.

Creatively edited and as insightful as any film can be about the lowest rungs of the music scene, this overview expertly captures the time and place. Still, the movie lacks the crossover potential to appeal to non-punk viewers.

It would be hard to mount a straight-faced defense of Brisseau's feverish moral tale, complete with a lurking angel of death, but the carnal machinations are hugely entertaining -- particularly if you like your skin with a bracing sermon chaser.

Director Ron Howard attempts the Great American Newspaper Picture and mostly pulls it off. The film's greatest weakness is that he and screenwriters David and Stephen Koepp (the latter a journalist himself) love those scrappy newshounds too much; THE PAPER doesn't even try for the appropriately acid bite of, say, any version of THE FRONT PAGE.

The saucy repartee will amuse adults, while the climactic showdowns -- yes, there are more than one -- are gripping entertainment for the whole family.

Capably directed by Betty Thomas, this freewheeling pseudodocumentary tribute to Stern's juvenile antics paints the anarchic radio idol as Everyschmo made good.

No voice is more vivid than that of the writer of O, who died in 2002.

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

This rather obvious parable about soul mates benefits from luminous B&W cinematography, Paradis and Auteuil's luminous performances and the picturesque carny atmosphere.

This small-scale film isn't for all tastes. But veterans of the dating wars will smirk uneasily at the film's nightmare versions of everyday sex-in-the-city misadventures.

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

The cast is aces, and Peter Morgan's screenplay is both very sharp on male sexual politics and crammed with enough comic twists and turns to keep you interested.

Sad, leisurely road picture.

As a standard science-fiction film, 2010 is fine. It has all the right plot elements, dramatic tension, and eye-popping special effects. The performances are uniformly good, the space-adventure scenes are excitingly handled, and the reappearance of HAL 9000 and Dullea is downright eerie. Yet it's hard to get over the fact that the purpose of this film is to tear down all the awe-inspiring effects of 2001. The sequel simply fails to fascinate and awe us like the original did.

Newcomer Grace seems born to the part of an unformed young woman whose character cries out to be shaped, but it's Ivey's unobtrusive skill that shapes their onscreen relationship into something thoroughly convincing.

The film is filled with the kind of choreographed carnage that became synonymous with Hong Kong action during the genre's heyday, but there's an elegiac self-consciousness to it all that acknowledges that while the best is behind us, there's still something to be said about its passing.

Vividly photographed in shimmering colors and driven by a propulsive score.

Director Gary Winick serves up enough giddy fun that it's easy to turn a blind eye to the film's skewed sense of time and minor anachronisms.

Lavishly costumed and shot largely on location, the film benefits from a phenomenal central performance by Lopez de Ayala.

Clever though the premise is, the film's real strength is the smooth banter between Sam and Devon; it's never less than smart, often startlingly perceptive and always thoroughly convincing.

Lightweight, thoroughly charming fluff.

Director Dennie Gordon keeps the pace brisk, and between makeovers and pratfalls, the girls deliver an easy-to-swallow dose of girl power.

It's actually a clever commentary on documentary filmmaking, an pretty good monster movie to boot.

Although occasionally bleak, the film affords many pleasurable moments, showing early man learning to laugh and expressing delight and amazement at the sight of fire.

Davis' tough, man-of-the-people narration is often annoying, but his words can't diminish the power of his story.

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.

Something to forget about. In this painfully contrived comedy of Southern manners, Julia Roberts's waning star power finally winks out.

The first two thirds of the screenplay by Aja and cowriter Gregory Levasseur is a relentless exercise in bare-bones nastiness.

While the script contains trite and unbelievable dialogue, the superbly convincing performances make up for these faults.

An accomplished film that carries with it the unshakable feeling that we've seen it all before.

Chilling special effects highlight a rather gory production.

The plot's preposterous and Affleck is way too callow for a role that would have fit Robert Mitchum like a second-hand suit.

Features generally crisp dialogue, solid performances by a mix of newcomers and familiar character actors, and Provenzano's direction is strikingly accomplished.

Whether you take the film as a deliberately vile act of filmmaking that unpacks rape-revenge scenarios while making a point about male desire, or simply as a deliberately vile piece of filmmaking, one thing is certain: It's about as close to a physical assault on viewers as movies get.

Is this sophisticated humor? No. But it is pretty entertaining.

Too much time is spent on the forced romance between O'Keefe and Holcomb, an attractive waitress, however, and the slapstick becomes utterly mindless toward the end (as if the producer said, "Okay, it's time for this film to really get out of control!"). Still, the laughs keep coming.

Extreme-weather buffs, thrill-ride junkies and anyone else in search of mindless entertainment need look no further.

It's a cut above the throng of mindless, purported thrillers in which explosions and gun battles replace even rudimentary story telling.

Berlevag's 1300 inhabitants are by nature hardy and uncomplaining, but Knut Erik Jensen's unhurried documentary reveals that there's more to them than mere stoicism.

Get Shorty's assortment of lowlifes and high rollers is a familiar one, but it's still deeply satisfying.

This is a wonderfully simple idea that succeeds very well indeed: take a bunch of kids from New York's High School of Performing Arts and let them strut their stuff. Fame shows us how much life there still is in moribund genres like the musical.

It lacks "Fingers" searing, explosive vitality.

Though clearly shot on a shoestring, it's handsome, tightly written and generally well acted.

The film has some excellent sight gags, some old jokes, and two winning performances from Dreyfuss and Landsberg, who could very well be a comedy team to reckon with, if their next pictures are handled better by the distributor.

This film is one of the most effective tearjerkers ever made and is given sophistication and style by its consummate lead actors.

It's alternately stimulating and exhausting.

For all the blood spilt -- and there are gallons of it -- this is a surprisingly understated thriller.

Even if you think you know a little something about world music, Cuba's cultural riches may come as a surprise.

It's an exercise in star turns, surrounded by elephantine blandness. The supporting cast look, and act, like refugees from Disney or Oral Roberts University, handpicked not to ruffle the star.

From the proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and the president's opposition to the morning-after pill to his pandering to fundamentalist family groups, Cho has all things Bush-related in her crosshairs, and she's taking no prisoners.

Though some consider this one of Eugene O'Neill's finest plays, The Iceman Cometh does not translate well to the screen. No matter what Frankenheimer pulled from his bag of directorial tricks, the work remains stagey and talky on celluloid; even the majestic talent of March cannot turn it around.

A great premise which doesn't quite deliver what it promises but it's fun anyway.

Shimizu generates a sense of palpable dread in each segment, expertly manipulating tried-and-true scare tactics supplemented by a truly inspired use of spooky sound effects.

The movie isn't "Blade Runner," but it's got some provocative ideas about the implications of cloning in a market-driven, capitalist society.

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.

Hayley Mills plays twins in this innocent, fast-paced comedy, a favorite of countless youngsters in the 1960s. An enjoyable, corny Disney picture with a memorable soundtrack featuring tunes sung by Tommy Sands and Annette Funicello.

The interactions between the raspy-voiced Hurt and various shallowly cheerful Americans are genuinely charming and dynamic.

Ratnam, known for integrating controversial cultural and political themes into popular melodramas, bundles a multitude of coming-of-age traumas into the kind of juicy, overwrought narrative that was once a Hollywood staple.

But the film soars when the stunning Jennifer Lopez beams and struts her stuff in a series of exhilarating performance sequences; she's a glitzy, thrilling icon a la the made-over Olivia Newton-John of Grease.

Balaban and Nairn are radiant, with none of the mannerisms that so often make Hollywood actresses look like Stepford teens.

Even during the most intense moments, it's hard to shake the impression that the conspicuously buff-and-polished Justine is only visiting this drab world, her miserable life an interesting career move.

Ambitious thriller, which never quite lives up to its aspirations or its cast.

This fast-moving gangster picture was typical of the Warner Bros. releases of the 1930s: lots of shooting, action, and romance, all crammed into a brief 78 minutes as overseen by supervisor Sam Bischoff who went on to be the producer of such epics as THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE, THE PHENIX CITY STORY, among others.

The film is marvelously acted all around, and the fact that there isn't a false note in the entire film is especially impressive given Kureishi's melodramatic contrivances and the fact that his characters are clichés whose behaviors are predictable at nearly every turn.

A delicate watercolor dream of a ghost story, as insubstantial and tremulously haunting as an unquiet spirit.

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

Based on a short story by Joe R. Lansdale, this low-key oddity stresses character over broad laughs and shock effects, allowing Campbell and Davis to develop a quirky rapport that's a real pleasure to watch.

By the film's end we feel neither sympathy nor, oddly, total disgust for this most loathsome of killers. We simply begin to understand, and perhaps that's achievement enough.

It's the perfect "smackeral" of adventure for youngsters craving Pooh Bear and his pals.

The script, the direction and finally, Fonda's acting choices capture nothing of what made Hellman a true piss-and-vinegar original.

The world of professional golf gets the Martin and Lewis treatment in this mildly funny film.

Neither a conventional documentary nor a work of complete fiction, Hammer's film constructs a secret history, part imagination and part reality that is both revealing and slyly entertaining.

An astonishing act of synthesis, bringing together disparate Ripper theories and a fiercely idiosyncratic version of London's history, architecture, policing and social structure.

Solid, old-fashioned narrative moviemaking with just enough no-budget cachet to disguise its essential blandness.

Multi-character drama that reveals a vivid cross-section of the city's inhabitants but fails to live up to the director's high ambitions.

Tom Gilroy's debut feature is a little obvious, but it's an excellent showcase for the criminally underused Ned Beatty.

The Turning Point features a few laughs, lots of maudlin moments, superior dancing from a host of real ballerinas, and an occasionally perceptive script.

Apparently intended as a larky, character-driven adventure with dark underpinnings, this attenuated road movie was originally envisioned as a vehicle for relative unknowns, and might have worked better that way.

Despite a disappointingly obvious ending, Ricochet is a brutally entertaining film.

Stewart seems uncomfortable playing an intellectual; his dull performance never displays the disturbance or authority that it needs.

The comedy is fairly light and the romance decidedly offbeat.

The film's energy and style are enough to recommend it. Lovers of the original should be pleased with this effort, as should most fans of the genre.

This efficient fright machine features a knowing cameo by Curtis's mom -- "Psycho's" Janet Leigh -- a couple of bloody good scares and a genuinely affecting performance from Curtis.

No matter that the setting is one of the most picturesque on the planet: cinematographer Jean-Max Bernard's camera would much rather linger all the skin and muscle Morel contrives to put on display.

Winslet and Keitel are perfectly matched, go-for-broke actors handed dramatic license to do a psychic striptease.

A military satire in the tradition of M*A*S*H and Catch-22, based on Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa's 1973 book.

Vincente Minnelli's film might have benefited from less emphasis on dialogue and more on the musical numbers ("Just in Time" and "The Party's Over" among them), but Holliday is adorable and efforlessly "real" in one of the best roles of her sadly abbreviated career.

An almost unrelenting barrage of gore, Dead Alive is also a constant assault on the funnybone, a film in which the graphic blood-spilling is taken so far over the top that it becomes hilarious instead of disgusting.

More comic book-like and less intriguing than the original, the film's punch-drunk cyber-mysticism still has a darkly seductive allure that sets it apart from juvenile, Star Wars-style space opera.

For the first time anywhere, filmmaking brothers Craig and Damon Foster capture this rare event as it happens, and it's something to see.

Bojanov's sad subjects could as easily be in Detroit or Glasgow or Marseilles. What keeps his film from being a relentless wallow in wasted lives is its surprising conclusion.

The caliber of the cast, led by Mirren and Walters, elevates the material above movie-of-the-week level, and viewers can relish seeing these fine actresses play against type.

Quite enjoyable on its own terms.

On the downside, it's slackly edited -- comedy is, after all, all about timing and there are way too many lengthy shots of Cho waiting for her audience to respond.

A very expensive caper picture that drowns in its own artiness, using multi-images, cinematic tricks, and other pretentious film gimmicks--all of which detract from the story.