Medem's stupendously gorgeous puzzle movie features strong performances from its four leads.

Some great things can found in this fluidly kinetic film, well-directed by X-Files series and movie veteran Rob Bowman, including no-nonsense dialogue, epic photography and a terrific score. It's too bad the story is so sloppy and stupid.

This dark, almost mythic heart is what makes the film such an emotionally rich experience.

An illuminating glimpse into what goes on in the dance studio.

Shunji Iwae's film began life as an interactive online "novel" and unfolds in a series of achronological vignettes whose cumulative effect is chilling.

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.

What ultimately saves the film from both silliness and ponderousness is not its simplistic social message, not its now-stale theme, nor its disappointing characterizations, but rather the dazzling cinematic (and theatrical) bag of tricks which Lang and company employed to keep things moving.

Director Rick Rosenthal ("Halloween II") seems to have forgotten everything he ever knew about generating suspense, relying on cliched shadows and grainy, handheld images supposedly shot by the increasingly terrified students.

Kudos to writer-director Eric Schaeffer for doing a sexually graphic romantic comedy about fiftysomethings without being patronizing or cutesy. With both heart and guts, he honestly depicts how that moony-eyed, falling-in-love rush of endorphins is the same at 55 as it is at 15.

It's hard to tell whether Attal means the fictional Yvan to be such an colossal jerk. His abrasive obnoxiousness undermines the film's generally light tone, and seriously deflects sympathy away from his character's dilemma.

As a document of the ever-mutable musician's signature persona, a wraithlike androgyne with a head full of apocalyptic dreams, it's fascinating.

With all the glossy sex, you'd be forgiven for thinking Zalman King was directing, except that even King knows you don't need such a ludicrously complicated plot to show pretty people having sex. Each character is so burdened with gratuitous back story that it's exhausting trying to separate the grain from the chaff, until you realize none of it matters at all.

De Marken and Freeman preserve the group dynamic by dividing the screen into six parts, each mini-frame capturing actions and reactions from a different camera angle, and while the film drags in spots, the performances are unusually powerful.

Anchored by Friel and Williams's exceptional performances, the film's power lies in its complexity. Nothing is black and white, starting with the girls' complicated relationships with their parents, which are simultaneously nurturing and fraught with psychological peril.

Hailed as a clever exercise in neo-Hitchcockianism, this clever and very satisfying picture is more accurately Chabrolian.

Violent, deliberately operatic, and makes ambiguous social statements.

To his eternal credit, Jones gives his considerable all and even coaxes a startling note of poignancy from one scene, while Smith just bops along, lobbing gags and grinning at the special effects.

A harmless, if ultimately inane, fantasy-comedy vehicle for youngsta-rapper Lil' Bow Wow, a 15-year-old who's already an alarmingly accomplished scene stealer.

Andersson creates a world that's at once surreal and disturbingly familiar; absurd, yet tremendously sad. The haunting score is by ABBA's Benny Andersson.

The action sequences are so franticly dizzying that they make "Run Lola Run" look as though it unfolds in slow motion.

By the end, it should be perfectly clear just why Cho is so loved by so many different types of people. Raunchy though her material is, it embraces all comers, regardless of gender, sexuality, race or ethnicity. And it's never been sharper — or funnier — than it is here.

Warm, funny and often brutally honest profile of an aging divorcee and her three very different daughters.

The story's self-conscious seaminess cries out for the ministrations of a filmmaker like direct-to-video auteur Gregory Hippolyte.

This amazing footage alternates with interviews that include more than a dozen surviving members of the troupe, whose recollections are by turn funny, touching and mind-boggling. What a time!

Essentially a feature-length episode of the popular Nickelodeon animated series, this faithful expansion is savvy enough to stay put.

This is a terrible movie in its own right, tasteless and condescending -- if Sandler's character is an Everyman, than the Everyman of today is a boorish jackass

The satire is broad and easy, while the romance is thoroughly unconvincing.

A film such as this, which relies on mood, atmosphere, and ideas, rather than plot, depends on its acting to be effective, and the entire cast is extraordinary, with Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek both giving their finest performance ever.