Connie Ogle

Everyone, including the candidates, will recognize the importance of civic duty, leaving Swing Vote to end with swelling music and uplifting speechifying but on a completely unsatisfactory note.

You might call My Sister's Keeper manipulative, and you would not be inaccurate.

The fact that you won't remember any of these names for more than a minute should indicate exactly how much depth each character displays.

What Shark Tale lacks in originality it makes up for with sassy humor, bright, effective animation and terrific vocal work.

In addition to providing a textbook example of suspense, Estes also makes us want to know what happens to these kids after the screen goes dark.

The sort of movie you enjoy much more while you're watching it in the theater than when you're deconstructing it on the way home.

Neurotic New Yorkers, messed up relationships, inept analysts, infidelity -- Ira & Abby has them all, and it's anything but refreshing to trudge through this well-worn territory again.

A cliché-ridden, condescending and ham-handed film that clumsily fails to bring to life what should be an interesting story. You might say none of its punches even comes close to connecting.

The cast, which includes Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City) as a coach who pushes her daughter too hard, is likable and energetic, and the film's messages are entirely reasonable.

Wins you over with this bright sense of humor and its gentle, welcome message of tolerance and acceptance.

The film, with its uniformly terrific cast, stern Gothic overtones and steady but measured pacing, is a crisp, old-fashioned delight, eschewing cheap tricks for repeated tiny pricks of unease that work up to a continuous gnawing dread.

It resonates with gleaming ferocity as it unspools a story of regret, longing and resolution in two generations of women.

The film is well-scrubbed of anything resembling sexuality, more a nonthreatening fairy tale than the romantic drama it aims to be. Its appeal flies straight to the hearts of 13-year-old girls.

The music is of course majestic, blending well with a loving cinematography.

The story is far from finished; the film can't help but feel like a bridge to its end. But the power of that partnership forged in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" remains strong.

Not so much a thriller as an exploration of one man's crumbling moral compass.

A slow-moving but heartfelt film.

The charms of Lucía, Lucía rely heavily on the charismatic Roth, who is funny and warm and a lot of fun to watch as she embraces her new life.

Casanova doesn't seduce so much as lull the audience into a stupor with tedious blather about the battle of the sexes, intermittent but pointless swordplay and clumsy slapstick.

Not exactly a tour de force, but the film succeeds on the wattage of its stars.

Manages to sidestep the potential overload of cheap sentimentality -- an intimate dance between an elderly couple registers with heartbreaking sweetness -- and evokes a lingering sense of loss.

Hilarious and imaginatively crude with a surprising sweet and subtle aftertaste that prevents it from flopping, limp and brainless, into the sugary abyss of romantic predictability.

A measured, magnificently understated and intense performance by Academy Award nominee Terrence Howard (Hustle & Flow, Crash) as Ellis gives Pride its fire and heart.

But if My Date With Drew is what passes for filmmaking these days, the movie industry is in more trouble than we thought.

The misery is there, all right, in every woozy, spaced-out shot of Hoffman clutching his gas-soaked rag. But in the end, do we really care?

Better than you might expect despite its awkward, slow beginning, drawing you in gradually and paying off in surprisingly effective and bittersweet ways.

There's an audience for old-fashioned romance, and Dear John will please most of it.

Crudup is about as effective as anyone could be in the dreary World Traveler, but he can't keep this shallow, pretentious film from wallowing in banality and staggering self-indulgence.