Kirk Honeycutt

The film suffers from uneven acting, an over-reliance on production values and an uncertainty over how dangerous the children's adventures should be.

If sheer cleverness were everything, Robots would be the best computer-animated cartoon yet…Yet, unlike the very best CG animation, Robots doesn't quite connect with the emotions and humor for which one yearns in cartoons.

The film lacks the depth and discipline of Mitchell's first film venture, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," which makes Shortbus a real disappointment.

Following up on Morgan Spurlock's wildly successful indie film "Super Size Me," critics of fast food were hoping that a one-two punch would further raise consciousness among consumers and purveyors alike. Alas, Fast Food Nation is punchless.

The film is fresh and funny, but it is also meandering, at times vague and defiantly uncommercial.

Cross "Body Heat" with "No Way Out" and you wind up with Out of Time, a slick crime melodrama with more style than substance.

It's still a gimmicky, tricked-out tale that is all too self-aware. But the film does keep you guessing and probably guessing wrong.

The film is only "superior" though, not great. The themes feel shopworn and devotee of crime fiction can point to the any number of antecedents for these characters.

Fulfills the requirements of grand-scale moviemaking while serving as a timely reminder that in the conflict between Christianity and Islam it was the Christians who picked the first fight.

A crackling good suspense thriller.

Actors blossom under Frears' direction. There is no false moment or off-key note in this movie.

What's cinematic experimentation without a few failures in the lab? Maybe that's why Howl is so appealing: The filmmakers don't get everything right but their passion for Ginsberg's genius and their excitement over trying to deconstruction a literary master work is contagious.

A loud, disjointed and not terribly funny comedy, which probably is what one expects with a title like that. The unfortunate thing is, it didn't need to be.

Does make you laugh even if you hate yourself for doing so. A creation of former "Saturday Night Live" colleagues, the comedy plays like an extended skit with bits of improvisation and several slightly extended sequences.

In Changeling Eastwood continues to probe uncomfortable subjects to depict the individual and even existential struggle to do what is right.

Whether meaning to or not, Devor and his accomplished crew expand our concept of the documentary film, which relegates this documentary to art houses, not porn theaters.

The large cast, costumed and made up as filthy scalawags and sinister buccaneers, gives tremendous energy to every scene.

Christopher Rouse's rapid-fire editing nervously stitches the stunts, chases, fights and confrontations together. It's a remarkable film.

Sustains itself through terrific forward momentum and two glorious star turns by gifted actresses Frances McDormand and Amy Adams.

The naturalistic style of the film is completely at odds with the hokey melodrama.

Could develop a cult following. But it is hard to envision repeat viewings or any great number of people willing, even vicariously, to undergo the couple's ordeal.

An unstable mix of a tearjerker, junkie-recovery story and odd-couple pairing. The film marks the American debut of Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier, whose European films show a strong affinity for stories of human frailties and of families unraveling.

Allen turns the character into a tour de force that unleashes an unexpected comedy about compassion and self-loathing.

Writer-director Preston A. Whitmore II throws enough soap opera for an entire TV season into a story that nearly -- but not quite -- sinks from the weight of all these implausible events. Animated acting and the sheer chaos of this squabbling family give the film a comic buoyancy.

Joel and Ethan Coen clearly are in a prankish mood, knocking out a minor piece of silliness with all the trappings of an A-list studio movie.

A neatly packaged Walt Disney Co. picture with bone-crunching football action; a nice sense of the blue-collar, male-dominated milieu that nourishes football fanaticism; and a few too many tugs at the heartstrings.

In The Weather Man, Nicolas Cage doesn't so much play a protagonist, warts and all, as he plays a protagonist who is all warts.

The problem confronting writer Richard Maltby Jr. and director Chris Noonan is that Potter lived a fairly uneventful life once you remove her success as an author.