Chris Kaltenbach

The cinematic equivalent of a beautifully wrapped gift box with nothing inside.

It fails to dig beneath that surface picture and offer up anything in the way of explanation or motivation.

Will keep kids happy and parents mildly entertained.

The cast doesn't impress, the story doesn't compel and the characters are too bland to make people remember them.

This is Forster's show, and he doesn't disappoint.

A return to form -- bad form. Lifeless, unimaginative and almost determinedly uninspired, it's paint-by-numbers filmmaking at its dreariest.

It's a blast!

Rocky and Bullwinkle have not only returned, but they've been placed in the hands of filmmakers who know what they're doing.

Fitfully thrilling.

In a stroke of voice-casting genius, the voices of Marjane and her mother are provided by real-life mother and daughter Chiara Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve, respectively, both of whom bring heft and measured emotion to the characters.

Stupid. Illogical. Simplistic. Pandering. And those are its good points.

Come Undone would have benefited immensely from less constricted performances from Elkaim and Rideau, both of whom go through the film determined not to crack a smile.

There's little time for nuance in Stop-Loss, and it doesn't deny any of the film's power to wish Peirce would occasionally slow things down enough to let her audience ponder what they're seeing.

If only La Mujer de mi Hermano had a dollop of humor and at least one character worth rooting for.

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

Some might find the whole thing exhilarating, but exhausting is more the word that comes to this man's mind.

The whole cast is good. It's too bad all that good work isn't in service to a better, or certainly more original, script.

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

Paycheck is one of those movies in which all the ingenuity went into the original idea and none into its execution.

Painfully earnest, The Astronaut Farmer is, sad to say, a bunch of hooey. It's Frank Capra without the genuine heart, certainly without any sense of perspective.

"His eye is incredibly sharp and amazing, in regard to visceral cinema," says Uma Thurman, who has worked with Tarantino on both Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. "He's a great storyteller. He's very seductive as a filmmaker."

Takes a great idea -- what if the inhabitants of a museum came to life at night? -- and milks it for every drop of fun it's worth.

The film ultimately is a letdown, leaving too many questions unanswered and ending in a gesture that doesn't really solve anything.

A movie like this could easy slide into Shirley Temple territory, showcasing a child actor so full of sweetness and light and good, old-fashioned spunk that audiences wince. But Palmer, whose enthusiasm and energy never seem forced, avoids all those traps; her Akeelah is never less than believable.

A twisted little comic gem.

But The Ugly Truth can't escape its own ugly truth, that the central characters are written to extremes both ludicrous and tiring.

Foxx is magnificent, taking a role that could be exorbitantly showy (actors playing the mentally disabled tend to forget the word "restraint") and turning in a performance that's controlled and mesmerizing.

The vocal canines appear for about 30 humorous seconds, in a dream sequence, and are then never seen again. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about the rest of the film, which runs an additional 98.5 excruciating minutes.