Cairo Time seduces the viewer with its beauty. It pulls you into another world so deeply that you are disappointed at having to leave it at the end.

Alice Creed is a wonderfully tense exercise in the mathematics of three -- how many different alliances, betrayals and conflicts can you extrapolate out of a gritty crime story with only three characters?

It's probably better than you expect -- but definitely not as good as you wish. Ferrell's website is called Funny or Die; I suppose this entry would avoid a death sentence, but just barely.

Middle Men" wants to be Boogie Nights for the Internet. Two crucial problems: Writer-director George Gallo isn't nearly the storyteller that Paul Thomas Anderson is. And this film stars Luke Wilson.

The Expendables is all about the big-bang theory: the bigger the bangs (explosions, gunshots, mammoth fireballs), the bigger the box-office. In theory, anyway.

The summer's unlikeliest action hero turns out to be Michael Cera, playing the title role in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a comedy that mocks its own proportions, right down to the title.

Darwin would easily recognize the struggle for survival in David Michod's gritty, gripping Animal Kingdom. And he would be quick to point out that, while strength rules, intelligence survives.

I'm sure that Tales from Earthsea, taken from the science-fiction writing of Ursula LeGuin, will entertain undiscriminating young viewers and will probably thrill anime lovers. It left me bored and impatient.

His two films have similarities that can't be overlooked -- but I'll take the quiet, beguiling Cairo Time over the picturesquely feel-good Eat Pray Love, thanks.

As Yael Hersonski's documentary, A Film Unfinished, shows, even in documentary film, seeing wasn't always believing -- and the Nazis knew this.

The Tillman Story will stoke your anger -- not only at the senseless waste of the life of an athlete and patriot, but the government's concerted effort to turn it into a propaganda win.

I once had an editor question whether I meant it as an insult when I referred to a film as "middlebrow." The answer was yes. Bruce Beresford's Mao's Last Dancer is a middlebrow film.

When Elvis fell off a toilet and straight into rock'n'roll heaven, I was the reporter the paper called to drive up to Memphis to cover it. But I didn't want to go.

The less said about Lottery Ticket, the better. The odds of you laughing at this weak and obvious comedy are about the same as winning the lottery.

Recently, I had to choose between two screenings, both happening at the same time. One was Lottery Ticket, a comedy starring Bow Wow. The other was A Film Unfinished, a Holocaust-themed documentary. That seems like a no-brainer, right?

I cautiously invoke the spirit of The Blair Witch Project to discuss The Last Exorcism, as taut and economical a horror film as I've seen in a long time. It opens Friday.

If you did a mashup of Gladiator and Braveheart and remade it as a videogame, you'd probably wind up with something like the mildly engaging action-thrillerCenturion.

Mention The Godfather or Scarface or Goodfellas -- it doesn't matter which American gangster epic you reference, chances are Jean-Francois Richet's pair of Mesrine films stack up pretty well by comparison.

Flipped wants both laughs and a lump-in-the-throat ending. Unfortunately, it earns neither.

August is a dumping ground for movies, a time when the multiplexes are flooded with leftover product, as opposed to films. Still, occasionally, a gem sneaks in -- a movie that someone has underestimated. Takers is not that film.

A character actor whose rugged face, imposing scowl, long hair, droopy mustache and massive chest tattoo have made him a favorite of directors and audiences alike, Trejo sounds slightly stunned at where he finds himself, at the age of 66.

The Winning Season follows the three-act, sports-movie formula, but it works much better than you'd expect because of the real desperation Sam Rockwell brings to his character.

The American is not an audience movie in the generally recognized sense of the term. Instead, it's an art film. Anyone who goes in expecting it to be in any way a typical Hollywood product will be sorely disappointed.