The gay romantic drama Shelter is rather ordinary (if a gay romantic drama can be called ordinary in today's political climate), especially in its filmic technique. But quietly and cumulatively, it s... 
With The Wire now off the air, Battlestar Galactica can make a strong case for being the best show on TV. 
For extreme skiers, life on the slopes isn't exactly "live fast, die young," but it's close. Mark Obenhaus' doc about the mortally risky sport of big-mountain skiing will hold most interest for those... 
It's telling that Sleepwalking is distributed by Overture Films, "a Starz company," as one can see it speedily arriving at its afterlife on cable and home video. Despite its best of intentions, this... 
A sort of teenage Fight Club, complete with daddy issues, Never Back Down is a slight refinement of the sort of picture that was ascendant in the '80s... 
In a way, Michael Haneke's Funny Games is the best-made bad movie you'll ever see, something equivalent to Stanley Kubrick directing Death Wish 6. With painstaking control, Haneke details a horrifyin... 
Writer-director Ira Sachs puts marriage under the ultimate strain in Married Life. Infidelity? That's nothing. Try a husband determined to kill his wife because it would be inhumane simply to dump he... 
Adapting the slim and charmingly quaint stories of Dr. Seuss into feature-length films has always been a dicey proposition, which makes the success of Horton Hears a Who all the sweeter. This loving... 
The structure and layered storytelling make Gone Baby Gone richly satisfying. 
A big, bold Hollywood movie that won't be winning any awards for subtlety but can't be denied its popcorn appeal. 
A resonant Pacino...though ultimately a misfire, suggests that there are worse things to call a movie than 'a curiosity.' 
Pacino at the top of his game...[but] the film's lack of faith in its audience is glaringly apparent. 
At 67, George A. Romero can still kick upstart film-school horror junkies to the curb with his restless intellect and artful vitality. It sounds like a joke, but it's a compliment: Romero comes up wi... 
Tunneling underground notwithstanding, a heist movie shouldn't feel this much like drudgery. 
An inspiring rebel yell from four girls unwilling to recede into the background as passive sacrifices to the MTV culture. 
Abstract art has always had its skeptics, but the documentary
My Kid Could Paint That gives new meaning to "artistic inquiry."
Following a blithely instinctive painter under investigation by
uncon... 
In and of itself, the story offers rich dramatic material that Haggis exploits well, but the writer-director's unsubtle condescension to his audience represents small thinking. 
Markovics expertly projects every craven instinct and heartfelt yearning of the complex protagonist, making The Counterfeiters an experience as satisfying emotionally as intellectually. 
A sort of cinematic comfort food: it's the mac and cheese of the cineplex. 
Penelope, a gender swap on the old Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, casts Christina Ricci as an innerly beautiful rich girl literally cursed with a pig snout. Marriage to "one of her own kind" can re... 
The film gets a full 'This is a work of fiction' disclaimer, even noting that any resemblance to any person living or dead is unintentional. That tells you something about how much trust to put in these historical CliffsNotes. 
Series creators Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler and Daniel Zelman put a premium on giving every episode at least one major plot twist...generally a satisfyingly suspenseful ride. 
The only real problem with the film is that it isn't long enough...wild story, complex and crammed plot, far-reaching cast of characters, terrific voice work, and sophisticated themes... 
A kid's movie for adults, a charming notion for a time of postmodern ennui. 
The tripartite film The Signal borrows a conceit from J-horror—technology as a portal for evil—and puts it through the American indie horror wringer. The signal in question, sent by someo... 
One of this year's five Oscar-nominated foreign films, the Israeli entry Beaufort essays the last days of the 12th Century Beaufort Castle, a mountain stronghold in Southern Lebanon. Once held by the... 
A straight-ahead suspense melodrama, complete with villain and a climax with satisfyingly clean lines. But Gilroy constantly elevates the material with surprise gifts. 
Inflated talk of American Gangster as a modern masterpiece--or even an Oscar-worthy picture--ignores the fact that there's not a single memorable setpiece in the film. 
Director Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) join forces for Goya's Ghosts, a reckless historical-ficti... 
Lee provides no such easy comfort, instead keeping audiences constantly off-kilter, purposefully frustrating them with character behavior that's just...wrong. 
Eastern Promises' unusually ambiguous character study makes for a different kind of crime drama, a striking if not entirely satisfying one. 
The dichotomy of Rickles' customary matador-theme entrance and tongue-in-cheek but true theme song "I'm a Nice Guy" captures Rickles' secret of success: you gotta love him. 
A study in isolation and, yes, paranoia...The mesmerizingly beautiful images--often in slo-mo--glide to evoke Alex's primary pursuit of skating. 
One of the film's prime strengths is its wordless willingness to let the principal characters express themselves through music and mime to overcome cultural barriers. 
The Abu Ghraib controversy sparked a national debate on torture that has yet to calm. Were the horrors of Abu Ghraib the work of "a few bad apples" or a systematic, tacitly authorized approach to war... 
Sometimes all we want from a movie is a good time out, and that's exactly what Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights—Hollywood to the Heartland provides. The documentary... 
Playwright Martin McDonagh, an expert of sweaty crime dramas, takes his show on the road in his feature debut, In Bruges. McDonagh (who won an Oscar for his short film "Six Shooter") writes and direc... 
Proves that even the studio's halfhearted larks still have life in them, thanks to golden-age animators...tunesmiths...and vocal talent. 
Though it panders shamelessly, it's not entirely unwelcome in a time when the PG movie is an endangered species. 
It's a dicey proposition to reverse-engineer a story, and Across the Universe shows the strain...[nonetheless] a very impressive music-video anthology. 