Lisa Schwarzbaum

When you watch this failed horror thriller -- which has been under studio doctors' care for some two years, undergoing futile title changes and reshoots -- there's no respite from the odor of flop sweat stinking up the screen.

Russian-born Xenia Rappoport gives it her tragic-heroine all as an abused Ukraine prostitute-turned-sneaky housemaid in Italy in The Unknown Woman.

The facts are so awful that Dear Zacharycan be forgiven much of its antsiness--as a memorial, as a condolence to Bagby’s parents (who became activists for judicial reform in their late son's honor), and as a howl of grief.

Peculiarly coy feminine-empowerment fable.

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.

Without ever dipping into indignity among wet, half-naked men, Shower sparkles with joy.

Beautiful, compassionate, articulate domestic drama.

Strangely inert drama.

Overworked if heartfelt indie.

No schmucks were harmed in the making of Dinner for Schmucks. That's the problem.

But Levinson's passion to explain how he got from there to ''Sphere'' gives Liberty Heights its own farkatke Hollywood integrity.

The only real magic in The Lake House is that Kate and Alex have never heard of e-mail.

This is a gentle, engaging narrative of constancy and devotion against all odds, both natural and bureaucratic, in which the past represents enduring family values and customs.

It's a puzzlement how so many pros could have so wrecked one of the most beloved, hummably familiar movie musicals in the Rodgers and Hammerstein repertoire.

Ladies! Thelma and Louise drove a '66T-bird, remember?! They picked up a young male hitchhiker 17 years before you did, and they too, um, interacted with a trucker and admired magnificent American sunsets -- is it coming back to you? Nope, it's not, which is exactly why the tires are so low on this creaky vehicle.

Processed comedy chop suey.

Filmmaker Yung Chang finds a sad and beautiful way to glimpse the big picture of dislocation through an exquisitely poised small study.

That the story is so oldfashioned and domestic and the family so average and secular is, in its way, the wind beneath this Broken Wings.

Very ''Waking Ned Devine.'' There's shrewd wit to Pouliot's gentle, no-bull farce.

It's an intoxicating feeling when a movie excites and enlivens us like this -- and there's a particular giddiness to be had in thinking about what movies can (but don't often) do for one's soul after imbibing such a fine vintage.

Reeves is a stiff dancer and he delivers his lines in a full leather jacket monotone.

The movie is smart, serious, and adult about something that matters, but not at the expense of a kind of awful, sensual revelry as le Carré's capacious plot hurtles to its big finish.

This beautiful, terrible story is not easily forgotten.

Bears the weight of too many genres jostling for screen time.

It's sort of an ursine ''The Last Waltz,'' with more costumes and no direction from Martin Scorsese.

It's scariest as a parable about the evil that exists in the hearts of adolescent boys.

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.

The Weather Man is what indie misery looks like when re-created by one of Hollywood's big studios.