Lisa Schwarzbaum

In a last-minute tweak, the production has also been meaninglessly 3-D-ified - never mind that there's nothing whatsoever 3-D-ish going on. Maybe those clumsy 3-D glasses are meant to let moviegoers mimic the superhero mask-wearing experience?

Tonally scattershot and more than a little heavy-footed.

Comedy has changed. Jack can only give his son-in-law the stink eye so many times before the whole "I'm watching you" pantomime gets stale.

The many fans of the uniquely droll 2003 animation Oscar nominee "The Triplets of Belleville" will recognize the inventive hand-drawn sensibilities of French filmmaker Sylvain Chomet in his loving and lovely new feature The Illusionist.

How Do You Know asks really good questions but doesn't so much answer them as toss the ball from player to player until the clock runs out.

Truer than the John Wayne showpiece and less gritty than the book, this True Grit is just tasty enough to leave movie lovers hungry for a missing spice.

And so by the time the pair admire the Grand Canyon and, Due Date has lost its way, relying on its leading men to lead by charisma alone, even though their characters have nowhere interesting to go besides the happily-ever-after of dull, responsible male maturity.

The telegenic Lomborg is the on-camera "star" of the show, while his angry critics growl on cue.

French mood-and-feeling master filmmaker Claire Denis returns to the Africa of her youth for an intense, mysterious drama exploring revolution and loss.

An old-fashioned romance-and-sickness picture, a publicity-grabbing sex picture, an Apatow-lite horny-boys picture, and a liberal satire on pharmaceutical-industry excesses committed in pursuit of pill sales - all in one.

Damien Chazelle's extraordinary black-and-white retro dream of a feature debut.

Tiny Furniture is proof, against steep odds, that there are no small stories, only small storytellers.

Lest the audience miss a cue, Hooper and soundtrack composer Alexandre Desplat count on the ringing grandeur of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony - the famous second movement, no less - to amp the emotions.

There's also a Disney den of big, comically dumb-looking bad guys who turn sweet when Rapunzel sings to them. Because Happily Ever After never goes out of fashion

Earnestly ersatz down to every spangle, dance move, plot turn, and line of hokum dialogue, Burlesque is a showbiz pic for these American Idol times - a time when we agree to pretend that mediocre mimicry of better artists is good enough to keep us entertained. We agree to pretend that quality is in the eye and ear of the undemanding beholder.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 also bravely faces the future, slipping with expert ease among the thrilling mass of complications (and complicated set pieces) that Rowling throws fans in the final sprint, then guiding the faithful to the fate that awaits everyone in this world, the moment called The End.

Theatrically ambitious, musically busy, and in the end cinematically inert - clearly reflects the authorship of myth-loving director Julie Taymor.

I'm confounded by the fact that, aside from the Pevensie siblings and their nicely obnoxious cousin, absolutely everything and everyone aboard the Dawn Treader looks one-dimensional.

Writer-director Tanya Hamilton's intellectually ambitious debut drama Night Catches Us is all the more notable for setting well-drawn fictional characters in a fraught, real moment in civil rights history.

It's the beaming movie-star intensity of the complicated comic Carrey in the role of the dominant lover and Obi-Wan Kenobi McGregor as the gentle beloved that makes this unfettered, stranger-than-fiction picture pop.

Terry Gilliam-ish territory here, spiked with imagery from Holocaust nightmares and drug trips. Attention, university film clubs: Here's your cult-ready midnight-movie programming.

A riveting and unexpectedly inspiring essay on the peace that comes from shared physical and mental concentration.

Waving a dubious flag of feminist inclusivity, Cole and screenwriter William Ivory turn cartwheels insisting that girl power, even in the 1960s, trumped class divisions.

Damon's how-to-break-the-law lesson - as ludicrous as anything else in this enjoyably zigzaggy exercise in accumulating peril - grants Neeson the fun of experimenting with an American ex-con accent for his one scene.

These guys are not charming; they're horrifying in their ignorance, and they cause real damage. But there's a weird relief to be found in the opportunity to laugh ourselves sick at their expense, if only for an instant.

A serving of "True Blood's" Ryan Kwanten in his native accent is the chief selling point of this picturesque, contentedly imitative Australian Western/thriller/Coen-brothers homage, the feature debut of writer-director Patrick Hughes.

Rachid Bouchareb's intensely dramatized, passionately partisan story of militancy in the struggle for Algerian independence from France after World War II makes effective use of "Godfather" storytelling theatrics.

Perry has taken Shange's feminist word-and-movement portraits of disenfranchised African-American women and turned those howls into...a maddeningly choppy mess of a Tyler Perry movie.

A dark and hilarious thwomping of the whole miserablist British gangster genre.

The cast, though, includes a great bunch of Brit faves who have all done better work elsewhere.

The affectionate, bemused, structurally unkempt portrait is at its best capturing Merritt's close collaboration with his longtime friend and bandmate Claudia Gonson.

Rileys has been casually dubbed "Kristen Stewart's stripper movie," but the handle doesn't stick: Stewart may wear skimpy clothes and grind once or twice from the neck down, but from the neck up she's all hollow, bruised eyes, twisted little mouth, and classic, coltish K-Stew rebellion.

The ever-magnetic Sam Rockwell is Kenny, Minnie Driver is full of beans as Betty Anne's best friend, Melissa Leo is wicked good as an ornery cop, and, in her two chewy scenes, Juliette Lewis reminds fans why we want her to run free forever.

The signature Eastwoodian music that the director lays over the proceedings - piano tinkle, guitar pluck, and an echo of Rachmaninoff out of Noël Coward's Brief Encounter - can't hold the assemblage together.

Milla Jovovich slinks cartoonishly as Stone's seductive wife, on a mission to compromise the lawman. Lordy.

A gaily busy kid flick.

Impressively unflappable and natural, 23-year-old Lohman -- whose best known credit is perhaps a role on Fox's short-lived ''Pasadena'' -- holds the whole plot together skillfully.

Costner (who's also a producer) plays to his middle-aged strengths in a role that exaggerates male weaknesses.

This trip down The Road to El Dorado proceeds under the speed limit all the way.

Watch for the director's own mother, Lili Kosashvili, a standout as Zaza's fierce, stately mama.

She's no Mary Poppins: Maggie Smith is more like a cheery Angel of Death in the light black comedy Keeping Mum, one of those dutifully daft British diddles (complete with Rowan Atkinson as a vicar) that, except for the blunt sex talk, might have been constructed decades ago.

The result is a movie, and Cannes Palme d'Or winner, of riveting power and sadness, a great match of film and filmmaker -- and star, too.

A graceful, unsentimental, well-made movie.

Spike Lee noisily attempts to place the hunt for real-life serial killer David Berkowitz at the center of a hotheaded sociological fantasy linking disco glitz, punk rebellion, ethnic insularity, sexual craving, and sizzling heat into one rattling chain of urban hysteria.

Director Bahman Ghobadi (Turtles Can Fly) shot his faux documentary in secret, and the close-to-the-ground style compensates for the tenuous narrative structure by capturing the energy and variety of Tehran's music scene in all its bravery.

True deft wit is just plum missing from this good-natured, flat-footed, eager-to- please, tee-hee Western.

With every recycled piece of business -- which is to say, every scene in Anything Else -- the distance widens between Allen and the elusive audience he pessimistically chases. He has never seemed less in touch with his own real, pulsing, 21st-century city.

Don't tell Walt Disney, but Hayao Miyazaki really holds the keys to the magic kingdom.

The film values quips and declamations over natural conversation (or an explanation of how such intelligent women could have been so blind to world events).

How exceptional a film actor is Russell Crowe? So exceptional that in Cinderella Man, he makes a good boxing movie feel at times like a great, big picture.

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.

We, the people, are meant to cheer in response, but the spirit isn't willing. War is hell, but so is peace -- at least when it comes to movies in a no-man's-land like this one.

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.

The hilarious Malkovich, coiffed in an artful pageboy and savoring a fruity French accent, would overpower the competition on sheer thespian madness.

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.

Where the movie falters is in sustaining the tricky balance between pastoral life lessons and creepy suspense.

In the very funny cop comedy Hot Fuzz, overachieving London police officer Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) commits a very British sin: He's too good.

More naturalistic -- and as a result, more believable.

Nothing wrecks the mood of a high-toned British period piece about erotic obsession quicker than an unintentional laugh. In which case, prepare for Asylum to be derailed by snorts in all the wrong places.

British director Mike Barker and magpie New York screenwriter Howard Himelstein, have taken "Lady Windermere's Fan" - Wilde's first big stage success, written in 1892 - and pulped it senseless in the name of puttin' on the charm.

What is there to do but laugh in self-defense at such pompous self-regard when blood gushes, fuses pop, and Seagal scowls in a series of snappy, embroidered buckskin jackets?

Crowe sometimes summons up one of the most powerful depictions of mental illness I have ever seen with barely an eyelid flicker separating manifestations of sickness from utterly sane displays of creative concentration.

As he did in his striking 2005 first feature film, "Man Push Cart," about a Pakistani street vendor in New York, perceptive indie filmmaker Ramin Bahrani looks at what others overlook and finds drama in everyday details.

A smart, playful, informative pleasure.

More a sampling of previous crowd-pleasers...than a fashion statement all its own.

The newcomer kids are delightfully...kidlike. Cosmic bonus: "The Office's" Rainn Wilson plays a New Agey science teacher.

A creepy, humiliating ''comedy,'' playing to Bullock's worst instincts for demonstrating the lovability of women who don’t fit in.

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

It isn't easy to get close to these two women. But the effort yields a rewarding take on the resiliency and therapeutic importance of friendship.

The disciplined performances play against schmaltz, and the casting is inspired.

It turns out that Joe ends up liking the old Joe better too. Who just so happens to be the kind of average-Joe character that continues to make Allen such a tidy, non-Joe bundle.

The disarming comedic tone -- silly and novel in its lack of cynicism -- is driven by the fearless, cheerful unself-consciousness of Will Ferrell, a big man last seen streaking (all too unself-consciously) through ''Old School.''

The great Polish director Andrzej Wajda musters the power of classical filmmaking and personal emotional investment to dramatize a stunning atrocity long covered up.

The first Irish creation I've seen in ages to pull off the high-difficulty feat of trafficking in grit, drollery, and emotion without turning to blarney as a crutch.

The clammy power of Young Adam lies as much in the frank, emotional nakedness the actors bring to their roles under Mackenzie's care as in the baroque hopelessness of the plot.

Darkly funny, twisty-cool existential tragicomedy, loaded with smart notions and filmed like a surrealist dream.

The old-pro twosome of Streisand and Hoffman make such sexy and inviting ethnics (as a certain kind of movie likes to think of a certain kind of Jewish character) that they blithely prevail over the been-there-done-that gags.

The simplicity and poignancy of the choices — riding a bus, swinging on a swing — and the great variety of interviewees result in a film of nonsticky freshness, as well as unforced profundity.

The movie's most artful feature is the fluidity with which the past slides into the present, echoing Murdoch's own unmoored sentience, so that the younger self, played with dash and vigor by Kate Winslet, turns into the old woman lost in her own home.

Martin's gift for physical and vocal comedy is as deft as ever.

She may be follically blond, but as an actor of distinction who's all of 25, Reese Witherspoon reveals interesting dark roots even as she plays golden girls.

An awful, stillborn comedy assembled out of rusty spare parts from secret agent movies and run-of-the-mill ''Saturday Night Live'' skits.

Cloverfield, a surreptitiously subversive, stylistically clever little gem of an entertainment disguised, under its deadpan-neutral title, as a dumb Gen-YouTube monster movie, makes the convincingly chilling argument that the world will end -- or, at least, Manhattan will crumble -- with a bang and a whimper.

Eight months of interrogation and torture in fetid Abu Ghraib followed before he was released, innocent. None of The Prisoner's showy flourishes -- animation, sound effects, fancy editing -- can match the power of Abbas' stillness as he describes one man's agony in one huge hell.

What matters for today's hero is the good fight, and Gladiator KOs us with a doozy.

The mechanics of the actual plot are pretty amazing. Singer has assembled a top-notch international cast.

As Demme's audienc we're at the mercy of political passion overshadowed by style.

The makers of this mediocre comedy about dorky guys who work in a cut-rate electronics store probably hoped that "40 Year-Old Virgin" lightning would strike twice. It doesn't.

A delightfully weird, if occasionally too arty, documentary as darting in its structure as a dragonfly's flight.

Ong-Bak (taken from the name of the sacred statue) is delivered raw, with an on-the-fly compositional approach from director Prachya Pinkaew that includes dim lighting and jumbled editing.

A superior lyrical ragamuffin Irish drama.

The antics are wacky -- but far from Wilde.

Actually, there's one other way to approach Matchstick Men, and that's to forget all about neuroses and con artistry and admire the movie instead for the unsettlingly beautiful directorial study in geographical mood that it is.

Leder establishes a syncopated rhythm unlike anything we're used to in a catastrophe spectacle.

As Carrie might type on her laptop while giving one of her girly little shrugs, When did Sex and the City become so long and mean so little?

Nanking, a carefully nonpunitive documentary of remembrance, is emotionally draining, as it should be, but it's also overstructured, as it needn't be; the actors are intrusive in a story that isn't theirs.

The comic moments in this ingratiating bit of malarkey from director Peter Cattaneo and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (both TV trained, both making their feature debuts) are winning.

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.