The atmosphere is once again black, creepy and unsettlingly elegant, lending this twisted tale of psychological dominance and submission a patina of anxiety and dread.

But once you're good and drunk on the look, details like the tin-eared tough-guy dialogue (which sounds especially stilted issuing from flesh-and-blood mouths) don't seem so important.

The swooping helicopter shots, the POV camerawork from the front seat of a 800 hp trophy-truck and the propulsive soundtrack will have your heart racing towards the finishing line along with the drivers.

Too many musical montages break the momentum, but overall it's an engaging piece of work, regardless of which team you play for.

Antal's debut is a sharp, blackly comic hugely entertaining thriller.

The multitalented Jaoui and Bacri excel on every level; her direction is efficient and unobtrusive, their script dissects the nuances of corruption by celebrity with a razor-sharp scalpel, and they deliver a pair of subtly unsparing performances.

Queen Latifah's warmly formidable presence drives this amiable but poky comedy.

Hauntingly beautiful documentary.

Despite the sluggish opening, Kutcher and Bernie Mac ensure that this predictably plotted comedy of preposterous misunderstandings is occasionally quite funny.

By the time it reaches its fiery finale, the film feels less mythic than self-consciously portentous.

The terrific soundtrack, which includes the Only Ones' "Another Girl, Another Planet" and New Order's most excellent "Temptation," is heavily weighted towards the '80s, which is exactly as it should be.

Generous, slyly tough-minded documentary.

No amount of style or good acting can disguise the fact that this downbeat Israeli comedy is little more than a sudsy soap-opera with a distinctly unsavory aftertaste.

This is absolutely not a film for all tastes, but it's a masterpiece of pitiless power whose audacious, ambiguous climax strikes a note of insane romanticism as haunting as it is perverse.

Without Bullock, the film's frantic antics would be painful to watch; with her, they're just trivial.

A riveting account of one of the most extraordinary events in U.S. immigration history.

Hugely entertaining, globe-trotting documentary.

The film's utterly predictable dialogue and plot developments will leave most viewers cold. Ice-struck preteens are, of course, the exceptions.

One-scene guest star Sissy Spacek packs enough genuine madness into her brief screen time to make the surrounding film feel like so much listless play-acting.

It's all very well to say that laughter and tears are just a heartbeat apart, but both variations on Melinda's story bear the unmistakable mark of Allen's morose sensibilities.

Overall, it's a seriously flawed but impressive and promising debut.

It's a gripping, understated thriller with a solid emotional undercurrent that builds to an unexpectedly moving denouement.

The sci-fi wonders, including an army of shuddering robo-soldiers and one-man, steam-powered bombers with delicate wood-and-linen wings, are truly marvelous and go a long way toward making up for the film's erratic pacing.

Think of it as a dark, suspenseful scenario penned by Joseph Conrad and designed by Toulouse-Lautrec and Auguste Renoir, and jump right in.

The lives of three deeply unhappy New Yorkers crisscross in unexpected ways in writer-director Joe Maggio's uneven but strangely affecting film.

The amazing thing is how dull a movie crawling with gunfire, psycho tantrums and stuff blowing up can be when you just don't care what happens to anyone.

Though the script is best described as mechanical and it takes a while to get into gear, this computer-generated "reach for the stars" story is a well-calibrated piece of entertainment.

As contrived and pretentious as its title.