Drama
Rod Lott
What seemed exciting in Sara Gruen's best-selling novel plays flat in the painful "Water for Elephants," a wretchedly written and overwrought drama that leaps to the top of my list of the year's worst films.

Drama
Rod Lott
Strangely, the single most interesting aspect behind "Adventures in Pornoland" isn't even mentioned in the film or on its box: that its story is essentially a put-on, with only the actors playing the engaged couple in on the "joke." Everyone else presumably thought they were part of a documentary.

Drama
Rod Lott
Anyone who thinks the current craze of rebooting fairy tales (from film’s “Red Riding Hood” to TV’s “Once Upon a Time”) is “edgy,” I’d like to sit them down in front of Catherine Breillat’s “The Sleeping Beauty.” Now that's edgy.

Drama
Rod Lott
Although "A Little Help" tries to make us believe it has presented "The Office"'s Jenna Fischer unattractive — as if! — the dramedy is worth seeing, assuming your expectations are kept reasonably in check.

Drama
Rod Lott
If you only see one movie in which a kidnapper often recites poetry to his hostage, make it “Sweet Hostage.”

Drama
Rod Lott
A quiet, teenage misfit living more or less on is own is befriended by a well-meaning but not always honest adult who serves as a surrogate father. That story line fits two independent character studies this year, both from 20th Century Fox: "Win Win" and "Terri." But the former is much better than the latter.

Drama
Rod Lott
"Mr. Nice" is a little too true to its title. Had the film had more balls, it might have made a stronger impression. Based upon the real-life exploits of Howard Marks, writer/director Bernard Rose tracks the smart Welsh lad's sharp-angled trajectory from bullied sissy boy to major worldwide player in the drug-smuggling trade.

Drama
Rod Lott
My advice to you is not only to watch “Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams” as soon as possible, but to watch it on the largest screen possible, and have your finger hovering over the remote's pause button. Because in the Japanese cinema master’s almost-final film, the angel's in the details.

Drama
Rod Lott
I liked "The Ledge" better when it was called, um, "The Ledge," and comprised one-third of the 1985 Stephen King anthology film, "Cat's Eye." Matthew Chapman's new movie isn't really a remake of the King short, but close enough: Both revolve around a cuckolded hubby forcing the man who put a wedge in the marriage (so to speak) onto the titular ledge of a very tall building.

Drama
Rod Lott
What more than can be said about the the film that’s widely regarded as the finest in history? Well, how about: It’s finally on Blu-ray.

Drama
Rod Lott
In 1983, I heavily doubt the party kids in Texas were quoting Christopher Walken from "Annie Hall," much less doing impressions of him at all, or having even seen a Woody Allen film. But for the most part, "Skateland" rings pretty true as a portrait of teen angst.

Drama
Phil Bacharach
In “The Station Agent” and “The Visitor,” writer/director Thomas McCarthy explored the dynamics of family, but not in the conventional sense. The characters in those films created their own families. His latest work now on Blu-ray and DVD, “Win Win,” manages to take a nuclear family and still convert it into something different and deeper.

Drama
Rod Lott
While not the disaster you may have been led to believe, neither is “The Beaver” a success. It sits somewhere in the middle, unsure of itself as to which style of story to commit. Ultimately, where it ends up is in the field of “noble curiosity,” based in no small part on the spectacularly public, ill-timed flameout of its star.

Drama
Rod Lott
Romancing a porn star: If "The Girl Next Door" was the Hollywood fantasy, "Meet Monica Velour" is the grim reality — comparatively speaking, of course.

Drama
Rod Lott
Initial human attraction may be physical, but with the lovers of “The Sentiment of the Flesh,” it’s literally anatomical.