Ann Hornaday

Might provide a much-needed fix for Mac's most ardent fans, but they'll have to wait for a star vehicle that fully exploits the range of his comic gifts.

Even within what often looks like a self-indulgent exercise in humiliation, pain and gratuitous gore, there is no denying the moments of genuine and powerful feeling in The Passion of the Christ -- some of which, by the way, evoke Jesus's most profound teachings of Jewish principles.

Volckman and Miance are undoubtedly superb draftsmen; what they need is a writer of comparable skill.

Within this structurally baggy weepie, at least two perfectly good movies fight to break free, one a provocative legal thriller, the other a melodrama.

At the movie's thoroughly expected conclusion, a visual joke has a bedraggled cat licking at the icing on a wedding cake, but it's really Melanie who gets to have it and eat it, too.

He has a knack for creating vivid characters even in the briefest of vignettes in his live act, many of which are taken from his life, growing up poor in Greenbelt.

No matter how much fun it is to watch -- and for hard-core movie fans, it is often enormous fun -- there's a certain relief when it stops and we're popped back out to our banal, one-track lives.

There's too much slow-mo and too many music cues, but there's a low-key buzz to Wahlberg's scenes with Greg Kinnear.

McDormand is the best thing about Laurel Canyon. She's also the most unfortunate victim of a film that seems unable or unwilling to give even its most intriguing and compulsively watchable character her due.

Most revelatory here is Malli, who defies the stereotype of submission and subservience and emerges as a woman of self-possession and substance. (The earthily beautiful Bat-Sheva Rand infuses the character with a generous dollop of her own zaftig sensuality.)

Make no mistake: The War Tapes is not an overtly political film. It appears to grind no partisan ax nor score either red or blue points. Whether viewers support the war or not -- or find themselves somewhere in the mushy middle -- this documentary won't fit comfortably into the pigeonholes of their preconceptions.

The dour, downbeat story eventually spirals into grisly Grand Guignol and contrivance. Still, Gordon-Levitt is superb, and Jeff Daniels delivers a wry and wily performance as Pratt's blind roommate.

Manages to be a diverting and funny character study, at least most of the time.

Unfortunately, for all its good music and admirable vocal impersonations, Walk the Line slides -- very, very slowly -- downhill.

Fellowes has brought intelligence and control to the eternally vexing question of whether the right thing is always the good thing.

What might have been a fascinating, intimate portrait turns into something much less compelling when Clark tries to impose a sex-and-action-packed narrative on the proceedings.

If Loggerheads sometimes feels too forced, it features some unforgettable performances, especially by Hunt, an accomplished comedienne who makes an impressive debut as a dramatic lead here.

For all its contrivances, Breaking and Entering has its finger on the pulse of contemporary London life and possesses its share of fleeting delights, chief among them the sublime Robin Wright Penn as Law's live-in girlfriend.

With a slick visual style similar to "Monster House", Open Season trots out tropes that recent animated classics have done with more wit and smarts.

Will probably appeal most to hard-core fans of Japanese animation and its wide-eyed style, both visual and philosophical.

The film's unforgettable stars are the beauty academy's students, women who have survived tribal warfare, Soviet invasion, Muslim tyranny, American bombs, patriarchal families and even Western good intentions with extraordinary grace and fortitude.

This is a carefully conceived, thoughtfully orchestrated effort in taste and restraint that ultimately is too restrained and tasteful.

An uneven, sophomoric and only fitfully funny omnibus of skits, The Ten is one of those silly-on-purpose ensemble exercises that must have been wildly fun to make.

Often funny (just listen to Becky fulminate against Harry Potter), but it's also a scary.

Unfolds as a series of meticulous tableaux vivants, but like those parlor pastimes, it lacks physical verve and a compelling emotional charge.

On the Outs has its rewards, especially in the mesmerizing performance of Marte.

Say this for Confetti: It's a crowd-pleaser. If, that is, the crowd is composed of people who have never seen a movie by Christopher Guest or a TV show starring Ricky Gervais.

Will probably appeal only to the most committed of Leigh fans.