Philip Kennicott

ShowBusiness is not so clever nor so entertaining as the popular musical "A Chorus Line," which plied this territory more than 30 years ago, but it does go deeper into the mechanics of the business.

Tokyo, if anything, becomes more of a mystery after Tokyo! than it was before. That's the strength and curse of the film. If you can't find real connections between its disparate stories, you can always make them up yourself. But if that kind of film frustrates you, think twice before booking a ticket to Tokyo!

Caine is magnificent, and the film is worth a look for his contribution alone. But Milner is a promising actor, too, and the pairing of young and old is believable and occasionally very moving.

It isn't so much a movie as a superheated, highly conductive miracle substance for the pure transmission of masculine aggression and misogyny.

Riklis has made a powerful film, but can a powerful film change anything about the fatalistic culture of powerlessness that is felt throughout Palestine and Israel? The irony of Lemon Tree is that what it achieves adds, in the end, to the sense that nothing can unravel this mess.

What Rulfo needs, unfortunately, is what too many trendy directors forsake: some social context, some succinct voice-overs and some talking heads to put the serious issues (urban poverty, urban stress, environmental degradation, corruption) into perspective.

A brutally efficient bit of storytelling, and it makes no unforced errors. It is admirably free of any Spielbergian effort to squeeze sentimentality or inspirational lessons out of what is a complicated and morally complex story.

Shrink is no worse than the average Hollywood comedy. But it shows, more obviously than most, the bankruptcy of standard-issue American pop narrative, circa 2009.

Falls flat at every turn.

It's all wildly implausible and occasionally fun, but it could be so much better if director Randall Miller (who co-wrote the screenplay) had thrown in a little more character development and excised a half-dozen crazy plot twists.

Remarkably entertaining.

A not-quite-funny comedy that devolves into a tedious discussion of miracles and redemption.

The splendid, painterly melodramas of Douglas Sirk lurk behind every shot, but the tone is essentially pre-Raphaelite, sexy and cold.

It's a film that will stay with you.

A light but enjoyable souffle of erotic vignettes.

A remarkable film from Romania.

The slaughter is part of a traditional fishing culture, according to the Japanese. But if you succumb to the emotional appeal of this documentary, it emerges not just as a bloody and brutal business but almost as bad as genocide.

You are left with the feeling that either Grossman hasn't done justice to the Germs or the justice they deserved was to spend eternity as a historical footnote.

Traitor traffics in the cliches of the terrorist chase film -- including the usual stereotypes of Muslims -- while trying not to succumb to outright bigotry.

Donkey Punch is almost humorless, and there's no wink and nudge behind the mayhem to absolve us of taking its ugly, class-obsessed subtext seriously.

Documentary makers struggle for this effect -- a feeling for the land that is both grand and unsentimental. The makers of Duma, a fable fit for children, have found it.

At its best, Tokyo Sonata is a deft interweaving of seemingly dissonant ideas -- war and music, family and politics, authority and freedom.

The subject is huge and worthy, and the film makes a noble effort to embrace some of its complexity.

You can't hate the film anymore than you can hate Herb and Dorothy. But this is lazy work.

Neither the title nor the subject matter prepares you for the pure fun of Frost/Nixon.

The power of "Grbavica" is not the arc of its story line, but the fullness of the world Zbanic creates.

Just when Sydney Pollack's new film about super-architect Frank Gehry, Sketches of Frank Gehry, threatens to get really interesting, Pollack, perhaps unconsciously channeling about 100 years' worth of bad movies about great artists, reverts to fall-back mode.

Even the basic look of the film -- it was filmed on a stage with every shot set against a bleak, dark backdrop -- underscores the filmmaker's position as master manipulator, in a laboratory, looking down at his mice running through his maze.