"Family -- it's what really matters," says Robert Miller (Richard Gere), or words to that effect, to a gathering in his posh Fifth Avenue townhouse that includes his wife (Susan Sarandon), grown children, grandchildren and friends, who have assembled to celebrate his 60th birthday.

Casually brutal, drily (but only intermittently) funny and frequently just plain strange, the German Snowman's Land is a gloomy comedy that's funnier in theory than in practice.

Given the evidence of The Master and his last film, There Will Be Blood, I'd offer this: Anderson seems bent on making movies that challenge the viewer to figure out what he's really about.

Stories within stories -- The Words sometimes threatens to swallow itself whole. The fact that it doesn't is a tribute to writer-directors Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal.

Ira Sachs' Keep the Lights On starts with a credit montage of bad paintings. His protagonist, Erik (Thure Lindhardt), is first seen cruising gay-sex phone chatlines looking for company.

Comedies in which women talk dirty and act stupid and horny -- is this such a hard to genre to get right?

Almost as soon as movies could talk, they were making films about the gangsters who came to prominence by supplying liquor to thirsty Americans who didn't believe in the nanny-state laws against alcohol known as Prohibition.

Pascal Laugier's story of a small, depressed town dealing with missing children, taken by a mysterious figure known only as the Tall Man, keeps you plugged in -- right up until it pulls the rug out from under you.

Is it really so hard to make a funny, dirty sex comedy? Apparently so.

Mike Birbiglia seems like an easy-going guy, someone who probably has a little trouble with confrontation or sticking up for himself. At least that's how he comes off in Sleepwalk With Me, the film version of his hit one-man show.

There is something magical about The Odd Life of Timothy Green. But not, unfortunately, magical enough.

Why Stop Now boasts such a diverse cast of recognizable faces that you have to wonder where it all went wrong.

A caper film whose biggest thief is actually the inexorable flow of time, Robot & Frank is a terrific character study that offers the always-captivating Frank Langella the opportunity to stretch out a little bit.

Craig Zobel's Compliance may be the creepiest movie of the year. It has no physical violence, no sex, barely even a raised voice -- and yet it burrows into your brain and keeps burrowing, the longer you watch.

Directed by Sam Fell and Chris Butler from a script by Butler, ParaNorman is a marvel of stop-motion animation, built on a script of flat jokes and frantic, frenetic but uninvolving action.

Chicken with Plums, opening Friday in limited release, is a fascinating puzzle: at once a mordant comedy, a tale of unrequited love and a story of heart-breaking artistry.

As one would expect from Cronenberg, there are sudden moments of shocking violence to go with the moments of unsexy sex. None of it will distract you from the fact that this limo, like the whole enterprise titled Cosmopolis, is going nowhere.

In her follow-up to 2 Days in Paris, actress-filmmaker Julie Delpy moves her focus across the Atlantic and switches leading men -- from Adam Goldberg to Chris Rock.

It used to be that a movie that celebrated the use of marijuana was considered shocking, scandalous, unacceptable and inappropriate. To some people, it probably still is.

Here's why I'd almost be willing to give The Campaign a pass on the fact that it's sloppy, inconsistent and only intermittently funny.

They take a very specific couple and make them universal. It could be a primer on what couple's therapy is about, how it works and how the results won't always be life-changing breakthroughs -- at least not right away.

The Babymakers wants to be a Judd Apatow comedy. Instead, it's like a third-rate Comedy Central sitcom, with dirty words, little nudity and fewer laughs than fingers on one hand.

Both are about intense relationships between young adults that end -- and yet go on. Both are stories of love that has grown one-sided. And both ache with the unavoidable self-pity that goes along with that kind of situation -- while finding the laughs in that same circumstance.

In a summer of movies made of bombastic special effects and obvious action, Killer Joe still has the ability to surprise by keeping it down and dirty -- though you'll need a strong stomach to make it to the end.

Ruby Sparks could be a tasty bit of magical realism in romantic-comedy form, the first produced screenplay by actress Zoe Kazan, who plays the title character. Except for one serious problem.