Todd Graff’s Joyful Noise tells the story of a Pacashau, Ga., church choir entering a gospel music competition against better-financed groups. It’s an underdog fable that neatly parallels Graff’s own career since directing his 2003 debut film Camp, the underappreciated—yet secretly influential—pop music celebration set at a training school for young musical theater aspirants. more

Guy Ritchie’s calculations in his sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows are so low-down they’re almost diabolical. He has retooled the famous fictional detective character with no resp more

You can’t get your mind off Lady Gaga while watching David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Gaga, the ubiquitous pop star summoned up by the same self-loathing zeitgeist that pop more

Brian DePalma’s 1996 Mission Impossible was a cartoon even though he didn’t direct it like one. The sheer, exhilarating pleasure of Mission Impossible IV (officially subtitled Ghost Protoc more

In a movie about servants, is it possible to take the masters’ side? Probably not. But that doesn’t make another story about aristocratic anomie versus proletariat pluck the solution, and that’s exactly what director Philippe Le Guay has done. Accomplished, well-acted and sporadically charming, The Women on the 6th Floor is ultimately too predictable and inoffensive to ever make us care. more

Alain Corneau was remarkable. Sixty-seven years old, dying from cancer, not only did his style remain as rigorous and lucid as ever but with Love Crime, he tapped into adolescent truths inaccessible to directors half his age. The story’s first half is an office drama between Isabella (Ludivine Sagnier), a young executive who despite her brilliance is hopelessly innocent, and her boss Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas), who steals Isabella’s ideas. Her colleague and lover Philippe (Patrick Mille) is a callous coward. And she’s happy with that because everyone likes her. more

Taking the low-budget movie The Family Tree seriously is virtually impossible, given its overly pedigreed cast and the vacuum it’s set in. As the dysfunctional Burnett family falls apart in Serenity, Ohio, they do it on suspiciously empty streets and the world’s most under-populated town fair. Extras were apparently out of the question once the salaries for stars Hope Davis and Dermot Mulroney were paid. more

Special Treatment aims to be both funny and philosophical and succeeds at neither. The first half follows the independent stories of Alice and psychotherapist Xavier Demestre (Bouli Lanners). Alice is the consummate professional; as we watch her fulfill eclectic fantasies—the scenes are always shot using the same comedic formula, a bizarre preparation followed by the postcoital punchline—we get the impression nothing will faze her. Strange sex doesn’t affect her everyday demeanor and she thinks of clients as less than people. more

Count Our Idiot Brother among Paul Rudd’s poor choices—a select group of dumb to unbearable films including The Shape of Things, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Dinner for Schmucks that waste the actor’s estimable gifts. Rudd’s commitment to playing off-center characters who combine nerdiness with idiosyncratic charm has made him a new kind of romantic comedian. He takes the Cary Grant mantel into the post-feminist era, where masculinity shades easily into non-aggressive, quasi-gay traits—the hallmarks of Rudd’s best characterizations in I Love You Man, Role Models, Diggers and Clueless. more

Graphic artist Joann Sfar makes a bold directorial debut with Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life by bringing his own artistic personality to bear upon this tribute to Serge Gainsbourg, the French recording artist/roué who has become a hipster icon. For Sfar, Gainsbourg (born Lucien Ginsberg) is foremost an icon of French Jewish identity. One of the first of the film's many animated sequences is "THE JEW AND FRANCE" poster announcing Sfar's underlying theme, as in his graphic novel The Rabbi's Cat. more