Chris Kaltenbach

Alpha Dog may well go down as the most dispiriting film of 2007.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated performs a great service, though not especially well.

White throws in a dog-in-peril shot to ensure the audience's sympathies. The ploy works, perhaps too well, turning Year of the Dog less into the askew character study it wants to be than a showcase of lovable-dog shots.

Unlike so many movies directed at teens, ATL is not interested in exploiting its audience.

There's tremendous energy in How She Move, so much that the audience can't help but be swept up.

Refreshingly, the movie never wavers in the importance it places on friendship over just about anything else.

There's more than a trace of James Dean in Gosling, except that he's a rebel with a cause.

Engaging though flimsy, lively though occasionally tone-deaf, it's a movie that thrives on the strength of its affable co-stars and a sense of adventure that provides just enough brio to get audiences through some energy-sapping rough spots.

It may not advance the art form, but it's a movie with pleasures for the whole family, and nowadays that's saying something.

Comes across as more willfully clever than profound, leaving us to applaud the message while pondering why the messenger had to strain so hard to get it across.

As great as the film looks, the story, adapted from a novel by P.D. James, never quite comes into focus.

The film may not be art, but it's got a beat and you can definitely dance to it.

Things may work out predictably, but The Ultimate Gift does not yank on the heartstrings so much as pluck them gently.

Anna Faris, her deadpan comic timing still a joy to watch, returns as Cindy Campbell, one of two main holdovers from the first three movies.

What it does have is the laughs.

Blethyn's performance belongs in another movie, not this bipolar comedy-drama.

It's a thrill ride not to be missed.

What makes RV work are some genuinely funny bits (one of which is not an overlong sequence in which Bob has trouble emptying the R.V.'s toilet) that should ring especially true to any parent forced to cajole a recalcitrant child into having a good time.

A derivative little tale with enough good intentions to recommend it, but not enough substance to embrace it.

If the movie were as funny as it is well-meaning, this would be one for the ages.

The emotions seem genuine enough, even if Sandler is not a talented-enough actor to always pull them all off.

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

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.

The one thing most sorely missing is movie magic.

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.

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

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.

If only it had a plot mere humans could follow.