Kirk Honeycutt

The film's characters are lively, the women all look terrific (the guys do too, for that matter), and its many romantic story threads weave into artfully told tales of love lost and found.

"Iron Man" has more wit and style, but Hulk is a neat thrill ride with an intelligent script by Zak Penn and smart, well-paced direction by the French director of "The Transporter" series, Louis Leterrier.

In Channing Tatum, who also starred in "Saints," the film has a good-looking, magnetic hunk to draw a crowd. Terrence Howard lends the pedigree of great screen acting, and Zulay Henao adds charm and glamour.

Transformers is a wet dream for fanboys, with vehicles that whiz and whir into alien robots, spectacular sci-fi stunt chases, glistening military hardware, overheated computer software and brainy, hot girls who love Popular Mechanics.

Apatow is on the right track. In moving his adolescent male comedies into more adult realms, the humor sharpens and characters deepen.

Good Neighbors is a film of acquired taste. If one is willing to accept humor in a movie about a serial killer, if one likes a thriller than emphasizes character over thrills, if one is susceptible to a cast of characters that includes three cats, then the movie has found its very selective target audience.

The movie features a great finish, where three movies' worth of subplots and characters dovetail into a breathtaking climax and final confrontation that is positively soul satisfying.

Where the best Coen brothers comedy is a matter of finely tuned tone, diction, attitude and visual rhythms, everything in The Ladykillers feels out of kilter. With Tom Hanks delivering -- arguably -- one of the most perplexing performances of his career.

The ending underscores the old cliche about the banality of evil but getting there is meant to be the whole fun. For some people at least.

9 never adds up to much. It's a dark adult film that gives itself over to the chases and frights of a kiddie movie.

The characters are so over-the-top with emotional pain -- that they are hardly credible as characters.

The real problem is that Brugge and Haythe fail to satisfactorily pull off either the thriller or the marital deconstruction.

Cheerfully disconnected from the real world, bearing a great resemblance to screwball comedies of old.

Fugitive Pieces has a sharp, devastating story to tell.

There is something really nasty about this cold, calculating exercise in mob psychology and human venality.

For a man apparently making his first film, Woolard carries the movie like a pro. Cross your fingers that this is no fluke, for this guy could be a real comer.

This is the kind of film that will leave many audience members groaning with laughter -- and others simply groaning. It's skit/situation comedy that exploits stereotypes with a vengeance and knows no shame in borrowing from much better movies ranging from "Some Like It Hot" to "Tootsie."

Long on atmosphere and Old World charm.

The film deliberately works against most cinematic expectations.

Director Curtis Hanson has made a chick flick with substance as well as style.

International audiences will be confronted by a rather predictable and highly implausible road movie that strains to achieve too many agendas.

Macy once again brightens an otherwise mundane character.

You don't have to be an enthusiast of Bollywood to embrace RA.ONE, but it sure would help.

A true story of courage, determination and guts that deserves a more exciting approach.

Director Robert Zemeckis not only deploys 21st century movie technology at its finest to turn the heroic poem into a vibrant, nerve-tingling piece of pop culture, but his film actually makes sense of Beowulf. In Zemeckis' hands, it's an intriguing look at a hero as a flawed human being.

Director-cinematographer Ryan Little neatly ratchets up the suspense while throwing emotional spotlights on the inner struggles of each combatant trapped in this hostile, frozen wilderness.

The movie gathers momentum with a steady, assured pace, accumulating incidents, characters, secrets and lies until the rush of events is absolutely transfixing. Cinema can sometimes rival the novel in compulsive intensity and Sarah's Key is one such example.

So much is unspoken and this slice of reality is so thin and slow as to make the film downright unsatisfying.

The freshness and ingenuity of this techno-thriller should spark a cult following among sci-fi fans at the very least, but the film could make inroads among cineastes, adult adventure-seekers and the Latino community as well.

Shaky story and predictable developments make this an off-key ballad.

A more accomplished film than "Yards." Yet it will fail to satisfy police movie buffs, as procedures are de-emphasized, and the drama is too perfunctory and obvious.

Predictable, cutesy and surprisingly short on genuine humor, Legally Blonde gets by thanks to the magnetic presence of Witherspoon.

Day Watch does dazzle and even at times amuse. But its imagination is limited. The backstory is shallow and pat. Its characters are mostly one-note. And everything goes on much too long at 133 minutes.

The film works best as a kind of mindless, action-packed B-movie. But on the A-level at which recent science fiction/fantasy films operate -- meaning the "Spider-Man," "Harry Potter" and "Terminator" series -- this movie falls woefully short.

That rare sequel that took its time -- 23 years -- so it not only advances a story but also has something new to say.

This is one helluva good movie that craves the eyeballs of as many American high schoolers as it can possibly get.

The Banishment (Izgnanie) starts off like a thriller with a car roaring into the city and a clandestine surgery by a man to remove a bullet in his brother's arm. Then, ever so slowly, the movie falls into the clutches of long, solemn stares into space, meaningful drags on cigarettes, cryptic dialogue revealing little and a tiny drama that feels old, tired and empty of real purpose.

Recycles just about every sentimental ploy and cliche from a raft of horse racing movies.

Insipid, predictable, broad comedy mixed with Disney Family Values makes for one exasperating sit.

Everything today's young audiences are conditioned to want: incessant noise, jumpy editing, torrential music, shallow, overblown characters and sheer emptiness at its core. Imagine yourself trapped inside a two-hour video game, and you've got the Night Watch experience.

The movie makes an excellent primer about the world of stock car racing for fans and nonfans alike. In 48 fast minutes, the Simon Wincer-directed film gives you a genuine sense of this particular sport, its rigorous demands and the fan base that supports it with such wildly enthusiastic devotion.

The fun of a movie like this is not found in its logic, but in scary stunts and supercharged emotions.

Life in a Day is an experimental project driven by the Internet at its best, where connectivity among the planet's population has become a reality.

The madness of Holocaust survivors is here played mainly for dark comedy. The film's dazzling central performance in a mental institute finds Jeff Goldblum in the role of his career.

Jarhead refuses to engage in its own point of view toward events it depicts. So the film feels empty and tentative, uncertain of what if anything these events add up to.

Kill Bill-Vol. 2 puts to shame doubts entertained about aesthetic strategies or structural imbalance provoked by "Kill Bill-Vol. 1." Now that the entirety of Quentin Tarantino's epic revenge melodrama is on view, "Kill Bill" emerges as a brilliant, invigorating work, one to muse over for years to come.

An engaging period drama. But German postwar guilt is not the most winning subject matter for the holiday season.

Nothing is bleaker than failed black comedy, which this is.

Biutiful has a strong, linear narrative drive. Nevertheless, and most of all, it's a gorgeous, melancholy tone poem about love, fatherhood and guilt.

This is a coolly efficient, tongue-in-cheek horror-comedy.

Jessica Biel has great fun with the American adventuress, while Kristin Scott Thomas is truly scary as her nemesis and mother-in-law.

It took three films, but The Twilight Saga finally nails just the right tone in Eclipse, a film that neatly balances the teenage operatic passions from Stephenie Meyer's novels with the movies' supernatural trappings.

The film is unusual in that it is a co-production with the Chinese. Whatever difficulties this imposed on the Western filmmakers, the reward is a period film that feel authentic to its time and place.

Splinter is a bad idea, borrowing body parts, as it were, from old horror flicks to genuinely unsatisfying results.

It is so outrageous with its ethnic caricatures, hokey plot and twin-brother mix-ups that you know the whole thing is a lark.

A misfire. The film that wants to be lighter than air instead crashes to earth with the swiftness of a concrete parachute.

Irish director Jim Sheridan, who has made his films in America in recent years, now delivers an American remake that hues closely to the original but loses some of its true grit.

A prime example of a solid romantic comedy.

Much of the bite and a good deal of the wit of the first two films are missing here. The rude send-up of beloved fairy tale conventions remains -- somewhat -- but these playful jabs no longer come as pleasing surprises. You expect them. And you expect better.

Stalls at the intersection of fantasy and science fiction.

Stephen Mirrione's fast-paced editing and David Holmes' pop-rock score propel the story ever forward whether one follows the twists or not.

Stirring tale of a team whose big win speeds the integration of intercollegiate sports.

There is not a credible moment in this overly calculated melodrama.

It may not be as much fun as old spy movies starring Cary Grant or more recent entertainments such as "Spy Game," directed by Ridley's brother Tony, but it feels all too accurate.

The most alarming cautionary tale for men with wandering libidos since "Fatal Attraction." It may also be the first horror movie that women drag men to see rather than the reverse.

Edward Burns' best riff yet on guys trying to sort out their feelings about women.

A real audience pleaser, so long as that audience is mentally agile and adult, for it comes at you from odd angles and features three distinct story lines and 10 main characters.

Few films have so poignantly portrayed a father's relationships with his sons as The Boys Are Back.

Does a good job of reviving stale material. Thanks to a snappy script by Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa and an effervescent performance by Jennifer Garner, this romantic comedy has a buoyant personality.

A gloomy but perhaps realistic depiction of the forces of corruption and deceit that produce environmental catastrophes.

How To Live Forever is less about how to delay or defeat death than a film about what gives life meaning.

Poirier is a master at dialogue. His script crackles with sharp lines and he gives all his scenes a splendid comic undertow.

Lights will put in more appearances at festivals before achieving a brief theatrical window for Kaurismaki devotees to gaze through. Most will do so with discouragement.

Successfully surmounts nearly all the challenges of making a film about a young person dying. Which means the writer-director avoids pitfalls. It is not cloying or sentimental or falsely optimistic. It avoids bathos and exaggerated emotions. Instead, the film affirms life in surprising and gratifying ways.

Well, that didn't take long. Everything fun and terrific about "Iron Man," a mere two years ago, has vanished with its sequel. In its place, Iron Man 2 has substituted noise, confusion, multiple villains, irrelevant stunts and misguided story lines.

The 134-minute film jams in much information, incidents and characters without losing any entertainment value. And, fortunately, its heroism isn't pumped up or glorified.

The two actors are solid, never overplaying scenes and capturing well that slow realization that their lives are never going to be the same.

"Dream" brings together so much history, sheer adventure and terrifying moments.

It merely recycles 1987's "Broadcast News" with only a single reference to YouTube.

Not hurting matters for foreign and Indian film devotees, the film features two icons of Indian cinema, Madhur Jaffrey and Naseeruddin Shah.

Imagine Paddy Chayefsky's "Marty" saddled with more sentimentality and sprinkled with a few more laughs and you pretty much have Last Chance Harvey.

The lameness of the gags and dialogue and the film's frequent deep dives for the bottom at the expense of real comedy speak to desperation in Hollywood to figure out the audience for contemporary naughty comedy.

Films about serial killers have become so ubiquitous that they now form a subgenre of the crime movie. Even so, Antibodies, has a bracingly original take on the matter.

In a summer of remakes, sequels and movies swollen with effects, The Terminal stands out as a strikingly original comedy.

Fascinating and absorbing tale.

What Meyers doesn't do is take chances. She sticks to formula and predictability. In "Complicated," this is as much a matter of casting as writing.