Joe Leydon

Often plays more like "Tyler Perry's Greatest Hits" as it recycles various elements from the writer-director's earlier works.

By turns laughably simplistic and confoundingly muddled as it charts the "final battle" between good and evil.

A wildly uneven, sporadically slapdash action-adventure that amuses in fits and starts.

Trenchantly witty and acutely insightful.

Strikes a deft balance of chase-movie suspense and wisecracking humor, with a few slam-bang action setpieces that would shame the makers of more allegedly grown-up genre fare.

Any provocative questions LaBute might have wanted to raise are totally obscured as the rising tide of absurdity gradually overwhelms the entire enterprise.

There's scarcely a boxing-movie cliche left unrecycled by the end of From Mexico With Love, an inaptly titled and thoroughly predictable indie drama directed by vet stunt coordinator and fight choreographer Jimmy Nickerson.

Sincere but unexceptional.

Insufficiently focused but undeniably intriguing.

The human dramas of individual gamers are what really make this technically polished documentary so fascinating and potentially commercial.

A modestly amusing dramedy that is all the more pleasant for its fleeting detours into cheeky fantasy.

A crafty and well-crafted wrap-up that really does bring a satisfying sense of closure to the franchise.

An unwieldy mix of self-conscious camp and heavy-handed allegory, Automatons plays like a cheesy '50s no-budget sci-fier with serious delusions of grandeur.

Lightning fails to strike twice -- an underwhelming follow-up to one of the career-stalled action star's better efforts.

A surprisingly effective teen-skewing thriller that soft-pedals graphic violence (in marked contrast to the R-rated 1980 original) while generating a fair degree of suspense.

An ungainly hodgepodge of vaudeville-style comedy, turgid soap-operatics, and joyful epiphanies of gospel-flavored uplift.

Wildly uneven effort, which is notably more strained and slapdash than such earlier efforts as "Madea's Family Reunion" and "Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns."

Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic showcases the comic-actress in her familiar on-stage persona as a blithely self-involved Jewish American Princess whose penchant for perky vulgarity can be explosively funny or unnervingly shocking.

Fitfully amusing prequel.

Richardson, who gracefully sways through a memorable drunk scene, and Quaid, whose megawatt smile has never been more dazzling, are disarmingly charming as the parents. And that's important; if the actors were any less engaging, the audience might not be so forgiving of their characters.

An intelligent, well-observed and ineffably poignant study of an Amerasian woman's attempt to trace her roots by journeying back to Vietnam.

A loose-knit, character-driven comedy that percolates with good-vibe amusement, often earning industrial-strength guffaws with sneaky one-liners and tossed-off non-sequiturs.

Arriving so soon after "A Knight's Tale" -- and the 25th-anniversary reissue of the classic "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," Black Knight is a textbook example of too much, too late.

Evidencing savvy visual flair and compelling storytelling skill, Goyer infuses heart and vigor into material that could have come off as overly familiar at best, sappily improbable at worst.

Zippy enough to delight youngsters and clever enough to engage their parents.

Conveys enough of the stirring true-life drama recounted in Butler's other Shackleton docu to satisfy ticketbuyers who demand substance even in larger-than-life entertainment.

A bland slab of sentimental hokum that proves even the most smart-alecky of indie auteurs can turn warm and fuzzy on occasion.

Surprisingly amusing.

A cleverly constructed, sensationally stylish and often darkly hilarious seriocomic caper.

Peter and Bobby Farrelly aimed low and grossed millions with "Dumb & Dumber," so it shouldn't be surprising that Kingpin, their latest effort, offers a similar mix of pratfalls, gross-out gags and jokes about bodily functions. This time, however, the humor is darker, edgier and occasionally, even more scatological.

Martin hits all the right notes while subtly conveying both the appealing sophistication and the purposeful reserve of Ray. But he cannot entirely avoid being overshadowed by Dane's endearingly vulnerable, emotionally multifaceted and fearlessly open performance.

Anemic action-fantasy.

Exuberantly rude and crude, but generally more frantic than genuinely funny.

Unfortunately, the new pic never really achieves maximum velocity as a full-throttle action-adventure opus, despite game efforts by returning star Milla Jovovich, still a lithe and lethal dynamo when it comes to butt-kicking, zombie-slicing derring-do.

A smart, subtle and seriously funny dramedy bound to find favor with sophisticated auds.

Imagine a live-action version of the "Dilbert" comic strip with a touch of Hal Hartley's deadpan absurdism, and you're ready for the frequently uproarious "Office Space."

A modestly clever comedy in which nothing gets seriously out of hand.

Comes off as a retro reprise of those slam-bang, buddy-buddy action-comedies that proliferated throughout the '80s in the wake of "48 HRS."

It's doubtful that anyone, even executors of Greene's literary estate, will be able to discern much of the source material in this frenetic trifle.

A doggone hilarious cartoon extravaganza...virtually bursts at the seams with a supersized abundance of witty wordplay, silly songs and inspired sight gags.

By turns darkly comical, seriously scary and purposefully incendiary, Bush's Brain may seem, depending on your politics, either a shamelessly one-sided assault on a popular U.S. president or a justifiably harsh critique of a politician who personifies the Peter Principle.

Sandler impressively assumes the Reynolds role here, with strong support by Reynolds himself and a slightly restrained but frequently hilarious Chris Rock.

Action pics rarely come much more blandly generic than Extreme Ops, an instantly forgettable snow-and-stuntwork extravaganza.

Too tepid to interest anyone old enough to operate a TV remote control.

Trick ‘r Treat neatly apportions scary and campy elements while cleverly interlacing four storylines on Halloween night in an Ohio hamlet.

A slight but lightly amusing sitcom-style comedy, strongly recalls dinner theater fodder of three decades ago.

A genuinely clever kidpic that should delight moppets, please parents -- and maybe tickle a few tweens.

Just fast, frenetic and funny enough to amuse both new fans and longtime devotees of the characters who have inspired more than 30 years worth of animated TV episodes and made-for-video features.

Squeaky-clean, family-friendly opus.

A modestly amusing family-friendly comedy about a miniature car race that brings out the worst in overzealous fathers who compete with each other through their children.

An engaging crazy-quit of comedy.

Manages an impressively huge score in the hit-or-miss gag ratio.

Genuinely clever switched-identities romp.

Frisky and funny enough to please pre-teens, but still witty enough to amuse even those parents who don't recognize Dustin Hoffman, Whoopi Goldberg and other notables among the unseen vocal talents.

Uneven but modestly diverting.