Andrea Gronvall

The movie gathers steam as these little terrors up the ante with each new gross-out recipe. Former child star Hallie Kate Eisenberg, blooming into a beautifully poised young woman, grounds the film as Benward's loyal supporter.

Fresh Manhattan locations prove as photogenic as the leads, and the supporting actors--especially Tina Benko as a glacial, impeccably dressed amazon--don't miss a beat of Maggenti's snappy dialogue.

Thanks to a strong ensemble cast, it's poignant and funny.

This amiable romantic comedy benefits from its stellar ensemble.

It's Joan Cusack as her doting single mom who holds the film together--her sensitive turn as a flawed feminist hints at what she could do with a meatier role.

Platinum-selling singer Usher is one hell of a clotheshorse, but he's too amiable to be convincing as a leading man--not that anyone is particularly believable in this feeble comedy.

Director Daniel Alfredson grounds the mystery in a real sense of place: his Stockholm looks and feels like a major city where corruption lurks behind attractive facades. The reporter character is better developed than in the first movie, but most of the supporting characters from the book have been shrunk to little more than walk-ons.

A macabre comedy of manners with the sting of dry ice, this 2007 ensemble piece captures the social climate of America in the late 40s, when a new anxiety and restlessness began to undermine the postwar optimism.

There's a trove of movie lore in this absorbing documentary.

The darker aspects of tribalism come under scrutiny here as nonconformists (unmarried men, women alone) are shown being marginalized.

That rare sequel that surpasses the original.

This handsome period drama is a big step up for director John Curran (We Don't Live Here Anymore), who shot in China with predominantly Chinese crews. Norton and Schreiber seem too American to be English colonials, but Watts navigates a challenging transformation (in a role first played by Greta Garbo in 1934.

Likable as she is, Latifah can't overcome a tortured mistaken-identity plot, buffoonery on the ski slopes, and enough saccharine dialogue to induce shock.

Unfortunately their story ends just as it becomes most provocative.

Ryan, barely refining her "When Harry Met Sally" persona, is a dud; Annette Bening, playing the best friend who sells her out to a tabloid, is better in the scenes she doesn't share with her.

As his wisecracking roomie, Smith keeps this contrived chick flick afloat, managing to steer past the kind of egregious product placement that would have capsized a less agile performer.

This delightful computer animation is less twee than Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, with more action and a broader American sensibility.

As a cautionary tale about the perils of nation building, this is both creepy and provocative, but director Rodrigo Cortés blows it in the last few minutes with a rushed ending that feels like a cheat after all the escalating tension.

Part celebrity dish, part business journalism, this illuminating 2008 documentary about the legendary Italian designer Valentino Garavani spans the tumultuous final two years of his decades-long reign as one of the most successful innovators in the fashion industry.

Pierre Morel's diving, spiraling camera keeps pace with Yuen Wo-ping's rapid-fire fight choreography, all smartly directed by Louis Leterrier.

Provost and cowriter Marc Abdelnour explore the mutable boundaries between spirituality, naivete, genius, and madness, showing how the two outsiders and polar opposites cultivated a mutual understanding.

Chris Klein steals the film as a rival ex-nerd, now the most gorgeous guy in town, while director Roger Kumble (Cruel Intentions) cribs from the Farrelly brothers and the Three Stooges.

Matt Dillon almost runs away with the movie as a preening, conniving NASCAR champ who may be dumber than a box of rocks but realizes there's something up with the VW.

Less magic also means less fun and discovery, as Harry battles depression and a hostile press; this is the bleakest Potter installment to date, and under David Yates's choppy direction, Maggie Smith, Emma Thompson, Brendan Gleeson, and David Thewlis have little more than walk-ons.

Tongue-in-cheek dialogue, inventive slapstick and fight sequences, and luminous production design make this a treat.

Bitchy cheerleaders and swimming pool catfights are just two of the tedious cliches propping up this brittle comedy.

This sequel improves on the 2005 original about four friends.

It loses steam once the wraiths become fully visible: they're just not scary enough.

It is only in the sequence about Berg's popular costar Philip Loeb that Aviva Kempner's documentary resonates. Loeb, an ardent union activist who was blacklisted during the McCarthy hearings, comes across as more identifiably human than the workaholic Berg, for all her fictional character's warmth and her many admirers' tributes.

Years on the Hannah Montana TV series have not adequately prepared Miley Cyrus for screen acting.

Director Juan José Campanella weaves together two love stories--between the victim and her husband, and the investigator and his former boss (Soledad Villamil)--and creates some masterful set pieces; his breathless chase through a packed soccer stadium is a marvel of choreography and top-notch CGI.

"Weird but cool," as one character says -- yet the movie is also remarkably touching.

Eva Mozes Kor, the lecturer and activist at the center of Forgiving Dr. Mengele, is most notable for her zeal in refusing to be a victim.

Drawn to these fumbling kids, Hurt gradually opens up about his one great, tragic love (Maria Bello), but any catharsis is circumvented by his floundering costars and their risibly cornpone dialogue.

To call this Kevin James comedy fatuous might be misinterpreted as an attack on the star's girth--so how about inane, tepid, lazy, puerile, phony, and unfunny?

This quirky indie romance is beguiling at first but later succumbs to artifice.

Henry Hübchen is dynamic as the title character.

It's not scary because not one second is believable.

The ability of faith to reintegrate a damaged personality is one theme here, although the film doesn't strive for psychological realism; in its heartfelt embrace of religion as ethical path, it owes more to the bygone Yiddish drama than to psychodrama.

Moodysson’s meticulous attention to surfaces allows him to draw a stark contrast between the Americans’ affluence and the Asians’ poverty, but his final observation--that somehow the rich will muddle through--is hardly a bold statement.

This bloated 2006 historical epic flatlines early and never regains a pulse.

Characters occasionally address the camera, which helps disentangle the competing story lines of madness, adultery, and betrayal.

Jayce Bartok--who plays Stanford's irresponsible musician brother--wrote the screenplay, whose central story of doomed young love gets lost amid the overplotting.

Stunning vistas of New Zealand's rolling countryside aren't enough to carry this lame 2006 horror spoof.

Costars John Cleese, Jean Reno, Alfred Molina, Andy Garcia, and Jeremy Irons look either bored or desperate, gasping for laughs in an airless screenplay.

Director Kevin Reynolds strikes a good balance between action and romance in this version of the medieval legend, but his leading man is upstaged by the supporting cast.

Smarter than its predecessor, the movie aims for the "High School Musical" market.

Except for one manipulative deathbed scene, Ken Kwapis directs with sensitivity, steering the multiple story lines toward a satisfying conclusion.

The film would have been more satisfying if director Jan Kounen (Darshan: The Embrace) had shown more of the ferment of the times.

The tone is bleak and the comic-book violence relentless, but the wirework and Yuta Morokaji's stunt choreography are impressive, culminating in a breathless showdown between the title character (Aya Ueto) and 200 foes.

There's more than a nod to Sergio Leone in Kapadia's rugged wide-screen landscapes, minimal dialogue, and extreme close-ups, but there's scant humor to relieve the harshness, and though he has presence Khan is no Eastwood--or even a Mifune.

The problem is that once they do connect, their passion isn't believable.

Slick, violent thriller that could seriously dampen tourism to Venezuela.

Director Roger Spottiswoode (Tomorrow Never Dies) uses the children and action sequences to good effect, but a lack of chemistry between Rhys Meyers and Mitchell makes the love story fizzle.

Williams's overacting, Russell's pinched melancholy, and Highmore's unflagging chirpiness would be trying enough on their own, but the convoluted story, with its pileup of obstacles and coincidences, makes this sophomore effort by director Kirsten Sheridan (Disco Pigs) an exercise in dissonance.

Forget about a stake through the heart: sheriff Josh Hartnett discovers that decapitation is the best way to stop the bloodsuckers, who suggest feral, steroid-crazed gymnasts as they scale buildings and leap onto moving vehicles.

Though a bunch of the jokes are milked too thin, there are some absurdly goofy sight gags--like a hacky sack game enlisting a family pet--and a lineup of fun, silly cameos by guests from Chris Rock to Mariah Carey.

Writer-directors Pete Docter and Bob Peterson present hilarious insights into bird brains and canine psychology and treat thornier human emotions deftly.

Inspired by anthropologist Donald Thomson's early-20th-century photographs, this collaboration between a Western filmmaker and the native people of Ramingining is an impressive achievement of ethnographic cinema.

George is suitably adorable, wreaking the kind of havoc that gives tykes a guilty thrill. Yet the movie concludes with the specious moral that reading is inferior to experiencing life firsthand.

The narrative is murky and ludicrous, the action violent and nihilistic, the contemporary western ethos painfully pretentious.

Authentic locations and careful attention to detail help evoke several New York boroughs in all their gritty vitality, but the screenplay about a hunky street vendor turned underground fighter is sloppy and false.

Mixing horror and comedy while minimizing the gore, writer-director Paul Weitz (About a Boy) serves up a witty adventure fantasy with a tasty dollop of schadenfreude.

Depp plays multiple versions of Sparrow, who now suffers from a split personality; his shtick is funny, but the players are all upstaged by the astonishing special effects, superior to those of earlier installments in creating a wondrous and menacing world.

Writer-director Gotz Spielmann (Antares) avoids the clutter and manipulation of most thrillers, escalating tension almost solely through the characters' turbulent emotions.

So clinically detached it borders on absurd.

Watching this thriller is like drinking milk that's about to turn: it looks OK but smells a little dodgy.

As an actor Austin is still a lightweight, but Rick Hoffman (Hostel) fleshes out a recognizable character.

True to series form, plot is nearly indiscernible, but this fourth installment in the sci-fi/horror/action franchise created by writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson is the sleekest so far, thanks to 3D and star Milla Jovovich's body-hugging catsuit.

This first feature from Disney's new nature division has an encyclopedic reach and spectacular footage shot by more than two dozen crack cinematographers.

The special effects are better and the dialogue slightly more humorous than in the first movie, but the anti-Arab subtext is repugnant.

The violence is minimal, and the humor is inoffensive enough for tots, but everything is damned soft--from the fuzzy backgrounds to the enemy's diluted Germanness.

The script is overwritten and has too many themes--suicide, abuse, anti-Semitism--to support, but Nicholson does remarkable work in an unsympathetic role, helped by Lipsky's fine control of his characters.

Inexplicably, Butler continues to get work in romantic comedies despite his limited range and boorish persona.

Sitting on the shelf since 2008, when it was muscled out of the marketplace by "Cadillac Records," Sony's glossy, star-studded movie about Leonard. But it's clearly the better movie, earthier, wittier, and more intimate in its treatment of America's racial divide in the 1950s.

Animation may be the ideal medium for replicating dreams, and in this unsettling feature by Ari Folman it also proves well suited to autobiography.

The project is lush and seductive as a whole, though some segments are especially vibrant.

How Posey's neurotic, self-destructive heroine finds her way to healing is the core of this generous film, whose moral is that happiness can't begin unless you're open to its possibility.

Samuel Maoz drew from his own war experiences to write and direct this searing drama, which ranks alongside "Platoon" and "No Man's Land" as an antiwar statement and recalls the claustrophobic despair of "Das Boot."

The most gleeful movie about a single-minded kid since "A Christmas Story."

Strains so hard to be upbeat you can almost hear gears shifting.

My pleasure in seeing Chicago's underexposed Humboldt Park neighborhood on-screen was gradually overcome by this indie drama's cliched treatment of a dysfunctional family reunion.

There's a discernible lack of enthusiasm from almost everyone involved, and Duff, who's gone from wholesome to haggard in two short years, is flat-out scary.

Credit production designer Therese DePrez and set decorator Clive Thomasson for the marvelous setting, a charmed building with a life of its own.

The movie includes some tony philosophizing about the conflict between science and faith, but it's mostly a beat-the-clock chase through Rome (nicely evoked in Salvatore Totino's lush cinematography).

Improved CGI renders the animals' bodies in greater detail, but the laughs aren't as sharp.

Sometimes feels like one of those "disease of the week" TV movies from the 1970s.

Cross the cold war nostalgia of "Good Bye, Lenin!" with the larcenous high jinks of "The Producers" and you've got the gist of this zany Russian screwball comedy.

Al Pacino chews up so much scenery it's surprising there's any left by the end of this fetid thriller.

This romantic drama by director Mike Newell preserves the odd playfulness of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's international best seller but sacrifices its eroticism and intricate nonlinear plotting.

Watching these endangered species evolve new approaches to hunting and shelter is fascinating, but the movie is seriously marred by a cloying screenplay and such kid-pleasing touches as shots of walruses belching and farting.

Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa switches gears from supernatural horror to poignant social satire.

Free of grandstanding and sentimentality, this powerful 2008 documentary follows missions to Liberia and the Congo undertaken by volunteers for Medecins Sans Frontieres.

More tart than sweet, this contemporary fairy tale provides a worthy vehicle for the fearless Christina Ricci.

Flawless comic timing and vivid imagination power this rollicking sequel to "Jumanji."

Directed by Louie Psihoyos, this well-intentioned documentary exposes the harvesting of dolphins by Japanese fishermen, yet its theatrics suggest a cross between reality TV and "Mission: Impossible."

The casting of Reeves in the lead role is inspired: who better than the star of "The Matrix" and its sequels, a trilogy that borrows heavily from Dick's sensibility and obsessions, to play a personality split through overindulgence in drugs and manipulation by outside forces he barely recognizes?

Wahlberg turns in one of his worst performances ever, but then he's saddled with preposterous scenes.