The film's strident tone also serves to undermine its generally above-average performances.

Stone, the master of the epic conspiracy and the operatic spectacle of diametrically opposed forces at war for men's souls, is so entangled in the trees that he's lost sight of the forest -- who could have imagined?

Svankmajer has crafted his finest live-action feature to date.

Charming, if slight, Venus-and-Mars romantic comedy.

Though the film's downbeat ending was softened for U.S. release, it's still a long way from happy.

Moooove along, there's nothing to see here!

Where the hero of Maupin's novel learns some valuable lessons about love and faith, the film strikes a darker, even angry tone that's far more understandable and, in the end, far more convincing.

Those who appreciate Ferrell's sense of humor will be utterly entertained by his efforts to kick it into high gear.

Poitras boldly dispenses with the traditional documentary voice-over, but her film is filled with telling moments that are far more eloquent than any scripted narration.

One of the most perceptive movies about the gentrification of Los Angeles.

Sweet-natured, episodic comedy-drama.

In the final analysis it all feels very much like a successful acting exercise that while psychologically acute, doesn't really bring much more to the table than what we've already gleaned from a few episodes of "Oz."

The story delivers enough twists and turns to be engaging without feeling like work, and the overall vibe is dangerous and flirty rather than brutal or excessively graphic.

Though Verow attended the American Film Institute and has made more than a dozen shorts and features since 1994, his low-budget gay-themed films are characterized by phenomenal indifference to framing, sound quality and performance. If his relentless amateurishness is deliberate, it's self-defeating; if not, it's inexplicable: Most people who do anything for more than a decade get better at it.

A combination of muddy sound mix and players with heavy accents (particularly Chinese superstar Gong, who seems to have learned her lines phonetically) renders large swaths of dialogue incomprehensible, but the details of what's being said and done don't really matter.

For the first time, Allen's trademark shtick sounds less like the anxious kvetching of an endearingly neurotic New Yorker and more like the ramblings of a tired, elderly man fumbling for the right words.

Surprisingly entertaining, if less than original.

The screenplay is blessedly free of mediocre songs and light on flashy pop-culture in-jokes.

Shot in neorealist black-and-white, it opens like a gritty slice of social drama, then takes a sharp turn into bleak, existential horror.

Law-abiding Americans who hand off a solid chunk of their salaries to the IRS might be interested in what filmmaker Aaron Russo has to say on the subject of income tax.

There's a fine line between subversively transgressive and just plain gross, and this coming-of-age-movies parody from Todd Stephens, who wrote and directed the charming and underrated "Gypsy 83," crashes right over it.

Despite some excitingly shot concert footage, one scene begins to feel very much like the next, and it's all rather predictable.

Shopsin is a small piece of New York history, and Mahurin's film is the portrait he deserves: small, noisy and oddly engaging beneath the bluster.

What makes husband-and-wife directing team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' hilarious debut such a great family film isn't that it's suitable for the whole family (it's not), but that it speaks a simple truth about what it means to be part of one.

Sebastien Pentecouteau's startlingly beautiful cinematography lends the film a dreamlike quality and perfectly suits Kounen's mystical subject matter.

They're frank, funny, resilient and altogether captivating.

Despite the edifying square-up -- moral lessons about family, the legacy of violence and the tenacious power of love -- the appeal is freak-show all the way.

If not precisely poetic in its elaborate offensiveness, it's certainly imaginative. Unfortunately, that's not the same as interesting or engaging, unless you're a dyed-in-the-wool fan.