Ultimately, Coppola's pastel-colored take on Marie's life is beguiling and annoying in equal measure.

The movie winds up becoming "The Annette Bening Show," and she's quite good: Bening makes the most of a string of mad scenes for which any actress would kill, and the real pain she brings to the part grounds the film in something real.

This is a powerful, important and, in the end, profoundly poignant movie dedicated to the lives of men and women who fight wars and shoulder the burden of becoming "heroes" to help the rest of us make sense of what remains incomprehensible.

Mayer knows how to tug at the heartstrings, and his admirably restrained cast keeps the family drama from becoming too sugary.

The film's prestige is a doozy, both dazzling and preposterous, but if you're watching closely -- as Cutter advises in the film's first few minutes -- it's flawlessly set up.

There are no laughs to be had here, though, unless you count nervous titters and frat-boy sniggers at the very thought of, you know.

Features a nutty mix of broad comedy, romance and maudlin melodrama.

Nelson's film eschews sensationalism, and knowing how the story ends in no way diminishes its visceral impact.

Bogumil Godfrejow's raw cinematography and Huller's poignant, close-to-the-bone performance transform what might have been a morbid curiosity into an entirely enthralling, quietly terrifying experience.

Mark Orton's overused fiddly score is nice enough, but can't disguise the essential emptiness of overlong scenes.

What's best about Block's documentary is how well he captures his own shifting perceptions.

Animator Bill Plympton's seventh feature is a must-see for fans of his often witty, always scabrous, hand-drawn work.

The film pulls off a couple of "gotchas!", but the subtle creepiness of its predecessors is gone, replaced by a sense of numbing predictability.

Wobbles unsteadily between broad humor and paranoid thrills. The result is a bland muddle.

Lunkheaded but entertaining action flick.

The most infuriating revelation in Amy Berg's powerful documentary is the lengths to which current Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney and other church officials went to protect Father O'Grady and themselves, even though it meant knowingly delivering countless other children into a child molester's hands.

Linney's character is written as a one-dimensional monster whose selfish cruelty is beyond redemption and, ultimately, belief.

Overall, McGrath's film has superior star power (including Gwyneth Paltrow in a one-scene role as a Peggy Lee-like chanteuse), is franker about the sexual nature of Capote's fascination with the murderous Smith and his sad, strangled dreams, and spends more time establishing Capote's glittering New York life before setting him adrift in the heartland.

This intimate coming-of-age story benefits from excellent performances, notably Gregory Smith's.

By turns fascinating and intolerable.

Anyone who understands the meaning of the title or catches all the frog references scattered through writer-director Martin Curland's feature debut will have a head start understanding this confused and confusing comedy.

Sax keeps things moving, but the best thing about the film is the British cast.

Produced by the son of Trinity Broadcasting Network founder Paul Crouch, this historical epic offers a solid two hours of spectacle and intrigue drawn from The Book of Esther by way of Tommy Tenney and Mark Andrew Olsen's novel "Hadassah."

As the film makes pointedly clear, ALS is what is considered an "orphan disease," meaning drug companies aren't willing to devote their resources to finding a cure because they feel too small a percentage of the population suffer from it to make an effective drug profitable.

Tedious and obscure where it was apparently meant to be atmospheric and tantalizing.

Once again, Field has crafted and grown-up movie that grabs you by the throat, drags you in and doesn't let you go until the very bitter end.

A thrilling return to form.

The less said about Simpson the better; whatever her talents, she can't sell a simple reaction shot, and, perhaps sensing this, Coolidge's camera tends to drift south of her face.