This unfortunate vehicle for former “Friends” star David Schwimmer, can never quite decide whether it wants to be a hard-hitting domestic drama or a quirky character comedy. Schwimmer – as the title alcoholic, who is in denial despite the threat of losing his wife and kids – seems capable of going both directions, but not

Gus Van Sant makes Elephant an act of mourning – specifically over the Columbine shootings, and also over the loss of innocence that tragedy implied. Appropriately set during the fall, when things are dying beautifully, the film uses lyrical camera work to cast a spiritual glow on the most mundane of high school activities –

This mostly works as a curious commentary on star Naomi Watts’ career. Her Ellie, a struggling Hollywood actress frantically running from one futile audition to the next, is a variation on Watts’ breakout role in Mulholland Drive, while one scene takes place at a zoo, where she goes gaga over gorillas. Sound familiar? The King

The Embalmer does just about everything in its power to turn you off. And guess what? It works. Set along what has to be the dumpiest, dreariest coastline in all of Italy – the sand is strewn with trash; the high-rises are mostly empty – the drama details a romantic triangle involving a diminutive taxidermist

Everything that is good and bad about an “art film” can be found in Eros, a meditation on desire featuring three shorts by three different directors: Hong Kong’s Wong Kar-wai, the United States’ Steven Soderbergh and Italy’s Michelangelo Antonioni. The Hand, Wong Kar-wai’s opening segment, is strictly sensual and very similar to his best-known work:

Just a single normal character would go a long way in Everything Is Illuminated, an aggressively quirky adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s hyperactively quirky novel. Both the book and the movie – which represents the directorial debut of actor Liev Schreiber – revolve around such fanciful conceits as an obsessive-compulsive Jewish-American (Elijah Wood) trying to

Writer-director Henry Jaglom, an icon of independent film, once again employs a very personal, quasi- documentary style, as he follows the intertwining, back-door negotiations involving two very different productions: a big-budget Hollywood prestige piece and an independent debut, both of which want to lure the participation of a legendary French actress. Greta Scacchi, Ron Silver,