By turns spiky and lyrical, this unsettling drama will be anathema to many audiences, but is bound to be a provocative, talked-about release.

The film's appealing characters and amusing situations prevail over its general shortage of energy.

While the film feels overlong at two hours 20 minutes, there's a seductive stillness to its enveloping mood.

Plenty of vile little secrets and ghastly urges are explored in the stylishly made Asian-fusion horror triptych.

Result hovers a little uncertainly between dark comedy and urban drama, but remains compelling thanks to its gritty narrative texture, nervous energy and loose, jumpy structure, which fit well with the DV-shot production's no-frills approach.

This slight but appealing film's funky eccentricity feels a little contrived at times.

Playing a Big Tobacco lobbyist, Aaron Eckhart puts his golden news-anchor good looks and smooth conviction to better use than in any pic since his breakthrough film, "In the Company of Men."

Charming character study.

This is a fresh, spirited drama, charming and unpretentious. It mines a similar vein to recent Latino-themed pics such as "Raising Victor Vargas" and "Real Women Have Curves."

Writer-director Douglas McGrath's boldest stroke is to impose a more overtly gay interpretation on a central relationship in which the attraction was generally supposed to be unspoken.

Its honest, unshowy performances and textured depiction of life in a working-class community in a nowhere Southern Illinois town make this modest indie feature an affecting experience.

A witty script and strong performances hoist Metroland beyond the confines of its rather standard, TV-style approach.

The intimately personal chronicle is more impressive for Famiglietti's disarming self-exposure than for any fully formed cinematic style or consistency of tone, but the modest production has a genuine, warm spirit.

A flawed and overlong but ultimately affecting account of one man's struggle to regain control of his life.

The material is at heart an intimate allegorical fairy tale about rarefied philosophical concerns.

An ultimately moving drama about a displaced people. But its emotional kick is muffled by long-windedness, sentimental overkill and an overpopulated character gallery.

While devotees expecting Moretti's wry worldview may feel shortchanged, others will find this a profoundly moving experience, giving it fuel to cross borders into the arthouse niche.

Despite some hazy plot points, the tough, compelling drama comes together quite satisfyingly, standing alongside 1996's "The Funeral" as perhaps the most controlled and cohesive of Ferrara's uneven work of recent years.

While it plays more like stage or TV sketch-comedy shtick than film material, this modest, visually unimposing production remains entertaining thanks to its ironic observations and winning sense of folly.

Modest but engaging.

A fairly sustained barrage of broad undergraduate humor and gross-out gags that should tickle young auds looking for unsophisticated laughs.

Lapses into melodramatic self-importance and gratuitous stylistic flourishes that take the audience out of the action -- are outweighed by the steadily amplified emotional power of this ultimately moving drama.

Jolie is even hotter, faster and more commanding than last time around as the fearless heiress/adventuress, plus a little more human. The less welcome news is that most of the same shortcomings that cramped the first installment are still dogging the sequel, which delivers on action but dawdles through downtime.

The broad comedy is somewhat strained and obvious, and the hyper-real atmosphere encourages the cast to slice the prosciutto a little thickly. But the film's sweet-natured ingenuousness proves reasonably contagious.

Ambitiously structured in non-chronological fragments that form a fascinating puzzle, this raw drama about grief, guilt and redemption becomes ultimately overextended and overwrought in its final stretch.

Despite its crude, willfully naive style, this comedy of transgression, judgment and revenge becomes steadily more appealing as it progresses.

While the premise has possibilities for some creepy, pulpy fun, writer-director Robert Parigi brings too little style or humor, instead going a more obvious, overwrought route.

Superficial but entertaining new pic offers equal parts freshness and kitsch appeal set to a pulsating Latin soundtrack.