Director Stephen Purvis and writer Chris Haddock never rise above the material's inherent pulpiness, but they keep the twists coming until the very end.

A nonstop cavalcade of Roth-style animation starring Rat Fink, vintage footage, artfully animated black-and-white film, and fanciful "interviews" with beautifully preserved cars of the era.

It's a sorry state of affairs when a goldfish and a frog (Ginger's prize specimen, unsubtly named Casanova) have more chemistry than a romantic comedy's human leads.

A darkly comic trifle that follows in the footsteps of such films as Catherine Breillat's "Romance" (2000), "The Brown Bunny" (2003) and Michael Winterbottom's "9 Songs" (2004) by incorporating hard-core sex into a nonpornographic narrative.

Mock's film leaves us with a sense of gratitude and relief that so thoughtful an artist as Kushner continues to work among us, capturing and reacting to the world as he buzzes through it.

Despite the absence of dialogue -- the mice squeak and the oak creatures caw like ravens -- Cegavske imbues her scrappy little creatures with disturbingly complex personalities. And if the tale's moral is less than clear, its haunting images speak directly to some dark, preverbal corner of the heart.

Mirren, who's played her share of queens in the past, is hypnotic.

A predictable amalgam of every military-academy movie you can think of.

Though silly and predictable, this animated comedy has stunning visuals, a catchy soundtrack and charming characters that are family-friendly crowd-pleasers.

For all its crudeness, Phillips' tale of men behaving badly is remarkably toothless.

Singaporean writer-director Eric Khoo's third feature is a beautiful, contemplative study of love -- unrequited, unfulfilled and reborn.

Scenemaker Dito Montiel's rough, grating memoir of growing up in a poor, violent section of Astoria, Queens, in the mid-1980s features a few too many arty flourishes, but also packs a raw power that's hard to shake.

Don't be put off: Hernandez's exquisite romance works on an emotional, as well as intellectual, level.

The film doesn't dwell on bad feelings, and anyone looking for lurid details won't find them. But fans will love the live footage of this still-powerful band ripping through a virtual greatest-hits set.

The supporting cast is uniformly strong, with Simon McBurney standing out as an oily representative of the British foreign service.

We never see enough of the small compromises Willie Stark makes on the way up to fully grasp the tragedy of his fall. Some will undoubtedly find Penn's hamboned, spittle-lashing performance a bit much, but it's a pretty close to Warren's original conception.

While the aerial dogfights are handsome and apparently historically accurate, right down to the tracer bullets that leave graceful, crisscrossing trails in the clouds, they have a video-game feel.

Ask yourself this: Did the title make you laugh? If so, you're probably the target audience.

The final scenes pack a surprising melodramatic punch.

John Gulager's directing debut is horror at its most reductive and least resonant.

The fact that Pastor Fischer would probably consider the film an accurate portrayal of her mission may be the most terrifying thing of all.

Twenty-five years on, hardcore continues to be the soundtrack of choice for extreme, white-supremacist groups hoping to tap into teenage rage. With no one on hand to counter the argument, this may go down as hardcore's lasting legacy.

Bernal continues to demonstrate an impressive range; the character requires the normally laid-back actor to be a wild ball of energy, and he's more than up to the challenge. His performance is hilarious, heartfelt and more than a little creepy, which could also be said about the movie itself.

Gorgeous and menacing at the same time.

Sweet, goofy story.

At well over two hours it's merely exhausting, and the constant evocation of the fearsome power of "The Lodge," which proves Pat's salvation (Nwamu is himself a Freemason), is as silly-spooky as the White and Black Lodge hokum of "Twin Peaks."

The result is hypnotic.

Togman, an associate professor in political science at Seton Hall University, paints a clear-eyed and unsentimental picture of Sheree's efforts, and there are no happy endings for her or for Mary, who's quietly battling breast cancer as she helps Sheree line up paperwork and negotiate with creditors. The film leaves them both where they started: struggling.