The Story: A sensitive massage therapist confronts racism, class warfare and a man who represents the imperialistic capitalism that destroyed her native Mexican village when she's stranded at a client's business dinner. The Lowdown: Despite a bleak worldview and half-baked climax, Salma Hayek's performance alone deserves your attention.

The Story: A gifted 11-year-old struggles to support his single mother and younger brother until the discovery of a classmate's abuse at the hands of her stepfather gives him a larger problem to solve. The Lowdown: It's the brilliant-tween-dramedy-cancer-molestation-murder-thriller you never knew you needed (because you probably don't).

The Story: A political candidate attends an ill-advised bachelorette party at the behest of her college BFFs, but things go predictably awry. The Lowdown: A great cast is hamstrung by a weak script and derivative premise, and the jokes that land never make up for the film's lack unwillingness to take risks.

In Brief: I'm going to make a potentially controversial statement here, but before you jump in the comment pool to argue with me, be forewarned that I'm prepared to defend this assertion: Vertigo is the best film Alfred Hitchcock ever made. As I was programming this month's AFS Big Screen Budget presentation, I was shocked to find that…

The Story: A shiftless shirker joins the Marines and finds her calling as a trainer working with explosive detection dogs, but her attempts to adopt the dog that saved her life are met with callous disregard and bureaucratic ineptitude. The Lowdown: A heartwarming true story tragically underserved by a fatally flawed script.

The Story: An Egyptian tomb unearthed by looters in Mesopotamia unleashes a 5,000-year-old mummified princess hellbent on revenge. The Lowdown: Naysayers not withstanding, The Mummy" is a serviceable slice of summer schlock spectacle.

In Brief: Godard's second feature is definitely second-tier, failing to live up to its predecessor, 1960's Breathless, but not entirely devoid of appeal. Although billed as the director's love letter to Hollywood musicals, the film is not a musical at all, and its connections to the genre are tenuous at best. Most of the stylistic quirks and…

In Brief: I've never had much luck with director Frank Borzage's particular brand of melodrama, so it's a bit surprising that I like his 1932 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms as much as I do. Hemingway himself was notoriously disdainful of cinematic adaptations of his work (Arms was no exception), and he was just…

The Story: A father struggles to protect his family in the wake of a mysterious plague that seems to have decimated humanity. The Lowdown: A thinking man's survivalist thriller that, despite its B-movie genre trappings, is more Cormac McCarthy than Roger Corman.

The Story: A princess from a race of mythical warrior women must kill the god of war to bring an end to World War I. The Lowdown: The long-awaited advent of the female-driven superhero movie is finally here, and it's the best thing to come out of the DCU thus far — but a heavily padded running…

In Brief: There's a good reason that Quentin Tarantino has continually referenced this 1975 karate classic throughout his career — in spite of (or perhaps, because of) its trash-cinema tropes and exploitationally gratuitous gore, The Street Fighter is a pretty damned entertaining film. Few screen presences have ever rivaled the demented dynamism of Shin'ichi "Sonny" Chiba, and The Street Fighter is…

The Story: A biographical documentary that delves into the life of possibly the greatest jazz saxophonist in history. The Lowdown: You don't have to be a John Coltrane fan to enjoy this film — but if you aren't, you most likely will be before it's over.

The Story: Winston Churchill struggles with grave misgiving in the days prior to the Allied invasion of France in World War II. The Lowdown: A character study that finds its footing in an outstanding performance from Brian Cox but falls short in the catharsis department.

The Story: Captain Jack Sparrow's at it again, this time with new sidekicks in tow for another round of swashbuckling inanity about ghosts or something. The Lowdown: Dead men tell no tales, and neither should directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg and the army of writers responsible for wasting 2 1/2 hours of my life.

In Brief: Following two earlier adaptations of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade source novel, John Huston's The Maltese Falcon (1941) proves that occasionally the third time is the charm. A cornerstone of Film Noir, the film that catapulted Humphrey Bogart to stardom, the first pairing of Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre (out of nine!), the list of groundbreaking firsts goes on…