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.

Powerful and startlingly unsentimental.

Perry's careful juxtaposition of images showing the town's sad present with footage of what it's long ceased to be is positively haunting.

The film is marvelously acted -- the Bolger sisters are a delight -- and Sheridan captures New York City's crazy energy as only an newcomer can.

The manic energy of the lively and outrageous opening sequence sets a tone and pace the film can't maintain.

The screenplay just isn't funny: Most jokes fall flat and just lie there in a pool of their own sick. And while Zwigoff's deadpan pacing was perfect for the wry, sophisticated humor of "Ghost World," here it's a comedy killer; that extra beat after each new outrage is just long enough for viewers to realize just how sad and disturbing it all is.

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.

This dreary science-fiction/historical-action hybrid is a misfire of staggering proportions.

Trapero again proves himself a master of mood, evoking the gritty, workaday world of contemporary Argentina that helped establish him as one of the most important young directors of the new Argentine cinema.

Strong performances -- Baldwin's smoothly vicious Shelley is a revelation -- and Kramer's eye for the striking detail give the familiar material its own distinctive flavor.

Aside from a little eleventh-hour pseudo-mysticism about death and the weight of the soul, the story is really little more than a unusually gripping thriller.

Frenetic and cheerless action aside, the film's real problem is the Cat, who looks most unmagically like a second-string college sports mascot and conducts himself like a risque baggy-pants comedian.

A gloomy-doomy ghost story that gets off to a creepy start and then spirals into flat-out preposterousness.

If the banter lacks the often brilliant and erudite -- if showy -- sparkle of its predecessor, the acting is still first-rate, and the film will be best enjoyed by fans eager to spend another 90 minutes with a group of old friends.

The story is predictable, but Reeder's performance is painfully convincing and the East Village locations so uniformly grimy that they all but weep despair.

Slight but affecting.

This amateurish comedy features some amazing sequences shot in Moscow. But everything else about it is second rate.

The scene transitions are sometimes jarring, but the story unfolds like a particularly juicy bit of small-town gossip, one that's told by a particularly vivid storyteller.

The bones of a great Western remain barely visible under the layer of mush he and screenwriter Ken Kaufman smooth over them, reminders of the viciously memorable film that might have been.

Masharawi's use of actual footage of clogged roadblocks and scary police actions bring a topical immediacy to his film, but it also asks an important question about the relevance of art during a time of crisis.

Sweet-natured charmer in its own right.

With the exception of a brief sequence on the Galapagos Islands, where Maturin briefly indulges in some pre-Darwinian study of its unique ecosystem, the entire film takes place aboard the ship, and Weir's greatest accomplishment may be that it never feels claustrophobic.

Fraser's goofiness matches that of the animated characters and he cheerfully pokes fun at his celebrity persona, while Elfman is oddly appealing as a strong woman who must seek help from a wascally wabbit.

The irony is that Shakur's speaking voice is the film's greatest asset: His transformation from eager-to-please teenager to gangsta icon is vividly apparent in the sound bites.

The cast isn't bad but the movie is, and Amir's use of Holocaust imagery is cheap and unnecessary; Jo and Alexander could just as easily have died on the Titanic. At one point the dialogue is completely drowned out by the roar of the surf, and that is no doubt a blessing.

This semiautobiographical work by Federico Fellini was the first film to bring him a measure of world attention.

A murder mystery wrapped in an experimental portrait of life in a rural Hungarian town, writer-director Gyorgy Palfi's engrossing feature debut is a breathtaking feat of filmmaking.

The scenes from Epidemic have the high-contrast look of a 1920s horror film, are in English (much of it badly dubbed) and feature images that are handsome and preposterous in equal parts -- they're amusing, and too stylized to be disturbing.