A film that's hard to watch and hard to recommend.

By the time the women pull off their climactic stunt, the film's been undone by its ungainly mix of heavy-handed comedy and melodrama.

I liked this movie somewhat, even if I'm not sure exactly what it means. Possibly it has something to do with arriving home, in the broadest sense. But in a Maddin film, uncertainty comes with the territory.

As an indulgence in creative verbal abuse, the film offers some nasty fun.

If nothing else, The Inbetweeners Movie proves that raunchy comedies about horny teens aren't just an American quirk.

The film is implicitly advocating a New Age or holistic perspective, with a dollop of Eastern religion added for good measure. (The title is Sanskrit meaning "wheel of life.")

The Eye of the Storm is performed with zest by a fine cast and offers some nicely biting moments but, in the end, falls short of its large ambitions.

Nostalgia for the groves of academe weighs heavily on Liberal Arts, which both exploits and undermines romanticized memories of campus life.

It's a sumptuously mounted melodrama that aims to make a big statement about big themes, but a stilted quality in the filmmaking drags it down.

Don't fault Thirlby, who does as much as she can with the material. Krasinski is pretty good, and DeWitt and Ennenga are outstanding. The direction is decent, and the film is handsome. But it's finally frustrating, enigmatic in a way that suggests emptiness more than mystery.

There's no getting around it. Though it's not without virtues, The Loneliest Planet may try the patience of even the most dedicated lovers of art film.

His personal efforts are praiseworthy, but if glacial melting is in fact the "canary in the climate coal mine" (his words), the movie might have given us a bit less of Balog and a bit more of the startling sequences he produced.

Despite a super-dark noir plot and respectable cast, Deadfall is a thriller that never quite delivers on its promise.

Like Someone in Love is best suited to viewers already familiar with this extraordinary filmmaker's better work.

Because he made "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004), there will always be high expectations for a new film by Michel Gondry. But while his new movie The We and the I, is intriguing in fits and starts, it isn't in the same league.

Has more in common with a horror movie than with a genuine political work.

Two hours of senselessness and overkill, decked out in lurid, bad-trip colors.

Hoodwinked is a computer-animated, "Shrek"-style satire of "Little Red Riding Hood" that offers a few laughs but overall is pretty tired.

A well-intentioned, but all-thumbs down drama.

Somehow, the funny stuff gets sucked into a kind of black hole in the center of the satire, along with all the comic debris. What should have been a surreal flight to the planet Lucas crumbles into a harmless collection of cosmic dustballs. [24 Jun 1987, p.52]

A lightweight and sentimental exercise that succeeds at little except maybe inspiring the viewer to go out and find a decent curry.

The effort is undermined with crass humor, mugging and slapstick.

The performers don't really seem at the top of their game here.

An unbroken flow of sad or nasty incidents.

The bad news is that the characters and situations are platitudes and the story is so heavy-handed that the film is hard to sit through.

It's an assaultive work about an assaultive fellow.

About as close to pure mall fodder as you'll see.

So many horror conventions are at work in After.Life that either the filmmakers are parodying them or couldn't come up with anything better. I'm betting on the second choice.