Lisa Schwarzbaum

Beresford, who'd like to teach the world to sing, makes the moment as moving as a Coca-Cola jingle. It's not the real thing, but it's effective.

As it is, the story collapses like a bad tip to Liz Smith. Still, there's something brash, retro, and even stupidly touching about all the chatty mania, and the way Baitz and Pacino get off on paranoia, conspiracy theories, and the lure of 1960s idealism.

Shanley turns out to have dismayingly few original cinematic notions to back up the basic did-he-or-didn't-he hook in his study of conviction and compassion.

That Cruise fails to make a case for Reacher's allure, though, has less to do with physical dissonance than it does with the film's inability - stupefying inability, really - to otherwise make a case for the character's originality in a movie so choked with visual clichés and dreadfully moldy dialogue.

The noisiest laughs in this watery animated comedy are reserved for those who value self-referential winks above all else.

Florid, convoluted historical drama.

Connoisseurs of digital animation, graphic novels, and the history of dystopian art will have plenty to discuss about Christian Volckman's visually striking, technically impressive black-and-white animated feature Renaissance…But no one will be talking about the movie's banal plot, the trite dialogue, or any of the indistinguishable characters who offer a bleak futuristic vision of cinema that's all style, no soul.

As a work of art, the movie, shot quickly on digital video, is genial enough if unrefined.

Older and sadder, Mulder and Scully are no longer sure they've got the energy to even ask if the truth is still out there. And it feels as if Carter is skeptical, too.

Ramis’ talented, underused SCTV colleague Eugene Levy makes a brief, welcome appearance as a nuttily dim cement contractor, but he’s a zany interlude in an otherwise muted, unzany tale.

Wafer-thin, content-light, structure-wobbly, and whimsy-heavy.

This sloppy, pleasant comedy by playwright and TV producer Robin Schiff (Almost Perfect) is an amiable mess, a padded-out expansion of a play called "Ladies' Room."

For the invited filmmaker, the opportunity to make a statement is surely a thrill, but for the viewer - who can't pause indefinitely, as with a book, between stories - the focus-shifting is a demand.

Scottish actor Peter Mullan saves a drama tangled in the seaweed of life lessons from drowning in pathos.

The warmth comes through, even if the storytelling is simplistic and clichéd.

But in this standard athlete-dies-young presentation, we never do catch the magic that made Steve Prefontaine a towering figure. Instead, this Pre is a shaggy-haired, sentimental favorite -- a teen angel rather than an Olympian.

Overworked if heartfelt indie.

The hothouse drama Mother and Child is organized like a femme-friendly spa that specializes in treatments for the psyche rather than the skin. Soft New Agey music tinkles intrusively. Sore spots are prodded and massaged. Clients pass one another in the changing room. The ritual is exquisite to some, and excruciating to others.

True to his stolid, humanist instincts and characteristically stodgy directorial style, writer-director John Sayles creates a story more educational than engrossing.

Filmmaker Greg MacGillivray, a specialist in gigantic-screen nature movies including "The Living Sea," is up to date in his use of 70mm IMAX film, but he's stuck in the past about how to tell a story.

Their message (Cassavetes and screenwriter Jeremy Leven) in My Sister's Keeper? Cancer sucks, but there's always the balm of beach scenes and an emo soundtrack.

Enough cheery mockery to amuse even non-tokers.

Plays more like a teaching tool than a dynamic drama.

Chan needs a foil, and Hewitt, while perky, doesn't project nearly enough comedy weight; she's too slight and tailored for his style.

There's something already exhausted, however, in the intrusively gauzy, wobbly, blurry, zoomy digital-video look of the piece.

For all the creaminess of the sets and costumes, every character talks as if she is still made out of written words, not flesh, and each woman's struggles feel about as important as a tea dance.

Ironically, they make the bond between John and Savannah look so natural that the ''dear John'' turn in their relationship makes even less sense than it does in the book.

What's missing from this by-the-numbers drama is a sense of abandon.