Chris Kaltenbach

Sarah Silverman says things you wouldn't expect a nice, attractive Jewish girl to say. But that's only half her appeal.

It's easy to be offensive in a movie; it's much harder to be funny. Which is why Scary Movie emerges as such a waste; when you're so good at the latter, why keep falling back on the former?

The story seems fresh and alive. They also had the good sense to cast Dunst, at 19 already one of Hollywood's finest and most consistent actresses.

When Catch That Kid isn't careening from plot point to plot point, events turning on unseen dimes, it's trying to ingratiate itself with stunts and chases that its young audience have seen done better on Saturday-morning TV.

The movie may be too precious for mass consumption, but its filmmakers' willingness to assume the best of their audience, combined with its Everyman origins, suggest a movie that deserves a chance.

Tedious almost beyond endurance.

Bland, inoffensive, formulaic and occasionally amusing - just like the animated kids' show that inspired it.

Lovely, heartfelt and unforced.

The real strength of Return to Me is Hunt, who knows just when to retreat from the film's overriding sweetness and inject a cynical moment or two.

Equal parts fantasy and cautionary tale, a film that manages to be uplifting and off-putting simultaneously -- fortunately, more the former than the latter.

Look, I love dogs. But this film tried my patience almost beyond endurance.

Let's just say this is a perfect film for penguin lovers who also are devoted members of the Green party - and leave it at that.

An opportunity to enjoy the pure adrenaline rush that has always been the hallmark of martial-arts cinema.

Hands-down, the best James Brolin-in-an-Italian-accent movie ever.

Garden State is filled with characters you long to know more about, in situations to which almost anyone can relate. And that's as near a can't-miss movie formula as one can get.

The one thing most sorely missing is movie magic.

Allen's latest, his 42nd effort as a director, is the work of an artist devoid of ideas and energy. Perfunctorily staged and lazily written, it comes to life in only the briefest of spurts, usually when the ever-reliable Tom Wilkinson is on-screen.

Thanks to the wonderful performances from both Korzun and Considine, there isn't a forced or dishonest moment on-screen.

A more honest version of "Summer of '42."

Offers plenty of honest, good-natured laughs in the process. That's something young and old can appreciate equally.

Neither Grimm comes across as especially interesting to watch, and neither does anything in the movie offer much to get excited about.

As it is, Hoot doesn't accomplish anything a picture book of the Everglades and a few well-chosen Jimmy Buffett tunes wouldn't do better.

A delightful and exuberant bit of romantic comedy and, as a bonus, it breathes new life into a pair of '70s musical chestnuts long off our culture's radar screens.

The result is a charmer that boldly marches where lesser movies - at least since the heyday of John Hughes - fear to tread.

McConaughey and (especially) Hudson manage to make it all work, maintaining their likability even in situations where they inevitably end up acting like jerks.

Just don't think about what's going on, and you should be OK.

Soars on the strength of strong acting and a script that stubbornly refuses to go all sappy and preachy.

Novocaine is neither funny enough to be a comedy, nor dark enough to be a true film noir. Like the drug of the title, it just kind of leaves you numb and anxious to taste the good stuff once again.

It wasn't shot in Annapolis and doesn't have an original thought in its head. Other than that, Annapolis is a fine film.

Next may be the silliest movie of 2007.

This is harmless fun for the holiday season, but Tim Allen doesn't give movie the punch it needs.

Tear-inducing feel-gooder that only a curmudgeon could find fault with.

Darren Aronofsky labors awfully hard to get across a pretty simple message in The Fountain. But his efforts are so ethereal and extreme, it's almost impossible to turn away.

Unsparing and uplifting - a wickedly difficult combination to pull off, but one that gives the film an emotional weight that's impossible to dismiss.

While the film is obviously meant as a call to arms, the very single-mindedness of the approach could work against it.

Its pleasures are slight and fleeting, and so many movies have done what it does, and done it much better, that there's nothing to get even remotely excited about - much less to draw audiences into theaters.

Everything about this film is drenched in adrenaline.

There's an honesty to the film that elevates it a cut above standard slasher fare.

The potential for action never lets up; you never know what's coming around the next corner.

Graeme Obree was a champion bicycler who, by all accounts, rarely took the easy way out. Too bad this movie version of his life doesn't follow suit.

A ham-fisted cautionary tale of religious fanaticism that would have been hooted out of even 19th-century theaters as melodrama of the most lurid kind.

Martin's script offers plenty of opportunities, but Martin the actor never takes advantage of them.

Soldini's consistently understated touch, and a poignant turn by Licia Maglietta as the confused and bemused main character, turns Bread and Tulips into a character study worth studying.

It rarely strikes the right tone and ultimately falls short of what one would expect from a collaboration between director Wim Wenders and writer Sam Shepard.

The film is the work of a visual genius who may have overextended his storytelling ability, but with fascinating results.

The end result is more a lecture than a film; audiences may come away understanding what went on, but for most, the emotional connection will be lacking.

Paints a vivid and darkly humorous picture of a world where directors are all-powerful and vampires are real; whether you want to buy into either fantasy is up to you. I did, and had a grand old time.

Lame.

It's a real shame the film gets mushy at the end. The result is an all too conventional ending on a film that should have been much better.

The only question is how many levels of meaning can be plumbed from the phrase "Let's party!"

Rarely has combat been portrayed as beautifully as in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Taiwanese director Ang Lee's thoughtful meditation on menace, mortality and the martial arts.

It's the rare film that trusts both its audience's intelligence and its emotions.

A quiet, heartfelt story of love and loss.

If only it had a plot mere humans could follow.

There's not a moment in Against the Ropes where you forget this is perky Meg Ryan up onscreen, talking trashy and acting tough.

Manages to pretty much ignore all the strengths of the earlier film while exacerbating all its faults.

Quinceanera may be the year's most nonjudgmental film, and therein lies both its greatest strength and most naggingly troublesome weakness.

The Last Mimzy displays a gentle touch and the best of intentions. But the film's message never quite becomes clear; what, exactly, are young minds supposed to take away from this film?

An unrelentingly dark vision that's as hard to watch as it is impossible to walk away from.

A cautionary tale, a warning not to gather all of your neurotic friends in one room - or better yet, not to have so many neurotic friends.

Bolt proves a refreshing throwback to the animated classics of yore.

It's a top-notch action film, albeit on the bloody side, complete with decisive action, mysterious characters and a nobility and sense of purpose that allows its excesses to be forgiven.

As a narrative, it has serious problems -- holes so gaping that they're all but unavoidable.

Gets the hell of war right and struggles to depict the unyielding passion of love. But the two sides make for an uneasy mix, one that not even the actors seem comfortable with.

There's way too much blarney in Evelyn.

It's like a Harlequin romance trying to pass itself off as something deeper and more profound.

Alien, even with some scene tinkering that has left this "director's cut" one minute shorter than its original release, is still one of the creepiest, scariest, most shocking films ever.

Plot-wise, this is strictly paint-by-numbers stuff.

Caan is so good as a man who watches helplessly as everything he's worked for crumbles around him, that he steals the picture from both Wahlberg and Phoenix, the ostensible stars.

A story about unmotivated characters trapped in an ill-conceived plot.

Malkovich acts as if he's doing Shakespeare, pontificating, enunciating and generally overreaching.

A pleasantly lightweight confection.

It's not hard to imagine these characters in a straight-faced Hollywood blockbuster. And that's the source of Hot Fuzz's genius, pointing out the thin line that separates convention from farce when Hollywood starts throwing its special effects around.

It's a zombie flick that moves -- no stumbling, staggering living dead here -- in an atmosphere that feels like a Gothic docudrama, and it's freaky beyond all reason.

With Anything Else, Woody Allen proves himself an old dog capable of thinking up some new tricks.

Shark Tale is "Finding Nemo" with bigger-name stars, far less heart and, the guess here is, about one-third the staying power.

Like watching a 90-minute game of the video game Asteroids - all bang and no buck.

There's a ton of joy in The Legend of 1900 -- but it's laid on so thick that one ends up more numbed than stirred, overcome by one too many Hallmark moments.

Retro in a refreshing sort of way, a return to those sci-fi films of the 1950s, filled with cheesy special effects and over-the-top acting, but with a gem of an idea at its core, and all done with just enough wit and inventiveness to keep audiences in the cheap seats happy.

About as clunky as a movie gets. It lurches from scene to scene with no sense of narrative grace, gives its roster of prominent actors nothing to work with and screeches to a halt with all the grace of a sprinter whose shoelaces have been tied together.

Most of the fun to be had with Thr3e is to spot the movies from which it cribs. Beyond that, what one has is a conventional psychological thriller that cheats too often and depends on actors determined to play only one note.

Until the last 15 minutes, What Lies Beneath is a well-paced maze that earns every gasp from its audience.

Extreme Measures, a new medical thriller with Hugh Grant and Gene Hackman as doctors with differing views on medical ethics, is an episode of "Beauty and the Beast" grafted onto an episode of "ER" as directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Probably the most sweet-spirited sex comedy ever made. It's pretty funny, too.

The images here are graphic and disturbing. But Miike somehow manages to stop just short of disgusting.

Method Man and Redman just don't have the comic timing to pull off 90 minutes at front-and-center.

The Bread, My Sweet is not for the cynical, who will doubtlessly find themselves gasping for air before the film's over and demanding a reality check of anyone who actually likes it. Their loss.

Long on style and technique, short on substance and plot.

Elf tries so hard to be a holiday classic, to be a sweet-natured, charming little piece of holiday gloss, it's tempting to declare it so and simply go with it.

A remarkable film about a remarkable man who's lived the kind of life usually reserved for adventure novels and pulp fiction.

The original Rocky would have found a way to ground that encounter in reality, to engender honest emotion and give audiences an Everyman hero both noble and believable. This film is too busy worshiping its hero to bother.

Torque isn't a movie, it's an 81-minute soda commercial.

Sure, this movie is proudly profane, but it's also funny.

The perfect film for anyone who finds the Keystone Cops a little too understated and I mean that as a compliment.

Should make comic modern-day fanboys happy, what with its dark undertones, its beat-it-to-a-pulp action and its sly winks at comic greats past and present. Everyone else, including fans of Will Eisner's original Spirit, may find themselves wondering what all the fuss is about.

Stuck On You is proof that sweet and funny don't always make for the best mix.

So, here's the problem with The Butterfly Effect: It's silly.

In this day of overstuffed action flicks and dumbed-down "comedies," (Snow Day) is kinda refreshing.