THE AVIATOR
***
USA
The life of Howard Hughes.
   It's unsettling to see Scorsese fall into the trap of stuffing thirty years of someone's tumultuous lifetime into three hours of celluloid without any imagination or narrative flow. In mostly chronological order he dumps individual events from Highes' life without any kind of build-up and little to no pay-off. The few attempts at character insight are purely pedestrian. Hughes ultimately proves too heavy a load for DiCaprio's skinny shoulders and the ladies in the cast settle for crude caricatures of screen legends that look and sound nothing like them. The picture is not without its strengths: the production design is immaculate, the cinematography ravishing, the period music evocative and several of the aerial sequences exciting. But it's hollow spectacle.
dir: Martin Scorsese
ph: Robert Richardson
pd: Dante Ferretti
m: Howard Shore
cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, Alan Alda, Alec Baldwin, John C. Reilly, Ian Holm, Danny Huston, Gwen Stefani, Jude Law, Frances Conroy, Willem Dafoe

BAD EDUCATION
****½
Spain
Twenty years after being the victim of a abuse at a Catholic boys school, Ignacio writes a script about it and wants his childhood boy crush to direct it.
   A complex queer noir homage from a former in-your-face deviant who has lately been emphasizing his new-found maturity and mastery of the medium. Towards the end of the picture, the intricacy of the plot starts to get in the way of the character development, but by then, you're so completely involved in Almodóvar's trademark world of vibrant colours and sleazy dealings, you won't necessarily care about the blips.
wr/dir: Pedro Almodóvar
ph: José Luis Alcaine
cast: Gael García Bernal, Fele Martínez, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Lluís Homar, Javier Cámara, Petra Martínez

BEING JULIA
***½
Canada/USA/Hungary/UK
A 1930s London stage diva faces competition from a bright-faced ingénue.
   Perfectly executed in its small-scale ambitions and particularly worth praising for its focus on character and wit. The climactic stage show down is a mini tour de force.
dir: István Szabó
cast: Annette Bening, Jeremy Irons, Lucy Punch, Shaun Evans, Bruce Greenwood, Miriam Margolyes, Juliet Stevenson, Maury Chaykin, Michael Gambon

BEFORE SUNSET
***½
USA
Jesse and Celine meet again for the first time since since Vienna nine years ago.
   A bittersweet romantic reunion, steeped in its predecessor's sophisticated conversation and written and performed with utmost conviction. Although its scope remains limited, it does expand upon the original with insight and honesty, earning its own moments of poignancy.
dir: Richard Linklater
wr: Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke, Richard Linklater
cast: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy

BEYOND OUR KEN
***
Hong Kong
A young schoolteacher contacts her ex-boyfriend's current girlfriend to warn her against him.
Not particularly substantial but enjoyable.
wr/dir: Ping Ho Cheung
cast: Chim Sui-man, Gillian Chung, Tao Hong, Emme Wong, Daniel Wu

THE BIG BOUNCE
***
USA
A light, breezy, thoroughly enjoyable and thoroughly forgettable con man comedy.
dir: George Armitage
cast: Owen Wilson, Morgan Freeman, Gary Sinise, Sara Foster, Vinnie Jones, Charlie Sheen, Bebe Neuwirth, Harry Dean Stanton, Willie Nelson, Andrew Wilson

BIRTH
****
USA
A widow for ten years, Anna decides it's time to marry again, but then a 10-year old boy turns up, claiming he's her dead husband reincarnated.
The gutsy, seemingly far-fetched premise is just the red herring. At its core, the film is a profound and profoundly moving study of a repressed grief and its frightening power to manipulate and devastate a rational mind when brought back out.
dir: Jonathan Glazer
wr: Jean-Claude Carrière, Milo Addica, Jonathan Glazer
ph: Harris Savides
m: Alexandre Desplat
cast: Nicole Kidman, Cameron Bright, Danny Huston, Lauren Bacall, Michael Desautels, Anne Heche, Peter Stormare, Ted Levine, Cara Seymour

BORN INTO BROTHELS
***
USA
A multi-award-winning documentary where New York based photographer Zana Briski introduces her art to a group of children from Calcutta's red light district. The children's snapshots are interspersed throughout the picture and quite a few of them turn out to be talented. Much of the time devoted to their frolicking on the beach or to Briski fighting to earn her wings would have been better spent looking into the children's (and their families') living conditions. But you do get enough of a sense of their personalities to be able to differentiate between them and even emotionally invest into their future.
wr/dir/ph: Zana Briski, Ross Kauffman

THE BOURNE SUPREMACY
***
USA
Jason Bourne is framed for killing two CIA agents and tracked down while hiding in India.
   A Hollywood action sequel with honourable intentions to balance out its action with character development. Sadly, the erratic, disorienting camerawork and editing negate much of the action, while the character development is often rushed, but an exceptional cast ensures that it's never less than watchable.
dir: Paul Greengrass
cast: Matt Damon, Joan Allen, Brian Cox, Franka Potente, Karl Urban, Julia Stiles, Oksana Akinshina

BRIDE AND PREJUDICE
**½
UK/USA
A contemporary Bollywood take on Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice".
   Considering the light, multicolored nature of the material and the treatment, the heroine's obnoxiousness (and wooden acting) seems all the more misguided.
dir: Gurinder Chadha
cast: Aishwarya Rai, Martin Henderson, Naveen Andrews, Nitin Ganatra

BROADWAY: THE GOLDEN AGE
***½
USA
Not much more beyond familiar, charismatic heads talking about Broadway in the olden days, but it's a delight from start to finish.
dir: Rick McKay

BROTHER TO BROTHER
***
USA
A gay black teenager meets an elderly gay black writer, who was a prominent figure during the Harlem Renaissance, but is now living on the streets.
Most of the contemporary stuff is contrived, but the scenes of queer New York in the 1920s carry a warm atmosphere.
wr/dir: Rodney Evans
cast: Anthony Mackie, Roger Robinson, Larry Gilliard Jr., Duane Boutte, Daniel Sunjata,, Alex Burns, Ray Ford, Aunjanue Ellis

BROTHERS
***½
Denmark
A Danish commander is sent to Afghanistan and presumed dead after a plane crash, while his misfit brother grows close to his wife at home.
There's two melodramatic plot strands at odds with each other throughout the second act, but even as you're waiting for the director to get a grip on them, the picture is never less than compelling. Eventually everything comes together anyway in a tense, harrowing finale.
dir: Susanne Bier
wr: Susanne Bier, Anders Thomas Jensen
cast: Ulrich Thomsen, Connie Nielsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Bent Mejding, Solbørg Højfeldt, Sarah Juel Werner, Rebecca Løgstrup

CELLULAR
***
USA
Efficient B-grade entertainment. The plot reads like a parody of contrived, wildly over-the-top action flicks, but it's all kept very tight and fast-moving.
dir: David R. Ellis
cast: Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, William H. Macy, Jason Statham

CHANGING TIMES
****
France
In Tangiers, a French construction worker tracks down the woman he hasn't seen or stopped loving in over 30 years.
   A bittersweet, complex and completely engrossing drama about ideals and their inevitable compromise set against a fascinating, politically charged backdrop. Even though you're essentially told very little about Depardieu's history with Deneuve, you can feel it. It's a joy to watch the two share the screen again, and the supporting characters are also engaging and well developed.
dir: André Téchiné
wr: André Téchiné, Laurent Guyot, Pascal Bonitzer
cast: Gérard Depardieu, Catherine Deneuve, Gilbert Melki, Malik Zidi, Lubna Azabal, Nadem Rachati, Tanya Lopert, Nabila Baraka

CLEAN
***
Canada/France
After her husband's death, a musician decides to quit heroin in order to win back custody of her young son.
   Maggie Cheung isn't playing a character, she's playing a statistic. And the plot ambles along through the motions. There's still some hints of personality along the way, but it's basically a Hallmark Channel feature with alternative music.
dir: Olivier Assayas
cast: Maggie Cheung, Nick Nolte, Béatrice Dalle, Jeanne Balibar, James Johnston, Don McKellar

THE CLEARING
***
USA
It's ambitious and well-informed - it prizes mature ideas and insight as they should be prized, but doesn't provide any new or interesting ones of its own.
dir: Robert Redford
cast: Robert Redford, Helen Mirren, Willem Dafoe, Alessandro Nivola, Matt Craven, Melissa Sagemiller

CLOSER
***½
USA
The troubled, interconnected relationships of two London couples.
   The dialogue seems to have survived the transition from stage to screen practically unaltered. It's stylised and theatrical, but that's not necessarily a problem in itself - it's brilliant dialogue, it just needs a compatible cinematic perspective. Although not impossible, uncovering said perspective would surely be a difficult thing to do. Sadly, Nichols never quite manages it. In the finished picture, the words are often at odds with the otherwise naturalistic presentation. But the characters and their neuroses remain remarkably compelling and the actors are a revelation.
dir: Mike Nichols
wr: Patrick Marber
cast: Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen, Julia Roberts

CODE 46
***½
USA
A love story where contemporary Shanghai and Dubai stand in for a very believable futuristic Shanghai and Dubai, where memories are manipulated according to what best suits the government, and the mishandling of genes has led to a law that forbids certain people from falling in love with certain people for very confusing reasons. The leads have no chemistry, but their forbidden romance is still affecting because of the universal issues it evokes. And director Michael Winterbottom is as skilled with mood buildup as he is with provocation (of the decent, constructive kind).
dir: Michael Winterbottom
wr: Frank Cottrell Boyce
cast: Tim Robbins, Samantha Morton, Om Puri, Jeanne Balibar, Nabil Elouhabi, Togo Igawa, Natalie Jackson Mendoza, Emil Marwa

COLLATERAL
**½
USA
A Los Angeles cabdriver finds himself transporting a hitman intent on delivering five hits in a single night.
   Another grown-up Hollywood thriller that fails to balance tension and character build-up like it wants to. The characters are underdeveloped, the set-pieces don't sit well with their lead-up, the uneven pace kills the tension, and Cruise is too short and wholesome to be menacing. On top of this, all hope for atmosphere is undermined by ugly camerawork and poor choice of music.
dir: Michael Mann
wr: Stuart Beattie
ph: Dion Beebe, Paul Cameron
cast: Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo, Peter Berg, Irma P. Hall, Javier Bardem

COMME UNE IMAGE
***½
France
An overweight music student craves the affection of her self-absorbed father, a successful writer.
   A subtle, witty satire of literary circles and generally self-absorbed people. None of the characters is particularly likable. But they seem more convincing for all their flaws and shortcomings.
wr/dir: Agnès Jaoui
cast: Marilou Berry, Agnès Jaoui, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Laurent Grévill, Virginie Desarnauts, Keine Bouhiza, Grégoire Oestermann, Serge Riaboukine, Michèle Moretti

CONTROL ROOM
****
USA/Egypt
A look behind the scenes of Al Jazeera that is also a gripping documentary exposé of the machinations of media as well as a fascinating alternative viewpoint on the war in Iraq.
dir: Jehane Noujaim

CRASH
*½
USA
Among the most grievous sins committed by pictures like this one is that they lull certain people into a false sense of having participated in an urgent discussion of an urgent issue. It's a contrived, sensationalist would-be exposé of racism in L.A. with a small army of characters and not a hint of truth or honesty behind a single one of them. There are ham-fisted metaphors (the most pungent of which claims that, no shit, we have acquired the need to crash into people just to feel something), new age music, lots of slow motion and lots of actors squinting. By the end everybody gets to belt out their own wordy, deceptively banal monologue, everybody mean gets redeemed and you're free to leave assured that you've just witnessed racism get solved in record time. It's a movie about racism made for people whose only contact with it would be via Oprah.
dir: Paul Haggis
cast: Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Thandie Newton, Jennifer Esposito, Sandra Bullock, Brendan Fraser, Larenz Tate, Ludacris, Ryan Phillippe, Terrence DaShon Howard, Michael Peña, Shaun Toub

CZECH DREAM
***½
Czech Republic
A bizarre, cocky documentary about the elaborate ad campaign for a hypermarket called 'Cesky Sen' opening in Prague - with the twist being that no such hypermarket will ever get built and the whole thing is a hoax designed by film school graduates. The premise is so outlandish that you spend a significant portion of the film wondering if you're the fool for falling for an outrageously nasty trick. But rest assured: it's all real, and it's fascinating. The filmmakers' intention was to provoke discussion on matters of consumerism and commercialisation, and in this they're successful. You leave the theatre pondering the connotations of the events you've just witnessed as well as desperately trying to get the 'Cesky Sen' jingle out of your head.
dir: Vít Klusák, Filip Remunda

DARWIN'S NIGHTMARE
***½
Austria/Belgium/France/Canada/Finland/
Sweden
A graphic, unsettling look at the effects globalisation has had on Tanzania, where a lakeside fishery produces 500 tonnes of fish to be exported daily, while 2 million natives go starving.
wr/dir: Hubert Sauper

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW
**
USA
A climate change threatens New York, and therefore, the world. Very obviously just an excuse for some spectacular, Independence-Day-style special effects (and box office), and it doesn't contain a trace of imagination beyond them. 
dir: Noah Emmerich
cast: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sela Ward, Ian Holm, Emmy Rossum

DAYS AND HOURS
***½
Bosnia-Herzegovina
A respectful thirtysomething bachelor visits his aunt and uncle’s humble abode to fix their boiler and ends up at a dinner party where the whole wacky neighbourhood is invited. The picture is half over before you realise writer Namik Kabil and director Pjer Zalica have the war on their mind but have grown tired of talking about it. This one is about moving on. A quiet, dignified account of the ravages of war on an intimate scale, it finishes on a warm, uplifting note without betraying the grief and the trauma.
dir: Pjer Zalica
wr: Namik Kabil
cast: Senad Basic, Mustafa Nadarevic, Semka Sokolovic-Bertok, Halid Beslic, Sanja Buric, Nada Djurevska, Emir Hadzifahisbegovic, Jasna Zalica

DEAR FRANKIE
***
UK
A single mother writes letter to her young son in the guise of his father, and the boy demands to meet him.
The story may as well have been lifted straight out of a Mexican soap opera, but it's hard not to fall for the picture, assuming you're willing to pretend the highbrow indie treatment passes for restraint.
dir: Shona Auerbach
cast: Emily Mortimer, Gerland Butler, Sharon Small, Jack McElhone

DELAMU
**½
China/Japan
A documentary about an isolated Tibetan village and the caravans that track impossible passageways for days to retrieve some kind of tea leaf.
Every single shot takes up an inordinate amount of time - and even though a lot of them are admittedly sppectacular, the picture is still too often too slow to endure.
dir: Tian Zhuangzhuang
ph: Wu Qiao, Yu Wang, Jiang Wu, Wang Yu

DE-LOVELY
**½
USA
The life of Cole Porter was previously romanticized in 1946, with Cary Grant starring in "Night and Day". Hollywood has matured slightly in the meantime, in that it now admits it's OK to be gay - except that you could only ever fall in love with a woman anyway, so why bother? Some of the numbers - often performed by modern-day pop stars - are entertaining, but the framing device of Porter commenting on his own biopic is not as clever as it wants to be. More just smug and lazy.
dir: Irwin Winkler
cast: Kevin Kline, Ashley Judd, Jonathan Pryce, Keith Allen, Natalie Cole, Angie Hill

DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY
*½
USA
A lot like "Anchorman" (see above), except more obnoxious, and at the end, there's more violins dumped on the soundtrack.
dir: Rawson Marshall Thurber
cast: Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Christine Taylor, Rip Torn, Jason Bateman, Gary Cole, Missy Pyle, Hank Azaria

DOWNFALL
***
Germany/Austria/Italy
Adolf Hitler's final days.
   It's fascinating subject matter and the visual reconstruction of the fall of Berlin is remarkable. But this Hitler is just a raging ham, spouting heavy-handed evil slogans. It's earnest, historical posturing more than an objective account. And the storytelling gets repetitive and contrived, particularly in the second half when - scene after scene -we have to watch an inordinate amount of people murder their families.
dir: Oliver Hirschbiegel
pd: Bernd Lepel
cast: Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara, Corinna Harfouch, Ulrich Matthes, Juliane Köhler, Heino Ferch, Christian Berkel, Matthias Habich, Thomas Kretschmann

THE EDUKATORS
****
Germany/Austria
A pair of activists (with a hobby of invading bourgeois homes with the sole purpose of shaking them up) fall in love with the same girl and are forced to kidnap a millionaire who catches them in the act.
   A witty, layered satire of youthful idealism and middle-aged materialism. The central trio of aspiring revolutionaries carry a maximum conviction in their revolutionizing and let nothing interrupt it. Except their bed-hopping. Weingartner may occasionally give off the impression that he's taking he's sweet time, but in due time you figure out every little twist and sideturn serves a greater purpose.
dir: Hans Weingartner
wr: Katharina Held, Hans Weingartner
cast: Daniel Brühl, Julia Jentsch, Stipe Erceg, Burghart Klaussner

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
*****
USA
An estranged couple undergoes a process of erasing memories of each other.
   Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman's hopeless romanticism is their major weapon even as it threatens to prove their undoing. But then it could never have undone the genius and gutsiness of the concept, the charm of the actors and the true, captivating, beautiful and heartbreaking heart on their film's sleeve.
dir: Michel Gondry
wr: Charlie Kaufman
ph: Ellen Kuras
ed: Valdís Óskarsdóttir
m: Jon Brion
cast: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Jane Adams, David Cross

EXILES
***
France
Two young lovers travel through France and Spain down to Algeria.
   A road trip across continents with a striking soundtrack, exploring the role family roots play in a search for identity. Apart from the frustrating closing sequences, it's buoyant and energetic.
wr/dir: Tony Gatlif
ph: Céline Bozon
ed: Monique Dartonne
m: Tony Gatlif, Delphine Mantoulet
cast: Romain Duris, Lubna Azabal, Leila Makhlouf, Habib Cheik, Zouhir Gacem

FAHRENHEIT 9/11
****
USA
Obvious, manipulative, completely one-sided, but also a lucid, engrossing and harrowing agitprop assault on the Bush administration.
dir: Michael Moore

FINDING NEVERLAND
**½
USA
Playwright James M. Barrie is inspired by a sickly widow and her four young sons to write one very famous play.
   A polished, efficiently tearjerking, reasonably entertaining biopic bathed in manufactured twinkle. It's sad to watch the film striving to celebrate imagination and invention without displaying very much of either. It constricts Depp to a nobly, blandly earnest and unconvincing imitation of the old-Hollywood conception of the eagerly inspirational writer/teacher/priest/role-model. Many liberties are taken with the facts of Barrie's life and that's technically allowed - except the facts would have made for far more fascinating viewing. (Then again, the nervous, half-assed way in which the film files away Barrie's fervently rumoured pedophilia suggests that it's maybe a blessing that it didn't attempt to explore the facts after all.)
dir: Marc Forster
cast: Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie, Radha Mitchell, Dustin Hoffman, Freddie Highmore, Joe Prospero, Nick Roud, Luke Spill, Ian Hart, Kelly Macdonald

FIFTY FIRST DATES
***
USA
A shockingly sweet and sentimental Adam Sandler vehicle that would have done well to discard with a vast majority of the toilet humour.
dir: Peter Segal
cast: Drew Barrymore, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, Sean Asrtin, Dan Aykroyd, Amy Hill, Missi Pyle

FINAL CUT, THE
**½
USA
A futuristic thriller with an interesting but severely underdeveloped concept - about a chip implanted in you at birth that records your entire life - and nothing else. And Robin Williams still refuses to let go of that frozen-faced expression he discovered in "Insomnia". You really wish he'd move on now.
dir: Omar Naim
cast: Robin Williams, Mira Sorvino, Jim Caviezel, Mimi Kuzyk, Thom Bishops, Stephanie Romanov, Vincent Gale

5 X 2
***½
France
Five more or less destructive stages in one couple's relationship presented in anti-chronological order. Gradually, subtly, Ozon builds on insight and emotional impact.
wr/dir: François Ozon
cast: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Stéphanie Freiss, Géraldine Pailhas, Françoise Fabian, Michael Lonsdale, Antoine Chappey

THE FORGOTTEN
**½
USA
Glossy, fast-moving, compelling trash with a talented star.
dir: Joseph Ruben
cast: Julianne Moore, Dominic West, Gary Sinise, Alfre Woodard, Linus Roache

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
***
USA
A character-based sports movie, focusing on the players of a small-town football team and the impact of the play-offs on a small community that follows them religiously. Although more dignified - and better-edited - than most examples of the genre, it's only marginally more absorbing.
wr/dir: Peter Berg
ed: Gabrielle Fasulo, Colby Parker Jr., David Rosenbloom
cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Tim McGraw, Derek Luke, Jay Hernandez, Lucas Black, Garrett Hedlund, Lee Thompson Young

GARDEN STATE
***
USA
A failed actor returns home to New Jersey for his mother's funeral.
   Braff's direction is inept when not derivative - his song choices are particularly jarring - but he has gathered an exceptional cast which, even when given too little to do, brightens things up.
wr/dir: Zach Braff
cast: Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Ian Holm, Jean Smart, Michael Weston, Jackie Hoffman

A GOOD WOMAN
**½
USA
One of the sillier ways to adapt Oscar Wilde is by playing it straight, with very contemporary actors who don't feel comfortable in a period setting. This brings more focus on the plot, and the plot of "Lady Windermere's Fan" was never constructed to stand up to close scrutiny. A few of Wilde's epigrams though, are witty enough to survive poor delivery intact.
dir: Mike Barker
cast: Helen Hunt, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Umbers, Stephen Capbell Moore, Roger Hammond, Tom Wilkinson, Milena Vukotic

GUERILLA: THE TAKING OF PATTY HEARST
****
USA
Though it doesn't exploit its very rich material to the maximum, this still makes for a beguiling, endlessly absorbing documentary of the notorious 1970s case of the titular heiress' kidnapping.
dir: Robert Stone

GUNNER PALACE
**½
USA
Another leftist Liberal-guilt-driven Iraq doc, this one focuses on the underqualified, overwhelmed younger soldiers. It's built around interludes of the 'gunners' hip-hop and co-director Michael Tucker's misjudged, ponderous voiceover, where he compares his experience of the war to the troops'.
dir: Petra Epperlein, Michael Tucker

HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE
***
USA
A stoner comedy, often surprisingly enjoyable thanks to the work of the two talented leads.
dir: Danny Leiner
cast: John Cho, Kal Penn, Paula Garcés, Neil Patrick Harris, David Krumholtz, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Christopher Meloni, Ryan Reynolds, Fred Willard

HARRY POTTER AND THEPRISONER OF AZKABAN
***
USA/UK
Elegantly manufactured entertainment, friendly not only to the series' cult following but to the young adult demographic in general. Too laboured to really charm though.
dir: Alfonso Cuarón
cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, David Thewlis, Gary Oldman, Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon, Robbie Coltrane, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Miriam Margolyes, Gemma Jones, Timothy Spall

HEAD-ON
***½
Germany/Turkey
Two suicidal Germans with Turkish roots marry to release the girl from the constraints of her conservative Muslim family.
   A hard-hitting, darkly comic account of alienation from one's cultural roots as well as a powerful assault on the oppressive boundaries of tradition.
wr/dir: Fatih Akin
cast: Birol Ünel, Sibel Kekilli, Catrin Striebeck, Güven Kirac, Meltem Cumbul, Cem Akin, Aysel Iscan, Demir Goekoel

HELLBOY
***
USA
Perlman puts a solid effort into investing the titular hero with presence and dignity. But the shoddy make-up defeats him.
dir: Guillermo Del Toro
cast: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Rupert Evans, John Hurt, Jeffrey Tambor, David Hyde Pierce, Karel Roden, Doug Jones

A HOLE IN MY HEART
*
Sweden
Various acts of extreme filth revolving around do-it-yourself hardcore-porn. The point is probably something to do with the dark, dank pit that is humanity today, but it's not terribly well articulated. Those familiar with Moodysson's brief but brilliant back catalogue will not only be very frustrated but also very sad.
wr/dir: Lukas Moodysson
cast: Thorsten Flinck, Björn Almroth, Sanna Bråding, Goran Marjanovic

THE HOLY GIRL
***
Argentina
At a medical convention in a small Argentinean town, a doctor interferes with a religious 16-year-old girl.
   A restrained, confident tale of sexual awakening and Christian guilt. Unfolding at a deliberate, assured pace, it ends frustratingly, just before it arrives at the dramatic climax towards which you assumed it was building. This way it ends up being confounding in a very unproductive manner.
dir: Lucrecia Martel
cast: Mercedes Morán, Carlos Belloso, María Alché, Julieta Zylberberg, Alejandro Urdapilleta, Marta Lubos, Mía Maestro

HOME ON THE RANGE
***
USA
At this point, just about every piece of hand-drawn animation carries with it a certain sense of nostalgia. They used to look much better than this one does, but it has its own minor charm.
dir: Will Finn
voices of: Roseanne Barr, Judi Dench, Jennifer Tilly, Cuba Gooding, Randy Quaid, Steve Buscemi

HOTEL
**½
Austria/Germany
A young woman takes over as a front-desk clerk in a small mountain resort from a woman who has disappeared without a trace.
A cool, distanced, enigmatic mood-piece, too antiseptic to be eerie.
wr/dir: Jessica Hausner
ph: Martin Gschlacht
cast: Birgit Minichmayr

HOTEL RWANDA
***
Canada/UK/Italy/South Africa
A hotel manager houses thousands of refugees during the Rwandan genocides in 1994.
I assume "Rusesabagina's List" was deemed unmarketable. This is no work of art - it's hackwork, essentially. But with such an Important issue at hand, you need a bit more time than usual to grow skeptical, and you don't really get a chance here. The (non-American) actors do their best, the tension and the horror never let up, but the English language sounds completely out of place and makes the clunky exposition stand out more. All in all, a documentary would have been the nobler approach.
dir: Terry George
cast: Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Nick Nolte, Joaquin Phoenix, Desmond Dube, David O'Hara, Cara Seymour, Fana Mokoena, Hakeem Kae-Kazim

HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS
***½
China/Hong Kong
In the 8th century AD, a rebel from an underground revolutionary organisation is tricked into leading a deputy to the organisation's leader.
The action scenes, particularly the bamboo forest sequence, are about as breathtaking as anything on film, but there is a shortage of them in the second half and an overload of melodrama instead. Still the pleasure remains of watching beautiful people in beautiful settings anticipating spectacularly choreographed martial arts showdowns.
dir: Zhang Yimou
ph: Xiaoding Zhao
ed: Long Cheng
m: Shigeru Umebayashi
pd: Tingxiao Huo
cast: Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhang Ziyi, Andy Lau, Dandan Song

HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE
***½
Japan
An evil witch turns an 18-year-old girl into an old woman, after she inadvertently helps an elusive magician.
Aside from a contrived ending, this is a warm, imaginative and thoroughly enjoyable cartoon feature. The healthy alternative to the heartless, wonderless Shrek-derived CGI pictures of late.
dir: Hayao Miyazaki
voices of: Chieko Baisho, Takuya Kimura, Akihiro Miwa, Tatsuya Gashuin, Ryunosuke Kamiki

I HEART HUCKABEES
****½
USA
Various troubled personalities hire existential detectives to sort out their dilemmas.
An impeccable balancing act that unfolds on a level that no other film has attempted before. The plot and the borders of the eccentric universe it creates for itself are only clearly defined in retrospect. For this reason it may initially seem to be working without a base, and the lazier option would be to dismiss it as a detached, dryly intellectual experiment. But all of these people and their dilemmas end up feeling very real and relatable. Even the caricatures evolve into complex, engaging and fully fleshed-out characters. As Russell discovers the egomaniac as well as the humanist within every one of them, he reveals multiple shades of thought and ambiguity to his satire, and all without a trace of smugness or self-serving. A lot also depends on his cast and each actor, right down to the most peripheral bit-player, inhabits their part energetically and believably.
dir: David O. Russell
wr: David O. Russell, Jeff Baena
m: Jon Brion
cast: Jason Schwatzman, Lily Tomlin, Dustin Hoffman, Mark Wahlberg, Jude Law, Naomi Watts, Isabelle Huppert, Richard Jenkins, Jean Smart, Talia Shire, Bob Gunton, Altagracia Guzman, Tippi Hedren

I, ROBOT
***½
USA
In the 2035 world of robots designed to prioritize human preservation, a robot-phobic cop is assigned a murder case where the principal suspect is a robot.
A refreshing anomaly: an intelligently handled, perfectly dignified Hollywood blockbuster, addressing perennially popular paranoias based around technological advancement.
dir: Alex Proyas
wr: Jeff Vintar, Akiva Goldsman
ph: Simon Duggan
cast: Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, Alan Tudyk, Chi McBride, James Cromwell, Bruce Greenwood, Adrian Ricard, Fiona Hogan

IN GOOD COMPANY
**½
USA
An occasionally clever mix of business politics and romantic comedy that's too desperate to be cuddly.
dir: Paul Weitz
cast: Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace, Scarlett Johansson, Marg Helgenberger, David Paymer, Clark Gregg, Philip Baker Hall, Selma Blair

IN MY COUNTRY
**½
USA
A partially fact-based drama revolving around the 1996 South African reconciliation trials. The subject matter is worthy and the sentiments honorable, but the treatment uninspired and terribly simplistic. From the protagonist's self-centred, trivial viewpoint, even the facts feel contrived.
dir: John Boorman
cast: Juliette Binoche, Samuel L. Jackson, Menzi 'Ngubs' Ngubane, Sam Ngakane, Brendan Gleeson

IN THE BATTLEFIELDS
***½
Belgium/France/Germany/Lebanon
An Iraqi girl's sexual awakening and the dramas of her extended family against the war-ravaged background. It's a novel, practically brave approach - and it works so well, you wonder why it wasn't the obvious one to begin with.
wr/dir: Danielle Arbid
cast: Marianne Feghali, Rawia Elchab, Laudi Arbid, Aouni Kawas, Carmen Lebbos, Takla Chamoun, Roland Tomb, Roger Assaf

IN YOUR HANDS
****
Denmark
In a women's prison rumours abound that one of the convicts has mysterious healing powers.
Gripping, devastating Dogme melodrama, addressing notions of guilt, faith, loyalty and superstition through superbly drawn characterizations.
dir: Annette K. Olesen
wr: Kim Fupz Aakeson, Annette K. Olesen
cast: Ann Eleonora Jørgensen, Trine Dyrholm, Nicolaj Kopernikus Christiansen, Sonja Richter, Lars Ranthe

THE INCREDIBLES
***½
USA
A family of superheroes is forced to go under a witness protection program and lead a life of anonymity when.
A Pixar production that subtly parodies superhero stories, James Bond movies and some of the more ridiculous among contemporary mindsets (there's lawsuits against superheroes from people who didn't wanna be saved). The best selling point however is its great sense of pace and storytelling.
wr/dir: Brad Bird
pd: Lou Romano
voices of: Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Jason Lee, Spencer Fox, Sarah Vowell, Samuel L. Jackson, Elizabeth Peña, Brad Bird, Wallace Shawn, Dominique Lewis

INTIMATE STRANGERS
**½
France
A troubled woman mistakes a tax lawyer for an analyst and reveals all her problems to him.
A subtle, extensive and well-acted psychological study, very typical of its maker - except this time, the psychologies he has chosen to study aren't terribly compelling.
dir: Patrice Leconte
cast: Fabrice Luchini, Sandrine Bonnaire, Michael Duchaussoy, Anne Brochet, Gilbert Melki, Hélène Surgère

JERSEY GIRL
**
USA
Kevin Smith sells his soul to the big cheeses in Hollywood. The cloying, sentimental script really could have used one of his ratty Jersey settings of old if it was ever gonna hold onto any sense of decency. The plastic Jersey depicted here has none of their character or detail. Furthermore, Smith's trust in his leading man - and the Dixie Chicks, among others - is sorely misplaced.
dir: Kevin Smith
cast: Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Raquel Castro, George Carlin, Jennifer Lopez, Jason Biggs, Will Smith

KILL BILL, VOL. 2
****½
USA
The Bride continues her roaring rampage of vengeance.
A wordier, much more romantic continuation that very nearly lives up to its electrifying predecessor aside from jarring tonal inconsistencies in the crucial final confrontation. All the same it makes for a resonant, satisfying conclusion.
wr/dir: Quentin Tarantino
ph: Robert Richardson
ed: Joe D'Augustine, Sally Menke
m: The RZA, Robert Rodriguez
cast: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Daryl Hannah, Michael Madsen, Gordon Liu, Perla Haney-Jardine, Michael Parks, Samuel L. Jackson, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox

KINGS AND QUEEN
*****
France
A self-absorbed single mother learns that her father is dying of cancer, while a third-party-request lands a troubled violinist in a mental asylum.
   A sprawling, energetic, tone-shifting masterpiece that plays around with strands of family melodrama, mystery and very black comedy. It's just barely anchored by two deeply unstable but thoroughly fascinating characters, whose convoluted, intertwining histories somehow bring up issues of gender politics, mental illness and, ultimately above all, family dynamics. Desplechin tackles these from fresh and fascinating perspectives with much style and invention, conjuring up in the process several captivating personalities as well as some striking, exhilarating sequences.
dir: Arnaud Desplechin
wr: Roger Bohbot, Arnaud Desplechin
ph: Eric Gautier
ed: Laurence Briaud
m: Grégoire Hetzel
cast: Emmanuelle Devos, Mathieu Amalric, Catherine Deneuve, Maurice Garrel, Nathalie Boutefeu, Jean-Paul Roussilon, Magali Woch, Hippolyte Girardot, Noémie Lvovsky, Elsa Wolliaston, Geoffrey Carey, Valentin Lelong

KINSEY
***½
USA
The life of professor Albert Kinsey.
The subject matter is rich and endlessly fascinating, but regrettably trapped within an Oscar-friendly context. It moves fast, it's well-acted and never less than entertaining, but it's never more either and it could have been so much.
wr/dir: Bill Condon
cast: Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Peter Sarsgaard, Chris O'Donnell, Timothy Hutton, John Lithgow, Tim Curry, Oliver Platt, Dylan Baker, Julianne Nicholson, Lynn Redgrave

KUNG FU HUSTLE
***½
China/Hong Kong
Imagine, if you will, a combination of martial arts, gangster showdowns and looney tunes. Never less than entertaining.
wr/dir: Stephen Chow
cast: Stephen Chow, Xiaogang Feng, Wah Yuen, Qiu Yuen, Zhi Hua Dong, Kwok Kuen Chan, Chi Chung Lam

THE LADYKILLERS
***
USA
A band of inept crooks conducts a robbery from the basement of an elderly, devout Christian in Mississippi.
Even when commercially oriented, the Coens produced an oddity that made you wonder why it was ever commercially oriented. The more eccentric and stylized touches make sure there's some good time - at least for the open-minded - but the pace is muddled and the central characterization completely confounding.
wr/dir/ed: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
ph: Roger Deakins
m: Carter Burwell
cast: Tom Hanks, Irma P. Hall, Marlon Wayans, J.K. Simmons, Tzi Ma, Ryan Hurst, Diane Delano, George Wallace

THE LAST SHOT
**½
USA
A great cast is more or less wasted in this mildly amusing comedy on Hollywood's beloved subject of movie-making, with few jokes that aren't obvious.
dir: Jeff Nathanson
cast: Matthew Broderick, Alec Baldwin, Toni Collette, Calista Flockhart, Tony Shalhoub, Tim Blake Nelson, Buck Henry, Ray Liotta

LAWS OF ATTRACTION
**
USA
How Hollywood has faded since the days of Hepburn, Tracy, Cukor et al.
dir: Peter Howitt
cast: Julianne Moore, Pierce Brosnan, Frances Fisher, Michael Sheen, Parker Posey

LAYER CAKE
**½
UK
One of those Guy Ritchie knock-offs, this one tries to differ from the others through a more earnest crime-doesn't-pay approach. It works OK to begin with, but the lack of comedy soon gets tiring. What's more, the drama is awkward. Daniel Craig is adequate as the anti-hero in that all that is asked of him is to look steely. But he is surrounded by caricatures who come off as artificial even within the highly artificial context. And the four-letter-words, which are supposed to lend the picture an air of authenticity, instead only complement the general feel of redundancy.
dir: Matthew Vaughn
cast: Daniel Craig, Colm Meaney, George Harris, Jamie Foreman, Sienna Miller, Michael Gambon

LEMONY SNICKET'S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS
***½
USA
Three orphans are sent to live with their greedy, egocentric, abusive uncle.
The visuals are moody and spectacular and the story often moves in unusual, pleasingly dark directions. But it gets nervous just as often, the writing isn't particularly distinguished and Carrey isn't always effective or interesting to watch.
dir: Brad Silberling
ph: Emmanuel Lubezki
pd: Rick Heinrichs
cast: Jim Carrey, Emily Browning, Liam Aiken, Jude Law, Meryl Streep, Kara Hoffman, Shelby Hoffman, Timothy Spall, Billy Connolly, Catherine O'Hara, Dustin Hoffman, Cedric the Entertainer, Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Adams

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PETER SELLERS
***
USA/UK
An episodic presentation of events in the life - and death - of Peter Sellers that contains outbursts of style and invention but coasts by without shedding any light over its protagonist's inner workings through the excuse that he had no character of his own. Not only is the latter lazy, insufficient and arguably invalid, but it also confounds the entire film's premise.
dir: Stephen Hopkins
wr: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely
ph: Peter Levy
ed: John Smith
cast: Geoffrey Rush, Charlize Theron, Emily Watson, Miriam Margolyes, John Lithgow, Peter Vaughan, Sonia Aquino, Stanley Tucci, Stephen Fry, James Bentley

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU
****½
USA
A middle-aged aquatic-filmmaker meets a Kentucky airline pilot who claims he is his son as he sets out to track down and kill the jaguar shark that ate his best friend.
A lot of people will likely be distracted and distanced by the surface quirk and whimsy, but there is a streak of grief and intimacy that underscores the lunacy and elevates the picture. In the meantime though, the surface detail is a lot of fun too. The production design and the soundtrack choices are particularly memorable.
dir: Wes Anderson
wr: Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach
pd: Mark Friedberg
cast: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon, Bud Cort, Seymour Cassel, Noah Taylor

LIFE IS A MIRACLE
***½
Yugoslavia/France
At the start of the war in Bosnia, the son of a railway engineer is enlisted in the army and the latter is abandoned by his wife.
The boisterous, outrageous, exhilarating chaos is missed when - about 45 minutes in - it gives way to a slightly more contained love story. But the entire experience is warm and genuinely uplifting and presents a tired war issue from an inventive, observant perspective.
dir: Emir Kusturica
wr: Ranko Bozic, Emir Kusturica
m: Emir Kusturica, Dejan Sparavalo
cast: Slavko Stimac, Vesna Trivalic, Natasa Solak, Vuk Kostic, Aleksandar Bercek, Stribor Kusturica

LITTLE BLACK BOOK
**
USA
A forced, unfunny romantic comedy with thin characters.
dir: Nick Hurran
cast: Brittany Murphy, Ron Livingston, Holly Hunter, Kathy Bates, Julianne Nicholson, Sharon Lawrence, Josie Maran

LOW LIFE
***½
South Korea
One gangster's many rises and falls during politically tumultuous times.
Too much happens for any of it to hold much gravity, but it's all expertly crafted and very entertaining.
wr/dir: Im Kwon-taek
cast: Cho Seung-woo, Kim Min-sun, Kim Hak-jun, You Ha-jun, Lee Hye-yeong, Moon Jung-Hee

THE MACHINIST
***
Spain
An industrial worker who hasn't slept in a year is no longer sure he's sane.
   Bale has reduced himself to little more than a walking skeleton with skin and bags under his eyes, but it's debatable whether this particular picture was worth this effort. It's a perfectly well crafted one, but very derivative in tone of several much better pictures.
dir: Brad Anderson
m: Roque Baños
cast: Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, John Sharian, Michael Ironside

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
***
USA
A sinister corporation has brainwashed a Gulf-War hero and pushes him for Vice-President.
An interesting attempt to update a famous Cold War political satire to an age of a whole new kind of paranoia, but it's never particularly perceptive or even remotely convincing.
dir: Jonathan Demme
cast: Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber, Meryl Streep, Jon Voight, Kimberly Elise, Jeffrey Wright, Ted Levine

MARIA, FULL OF GRACE
****
USA/Colombia
A young Colombian girl becomes a mule, carrying drugs to the United States.
A precocious debut feature that could have easily settled aboard the Lifetime route but completely rejects that alternative, opting instead for honest, authentically human and harrowing drama.
wr/dir: Joshua Marston
cast: Catalina Sandrino Moreno, Patricia Rae, Yenny Paola Vega, Guilied Lopez, Orlando Tobon, John Álex Toro

MEAN GIRLS
***½
USA
A 15-year-old girl, raised and home-schooled in Africa by zoologist parents, enters public high school.
A surprisingly smart teen satire. Only Hollywood's belated interference makes it fall short of becoming the "Clueless" of this era.
dir: Mark S. Waters
wr: Tina Fey
cast: Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert, Amanda Seyfried, Tina Fey, Tim Meadows, Lizzy Caplan

MEET THE FOCKERS
**½
USA
Maybe De Niro isn't actually embarrassed. Maybe the embarrassment is projected. Hoffman tries really hard to infuse oxygen into the premise, but the movie is basically just a tired, airless rehash of its tired, airless predecessor.
dir: Jay Roach
cast: Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Blythe Danner, Teri Polo

MELINDA AND MELINDA
***
USA
A self-destructive woman gets entangled in the unhappy marriage of a Park Avenue couple.
   Partly told as not very funny comedy, partly as not very moving tragedy, with an annoying, wholly redundant framing sequence where a group of writers introduces the concept and goes on to interrupt throughout. But where someone with Woody Allen's track record is concerned, you're bound to look harder for the good things, and occasionally you're rewarded for it.
wr/dir: Woody Allen
cast: Radha Mitchell, Will Ferrell, Chloe Sevigny, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jonny Lee Miller, Wallace Shawn, Larry Pine

MILLION DOLLAR BABY
***½
USA
A hardened boxing coach grudgingly agrees to train a woman desperate to rise above what she considers trailer trash status.
   The focus seems to switch from boxing to character in the crucial third act, but character had never been restricted to the sidelines to begin with. It's an exemplary approach in that sense and very affecting, though sadly undermined by redundant voiceover narration.
dir: Clint Eastwood
wr: Paul Haggis
cast: Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman, Jay Baruchel, Mike Colter, Margo Martindale, Lucia Rijker

MILLIONS
***½
UK
A refreshingly unpatronising fable about a young boy who ends up with millions in stolen loot and mistakes it for a sign of God. He wants to donate it to starving Ethiopian orphans, while his brother wants to invest in real estate. And each of them is still grieving over his mother's death in his own way. None of the lessons that the boys need to learn are simplified by director Danny Boyle. When sentiment abounds in the closing scenes, all of it feels organic. The picture has worked hard to earn its violins.
dir: Danny Boyle
cast: Alexander Nathan Etel, Lewis Owen McGibbon, James Nesbitt, Daisy Donovan, Christopher Fulford, Jane Hogarth

MIRACLE
**
USA
Although polished and dignified, it is, like so many sports movies, very predictable and unnecessary.
dir: Gabin O'Connor
cast: Kurt Russell, Patricia Clarkson, Noah Emmerich, Sean McCann, Kenneth Welsh, Eddie Cahill

MOOLAADÉ
****
Senegal/France
A vows to protect three young girls from circumcision.
A vibrant, engaging humanist polemic on a taboo topic from a region that rarely gets to export a picture and by a seasoned master whom not enough people have heard of outside the festival circuit.
wr/dir: Ousmane Sembene
cast: Fatoumata Coulibaly, Maimouna Hélène Diarra, Salimata Traoré, Aminata Dao, Dominique Zeïda, Mah Compaoré

THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES
****
Argentina/Germany/USA/UK
In 1952, Che Guevara goes on a road trip across South America with his womanizing pal.
The earnest Che Guevara of the voiceover narration doesn't necessarily match the subdued, observant one on-screen, and even though politics are relegated to the sidelines, they often manage to sneak in and turn things heavy-handed. But at the same time, few films have managed to truly capture the road trip experience, and this one does rather bracingly and on such an epic scale that you're willing to look past the flaws.
dir: Walter Salles
ph: Eric Gautier
m: Gustavo Santaolalla
cast: Gael García Bernal, Rodrigo De La Serna, Mía Maestro, Mercedes Morán, Jorge Chiarella

LOS MUERTOS
*
Argentina/France/Netherlands/Switzerland
An aging convict gets released from prison and travels to his daughter's home.
There's enough material here to maybe form the background to a titles sequence, but instead it's stretched out to 78 minutes principally consisting of unnecessary, interminable shots of nothing interesting - on many occasions, the director refuses to cut away from a particular shot long after the subject has left the frame. Towards the end a goat is graphically slaughtered. At this point, the picture crosses from pretentious to unwatchable.
wr/dir: Lisandro Alonso
cast: Argentino Vargas

MY SUMMER OF LOVE
***
UK
In Northern England, two teenage girls become attracted to each other.
An edgy, perceptive, well-acted adolescent romance. The closing section feels at odds with the rest of the film mood-wise, but it's not necessarily implausible.
wr/dir: Pawel Pawlikowski
cast: Nathalie Press, Emily Blunt, Paddy Considine, Dean Andrews, Michelle Byrne

MYSTERIOUS SKIN
****
USA
Two eight-year-old boys are abused by a baseball coach and are still suffering the repercussions well into their adolescent years.
A bold, confronting film tackling a controversial issue without a hint of sensationalism. It's terribly unsettling but compulsory viewing, with a level of insight into the consequences of child abuse never before even attempted on screen.
wr/dir: Gregg Araki
cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bill Sage, Michelle Trachtenberg, Brady Corbet, Jeffrey Licon

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE
***½
USA
In an isolated small town, an obnoxious teen geek tries to deal with his bizarre family and win the class presidency for his friend.
The setting is reportedly present-day, but all of the characters seem forever stuck in the 1980s - one even buys a time machine in the hope that it might transport him back to 1982. They're all extreme oddballs, but each one carries around a barely-repressed sadness and that's what makes the film accessible and affecting against all odds.
dir: Jared Hess
wr: Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess
cast: Jon Heder, Jon Gries, Aaron Ruell, Tina Majorino, Efren Ramirez, Haylie Duff, Diedrich Bader, Sandy Martin

NATIONAL TREASURE
**
USA
A lifeless, overlong modern-day Indiana Jones variation, eager to cash in on the contemporary craze for codes hidden in famous artifacts, be they Da Vinci's or otherwise.
dir: John Turtletaub
cast: Nicolas Cage, Justin Bartha, Sean Bean, Diane Kruger, Harvey Keitel, Jon Voight

NINE SONGS
**
UK
A lot of bland but explicit sex, followed by an indie rock concert performance, followed by a bit of silly small talk, followed by a lot more bland but explicit sex, and so forth. After about fifteen minutes, the pattern becomes clear and monotony sets in. There is a relationship between a British glaciologist and an American girl that sort of happens in between, but there is no reason for anyone to care about it. It's difficult to accept that this wank-fest was the brainchild of Michael Winterbottom, ordinarily an accomplished filmmaker (he made the perfectly decent "Code 46" this very same year). It's also difficult to deduce what Winterbottom is aiming for here (beyond pushing the censorship envelope). There is maybe the possibility that he is trying to build an impressionistic portrait of a mundane, repetitive relationship based on mundane, repetitive details. But it's difficult to keep mundane, repetitive details even mildly compelling.
dir: Michael Winterbottom
cast: Kieran O'Brien, Margo Stilley, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Dandy Warhols, Elbow, Franz Ferdinand, Michael Nyman, Primal Scream, Super Furry Animals, The Von Bondies

NOBODY KNOWS
***½
Japan
A precocious 12-year-old is left by his mother to take care of his three younger siblings.
Detailed, sentimental, gently humourous, quietly devastating drama, shockingly inspired by true events.
wr/dir/ed: Kore-eda Hirokazu
cast: Yûya Yagira, Ayu Kitaura, Hiei Kimura, Momoko Shimizu, Hanae Kan, You

THE NOTEBOOK
**½
USA
Despite the contrived, aggressively tearjerking material, the more seasoned performers do manage to wring some emotion out of you, no matter how unwilling you are to part with it.
dir: Nick Cassavetes
cast: Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, James Garner, Gena Rowlands, Joan Allen, Sam Shepherd, James Marsden

NOTRE MUSIQUE
**
France
The first of three parts is a thematic montage on the ravages of war, the middle - and major - part is a type of reportage on the state of post-war Sarajevo with loose fictional narratives, and the third a vague meditation on the notion of the afterlife. All consist of the pretentious, often laughable rambling of a master long past his prime.
wr/dir: Jean-Luc Godard
cast: Sarah Adler, Nade Dieu, Rony Kramer, George Aguilar, Leticia Gutiérrez, Elma Dzanic

OCEAN'S TWELVE
*½
USA
The wronged casino owner catches up with the gang so they end up owing a lot of money.
Plays like a student movie done by really famous people. Maybe they knew they were forcing it. At one point, even Brad Pitt himself monotonously blurts out "We're forcing it." But it doesn't make the pain go away. After a good hour and a bit, the picture picks up slightly when it introduces into the mix what Robert McKee scholars may choose to refer to as a 'deus ex machina'. But then it only goes on to disintegrate all over again. Fans of the original - well, the initial remake - are in for a lot of motivated forgetting.
dir: Steven Soderbergh
cast: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Catherine Zeta Jones, Julia Roberts, Vincent Cassel, Andy Garcia, Don Cheadle, Shaobo Qin,  Scott Caan, Casey Affleck, Elliott Gould, Carl Reiner, Bruce Willis, Albert Finney

OLDBOY
***½
South Korea
A small-time con-man is abducted and imprisoned for fifteen years without an explanation.
Violent, operatic, hyper-kinetic revenge melodrama, with a cocky confidence and sense of humour that aggravates to start with but proves relatively warranted by the end.
dir: Park Chan-wook
wr: Hwang Jo-yun, Lim Chun-hyeong, Park Chan-wook
ph: Jeong Jeong-hun
ed: Kim Sang-Beom
m: Jo Yeong-wook
cast: Choi Min-sik, Yu Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jeong

ONE NIGHT IN MONGKOK
***
Hong Kong
A gritty, neon-basked cops-and-Triads melodrama with a particularly efficient first half before everybody starts to take themselves too seriously.
wr/dir: Derek Yee
cast: Cecilia Cheung, Daniel Wu, Alex Fong, Anson Leung, Kar Lok Chin

OUTFOXED: RUPERT MURDOCH'S WAR ON TERRORISM
***½
USA
An absorbing if unremarkable addition to the contemporary string of leftist documentary agitprop.
dir: Robert Greenwald

PALINDROMES
****
USA
13-year-old Aviva is convinced having a baby will make her happy with life.
And eight different actresses take turns at the lead role - including a bunch of 13-year-old girls, a 6-year-old, Jennifer Jason Leigh and an obese African-American woman. There's probably a reason for this, but it's not very easy to decipher it. Maybe it's to highlight separate facets in Aviva, or, as Solondz has suggested, to point out extents to which our response to characters is shaped by their demographics. The approach is sure to prove distancing with a lot of viewers. But if you give it a shot, it's an often blackly funny but profoundly touching story of a horribly tragic character. In typical fashion, Solondz finds many reasons to condemn both pro- and anti-abortionists.
wr/dir: Todd Solondz
cast: Ellen Barkin, Matthew Faber, Emani Sledge, Valierie Shusterov, Hannah Freiman, Will Denton, Rachel Corr, Sharon Wilkins, Shayna Levine, Jennifer Jason Leigh

PERSONS OF INTEREST
***
USA
A documentary revolving around the accounts of Muslim-Americans wrongfully imprisoned in the wake of 9/11. The subject matter is absorbing, but the crafting is tawdry, often off-putting.
dir: Alison Maclean, Tobias Perse

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
**
USA
A lifeless adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage musical with big costumes and bad music.
dir: Joel Schumacher
cast: Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wilson, Minnie Driver, Miranda Richardson

LE PONT DES ARTS
**½
France
A prissy, overlong mix of baroque theatrics and existentialist posturing, set in a stylised, deoxygenated Paris of the 80s, where a quirkily blasé masters graduate falls in love with a suicidal opera singer he's never met. The leads are charming, though squandered.
wr/dir: Eugèn Green
cast: Adrien Michaux, Natacha Régnier, Alexis Loret, Denis Podalydès, Olivier Gourmet, Camille Carraz, Jérémie Renier

THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES: THE RISE OF THE POLITICS OF FEAR
***½
USA
After premiering on BBC (in three parts) to much controversy, this loaded polemic screened at Cannes to further controversy and great acclaim. In time it even received a limited theatrical run in the US. Drawing parallels between the histories and ideologies of Muslim fundamentalists and American neo-conservatives, Adam Curtis  largely focuses on the latter's tendency to exaggerate foreign - and domestic - threats (starting with the Reds, moving on to Bill Clinton and finally reaching radical Islamists) without much evidence. He even goes as far as to argue that Al Qaeda doesn't exist or operate as a network, and much of the threat is projected by the neo-cons. There are jarring gaps in his contention - he barely addresses the existence of Islamist weapons training camps and their ramifications; he resists many major and complex opposing arguments in favour of easy targets; and overall, the first two-thirds are far more coherent, whereas the last seems rushed. On the other hand, Curtis successfully uncovers - or at least, bravely examines - a fascinating pattern in the US conservatives' reliance on larger-than-life villains in their plights for power. It appears that in the way they once used to promote utopian visions, these people have been relegated to a position where they have to build fear among the population and create nightmares from which they promise to defend you. It further becomes apparent that when the need arises the neo-cons are ready to create such villains and in some cases even grow to believe the fantasies they themselves created. There's ample room to dismiss the entire picture as just another conspiracy theory playing upon anti-American sentiment, but there's a lot here to chew on. At the very least it makes for a gripping history lesson and it's very cleverly crafted, with music and archival footage that consistently complements the narrative.
wr/dir: Adam Curtis

PRIMER
***
USA
Two guys accidentally invent a time-travel machine and have to deal with the consequences.
The dialogue is barely intelligible, which makes the complex plot near impossible to follow. You can tell there's a lot of clever stuff going on but you feel left out. Perhaps repeat viewings might help.
wr/dir: Shane Carruth
cast: Shane Carruth, David Sullivan, Casey Gooden, Anand Updhyaya, Carrie Crawford

PROMISED LAND
***
Israel/France/UK
A loose, oblique, documentary-style depiction of the white slave trade. It's aiming for an 'improvised' feel, so the dialogue is scarcely intelligible, the camerawork is very shaky and the takes tend to go an awfully long time. It's actually often quite vivid and absorbing, even if it is horribly self-conscious.
dir: Amos Gitai
cast: Kristina Likhnyski, Rosamund Pike, Diana Bespechni, Hanna Schygulla, Anne Parillaud, Alla An

RAY
*½
USA
The life of Ray Charles.
An unabashed hackjob, often too lazy to connect one biopic cliché to the next. Foxx is remarkable at mimicking the late Mr. Charles, though the script severely limits whatever insight he attempts to inject into his character.
dir: Taylor Hackford
cast: Jamie Foxx, Regina King, Kerry Washington, Sharon Warren, Clifton Powell, Harry Lennix, Curtis Armstrong

RED LIGHTS
****
France
Tensions rise between a married couple as they embark upon a holiday trip.
Though the deliberate pace is initially trying, the tension builds up and this unorthodox marriage drama develops into a clever, gripping warning against complacency.
dir: Cédric Kahn
wr: Laurence Ferreira Barbosa, Cédric Kahn, Gilles Marchand
ph: Patrick Blossier
m: Claude Debussy
cast: Jean-Pierre Daroussin, Carole Bouquet, Vincent Deniard, Charline Paul, Jean-Pierre Gos

SAMARITAN GIRL
***½
South Korea
After the suicide of a teenage prostitute, her best friend takes up her trade.
   An unflinching, unsettling study of teen prostitution turns into a violent, confounding and oddly moving meditation on guilt and redemption. It's adroitly, sensitively crafted and wholly absorbing throughout.
wr/dir/ed: Kim Ki-duk
ph: Sun Sang-Jae
m: Park Ji-woong
cast: Ji-min Kwak, Eol Lee, Min-jeong Seo, Kwon Hyun-Min, Oh Young

SAVED!
*½
USA
A toothless teen movie pretending it's a biting satire of Christian fundamentalists.
dir: Brian Dannelly
cast: Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, Macaulay Culkin, Patrick Fugit, Heather Matarazzo, Eva Amurri, Martin Donovan, Mary-Louise Parker

SAW
**
USA
A nasty high-concept premise, not rendered believable at any point. The dialogue is particularly half-assed, and abounds in shoddy exposition. The psycho killer sounds like a trailer for an 80s straight-to-video thriller.
dir: James Wan
cast: Cary Elwes, Danny Glover, Leigh Whannell, Monica Potter

THE SEA INSIDE
***½
Spain/France/Italy
The final few years of a quadriplegic Spanish writer who fought for his own right to die.
Not the most objective take on a hot topic - it's, in fact, a very biased and passionate one. Also very moving and remarkably well-acted.
dir: Alejandro Amenábar
cast: Javier Bardem, Belén Rueda, Lola Dueñas, Mabel Rivera, Celso Bugella, Clara Segura, Joan Dalmau, Alberto Jiménez, Tamar Novas

SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL: THE JOURNEY OF ROMÉO DALLAIRE
***½
Canada
Hotel Rwanda: the True Story About Nick Nolte. Peter Raymont's documentary takes Canadian General Romeo Dallaire‘s perspective in recounting the 1994 Rwandan genocides and the role that racism has played in the West’s continued indifference. The United Nations appointed Dallaire the task of maintaining peace in the region without providing him with a rational number of troops. Dallaire’s best efforts inevitably resulted in failure and he appears to have spent the past decade feverishly justifying his actions and inactions. His words at first seem portray him as convinced of his own righteousness. But there is an awfully depressing undercurrent that hints at Dallaire’s having taken on the Western world’s collective burden as well as his continued, harrowing struggle to shake it.
dir: Peter Raymont

SHARK TALE
*
USA
A lazy, tedious, plotless and witless package of pop culture references and potential merchandise.
dir: Bibo Bergerson, Vicky Jenson, Rob Letterman
voices of: Will Smith, Jack Black, Robert De Niro, Renée Zellweger, Angelina Jolie, Martin Scorsese

SHAUN OF THE DEAD
***½
UK
A loser in life struggles to take control of his life as London is gradually overtaken by zombies.
A witty, clever, practically perceptive cross between zombie splatter, social satire and family drama. Even when its talented writing duo strives to cram in issues still slightly beyond their reach - or at least beyond their running time - they hack at them with such honesty and conviction that they basically get away with the whole thing.
dir: Edgar Wright
wr: Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright
cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis, Dylan Moran, Nicola Cunningham, Peter Serafinowicz

SHREK 2
***
USA
Shrek sets out to meet his royal in-laws, accompanied by Princess Fiona and Donkey.
Contrived, lifeless, rarely amusing sequel riddled with fart jokes and bad pop but none of the original's wit.
dir: Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, Conrad Vernon
voices of: Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas, John Cleese, Julie Andrews, Jennifer Saunders, Rupert Everett

SIDEWAYS
***½
USA
A depressive middle-aged writer travels through California's wine country with his obnoxious friend, whose only aim is to get laid before the week ends and he has to stand at the altar.
An American indie effort exhibits maturity and worldliness and all of a sudden record numbers of critics' shorts are sprayed simultaneously. There is actually not much style to speak of here: all of the effort is invested into the characters and these characters could exist just as vividly in a book - and probably did. What's more, Payne rarely grants them oxygen. There are pleasures, certainly - there's maturity and worldliness, but there's no guarantee that their place in your memory won't be taken over by equivalents of a greater subtlety and a higher intensity.
dir: Alexander Payne
wr: Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor
cast: Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh, Marylouise Burke

SILVER CITY
**½
USA
What looks to be a broad, sketchy and very obvious satire on George Bush gradually morphs into a moderately absorbing mystery. For a long time though, the mystery just feels like padding as you wait for the comedy to return. Then when it hits you that the comedy won't be returning, you wish somebody else used the premise instead for a more sophisticated political satire.
dir: John Sayles
cast: Danny Huston, Chris Cooper, Maria Bello, Billy Zane, Richard Dreyfuss, Michael Murphy, Daryl Hannah, Kris Kristofferson, Mary Kay Place, Tim Roth, Thora Birch

SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW
***½
USA
A mostly computer-generated homage to 1930s serials, where the charisma-free leads don't matter anywhere near as much as the peerless, spectacular visuals.
dir: Kerry Conran
ph: Eric Adkins
pd: Kevin Conran
cast: Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Giovanni Ribisi, Bai Ling, Michael Gambon

SOMERSAULT
**½
Australia
After seducing her mother's boyfriend, a teenage girl runs off to a winter resort.
Really just one half of a movie, inflated and practically obliterated by a standard film-school-graduate complex. It mistakes a deliberate pace and piles of close-ups of hands touching pretty colours for sensitivity and sensuality.
wr/dir: Cate Shortland
ph: Robert Humphreys
cast: Abbie Cornish, Sam Worthington, Lynette Curran, Erik Thomson, Hollie Andrew, Leah Purcell

SPANGLISH
***
USA
The characters are trying very hard to be complex and compelling, but they generally get drowned in caricature and sentimentality. The framing device - a character's college application spawning a lengthy flashback - is not only redundant but very very silly. The actors' game performances though, and some choice one-liners, ensure you're not bored for the most part.
dir: James L. Brooks
cast: Paz Vega, Adam Sandler, Téa Leoni, Cloris Leachman, Shelbie Bruce, Sarah Steele

SPARTAN
***½
USA
A vicious attack on the Bush regime dressed up as a mystery thriller about the kidnapping of the (fictional) President's daughter. Dense, absorbing viewing.
wr/dir: David Mamet
cast: Val Kilmer, Derek Luke, William H. Macy, Tia Texada, Kristen Bell, Ed O'Neill

SPIDER-MAN 2
***
USA
As he must face an insane scientist with stunning super-powers of his own, Spider-Man is tormented by his superhero status.
   An efficient sequel with excellent action sequences and admirable intentions of character build-up, marred by gaps in logic and insistently inane dialogue, with which a smart cast must valiantly struggle.
dir: Sam Raimi
cast: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Alfred Molina, James Franco, Rosemary Harris, J.K. Simmons

THE SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS MOVIE
***
USA
Far more endearing for its Looney-Tunes-style slapstick than its self-referential in-jokes, and often very endearing. It's assured of a cult following.
dir: Stephen Hillenburg
voices of: Tom Kenny, Clancy Brown, Alec Baldwin, Scarlett Johansson
cast: David Hasselhoff

STAGE BEAUTY
**½
USA
A period drama eager to bring up issues of gender and sexuality, but its perception of these is decidedly warped.
dir: Richard Eyre
cast: Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Tom Wilkinson, Ben Chaplin, Hugh Bonneville, Richard Griffiths, Rupert Everett

STARSKY & HUTCH
***
USA
Two bickering cops are forced to work as partners in New York in the '70s.
   Yet another unnecessary film adaptation of an unremarkable TV show. Though it tries hard, and often in the right way, it comes up with little that's original or particularly funny.
dir: Todd Philips
cast: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Snoop Dogg, Fred Williamson, Vince Vaughn, Juliette Lewis

A STATE OF MIND
****
UK/North Korea
A miracle in many ways. It was terribly fortunate for Daniel Gordon, his crew and the world that they were granted unprecedented access to the notoriously stand-offish state of North Korea. In following the preparations of two talented young gymnasts and their families in the lead-up to the spectacular, state-supported Mass Games, Gordon presents the country at its most idyllic as well as at its most frightening. He glorifies the Games' tens of thousands of dancers as they command the intricate, awe-inspiring choreography in hypnotic unison at the same time as he deconstructs the routines' eerie, conformist connotations. In the living room he dwells on the family unit at its strongest and most functional, while in the kitchen he discovers an Orwellian radio that constantly spouts state-sanctioned propaganda (you can turn its volume down, but you can never turn it off completely). The picture bears the obvious fascination of footage from a country whose doors are closed pretty much to the rest of the world, but it's also a detailed, penetrating study of a society carrying on with an ideology almost entirely removed from our own. The photography and editing are impeccable.
dir: Daniel Gordon

STEAMBOY
***½
Japan
From the maker of "Akira" (1988) comes this Victorian-England-set anime 10 years in the making. The plot is serviceable, the animation rather attractive, and the absence of fart jokes and pop culture references very welcome.
dir: Katsuhiro Ôtomo

THE STEPFORD WIVES
*½
USA
Extended chunks of this limp comedy remake very obviously found their way to the cutting floor at the last minute. And there's no trace of a point to be found in the loose, unfunny leftovers.
dir: Frank Oz
cast: Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Glenn Close, Christopher Walken, David Marshall Grant, Jon Lovitz, Faith Hill

SUPER SIZE ME
***½
USA
As Morgan Spurlock sets off to eat three meals of McDonald's every day for a month, what transpires is hardly enlightening, but very entertaining.
dir: Morgan Spurlock

THE SWENKAS
***½
USA
A documentary about a group of men in Africa who organize competitions over who boasts the most glamourous clothing and perfect grooming.
The obvious quirk factor is relegated to the sidelines and the picture focuses instead on a family drama, aiming for maximum emotional impact. It's a commendable approach and, even if it doesn't completely come off, a lot of it works well. The competition scenes are still the highlight though.
dir: Jeppe Rønde

THE TAKE
***½
Canada
A stirring, well-made documentary account of Argentinean factory workers left jobless by globalisation. They band together to reclaim the factory and their old jobs.
dir: Avi Lewis, Naomi Klein

TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE
***
USA
American marionette superheroes try to protect the world from terrorists.
Clearly conceived as an anarchist assault on just about all things anyone could ever hold sacred. Initially it seems to be poking fun at the American tradition of aggression, blind patriotism and self-righteousness, but then it rapidly adopts left-wingers and political activists as its steady target. Parker and Stone's own political attitudes come off as immature and irresponsible, which wouldn't have mattered as much had a few more of the jokes been as clever, biting and well-timed as those of the average South Park episode.
dir: Trey Parker
voices of: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Kristen Miller, Masasa, Daran Norris

THE TERMINAL
**
USA
There is ample room here for many things, including political satire, but Spielberg chooses to look past it. So nothing really happens in the film. And it goes on for a really long time, considering.
dir: Steven Spielberg
cast: Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta Jones, Stanley Tucci, Chi McBride, Diego Luna, Zoe Saldana, Barry Shabaka Henley

THEY CAME BACK
***
France
A new-age zombie picture with a social conscience, not so fussed by the potential threat of brain-chomping as it is by the consequences on the welfare state of a provincial French town when one day - without explanation - the dead come back to life. The approach is not only novel but ingenious and thought-provoking, so it's a shame that director and co-writer Robin Campillo doesn't know where to take his picture once he sets a tantalising scene. The characterisations are lazy and vague, and the conclusion tacked on in a hurry.
dir: Robin Campillo
cast: Géraldine Pailhas, Jonathan Zaccaï, Frédéric Pierrot, Victor Garrivier, Catherine Samie, Djemel Barek

THIRTEEN GOING ON THIRTY
**½
USA
The girl-oriented version of "Big". If Hilary Duff could pass for 30, she'd be in it.

3-IRON
****
South Korea
A simple, calming love story between an eccentric, self-appointed house sitter and a battered young wife. There is next to no dialogue. Writer-director Kim Ki-duk has a lovely, unfussy, unassuming touch, so the picture's naïveté is not only forgivable, but terribly endearing.
wr/dir: Kim Ki-duk
cast: JaeHee, Jang Hoon, Lee Seung-yeon, Park Se-jin

TONY TAKITANI
***
Japan
Adapted from a Murakami novel, this is an essentially quirky character study delivered in a melancholic, meditative mode. The initial impressions of freshness wear off once you realise the picture isn't about to progress beyond a bunch of quirky episodes framed by really sad piano music.
wr/dir: Jun Ichikawa
cast: Issey Ogata, Miyazawa Rie, Shinohara Takahumi, Nishijima Hideotoshi

TROPICAL MALADY
***½
Thailand/France/Germany/Italy
A romance slowly develops between a soldier and a country boy.
An atmospheric, sensual, elliptical love story is interrupted half-way through by a brief blank screen interlude, which in turn gives way to a dark, cryptic, dreamlike reinterpretation of a folk tale - possibly a symbolic exploration of desire. Certain to infuriate many, if not most, it boasts lush photography and a voice unique in contemporary cinema.
wr/dir: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
ph: Jarin Pengpanitch, Vichit Tanapanitch, Jean-Louis Vialard
ed: Lee Chatametikool, Jacopo Quadri
cast: Banlop Lomnoi, Sakda Kaewbuadee

TROY
*
USA
Helen of Sparta elopes with Trojan prince Paris and war ensues.
An ugly, dull, vapid mega-budget embarrassment, "inspired by" Homer's Iliad, without a single redeeming feature in terms of crafting and performances.
dir: Wolfgang Petersen
cast: Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Brian Cox, Sean Bean, Brendan Gleeson, Peter O'Toole, Diane Kruger, Rose Byrne, Saffron Burrows, Julie Christie

TURTLES CAN FLY
***½
Iran/Iraq
The first film to be shot in Kurdistan after the US invasion (though the story itself takes place during the lead-up to the war). It's a strange, disconcerting portrait of a world where children take on adult roles (often with an eerie sense of resignation) and where grown adults are rare and thoroughly ineffectual.
wr/dir: Bahman Ghobadi
cast: Soran Ebrahim, Avaz Latif, Saddam Hossein Feysal, Hiresh Feysal Rahman, Abdol Rahman Karim, Ajil Zibari

A TWIST OF FAITH
***½
USA
A harrowing twenty-years-later look into the sufferings of Tony a Comes, a Toledo firefighter who was one of several teenage boys abused by a Catholic priest. Not only is the subject matter unpleasant, but there is an exhibitionist streak to Comes' confessions - a scene where he explains his abuse to his six-year-old daughter in what seems like unnecessary detail is particularly disconcerting. You're not quite sure what the camera is doing there. But there is also a lot in this film that warrants attention. There are several devastating revelations about the Church - apparently priests are allowed to lie when necessary to protect the Church's interests - as well as the specific ways child abuse can continue to destroy the victim's life decades after it has been committed.
dir: Kirby Dick

TWO BROTHERS
***
USA
There's animals here so adorable and fascinating that you really wish the homosapiens would just stay out of the way.
dir: Jean-Jacques Annaud
cast: Guy Pearce, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Christian Clavier, David Gant

2046
****
China/France/Germany/Hong Kong
The playboy lifestyle of a pulp fiction writer in 1960s Hong Kong.
An over-ambitious companion piece to "In the Mood for Love" (2000) with ill-fitting sci-fi interludes and too much story development left for when there's no longer much time for it. But the atmosphere, again very much helped by the soundtrack, is rich and beguiling throughout.
wr/dir: Wong Kar Wai
ph: Christopher Doyle, Kwan Pung-Leung, Lai Yiu-Fai
m: Peer Raben, Shigeru Umebayashi
cast: Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li, Faye Wong, Takuya Kimura, Carina Lau 

UNCOVERED: THE WAR ON IRAQ
***
USA
Old news efficiently re-packaged. It didn't necessarily call for a big-screen release.
dir: Robert Greenwald

UNDERTOW
***½
USA
Two Southern farm kids go on the run from their ex-con uncle after he kills their father.
An awkward mix of artsiness and the suspense genre that doesn't fully function as either, this is no 'Night of the Hunter'. But it's quite absorbing and haunting, and at least you can never accuse it of settling for the easy options.
dir: David Gordon Green
cast: Jamie Bell, Josh Lucas, Dermot Mulroney, Devon Alan, Kristen Stewart, Robert Longstreet, Terry Louglin

UP AND DOWN
***½
Czech Republic
Two smugglers are left with a baby in their car, so they sell it.
For a long time it just seems like two unrelated, awkwardly intercut stories with a healthy sense of humour and rich, entertaining characters. When the two stories eventually come together, the picture reveals itself to be a bitter portrait of post-Communist Prague, particularly damning of local racism and corruption.
dir: Jan Hrebejk
wr: Jan Hrebejk, Petr Jarchovský
cast: Petr Forman, Emília Vásáryová, Jan Triska, Ingrid Timková, Kristýn Boková, Jirí Machácek, Natasa Burger, Jaroslav Dusek

VANITY FAIR
*½
UK/USA
A biting social satire is diluted into a shallow soap opera. At heart, this is just another "Sweet Home Alabama" with costumes and posh accents. Thackeray's irresistibly corrupt Becky Sharp is desecrated into a misunderstood, unambiguously righteous heroine. The purpose was either for the director to project some pseudo-feminist pretensions or for the miscast star to avoid a blotch on her cutesiness and bankability.
dir: Mira Nair
cast: Reese Witherspoon, James Purefoy, Gabriel Byrne, Rhys Ifans, Romola Garai, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Eileen Atkins, Bob Hoskins, Kim Broadbent, Geraldine McEwan, Deborah Findley

VERA DRAKE
***½
UK/France/New Zealand
In the 1950s a selfless middle-aged working-class London woman secretly performs free abortions for young girls.
A detailed, superbly acted evocation of the 1950s British socio-political climate. For the most part, Leigh expertly balances extensive character observation with his openly biased exploration of the sensitive issue at hand. But the film hits a dead end with the underdeveloped third act, when it begins to drag and repeat itself. By the end, the emotional impact is muted.
wr/dir: Mike Leigh
cast: Imelda Staunton, Phil Davis, Richard Graham, Heather Craney, Daniel Mays, Alex Kelly, Eddie Marsan, Lesley Manville, Simon Chandler, Anna Keaveney

A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT
***½
France
A country girl refuses to give up hope that her fiancé survived WWI despite signs that heavily hint at the opposite.
A clustered but gorgeously crafted, gripping epic on the perennial topics of the power - or relentlessness - of love and the absurdity of war. A cross between "Gone with the Wind" (1939) and Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" (1956), it distinguishes itself on its own terms as it finds a genuine and infectious sweetness even behind lines like "I hear her heartbeat like Morse code."
dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
wr: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Guillaume Laurant
ph: Bruno Delbonnel
pd: Aline Bonetto
cast: Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, Dominique Pinon, Chantal Neuwirth, Dominique Bettenfield, Marion Cotillard, Jean-Pierre Daroussin, Jérôme Kircher, Clovis Cornillac, Denis Lavant, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Jodie Foster, Julie Depardieu, Elina Löwensohn

THE VILLAGE
**
USA
The residents of a village are isolated from civilization by woods haunted by demons.
Contrived, earnest, leaden horror that attempts to take on dimensions beyond its intellect.
wr/dir: M. Night Shyamalan
ph: Roger Deakins
cast: Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, William Hurt, Adrien Brody, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson

WALK ON WATER
***½
Israel
A Mossad intelligence officer befriends the gay grandson of his next target, a septuagenarian Nazi war criminal.
The set-ups are forced and it's all written far better than it is directed, but it never fails to entertain as it covers, with humour and insight, issues ranging from homophobia to the Palestine conflict to the repression of scars still borne from the Holocaust.
dir: Eytan Fox
wr: Gal Uchovsky
cast: Lior Ashkenazi, Knut Berger, Caroline Peters, Gideon Shemer, Hanns Zischler, Carola Regnier

WALKING TALL
*½
USA
A solemn, self-righteous testosterone package where the cops are corrupt, the kids are on drugs and the mean local casino owner runs the town. But then comes The Rock, with a really big gun. I thought this kind of movie got extinct in the early 1990s.
dir: Kevin Bray
cast: The Rock, Johnny Knoxville, Neal McDonough, Kristen Wilson, Ashley Scott

WE DON'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE
***½
USA
A mature, satisfying drama about two dysfunctional marriages. There is a welcome focus on character development and all of the creative departments handle their respective tasks with skill and imagination.
dir: John Curran
cast: Mark Ruffalo, Laura Dern, Naomi Watts, Peter Krause

WHITE CHICKS
**½
USA
Generally lame, but at least not smug or mean-spirited.
dir: Keenen Ivory Wayans
cast: Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Jaime King, Frankie Faison, Lochlyn Munro, John Heard

WIMBLEDON
*½
USA
It wants to be the type of gently witty British chick flick that normally stars Hugh Grant, and fails even in its modest ambitions because the premise is remarkably far-fetched.
dir: Richard Loncraine
cast: Paul Bettany, Kirsten Dunst, Sam Neill, Jon Favreau, Bernard Hill, James McAvoy

WIN A DATE WITH TAD HAMILTON!
**
USA
Characterless fluff with a bad pop soundtrack.
dir: Robert Luketic
cast: Kate Bosworth, Topher Grace, Josh Duhamel, Nathan Lane, Sean Hayes

WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN
**½
South Korea/France
Upon returning to Seoul from the USA, a filmmaker catches up with a lecturer friend and they reminisce over the woman they each had an affair with.
An awkwardly structured, facile deliberation on mostly sex-related matters, somewhere between low-key comedy and light drama, offering little that holds interest.
wr/dir: Hong Sang-soo
cast: Yu Ji-tae, Kim Tae-woo, Seong Hyeon-a, Kim Ho-jeong

THE WOODSMAN
***
USA
A convicted pedophile is released and continues to suffer for his crime as well as.
A companion piece, in a sense, to the same year's "Mysterious Skin", this time exploring the issue of pedophilia from the side of the perpetrator rather than the victim. It isn't as incisive or as impressive as Araki's picture - the central character is the only one that's believable (largely due to Bacon's bold, chilling performance) - but it's intriguing in its own right.
Certain commentators have interpreted the makers' sympathising with the protagonist as justifying his behaviour. It's difficult to support this claim.
dir: Nicole Kassell
cast: Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Eve, Mos Def, David Alan Grier, Benjamin Bratt

Z CHANNEL: A MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION
***½
USA
A documentary on the famous pay-TV channel that ran from 1974 to 1989 and played exclusively arty/culty/foreign pictures. It features enough clips to satisfy a film nut as well as a compelling plotline about the station's offbeat main programmer, Jerry Harvey, and his tragic death.
dir: Xan Cassavetes

YET TO SEE:

DOOR IN THE FLOOR;
GILLES' WIFE;
INTRUDER, THE;
KEYS TO THE HOUSE, THE;
METALLICA: SOME KIND OF MONSTER;
PASSION OF THE CHRIST, THE;
WORLD, THE

Film:
Kings and Queen
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Bad Education
Kill Bill, Vol. 2
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Director:
Arnaud Desplechin (Kings and Queen)
Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
Pedro Almodovar (Bad Education)
Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill, Vol. 2)
Wes Anderson (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou)

Performance:
Emmannuelle Devos (Kings and Queen)
Mathieu Amalric (Kings and Queen)
Javier Bardem (The Sea Inside)
Gael Garcia Bernal (Bad Education)
Liam Neeson (Kinsey)

Supp. Performance:
Carole Bouquet (Red Lights)
Catherine Deneuve (Kings and Queen)
Jean-Paul Roussillon (Kings and Queen)
Natalie Portman (Garden State)
Natalie Portman (Closer)

Script:
Kings and Queen
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Bad Education
Kill Bill, Vol. 2
I Heart Huckabees

Cinematography:
The Motorcycle Diaries
Tropical Malady
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2046
Bad Education