Denis based the circumstances on recent developments in Sierra Leone, but the film doesn't specify a time or place, giving it the quality of a fable or a morality play.

In Tanya Hamilton's debut feature, former Black Panthers Marcus (Anthony Mackie) and Patricia (Kerry Washington) navigate the pitfalls of a post-radical life.

Once you get past the initial shock, the idea of making a comedy about suicide bombers doesn't actually seem so far-fetched.

Saddled with the least appealing title this side of Hope Floats, Drake Doremus' discomfiting road movie at least makes good on its promise.

Steal, as did prior Argott doc Rock School, expands the national image of a city beyond airborne batteries and the Rocky run. Even better, the films do it without a trace of civic boosterism, the kind that makes the city seem even more undervalued than it is.

In Night Catches Us, the past is always present, as tangible as the Germantown houses where the film was shot, which Hamilton says required little modification to look as they did 30 years ago. Behind the wallpaper in Kerry Washington's kitchen are bullet holes and bloodstains, reminders of a more violent time hidden just beneath the surface.

By the time the cast slaps on glittery eye shadow and lip-synchs to "Under Pressure," your head will be buried too deep in your hands to see what happens next — that is, if you haven't fled the theater already.

By general consensus, 2010 was the Toronto International Film Festival's most lackluster year in recent memory.

The understated approach to Ishiguro's (science-) fictional past absolves the movie of the need to roll out space suits and rocket cars; this is a worn world, made of metal and stone, free of technophile fetishism.

Phoenix's abrupt decision to stop playing "the character of Joaquin" doesn't scan, nor does his selection of hip-hop, a genre about which he seems to know next to nothing, as his venue of choice.