It's a show we don't see, presumably because of issues with music rights, and while "much ado about nothing" might be overstating things, after more than an hour and a half of buildup, it would have been nice to see Wu-Tang perform.

Does so many things right that it's a shame to see it sink into horror-movie cliches.

Overall, Grindhouse may well be the Beatlemania of sleaze-movie viewing, but since the real thing is gone it's the best that many fans will ever have.

Seeks to set the record straight. But Gere's sneaky, ingratiating presence keeps it dishonest to the last frame.

Insipid, formulaic and suitable for the dumbed-down sensibilities of lowest-common-denominator couch potatoes.

Interestingly, the real heart of the film is in the finely drawn adult characters.

Swank and Elba work hard for their paychecks, but Rea quite literally phones in his performance.

The film desperately needs a stronger script; one with a few funny jokes would be nice.

No cliché is unturned, no "dog duty" pun avoided (get it -- dog doody), no creepy gay-panic subtext unplumbed in this family comedy.

While Rachel's story is fiction, many of its incidents are rooted in historical events carefully researched by Soeteman and the film's briskly staged action and stunning reversals of fortune ensure that its two and a half hours fly by.

While funny enough, it's essentially a one-joke movie.

A smart, engrossing thriller in which you care as much about the characters as the crime.

A barrage of pop-culture jokes, time-travel high jinks and plucky orphans that's as confusing as it sounds, and riddled with plot holes to boot.

With a third-act twist that outdoes that initial revelation, the film turns out to be a thoughtful exploration of paternity and responsibility. Much of the film's success lies in Bier's sensitive direction, but credit is also due to the fine cast, particularly Mikkelsen.

Goldberger, who made his debut with the similarly gritty and deliberately unpolished "Trans," tries to pull the novel's concerns to the surface, but much of its subtlety is lost. Giamatti, however, delivers yet another superb performance, turning what might have been a freak show into an unexpectedly moving experience.

Brilliantly conceived, imaginatively structured, superbly written, stylishly composed and photographed, and very often wryly funny, Killer of Sheep lives up to its official designation as a national treasure.

While it does take place over a weekend spent touring Northern California's wine country, writer-director Russell Brown's feature debut isn't exactly a bicurious "Sideways." The characters are less interesting and even less likable, and the only pleasure we can take is in their emotional pain.

It's vivid evidence that great music and stories transcend time and place.

Wahlberg acquits himself well, and the supporting cast -- which includes pioneering rocker Levon Helm in a scene-stealing cameo as an aging gun buff who knows a thing or two about cover-ups, Ned Beatty as a corrupt politician, and a Strangelovian Rade Serbedzija -- is so strong you almost wish the film were longer so they could have more screen time.

Though written by Wes Craven and his son, Jonathan Craven, this is pretty standard stuff: A lot of creeping through dark tunnels with just enough characterization to help you keep track of who's still alive, but not enough gore to really satisfy fans of Aja's bloodbath.

An intelligent, imaginative children's adventure refreshingly free of rapping cartoon animals, fart jokes and mind-numbing special effects.

Sadly, the only aspect of this well-intentioned film that doesn't feel completely formulaic is its refreshingly unromantic picture of an inner-city neighborhood in the early '70s: Life in Nicetown is hard and very, very poor.

As overstuffed as a twice-baked potato.

Bummer, dudes. Longtime fans who expect the fun lingo and pizza-gobbling Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of the past may be shocked by director Kevin Munroe's reimagining of the popular kiddie series.

Without their efforts, ordinary moviegoers would never know that air-guitar competitors must craft a series of one-minute routines, some to songs they've only just heard, or that their efforts are judged on the 4.0 to 6.0 scale used to rank competitive figure skaters. Important to know? No. Fascinating? Absolutely.

Shrewder than you'd think and not half as dumb as it looks.

Linear storytelling was never Herzog's strong suit even under the best of conditions. His strength lies in capturing lucid lunacy on film, and Manoel da Silva's descent into the jaws of madness is a straight shot into the heart of darkness, a place familiar to both Herzog and Kinski.

Malkovich pulls out all the gaudy stops.

Fergus' thriller benefits from Pearce's high-strung performance and the stark New Mexico landscapes, but the story is familiar and the pacing much too measured for a slight tale of ineluctable fate.

Poignant and sometimes downright hilarious, much of the film unfolds in the small area outside the arena -- an "offside" penalty box for women who just won't behave.

The film flows like a sinister and unsettling piece of music, from gripping overture to the tightly orchestrated movements to the unforgettable coda.

Stylish and twisty, but not clever enough to support its more outrageous plot machinations.

Perhaps too clever for its own good.

It took the combined directorial talents of Ivan Passer and Sergei Bodrov to complete this historical epic about the 18th-century attempt to unify the contentious Kazakh tribes into what would become Kazakhstan (no Borat jokes, please), but the result is really little more than an intermittently entertaining.

There are no two ways about it: A chubby-cheeked dummy doing stuff it shouldn't be doing is spooky stuff. But Wan isn't on such sure footing with his actors -- Wahlberg is stilted as the tough-guy cop, and Kwanten is blandly uninteresting.

Forgetting that French New Wave directors often turned to Hollywood for inspiration, cinema snobs will doubtless be outraged that Hollywood would dare remake such a beloved Rohmer masterpiece, when in fact, tone aside, "Chloe In The Afternoon" isn't all that different from "The Seven Year Itch."

The script's vague, silly "explanation" for Linda's experiences -- nature abhors a spiritual vacuum, so weird stuff happens to the faithless -- is the icing on the irritation cake.

The first half of Lover's film is surprisingly affecting...But the film comes apart in its second half, when James' flight triggers a long series of flashbacks to the brothers' childhood.

The vicious clamor the film occasioned in the U.K. is simply the measure of how volatile a subject the relationship between England and Ireland remains more than eight decades after the film's events, and the thinking viewer can hardly help but see parallels between the Irish insurgency and all subsequent guerrilla conflicts.

Peculiar but oddly winsome fable.

Whatever the project's "reality," it's insightful as well as entertaining, and the inclusion of real interviews with people both inside and outside the business means it functions as both an intelligent critique and a dire warning.

It may not be by-the-book history -- a relative term in any event, when discussing the ancients whose worldview embraced men, gods and monsters -- but what a spectacle!

Caton-Jones' refusal to pull back on showing exactly what happened to the 800,000 Rwandans who were murdered that spring means that strong stomachs and even stronger nerves are required, but the film demands to be seen by anyone attempting to grasp how -- and just how quickly -- genocide can occur.

Boon's film is both funny and heartbreaking, a supremely confident mix of political satire, free-floating paranoia, fractured family dynamics and the kind of comedy that regularly reconfigures itself into tragedy.

At times funny, but mostly tragic, Scurlock's film is important viewing for any who owns a credit card without realizing that it's a wallet time bomb.

A funny and touching adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winner Jhumpa Lahiri's novel about two generations of Bengali-Americans attempting to reconcile the world of their collective past with that of their individual futures.

It is message filmmaking so blunt you might be tempted to root for the parasitic reprobate over the saintly old man, and that's just not right.

Like "Secret Things," the film is ultimately infuriating, subtle, self-indulgent, astute and disingenuous, which makes for great -- if divisive -- conversation.

Makoto's misadventures are specifically geared to the concerns and perspectives of teenagers, while avoiding the luridness of similarly themed films like THE BUTTERLFY EFFECT, and the resolution refreshingly bittersweet.

Peter Fonda's cameo appearance is a cute fillip, but hardly worth the wait.

Fincher gets it all right, and Donovan's hippie-dippy "Hurdy Gurdy Man," which bookends the story, has never sounded so hauntingly menacing.

The person who can resist a formerly homeless senior citizen gradually restored to sufficient stability to the degree that he can take in his own "castaway cat" is hard-hearted indeed.

It's beautifully shot -- the sweat-drenched jukejoint scenes are particularly evocative -- and features a terrific performance by Ricci, one that deserves to be seen by a wider audience than the one certain to be reeled in by those torrid ads.

Groning's approach gives the viewer a rare chance to really listen to what water sounds like when it drips from a tin bowl, or the watch what patterns raindrops make when they fall on a shallow puddle -- purely sensual, cinematic experiences. In such moments we sense the point of view of a patient, sensitive filmmaker.

fFrst-time feature filmmaker Cam Archer turns what might have been an exercise in salaciousness into a stylish visual poem about desire and adolescent alienation.

A dreary, downbeat "Field of Dreams."

The film's longer running time means more dead spots and the more elaborate stunts demand tighter scripting and less room to improvise, which is a shame since improvisation is the Reno's gang real strength. Forgiving fans, however, won't care a whit.

By the film's downbeat climax, Cerda's dread of death and uncertainty about digging too deeply into what's better left buried have become palpable, and The Abandoned lingers beneath the skin as any decent horror movie should.

A workmanlike piece of storytelling elevated by fine performances.

The only bright spots are Cavanagh's easy charm about him and Cumming's performance as Grody -- he's much more believable as a straight man than Graham is as a gay woman.

While at times overly familiar, the film never feels self-mocking.

Cocaine Angel may be a fine counterpoint to glammy cocaine-scare films like "Less Than Zero" (1987) and "Blow" (2001), but it comes on so strong it risks being dismissed along with the "this is your brain on drugs" school of dope-scare PSAs.

Phillippe has the unenviable task of trying to make O'Neill equally interesting, but an eager beaver with some unresolved family issues is no match for a poisoned soul methodically laying the groundwork for his own inevitable fall. The unfortunate imbalance makes long stretches of the film feel dull, but when Cooper is on screen it's mesmerizing.

Parents should be warned that the novel ventures into some emotionally dark territory that could be upsetting to very young or sensitive children, and might want to consider reading and discussing the book together before seeing the film.

Marvel-man Mark Steven Johnson, who wrote and directed "Daredevil" (2003) and scripted "Elektra" (2005), continues to demonstrate the wrong way to make comic book movies: Make sure special effects overwhelm the characters, let campy mannerisms go unchecked and be sure dialogue is declaimed rather than spoken.

Thompson's stories are familiar, but she weaves them together with such assurance and good humor that they're equally soothing and thoroughly enjoyable.

It presents an image of today's Israeli army, composed of teenagers who are by now several generations removed from the founders' original vision and have begun to question whether tactics designed to keep the country safe will only lead to increased levels of fear, humiliation and deadly violence.

Bolstered by a beautifully shaded performance by Karanovic as a woman attempting to escape the torments of her past while securing a future for her daughter, Zbanic's film begs a pretty complex question: Is a love story possible in the aftermath of torture and genocide? The answer appears to be a tentative yes, both on the levels of the film and filmmaking, but it isn't easy.

There are fewer laughs and more lectures -- but there's plenty of sass and soul in between.

What charm the movie has is almost entirely due to Grant and Barrymore -- the master of smarmily irresistible self-deprecation meets the sweetly vulnerable queen of awkward self-sabotage. While they have no romantic chemistry, they're certainly appealing.

It's a handsomely mounted but poky thriller undone by a fatally miscast lead.

Mean-spirited and depressing, this horror movie in comedy disguise delights in the twin spectacles of morbid obesity and domestic abuse, of which children are often the target.

Opening with the Mohandas Gandhi epigram "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," it humanizes the bombers without excusing their actions.

The voice-over narration is obvious, but overall the message is integrated into an unusual story that's enhanced by Liberato's and Fulton's appealing performances as the youngsters who see through their elders' lies and help right a terrible wrong.

While Kudlacek lets some of the elder statesmen ramble, their recollections are a vivid, firsthand window into a bygone era of American art.

Pays backhanded homage to Woody Allen via the travails of college loser Max (Gary Lundy), who fears that years of wallowing in "Annie Hall" have permanently poisoned his love life.

Released simultaneously in the U.S. with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Oscar-nominated fictional thriller "The Lives of Others," this chilling 82-minute documentary about three souls destroyed by the Stasi, the notorious secret police of East Germany, puts a cold, factual gloss on what might otherwise be taken for fiction.

Overall, Graham and Perabo have so little to do that it's hard to imagine why Maggie has three daughters instead of one; they just clutter up her screen time. As to Perabo, she seems to exist for the sole purpose of making risque remarks, and the family dog has more memorable moments.

The trouble isn't just that this haunted-house story, written by Mark Wheaton and directed by Hong Kong filmmakers Danny and Oxide Pang, is both formulaic and derivative. It's that it's completely free of atmosphere, the very thing that their 2002 "The Eye" had in such creepy abundance.

While not easy to watch, and at times even harder to follow, Haas' film is an important attempt to accurately capture the confusing reality of contemporary Iraq.

Just when the film seems to be getting bogged down in "before I made it big" anecdotes -- around the time she and Andy Dick, who was once dismissed from a food-service gig, spend a day operating a mobile lunch stand -- Gurwitch wisely broadens her focus, interviewing ordinary victims of corporate "right-sizing," plant closings.

There's also precious little chemistry between the players. Only Mol has any charm of which to speak, and, frankly, she deserves much better.

There are effective scenes and powerful performances scattered among long sequences in which various members of the family gaze into space as they contemplate the burden of the past, walk aimlessly through Atlanta or have odd encounters with strangers.

The twists and turns continue until the very end of Choi's mesmerizing, high-energy romp, whose 139 minutes zip by like a round of speed poker.

While the cast is uniformly committed, some are able to make more of the material than others.

Skrovan swears that during two years of filming, Nader's only demand was, "Make sure you talk to people who oppose me."

A far cry from such sneakily subversive werewolf-sex tales as "The Company of Wolves" (1984) or "Ginver Snaps" (2000), this pallid little picture is all "Lost Boys" (1987) posturing by way of the sublimely ridiculous "Covenant" (2006).

As soon as it pitches camp in generic romantic-comedy territory, it loses its intriguing edge and becomes one more predictable girl-meets-unsuitable-boy story.

The sadists responsible for the painfully unfunny "Date Movie" (2006) are back, and this time they've outdone themselves: This theater-clearer is even less amusing than its terrible predecessor, a spoof so devoid of laughs it can longer be categorized as a comedy.

For rip-snorting pop entertainment, it's one discomfiting, nasty piece of work, and ain't that a kick in the head.

Television director David Von Ancken's metaphorical revenge Western wears its influences on its sleeve, but adds nothing to the genre that hasn't already been explored in the quietly demythologizing films of Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher, the baroque, operatic Italian Westerns of Sergio Leone and his less-familiar peers, and even in Sam Fuller's deranged, post-Civil War psychodrama "Run of the Arrow"(1956).

Without the gloss of novelty, the film's underdeveloped characters and thin -- though busy -- story are forced into the foreground, and its 88-minute running time feels far longer.

German filmmaker Malte Ludin's gripping documentary about the father he barely knew is both an extraordinary exercise in family history and an example of what Germans call Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung: "facing the past," particularly the years of Hitler's Third Reich.

Bean carves out his own modest variations on the theme of John Ryder-on-the-storm, but Bush and Knighton are so blandly forgettable that it's hard to believe that they're the protagonists and not Victims 1 and 2.

Equal parts "Oliver Twist" and "Pinocchio," Russian director Andrei Kravchuk's fictional hearttugger exposes a troubling real-life practice in contemporary Russia: the buying and selling of abandoned children to rich foreign couples.

A small comic masterpiece that dares to deal with that of which many Sicilians dare not speak: the Mafia.

While Canadian writer-director Eric Nicholas has no fresh thoughts about the voyeuristic nature of movie going, he knows enough to make sure when high-tech peeper Doug (Colin Hanks, son of Tom) conceals his camera in a bag, its lens pokes out of the zipper like the big, fat metaphor it is.

The film's pared-down narrative is anything but aimless, and it pays off in a haunting final last scene scored with Gang of Four's "Damaged Goods."