This is not a fast-paced, plot driven film. It is slow and drifting, with long shots of the cast sipping tea or the balloon floating through the Parisian rooftops. It is a film meant to be taken in slowly, much as Paris itself is best seen while enjoying a drink in a boulevard café, or while strolling through a city park eating a crêpe. No hurrying: simply calming down and quietly observing the life going on everywhere around you, and letting it soak in. The child in me wanted more of the balloon, more of the wonder of Simon, more of his discovery that the balloon is following him—that the balloon, in a sense, cares about him. But Hou is asking the child to genuinely look at the adult, and the adult to genuinely look at the child, in long contemplative stares.

There’s not a lot to say about the film, other than to remark that’s it’s a very fun little flick that doesn’t pander to the usual conventions of high-schooler dramas. It feels a lot like Coppola’s S.E. Hinton adaptations—Rumble Fish and The Outsiders—without being quite so self-conscious or arty. This is director Michael Mayer’s first real stab at a theatrical release, and if he connects with the right audience he could have a success on his hands. But the star of this show is Shannon Lucio as Polly. She’s already put together a smallish if decent résumé of TV and film work; but here I felt as if I was watching an early Grace Kelly crossed with Bridget Fonda… or something. There’s real talent there, and a good deal of charisma.

documentaries left and right are being pejoratively tarred with the adjective “propagandistic”—as if that’s somehow a new development. But, as serious students of film know full well, it has always been impossible, with the brain disengaged, to digest cinema of any sort and still expect to find truth. Kudos to Errol Morris, then, for taking the opportunity, when releasing Standard Operating Procedure, to educate us not only about Abu Ghraib but about documentary filmmaking as well. If you want to learn a thing or two about what makes films (and human psychology) tick, read Morris’ two-part column in the New York Times (and all of the attached comments)… and then go see SOP.

Then She Found Me is sweet, funny, moving, and genuinely an overall pleasure to watch, blending and balancing serious “drama” with screwball comedy, all while maintaining the hip, indie vibe that Hunt is striving for as a director. What she really wants to do is direct… and the actress makes her debut with this film—as well as a co-screenwriting credit. Watching it, you may be surprised that she hasn’t had years of experience. I found the film very well-constructed and -paced, maintaining my interest throughout. I was even conscious of emotion welling up from somewhere deep inside myself. I have a feeling this film will fly far under the radar, given that its release date falls so close to the start of the summer blockbuster season. But if you’re looking for a break from explosions and superheroes, I highly recommend seeking this film out.

The film just fizzles. The jokes aren’t that funny, the awkward situations aren’t quite awkward enough, and the womanizer-turned-hopeless-romantic angle just seems forced. I’m also not convinced that Dempsey has what it takes to carry a movie on his own. Enchanted proved successful, but that was due more to the talents of Amy Adams than Dempsey himself. But at the core of the problem with Made of Honor is the lack of originality. Not just the basic plotline, but the jokes, situations, and even the characters seem like they were taken right out of another movie and plunked squarely in the middle of this one. I have no doubt that many people will find this movie “cute”—a word I heard uttered multiple times as I left the theater—but for my money, cute doesn’t quite cut it.

The Life Before Her Eyes asks the question, “What would you do?”—not only in the moment itself, but in living with the outcome as we watch Diana’s life unravel. The survivor’s guilt is not just that she lives through something that others did not, but that she lives because others, namely her best friend, did not. As the film slowly climbs to its dramatic peak, the audience is drawn into not only the difficulty of making moral decisions, but also into vacillating ambivalence between empathy and shame for Diana. People of faith may wonder if they could be as strong as Maureen, loving Diana so deeply despite her sin, even being willing to die for her friend.

I like to see a movie I’m going to review without knowing much about it. I try to be as unbiased as I can be, but sometimes that’s just not possible. In this case I’d seen the trailer for Baby Mama and wasn’t very impressed. Frankly, even the title of the film grates on me like screeching fingernails on a chalkboard. Thus you can imagine how I wasn’t very excited as a dragged myself into the theater to see this one. I was sure I was in for a miserable experience. Simply put, I was wrong.

This is a potential thriller with no thrill to be found. The plot is so transparent that the only way you could possibly be surprised by the supposed twists and turns is if you happened to doze off early in the film and awaken just before the credits roll. You’d be justified in thinking, though, that Deception would be the recipe for a halfway-decent thriller if nothing else. Unfortunately, you’d be wrong. But it’s hard to blame the problems on the casting. McGregor and Jackman perform about as well as you’d expect.

No child under seventeen, accompanied or not, should be subjected to this movie—and from the comments of many of the adults walking out on the screening (with me among them), neither should the grown ups. And guys, be careful. If you think this would make a good date picture, make it a date with the boys. The women were just not laughing. Now, I labor under no misconceptions. This film will probably kill at the box office; and sadly, that is a testament to the state of our culture today.

The filmmakers themselves are two brothers who grew up in horseracing and thus had unparalleled access to the stables, the trainers and the races. For telling the human story this worked quite well, but what I was really itching for was more footage of the horses and races themselves. But watching these men struggle to fulfill their dreams, their stories become part of the American Dream. The blood, sweat and tears of their struggle is that of the classic Horatio Alger novel, Struggling Upwards.