Carina Chocano

Campy, shameless and sophisticated, Lichtenstein's debut is gutsy and original, and it makes "Juno" look positively tame by comparison.

Charming, bittersweet.

A humanist parable about how to be a good person, live a good life and make gallons of lemonade when life suddenly hands you lemons, it's predictably delightful and delightfully predictable.

It's the kind of observational comedy, that'll be hard to find come summertime and should be enjoyed while there's still a chance.

For a druggie movie, Candy is surprisingly dynamic and involving.

What's being sold here is the movie equivalent of the honey-drenched sweet potato biscuits that are forever being passed around on-screen. Their nutritional value may be nil, but they sure look comforting.

So, while the movie at times warmed my own middle-class, private school-educated cockles to a toasty complacency, there's an undercurrent of friendly fascism running through it like a nasty draft.

As a take on celebrity as religious mass derangement, Backstage is nominally interesting. As a study of two characters, it's not very convincing.

Feels terminally generic and tone-deaf.

What's missing is less a sense of the protagonist's inner nose (which is very well-trammeled) as a sense of his inner life, motivation or desire.

Small and intimate, Game 6 is a meditation on American theater and the Great American Pastime that hovers above the surface of reality but never quite takes off, either.

Sweet and often hilarious.

Harris, of course, is in a different league from the rest, and his depiction of the tortured writer is remarkably well-realized, considering the nonspecific yet somehow overly familiar inscrutability of the character. Despite its limitations, there's something appealing about the world Rapp has created.

Leatherheads proceeds agreeably, hitting occasional high notes when it isn't getting bogged down in forced slapstick hi-jinks.

Despite very good performances and solid construction, it's a slightly too symmetrical, way too tendentious side-by-side comparison of two families -- Haves, meet the Have-nots -- who come into unlikely contact in the fitfully gentrifying area of Kings Cross.

There's something about Hunt's put-upon persona that grates, and it would be nice to see her for once in a role that doesn't call on her to be so angry, short-tempered and disappointed all the time...Still, all in all, Then She Found Me is a warm, entertaining and well-made little movie and an auspicious debut for Hunt the director.

At a certain point, Wassup Rockers transforms from a relatively naturalistic slice-of-life portrait into a surrealistic funhouse trap.

A glorious blend of kitsch, grit, humor and uplift.

Stahl and Farmiga give layered, restrained performances that keep what might have been a schlock fest with an improbable twist ending from devolving into trashiness. Instead, Brooks and his actors manage to render an involving and thoughtful story from some pretty dubious material.

It's neither very original nor very convincing. "Shakespeare in Love" did something similar by casting its writer protagonist as the hero of a story he himself might have written, but Becoming Jane lacks that movie's wit and playfulness.

As it turns out, spending a couple of hours with emotionally arrested, socially moronic characters is not a whole lot more fun than spending a couple of hours with actual emotionally arrested, socially moronic people.

Rendition offers few surprises, and it tips its hand too soon and too predictably to do much more than goose your weary outrage.

Enthusiastically smutty and lyrical, the movie attempts to capture the way we unconsciously set the emotional moments of our lives to pop music, turning fits of passion, anger and righteous indignation into elaborate musical numbers in our heads.

The movie hardly allows itself any sharp moments at all -- it's much too sweet-natured to be cruel, and much too cheerful to be angry. It probably could have pushed a few more buttons, but Baby Mama aims to please and succeeds.

Robbins plays David with the self-assurance that there's no combination sexier than smart, funny and self-righteously angry.

Modest but well wrought and witty, Snow Cake is full of unexpected moments and clever observations.

For the most part, it's an uneven if amiable and occasionally inspired comedy about getting through adolescence that hits some false notes along the way.

Spanning two decades and a momentous war, Memoirs of a Geisha displays all the pomp and grandeur of an epic, but you wouldn't call it sweeping.