Chris Kaltenbach

The film marks Braff as a talent to watch, blessed with the sort of natural, everyman appeal that audiences eat up.

Characters are manipulated and lives made whole in ways both satisfying and unexpected.

A pleasant little confection that leaves behind the sneaking suspicion it should have amounted to so much more.

A Dirty Shame is certainly dirty, and maybe it's even a shame. But this is the John Waters we've come to know and cherish, and that alone is cause to celebrate.

Baseball, Boston and Drew Barrymore. Certainly sounds like a winning combination.

Chicken Little is relentlessly cute. That's the good news, and those who consider the word cute anathema may want to look for entertainment elsewhere.

Passionately acted and grittily convincing.

A great cast can't quite pull City by the Sea out of the drink.

Sometimes sly and witty, sometimes dull and forced, Coffee and Cigarettes is Jim Jarmusch's testimony to the difficulties and delights of communication.

Like "Tango," Wang's film also seeks to uncover whether sex without emotion is really possible, or worth the effort.

If only all this wonderful talent wasn't in service to a story that pushes credulity beyond the breaking point, perilously close to the realm of farce. Too many coincidences, too much convenient timing, too little honest plot development.

In the end, this is a movie that doesn't respect its own power. Less of a stacked deck would have left Vera Drake to play a far more effective hand.

The best moments in Paper Clips - and there are plenty - come when it doesn't resort to mundane cliches or calculated emotions to make its point.

All about mood, and not one bit about action - which explains why it's at once both the most passionate film of the year so far, and the most determinedly inert.

Earns few points for originality, but scads for good-hearted exuberance.

There's a good heart beating at the core of Victor Vargas, one that belies its R-rating.

Like the particular brand of music Dewey espouses, this is a movie more concerned with exploiting rock than understanding it.

All this is out of the Haunted House 101 textbook.

Regrettably, Bones is what passes for horror these days: Throw a lot of graphic, gore-filled, darkly lit stuff on the screen, and see what sticks. Discerning moviegoers should pass on the opportunity.

This military courtroom drama is full of questions, but woefully short of answers.

A crackerjack thriller, laced with labyrinthine mysteries, moral quandaries and unspeakable evil.

Put simply, Mona Lisa Smile is too much of a stacked deck -- a movie too concerned with ensuring that audiences feel a certain way to risk anything like nuance or interpretation.

Kids will get antsy, wondering why their favorite characters disappear for long stretches of the film, while adults will wonder just when this scattershot approach to storytelling will congeal into something resembling coherence.

Hellboy is, to borrow a phrase, one helluva good time.

Filled with delightful sequences.

Shortbus is nothing if not over-the-top, replete with consummated sex acts, both gay and straight.

Those not familiar with Proust will doubtless feel lost. Unlike the printed word, film does not offer the chance to pause and reflect, or go back and re-read a passage.

Nothing in this film -- even Robin Williams, alas -- is funny.