The similarities between this film and Michael Bay's overblown "Armageddon"are too numerous to ignore; the crucial difference is that this one is actually pretty good.

Rather than portraying these girls as one-dimensional victims, Harada offers a complex portrait of teenagers who've learned to make their exploitation work for them.

Chilly, muted and refreshingly free of cheap shocks, this stylish psychological horror tale is greatly enhanced by subtle (acting) performances.

Ejiofor's subtle, infinitely humane performance is the invisible glue that holds everything together and Chris Menges's darkly shimmering cinematography lends the story a gritty, coolly seductive glamour.

The result is gorgeous, if ultimately shallow -- much like Simone herself.

The costumes are phenomenal, the set design ravishing and the sadistic inventiveness extraordinary.

Somewhat overly sentimental, lacking the novel's subtlety, and less interesting when the action leaves the ball park, Barry Levinson's beautifully shot film is nonetheless a charming fairy tale.

The plot is simple and the Italian performances verge on the operatic, but Leone revitalizes the Western through a unique and complex visual style. The film is full of brilliant spatial relationships (extreme close-ups in the foreground, with detailed compositions visible in the background) combined with Ennio Morricone's vastly creative musical score full of grunts, wails, groans, and bizarre-sounding instruments. Aural and visual elements together give a wholly original perspective on the West and its myths.

The first part of this film is an exceedingly taut little chiller that stands on its own, and in fact was once a short film entitled The Sitter. Director Fred Walton decided to expand the clever premise into a feature and, unfortunately, that is where the film begins to fall apart.

Burnett and Lee's graceful, sympathetic documentary focuses on participants who embody Burning Man's ideals without being blind to the opportunists and party animals it inevitably attracts.

Although the film's small budget and tight shooting schedule (lensed in 15 days on Super 16mm) is betrayed by sloppy editing, unpolished sound and an occasional flat performance, particularly Johns in the lead role, She's Gotta Have It still bursts with the energy and technical command that have quickly established Lee as a major force in American cinema.

The sci-fi wonders, including an army of shuddering robo-soldiers and one-man, steam-powered bombers with delicate wood-and-linen wings, are truly marvelous and go a long way toward making up for the film's erratic pacing.

Both De Bouw and Decleir are superb.

Far too long for a lighthearted farce, with dull patches that outnumber the high spots, the film is really about Maclaine and Lemmon striving to rise above the fat Diamond-Wilder script and Wilder's lethargic direction.

Blanchett's insouciant but steely performance alone makes the film worth watching, but it's Brenda Fricker's quietly underplayed turn as Guerin's mother that makes your throat tighten.

The film is all a little Lit Crit 101, but it's extremely well played and often very funny. But beware: Solondz uses humor as a booby trap, so be careful what you laugh at.

If ever anyone earned the title "diva," it was the late singer Amalia Rodrigues.

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

Colorful and deceptively buoyant until it suddenly pulls the rug out from under you.

As it is, Hard to Kill has just enough going for it between the explosions and bone-crunching fight scenes to qualify as two hours of solid, high-decibel action entertainment.

Character and plot are the main event, and the film's got both in spades.

Though not much about the film sticks with you, it's a reliable piece of fluff that delivers the goods.

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

A likable but forgettable bit of fluff about mistaken identity.

On Dangerous Ground is tautly directed by that master of stark dramas, Nicholas Ray. Ryan and Lupino give sterling performances but the story line is broken up into two distinct segments, which lessens the film's impact and cohesiveness.

Hopkins and Rock are a surprisingly good mix; Hopkins actually underplays his role as a company man with a barely acknowledged conscience, while Rock's manic impulses aren't allowed to run riot.

With British-American culture clash as its dominant theme, A Fish Called Wanda bristles with wit, enlivened by delightfully over-the-top ensemble acting.

It aspires to a documentary realism and keeps the focus on the characters at all times. Though the results can't really be called enjoyable, the intensity that bleeds off the screen is undeniably effective.

The music continues to speak for itself. Play loud.

Cudworth's script gives the characters more depth than is the genre norm, and the ensemble acting is terrific.

Boursinhac and Bibi Naceri throw all the usual elements into the pot: Economic inequality, ethnic tensions, feverish family ties and the titular criminal code, which everyone invokes and everyone agrees is a load of claptrap.

Orenna, Thornton and Belton deliver strong, surprisingly subtle performances that make the modest fireworks genuinely engaging.

A grim meditation on faith and betrayal that focuses on a relatively obscure corner of Holocaust history: the fate of the Catholic clergy under the Third Reich.

Intrigue comes in epic proportions in this US versus Russia arctic battle.

While this cheerful film has nothing particularly new to say about the ties that hold family members together even when they're driving each other crazy, it's a pleasure to watch such a talented ensemble at work.

Takashi Miike's frenetic comic yakuza thriller embodies the best and worst this notorious Japanese genre auteur has to offer: It's endlessly inventive, consistently intelligent and sickeningly savage.

Hugely entertaining.

Dowdy and thin.

Director Andrew Davis (THE FUGITIVE) punches out the action sequences with frightening efficiency, and The Fugitive Guy keeps things moving -- so fast, in fact, that it's easy to get lost in the tangle of conflicting conspiracies. The whole breathless business feels as though it should be over about 15 minutes before it is.

This humorous, lively, and entertaining picture could be described as a caper film set against a WW II backdrop.

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

Basically a one-joke film, but the joke is a good one.

It's notoriously difficult to balance lighthearted humor with the spookiness a good ghost story requires, but director Rob Minkoff is surprisingly successful, delivering a satisfying mix of laughs and mild scares aimed at a young audience.

More a reflection in a fun-house mirror than a portrait of the artist.

LaBeouf somehow manages to turn Kelly's self-centered behavior and irritating character quirks into a sympathetic lead, and the well-written script by newcomer Erica Beeney brings a lot of humor to some very touching moments.

Breezy and eminently watchable.

A huge hit in France, this ensemble drama revolves around two very different social groups whose encounters with each other change several lives in surprising ways.

Director Curtis Hanson keeps the hugely complicated story zooming along the boulevard of broken dreams without losing sight of the details that make the trip worthwhile.

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.

Neither Parker nor Donovan is a typical romantic lead, but they bring a fresh, quirky charm to the formula. Nor are their characters typical meet-cute types: David and Toni are imperfect people who are some how perfect for each other.

Beauchamp reconstructs the actual crime with disturbing immediacy, and his treatment of how Till's death galvanized a country makes this short film a good way to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a crime that still has the power to outrage.

Caustic and despairing, Shrader's film lacks the delicate beauty of Atom Agoyan's "Sweet Hereafter," but has just as much bitter power.

What Garvy's oral history of the Students for a Democratic Society lacks in clarity and opposing viewpoints it makes up for with fascinating personal reminiscences of a turbulent time.

Excellent performances from Sarah Polley and Deborah Harry, and a sensitive script from writer-director Isabel Coixet transform what might otherwise have been little more than a disease-of-the-week cable melodrama.

Until the patently preposterous finale (you can just hear the studio suits saying, "Ya gotta make it big"), the miserable perils faced by the damp, sooty, squabbling motorists are claustrophobically convincing, assuming you accept in the first place that they escaped a fireball that looks as though it should have fried every living thing between the New Jersey and Manhattan shores.

Good acting and careful direction by Becker make it worth seeing, but the violence and the language may be too graphic for some tastes.

By focusing on one period in his life, this film chronicles the bulk of Kinsey's experiences while barely scratching the surface of his personality.

Though Hearst is the hook, Stone's unwavering focus is on the heady mix of social and personal dynamics that spawned the SLA.

Instantly forgettable but fun while it lasts, Disney's live-action adaptation of the classic cartoon is an ideal action-adventure thrill ride for kids who may be a little too young for the latest Bond extravaganza.

A sloppy but ambitious mix of pop anthropology, political observation, and good old-fashioned Val Lewtonesque horror, The Serpent and the Rainbow succeeds more often than it fails.

The first film by director David Cronenberg, the black and white, hour-long feature Stereo is more self-consciously avant-garde, and less visceral, than his later work. Nevertheless, many of the usual Cronenberg concerns are present: a futuristic setting, bizarre scientific experimentation, and an obsessive exploration of perverse forms of sexuality.

Bearded, burly and even balding, these "bears" are a refreshing change from the depilated, youth-obsessed men of "Queer as Folk."

The characters are two-dimensional types -- the good girl, the tough lesbian, the saintly mother -- but the cast gives its all. Just try not to get too distracted by the echoes of other movies, like DEAD END BOYZ N THE HOOD.

Wavers between being condescending and downright preposterous, but there are redeeming moments.

Their dilemmas are the stuff of dozens of Masterpiece Theater productions, but they're brought to life with a vividness that defies changing mores and cuts to the heart of the ways people justify hurting each other in the name of love.

Beautifully shot against Iceland's frozen landscape, the film is nearly as spellbinding as its strange heroine, whose essential mystery Gudmundsson preserves until the film's final frames.

A bold, painful memoir that finds an innovative middle-ground between conventional documentary and a homemade, home-movie collage.

A cerebral thriller that dares to ask a fundamental question: What, exactly, is love?

And if you never learn much about the man behind the mask, well, that's as Nomi would have wanted it.

Morrison brings an amazingly sure hand to MacLachlan's prickly screenplay.

A charming, technically sensational version of E.B. White's children's classic.

While one could wish the film offered something more original than its strictly formula heroics, it benefits from a generous portion of charm. And most kids attending 3 Ninjas are likely to stand up and cheer the rousing, action-packed finale.

An inconsistent and unsatisfying tale of amour fou and literary ambition.

Running a substantial 140 minutes, the film does, at the very least, give fans a chance to see many of their favorite players hamming it up.

The performances in the film are excellent, and its look is entirely appropriate and mesmerizing--but only for a while. The film's basic flaw is that it's just too painful, too depressing, and too slow to watch.

Director Saks, who won a Tony for his stage direction, works in his typically fish-out-of-water fashion here, trying to put some air into a stagebound work, but much of the spontaneity of the theater version seems to have been supplanted by the mechanics of moviemaking. The acting by a very talented cast is generally quite good, even if Danner doesn't convince as an old-fashioned Jewish mother type. More of a nostalgic piece than a story, the film shows an attention to the specifics of the culture on display which has genuine if modest appeal.

So while the facts of Frank's actual political career tend to fall by the wayside, Everly treats us to an insightful look at a remarkable public figure who first became famous for what he does in private.

Arteta wrings some laughs from their bizarre (and more than a little frightening situation), but they're uncomfortable laughs, emotional protection from the freak show.

Carole Lombard's final film for Paramount was a charming screwball comedy that was entertaining, if lightweight.

White's take on southern life is no more "real" than the stereotypes he's trying to disrupt, just cooler.

Skillfully written by Bloch and boasting an excellent cast, this omnibus is a bit better than most and was the feature debut of television director Peter Duffell.

Although it definitely falls short of The Deer Hunter or Apocalypse Now, the film is not without interest.

Anyone unfamiliar with Chomsky's work may be unsettled by his unblinking critique of the U.S. policy at a time when patriotism is the order of the day, and while he fails to offer any real solutions, his conscientious perspectives on the questions remain invaluable.

Though ultimately something less than the sum of its parts, the film's performances are reason enough to see it.

The subject can sharply divide even the most liberal-minded critics, but it's no secret on which side of the debate filmmakers Bathsheba Ratzkoff and Sut Jhally find themselves.

This big-screen incarnation of the TV kids' adventure show that spawned a marketing empire is no better than it should be, but it's lively enough to fulfill its primary mission -- which is, of course, to sell more toys.

A laser-sharp evocation of the tortured ties that bind sisters, who can love and loathe each other simultaneously and inflict lifelong wounds with chilling expertise.

They're answers that will either earn your respect, or further damn him as the architect of an American nightmare.

You may not care for the message, but there's nothing insidious about it.

Brilliantly acted and lugubriously paced, Liv Ullmann's fourth feature as director — the second written by her mentor, Ingmar Bergman — will no doubt be manna to those who miss the brilliant acting and lugubrious pace that characterized Bergman's late-period films.

The performance sequences are in color, while the recording sequences are in B&W. Jacquot's strategy allows his cast the benefit of being able to give full performances (Raimondi is a particularly good film actor) while demonstrating vividly that the beauty and power of the opera reside primarily in the music itself.

Lacking the thematic depth of "On The Run," this brisk, bubbly jape never really transcends the genre it's emulating, and your enjoyment of the film really depends on your tolerance for bumbling misunderstandings and improbable coincidences.

Cuaron lets his enthusiasms show.

Depending on one's mood, or level of sobriety, it can be a hysterical picture that pokes good natured fun at American movies, TV and commercials.

Clever and offbeat.

Given a better structured screenplay, Mistress might have given The Player a run for its money. Instead, it merely offers glimmers of what might have been, and settles for being a cinematic footnote.

The film flawlessly captures the directionless alienation of youngsters whose families are in no shape to guide them through the turbulence of their teenage years.

This could have been a wonderful film, but the makers fell in love with the hardware and forgot the humanity. BRAINSTORM is chockablock with special effects that sometimes obstruct rather than enhance the story.