Jan Stuart

Mortimer gives a terrifically keyed-up performance that is nicely complemented by the wholesomely chipper Harrelson, who seems to be drawing inspiration from Fred MacMurray's gallery of Disney dads.

If you let it be what it is, Donnie Darko will knock you flat.

A funkadelic fun ride that shrewdly reinvigorates the eye-popping styles and pulpy veneer of '70s blaxploitation flicks.

Exceptionally user-friendly for the technologically challenged among us and rides over its less inspired patches on a wave of cheeky humor.

This round-robin of marital malaise has a lot more integrity than one might anticipate from its meet-cute beginnings.

Bracing and remarkably compact drama, which invests some standard movie tropes of rough-and-tumble urban life with deep feeling and urgency.

If Lonesome Jim feels like it's perpetually on the verge of evaporating, Buscemi brings to the material the boundless empathy for misfits and screw-ups he displayed in "Trees Lounge."

High-grade lampoon, at once more consistently on-the-money and less patronizing than anything off the Christopher Guest conveyor belt.

Audiences who feel battered by Hollywood's usual hard-sell approach to farce may be disarmed by Koepp's soft touch and inclined to credit blandness as understatement.

The Irish-pretty Cyrus exudes a goofball vitality and sunny work ethic that ultimately wins you over, despite the slickness of her vehicle. The 3-D camera throws drumsticks and confetti in our faces, but the technical effects seem superfluous to the star's bona-fide energy.

SomeBody reclaims well-trodden territory with an innovative hand that feels fresh as tomorrow.

All of the actors convey the ebullience of old friends convening for an on-the-cheap reunion. The shared good spirits result in a diminutive comedy with a bounty of charm and shrewd humor.

The French are very good at taking sit-commy setups and cloaking the machinery with charming and surprisingly resonant comic nuance.

Lurie undermines his high-wire act with the melodramatic carryings-on of the diner patrons.

In the role of dramaturge, Rogen and his co-scripter Goldberg lack Apatow's discipline and deft hand for peripheral characters; the writing in Pineapple Express gets lazy whenever it strays too far from its central axis of players.

Seems to have been tailored to its designated R "for brutal scenes of torture and violence, strong sexual content, language and drug use."

It's borderline parody of a kind of fey filmmaking popular at crunchy-granola festivals, but the counterfeit aesthetic is ultimately outshone by the life-affirming message.

Any charm and character ascribed to Carl Hiaasen's bestselling book have been homogenized in Wil Shriner's flat screenplay and direction.

A disposable sports drama.

Brick Lane has been whittled down from Monica Ali's expansive 2003 novel into a glossy but overly efficient drama that, like Nazneen's husband, is ultimately too ineffectual to make much of a dent.

While there is the requisite amount of shorn limbs and splashing blood one might expect from the director of "Saw," Wan should be saluted for putting the coup de grâce off-screen.

There is very little about the hoary conventions of The Mothman Prophecies that couldn't be improved by a little levity, a little more sunlight and some judicious cutting.

The Good Night has flashes of bookish wit but never quite recovers from the metronomic monotony of its first half, which ticktocks between scenes of Paltrow braying and Cruz voguing.

If you're willing to suspend a barrel or two of disbelief, then Happy Accidents has its moments.

While all of the actors are excellent, we sat up whenever Gabrielle Union walked on screen. As the ever-sensible woman who disrupts Jackson's bachelorhood, she projects the pluck, gravitas and beauty of a younger Alfre Woodard.

Just to shake things up a little, I guess, the creators of the laughably over-the-top Doomsday thought it might be fun to turn the survivors of a deadly epidemic, rather than its victims, into maniacal murderers.

What makes Comedian more than just another documentary about the comedy club comeback of a sitcom prince is that it contrasts his struggle with that of just another stand-up climber, Orny Adams.

Ultimately, Journey to the Center of the Earth's minor-league visual pleasures will be most enjoyed by those with the smallest number of celluloid reference points, preferably those who have started going to the movies after "Jurassic Park" or, better yet, the Harry Potter films.