Kimberley Jones

Falling in love with the wrong person makes for a far more toothsome melodrama, a fact this small, satisfying picture rightly recognizes.

It’s an enjoyable enough exercise in teen angst triumphing.

A devastating and weighty picture.

While Saved! initially gets in some good gags at the expense of religious hypocrisy, it eases off, opting not to skewer religion but rather to poke it gently with a stick to see what happens.

It packs a hefty emotional wallop.

A Girl Cut in Two is Hitchcock sans the whodunit, essentially a long preamble of seduction and spiritual ruin, capped by a crime everyone saw coming (and an eye-dazzling coda that twists the title from metaphor to … something else).

Though the three leads are all likable performers, their lunkheaded characters are as thinly drawn as their cartoon counterparts, and the supporting cast is littered with one racial stereotype after another.

Is Gary Winick atoning for his sins? If “Bride Wars” was an acid spill -- and that’s putting it generously -- then Letters to Juliet is like the safety shower in your high school chemistry class, delivering an unsubtle blast of sanitized sentimentality.

Terrio's technically proficient film is mature, modern, and minus the all-important passion and risk.

No doubt about it: Bad Santa is blasphemous. But, to borrow a phrase from another famous hedonist, Homer Simpson, it’s also sacrilicious.

It's an intermittently amusing parable about an outcast's ascension, as performed by a pack of digitally manipulated dogs. Next.

The cast seems to have been assembled primarily for its blinking resemblance to the stars of the original Eighties TV series about a renegade group of former Army Rangers now for hire.

It’s always a pleasure to be in the company of Potter, and when looking back at the just-competent first outings – well, baby, you’ve come a long way – but still: Where’s the magic, huh?

From "Hands on a Hard Body" to an 89-minute ogling of another hard body: It boggles the mind that 11 years after his engrossing documentary about an endurance competition to win a truck in Longview, Texas, filmmaker Bindler has channeled his talents into this regrettable comedy.

I'd be hard-pressed to name another recent film so deeply noxious, soul-sick, and unfunny.

I’m told Bella’s helplessness is true to the spirit of the novels, but so what? It’s almost 2010 – let’s get hip, people.

It's huge and bewildering and it hurts to watch, but it hurts so good it's gorgeous.

The script negates anything heartfelt with its flippant, almost vulgar tone.

Jovovich, who's shown sensitivity in her dramatic work, looks spectacularly bored as she power-kicks her way through one bloody pile-up after another. That boredom, like the mystery virus at the center of the film, is contagious.

Moments of almost unbearable beauty.

Feels like a Fincher film: It possesses the same smarts, the same visual panache, the same violence. But not the same heart.

All told, either you get it or you don't. Film critics and senators with election prospects don't. Kids in the mood to laugh at stupid shit for 87 minutes do. I'll toss my hat in the latter ring with glee.

The collective charisma of Robert De Niro, Eddie Murphy, and Rene Russo is the only reason to slap down eight bucks for this limp action/comedy, but then, it's difficult not to want to avert your eyes out of embarrassment for the trio.

It's all about the little things, and the way in which the little things can steal into your heart in big ways.

Mamet does a shrewdly skillful job with these Tinseltown terrors.

Ramsay is experimental, unconventional, and forever reaching at the gorgeousness in grief and despair. Her film moves slow as molasses, slow as paint drying -– and all the better to see the colors and the complexities.

There's just no reconciling the film's ambivalent message. Newell hangs a modern sensibility on a supposed period piece, and hangs his film in the process.

One wishes perhaps for a more thumping conclusion, but what we have instead is something perfectly in the spirit of the piece, reaffirming that life, big and little, happens in 10 minutes chunks.

The magnificence of the film's pieces does not quite add up to a satisfying whole.

Taking a cue from the horse in question, Ross’ film takes its time getting into the race, but once it gets going, the going gets good.

It's impossible to shake the feeling that these are merely actors -- albeit good ones.

If you're gonna hire one of the funniest American comedians working today – Zach Galifianakis – and shove him to the side of the frame, then frankly, you can take what happens in Vegas, keep it in Vegas, and keep the rest of the us out of it.

All herky-jerky camera movements and no pussyfooting around with the interior lives of these characters.

The camera may dive deep, but the content skims mere surface.

Once spoiled by the gossamer disquietude of Kim Jee-woon's original Tale, it's difficult to view this Americanized version in anything but the blandest light.

What a glorious weepie The Notebook might have been if they’d just found a way to get rid of the damned notebook.

So much here is equally befuddling and beguiling; I caught myself leaning in toward the screen repeatedly, trying to somehow get closer to the gorgeous impenetrability of the story, of the boy.

Linklater has crafted an always genial and at times even joyful period charmer about that moment on the cusp: before a boy becomes a man and another man becomes a mythological figure.

Perhaps the more appropriate question to put to this remake would be "What the hell’s the point?"

A succession of shrill overacting jobs.

The scoped camerawork is a shrewd tactic; only occasionally does its flat, proscenium effect make the action feel overly staged.

Funny and friendly and all-inclusive and unremarkable.

There are just too many damn characters, with the best ones taking a backseat to the dullish love quadrangle.

The film moves so subtly, in fact, and so seamlessly between wry humor and the emotional wreckage of life-or-death, that it was with some shock that I found myself weeping halfway through the film.

Serenity evinces the kind of swashbuckling bonhomie that made so many of us fall in love with the original "Star Wars" films, a love that was mightily tested by George Lucas' humorless prequels.

To do no disservice to the impressive work of Bridges' co-stars, anytime his ragged writer, in flowing caftans and floppy hats, is on screen, it's impossible to take in anything else, so commanding is his presence.

There’s an undeniable thrill to watching something so experimental and yet totally accessible to those of us who speak only layman’s Dylanese, and it’s Haynes’ warmest film yet.

Nolan’s end-act pacing has always felt ponderous – but it’s not enough to ruin what is surely the most intellectually and viscerally engaging action film in years. The soul doesn’t stir, no, but everything else is wildly somersaulting.

Everybody figured producer Joel Silver and Willis couldn't lose and guess what? They all rolled craps.

Failed feminist statement or not, Coyote Ugly is a likable, if confused film.

Big, dumb, and fun.

How many screenwriters does it take to screw in this dim bulb? Five – no joke – and another one credited with “story by.”

It's all pretty goofy, which I assume is the point, but it's also pretty dull.

The soundtrack is a boisterous blast from the past, and there's a quiet pleasure to watching Zoe and Daly let their composure loose like scrambled eggs, but there's little else to hold dear here.

Most devastating to the film’s effectiveness is its inability to convey that one essential to the story of Amelia Earhart: the tangible pleasures of flying.

Little Black Book isn't your run-of-the-mill romantic comedy – it's much worse – and, rather disgustingly, the devils on earth it unmasks are all female and vindictive.

It's a botched job through and through, made all the more distressing by Bullock's recent announcement that she's throwing in the romantic comedy towel for a while.

The film stumbles a bit in its third act, when war kills the good times for good.

Kurosawa's international breakthrough is a masterstroke in unreliable narration.

July sees the world in a most unexpected way, and it's a shame that Me and You's preciousness sometimes overwhelms that uniqueness of vision.

Moon doesn't belabor anything, really, so confidently measured and philosophically nuanced it all plays out (aided by a striking, under-the-skin original score by Clint Mansell).

It closes the film in what I suspect was intended as something of a happy ending, but it’s unnecessary: Thirty happy years should be happy ending enough.

There are flashes of wit and flair here, including two stylish sequences detailing the French obsession with food and scarves, but they are but brief respites from the film’s near-pathological drear.

Never achieves the satisfaction of a real crackerjack con movie.

A lovely, quietly thrilling thing.

Shannon is monstrously good – unpredictable where the other actors are clipped and careful – and he steals the whole picture in two short, shattering scenes. When Shannon exits the film, the air gets sucked out again, and you realize the pretty artifice extends to more than just the Wheelers.

Although the transvestites’ plight – mishandled, misunderstood, and/or misappropriated – is meant to supply Connie and Carla's emotional core, one never gets the feeling of anything stronger than an at-shoulder-length's sympathy from this film.

Perfectly passable film.

Aggressively unfunny and unromantic, Valentine’s Day’s chief concern appears to have been the corralling of its cast of a thousand stars; it seems far less attention was paid to what to do with that cast once assembled.

Myla Goldberg's novel about spelling-bee fever, a family in chaos, and religious/mystic exploration arrives on the screen with all its faults intact, but few of its charms.

Has a heart bursting with good intentions, something that goes a long way in dimming from memory its inherent routineness.

No film that requires a woman to jump in water and dogpaddle toward a man has the "sisterhood's" best interests at heart.

If anything, The Invention of Lying is too soft for the satirical promise of its premise.

The jokes just aren't there, which makes it very hard for the stars -- who are trying very, very hard -- to really make a dent.

The Virginity Hit is repugnant.

Cotillard doesn't look part Native American or sound like a Thirties Chicago moll, but damned if she isn't a sight and sound to behold. Whatever her technical limitations, she rises above them to breathe a flesh, blood, and battered verisimilitude into the part. You can't tear your eyes off her, any more than you can Mann's flawed but still engrossing picture.

Bait equals bad.

Slight but agreeable picture.

Boden and Fleck's unabashedly warmhearted film is a sensitively wrought but also very funny portrait of the way we respond to pressure.

New in Town might have better played on the less demanding stage of, say, a Lifetime made-for-TV movie.

The script's tone veers chaotically -- and ambitiously -- at once aiming for a Noel Coward kind of elegant sparring, then for the lightly raunchy, rompy absurdism of "What's New, Pussycat?"

Just as marriage does not banish aloneness, proximity to the characters onscreen doesn't unlock any special connection to them.

Funny, bewildering, giddy spectacle.

The climax, like the film itself, is big, loud, and looks cool enough, which is what we’ve come to expect from summer movies … but not from Robert Rodriguez.

The upshot to a ticking bomb is that it only explodes the once, but Rachel's sister, Kym (Hathaway), goes off again and again.

Burrus has a face that does all the talking for him -- deep creases, sad eyes, and a gray hue that hangs over him like a rain cloud. It's a remarkable performance.

How do movies this bad still get made?

Understandably, a filmmaker tackling the retelling of a national hero must do so with great delicacy, but The Sea Inside presents not so much a hero as a saint in Sampredo.

After two hours of Vera's pretty but wet-blanket direction, it's too late to ignite any fireworks, even in the hands of such capable actors.

The Dogme pedigree rarely distracts; there is too much emotional investment to care much about dogmatic fidelity.

But by the time this imperfect little film wends its way to one of the most winning exit lines I've heard in a long time, it's turned into something, well, perfectly lovely.

Little more than a constant and occasionally pretty imaginative sex show.

Refn’s artful and energetic film never goes further than face value.

The sum is something deeply profound: about awkwardness, culture clash, failed connections, and – ultimately – the strength that comes from surviving a trial by fire.

The movie scores some laughs, all of which come from the expert Giamatti.

Murphy's screentime takes a back seat to Douglas', of course, but from that back seat she makes a very big noise.

Gilroy zings the film with tantalizing bits of absurdity (one wonders, wistfully, what the Coen brothers would have done with this material), but too often he returns to his darker, more ponderous instincts.

Until Hollywood stops being a boys club, and America graduates beyond short pants and its embarrassingly pubescent attitudes toward sex, I suppose one can only hope that all male adolescent fantasies will play as goofily sweet as this one.

Frankly, I don't like to be bullied, and bullying is exactly what Knight and Day – overly cute and overconvinced of its own cool – does best.

Kinsey is too tasteful by half, and while it may have its gentle charms, it never thrills.

Doesn't do much to further distinguish Lehmann's career. As for those of us waiting for the year's first worthwhile date movie, the wait continues.

Fletcher demonstrates, as with her second film, "27 Dresses," that she can put together a funny, able romantic comedy that is a cut above, but no more. Still, those leads are awfully likable, the Massachusetts-for-Alaska landscape rather picturesque, and if The Proposal doesn't reinvent the wheel, merrily we roll along nonetheless.

Love Happens? It depends on your definition of “love.” And “happens.” There isn’t much of either in this predictable, putzy drama.

It’s a lot like hearing the play-by-play account of a heated game of bridge. Only not half as gripping.

The resultant film is all surface and plush, with nary a hard edge or demanding note. Despite the movie's well-intentioned heart, its head is out to lunch, neglecting its responsibility to provide these powerhouse actresses with a script half as smart or compelling as they.

Funny and sweet and guaranteed to flood you with good feeling.

Blisteringly entertaining.

This Native American romantic comedy, which won the Audience Award at the 2001 Austin Film Festival, arrives in theatres four years late but seasonally right on time.

Jet Lag's romantic fluffery is somewhat beneath these old pros, but they make its meet-cute scenario work, mostly -– and most especially when crusty, grumpy, grizzled Jean Reno announces he's "totally in love."

The deeply heartfelt Milk is more of a surface skim: a fairly standard biopic – if a very fine one, indeed – but never the transcendent work one would have hoped from the filmmaker or his subject.

Bandslam belongs to Connell. He has the unruly 'fro and endearing shamblingness of a young Daniel Stern, and he ably brings to life that rarest of cinematic qualities: decency.

Quite astonishingly, amidst all the chaos – and there's no better word for Tristram Shandy's inspired, breakneck madness – what emerges is a featherlight, moving meditation on new fatherhood.

There’s a surprising – and truthful – melancholic undercurrent to Definitely, Maybe – the one commonality between the three women is the heartbreak they induce – but Brooks undermines that truthfulness with a dogmatic insistence upon romantic mythologizing. No maybes about it: The reality is far darker, and more interesting.

Mancini's character boils down to a lot of self-loathing and unresolved mommy issues – which is as tedious as it sounds.

The bland script and direction are spruced up by a likable cast.

Going dramatic, Stiller commits to the role completely; there's something rather admirable in his refusal to pander or soft-pedal the self-serious, frankly unlikable Greenberg.

Appropriately belongs to Lopez. His mannequin glaze and never-wavering smile provide more creepy-crawlies than a thousand quivering violins or perfectly timed thunderclaps.

Roberts, wearing that beatific half-smile of hers that suggests inner peace and wisdom before she's even begun her journey, is too open-faced with her emotions to signal the complexities of Gilbert's distress – over her divorce, her control issues, her rootlessness, and inability to live in the moment.

In practice, and played as farce, the characters are one-dimensional cutouts kept at a dogged remove. Their miseries are a bore – maybe to Allen, too, who abruptly ends the film, after so much inaction, when it finally catches some dramatic traction.

The fault does not lie with Hoffman (who doesn't so much act out Capote's distinctive mannerisms and high-pitched lisp as channel them); his performance is undeniably great. Everything else – solid, satisfying though it may be – falls short of that greatness.

Ultimately Hedges’ film, like the turkey, comes out underdone.

The misfits, as ever, must take a back seat to the morality, and the result – while in no way migraine-inducing – traffics in rote truisms.

A crowd-pleasing portrait of boys-who-will-be-men-who-will-be-boys.

Irritating throughout, Love Me if You Dare turns positively appalling in its last half hour, with the inevitable final showdown producing an image that continues to curdle my stomach days later.

Brothers is too depthless to dredge up any tears.

Even though She’s Out of My League ends exactly where you think it will, it does so without ever having actually gone anywhere at all.

Did I fall in love with Undertow? Not in the least. But I liked it alright, and amidst the mediocrity, even rot, that constitutes 98% of contemporary American movies, that'll do fine.

The trouble with retooling fairy tales to jibe with our more enlightened times is that too often the fun gets stripped along with the offensive parts.

It isn't all the actors' faults, of course. You can't, ahem, turn straw into gold, and straw – dull, brittle, lousy to taste – is entirely what director Mark Rosman and first-time screenwriter Leigh Dunlap deliver.

The film's "never grow up" refrain plays like a broken record, until, in an abrupt (but not unexpected) turnaround at film's end, it fixes itself.

Isn't Lee's most personal piece, but it may very well be his most mature.

Carrey is a bit of a conundrum: He's the best and worst thing about Lemony Snicket.

A romantic comedy, too, but this time the romance is between two women, and one of them, truth be told, is a dud.

I suspect that, like the Coen brothers, David Lynch, and Wes Anderson -– our American masters of idiosyncrasy -– Kaurismäki has a limited appeal. Those who get him, really get him.

The elements are all here for something spectacular – and in brilliant bursts, Jeunet really gets it – but in the end, all that potential is sunk by a terminally confused tone and milquetoast pairing of lovers. Pity that.

The subdued characters I can abide, intellectually speaking, but subdued filmmaking with material this fundamentally gut-punching is a lot less easy to swallow.

In its cinematic incarnation, Sex and the City has lost none of its bawdiness yet gained a more profound sense of soberness. Parker, especially, who in the last season of the show bordered on insufferable in her affected squeaks and shrieks, is allowed to go to very dark places – to be, in fact, quite unfabulous.

The action is constant, often pointless, definitely gratuitous, and breathlessly fun.

It's like 90 minutes of teasing foreplay, and then, just when it's about to get really good, your partner rolls over and goes to sleep.

Much to cheer here, from its treasure trove of early and alternate versions of songs to the triumphant finale.

Everything that was sharp in the original text has been rounded and buffed.

The script also takes the occasional dip into hokeyness, but even that is buoyed by its ballsy leading ladies.

For a film about looking for a sign, looking for solace, Room quite brazenly offers neither. It isn't an easy film, but the world's already got plenty of easy and easily digestible films.

Ambrose owns this crawlspace between being fierce and being fragile. But she can't escape the fact that her role is underwritten; the script suffers from an excess of subtlety.

Bruce Almighty attempts to blend both sides of the actor – comedic and dramatic – and while Carrey achieved that balance quite wonderfully in "The Truman Show," Bruce Almighty doesn't so much straddle the fence as impale itself on it.

They’re not all hideous, the men who sit for interviews with a graduate student (Nicholson) and unload their dirty laundry. Sometimes they’re just feckless, or crass; some are even pitiable.

The balloon will resurface throughout, but far more interesting, and substantial, is the slow reveal of Simon's domestic situation.

The person I most connected with for most of Mr. Fish: Cartooning From the Deep End was not the artist, railing against the man, but his wife, Diana Day, sweating their debt, working the job that gets them and their twin daughters health insurance, doing the dirty work that enables him to stand on his principles.

As with "Sunshine," I'd call Juno a family film if only it didn't make teen pregnancy look so sporting. Instead, we'll settle for that rare bird, an indie comedy that uplifts – funny and smart, totally trying to be cool and succeeding, and heartfelt to boot.

Because Wendy and Lucy is so lean on plot and dialogue, there are long spaces to contemplate Wendy and her situation, and the logistics are mind-boggling.

Is nothing if not exquisitely detailed: It's like a blood orange that del Toro spends the film seductively unpeeling, revealing layer upon layer of meaning and pathos.

Knoxville, in his first dramatic role, does what he can with script and direction that aggressively eschew any insight into Kaufman's grief.

Christina Applegate, of Eighties white-trash pinup fame, is a comic foil par excellence, delivering a snazzy, self-assured performance that lands the biggest laughs in a movie made mostly of hollow chuckles. She, in fact, is the sweetest thing in this sour, sucky film.

Well, we're not in "Chicago" anymore, or even its soundstage approximation, but that hasn't stopped Oscar-nominated director Rob Marshall from fashioning another epic spectacle out of two squabbling women in (a sort-of) show business.

The opening montage is a jazzy, grabby thing, artfully layering the kids’ auditions to mimic the frenzied pace of the day. But that freneticism never really goes away, nor does the staccato timing.

Frankly, I'm shocked that Disney, frequent purveyor of sleeping beauties and singing animated animals, is the studio behind this wonderfully black comedy/morality tale for children, but maybe Disney, too, saw past the material's deliciously macabre bent to find also a thrilling little essay on friendship, fate, and the restorative powers of onions.

Grace and Johannson's courtship has all the heat of a wet wipe and, worse yet, leaves Quaid offscreen for long stretches.

It's a nice, friendly kind of love, but hardly an inspiring one.

“Caution: Contents may induce brain bleed.” That is, if you think too hard on the logic and mechanics of its time-travel conceit.

Three actors play Bobby at different ages, and none of them quite jibe with the other – 16-year-old Bobby seems far savvier than the twenty-something version (who is played by a defanged Colin Farrell).

The whole thing still reeks of voyeurism -- and not the fly-on-the-wall voyeurism of a vérité doc, but rather the dirty-old-man-in-the-peep-show-booth kind. Might as well just wait for it to hit late-night cable.

Post-viewing, I was still coasting on the giddy high of kinetic cinema, only to have the astonishing callousness of its conclusion slowly settle in. It's a better film for it – one only wishes that Reprise on a whole had been of the same mind: a little less cool, a little more cruel. That's where the really good stuff is.

Instantly forgettable but good-natured all the same.

Director David Zucker once upon a time made a very funny movie called Airplane!. Twenty years later, he’s made a movie only a 13-year-old horndog could appreciate, and for all the wrong reasons.

A pretty spot-on distillation of human weakness, but my god, must they all be so inhumane in the process?

It's kinda funny and pretty cute. Sometimes that's all it takes.

To a one, they're terrific. But in this overpacked ensemble cast, it's Binoche you want to see more of.

Never aims higher than the urinal.

A film that wants you to get happy.

Overall, Just Married doesn't really take -- it has a shelf life about as short as the disastrous honeymoon -- but in the moment, it's cute, if corny. It'll do.

It’s best to situate yourself in the middle of the row; a seat at the end will most likely leave you feeling cross-eyed for an hour.

Something is terribly amiss when the American actors sound like English is their second language.

It's a Big Idea movie that comes out only half-baked.

It all adds up to a portrait in decency, which isn’t nearly as sexy as the title would suggest.

"By practicing his art, he revealed himself to us." Fellini: I’m a Born Liar provides proof positive: The art indeed reveals far more than this pedestrian documentary ever does.

All told, The Young Victoria is a very well-made if not especially memorable picture, moving with all the grace and steadfastness of a waltz Victoria and Albert share, but absent any urgency or anything particularly exclamatory.

I don't know if the many plot swerves withstand a second viewing, but I suspect the meat of the matter – the swooning visuals, the expert choreography, the teasing love story – does.

In terms of a pre-teen instructional, Sleepover offers throughout a laudable emphasis on the importance of friendship, but parents may rightfully flinch at a protagonist who is ultimately rewarded for breaking all the rules.

You don't just root for Harold and Kumar to get the girl, get the weed, and, above all, get the burger – you want to hang out with them while they' doing it, and see if they'e free next Friday night, too.

Manages the neat feat of feeling sweetly inevitable rather than boilerplate predictable.

An entirely sympathetic portrait of the artist at an advancing age. That's right, artist – and to a generation that knows Rivers only as a screeching red-carpet provocateur or as an overknifed monstrosity, that revelation alone is worth the cost of admission.

Cornish, in her first film seen stateside, is astonishing.

Sugar is a curiosity – too somber for a picaresque, too arm's-length for much emotional effect – and while it's interesting, it's never truly absorbing.

There is, quite simply, a rather refreshing ordinariness to Remember Me in the unflashy, knuckle-down attention it gives to character development and the building of plausible and involving family and friend dynamics.

It doesn't have the bite to be satire, the pratfalls to be broad comedy, or the wit to pass as a comedy of manners. What does that leave? The French cinematic equivalent of motivational coaching, and -- just like Pignon -- something spectacularly unspectacular.

A film that is long on atmosphere, but short on smarts: Plot points are easily unraveled 20 minutes in advance (no fun sleuthing for the audience here), the ending is an unsatisfying pastiche off too many horror tropes, and it would take a week to plug all of Gothika’s gaps in logic.

This is an animated film that happily has room for both an existentialist dread of death and a grinning joie de vivre.

The only weak link here is Aniston's character – her Olivia, stuck in a holding pattern, feels like a holdover from Holofcener's previous, single-girl pictures, and Aniston underplays the role to the point of expressionlessness.

Fish Tank isn't an easy watch – it's like two hours of ache – but there are rich rewards to be had in the many ways Arnold and her terrific team rend us to and fro.

Something that falls just shy of greatness.

When the boys are tossing balls around and bopping in time to Notorious B.I.G., they -- and the film -- are right-on.

Funny and fierce and deeply moving.

A stiff drink or maybe some pharmaceutical assistance might have made me overlook the film's sour tone, or the unremarkableness of its direction.

[Keaton's] lost none of the spunk, sass, and ditzbomb charm of her "Annie Hall" days. She, quite simply, is marvelous. Too bad her similarly iconic co-star is such a toad. Jack never stops being Jack, to great distraction.

When The Company owns up to what it is -– a performance piece -– it’s glorious. Everything else -– the window-dressing of a fiction film -– just gums up that gloriousness.

The damn thing is boring. Dull as dirt. Despite the many fine actors involved, View From the Top is a third-class production through and through and, frankly, I'd rather be pelted in the head with stale, salty peanuts than sit through it again.

You can’t read one of Clooney’s endless People profiles without hearing the Cary Grant comparison, but here, he’s all Gable – same rakishness and stubble and tanned-leather basso profundo.

This British rom-com is all soft and plodgy, a by-the-numbers redemption tale that careens uncomfortably from sentimentality to stomach-turning sight gags.

Although Super Size Me benefits from a number of interviews with nutritionists, lobbyists, lawyers, and the like, the film inevitably (but not unenjoyably) is dominated by Spurlock, who offers his sober-minded statistics and cheeky asides without ever devolving into an off-putting Michael Moore-like moralizing.

Clearly the film is archly trying to connect the dots between Rove and the supreme mishandling of Iraq – and a compelling case might be made – but it isn't made here.

Hair is personal. It's also political.

The Last Station would have satisfied alone as a witty, manic lark, but as it moves toward the titular railway station, the film unfurls into so much more – a work of compassion, modulated mournfulness, and unchecked joy.

Franklin injects life into a flat format and has in the process done something nearly unheard of in Hollywood as of late: He's brought class back to the genre film.

It's easy enough to forget there are special effects involved, so convincing is Stu's rippling fur and big beamy eyes filling up with tears.

There’s gore, all right, although the real terror lies in the tease, and the often dark, herky-jerky DV format ratchets up the tension to an almost unbearable degree.

Ghosts indeed: This romantic comedy by name alone attempts to make funny – not to mention culturally relevant – the kind of swinging-dick misogyny that went out of fashion years ago.

Ao relentlessly, gleefully dumb -- without being the slightest bit sardonic -- that you just can't help but guffaw … or groan … but probably both.

It’s just too much drama for one modest film to service adequately. In an effort to cram it all in, scenes abruptly jump from one to the next with nary a smooth transition in sight, relationships evolve far too quickly, and certain subplots drop out of the mix only to resurface, jarringly, much later.

Filmmakers nicely mix the historical and the tributary, honoring both Bennett's cultural landmark and the dancers who dream of joining its ranks.

I laughed more (sincerely, full-throatedly) at Toy Story 3’s smart comedy than at any other film of the still-young summer movie slate.

A triumph in anguish.

While The Art of the Steal makes a very convincing – even bone-chilling – argument that the people and foundations that essentially hijacked the Barnes Foundation are primarily concerned with tourist dollars and not the preservation of Barnes' legacy, the film fails to even ponder why easier access to some of the world's greatest art treasures might not be an entirely bad thing.

Movingly captures the terrors and delights of being lovesick at 17. Would that it hadn't felt constrained to target only the 17-year-olds.