Lou Lumenick

Frey's harrowing depiction of this milieu transcends the indifferent acting and contrived plot.

Atmospheric and moves briskly, but it's basically TV writ large.

You know a low-budget indie has problems when it's less emotionally honest than a studio-backed project like "(500) Days."

I don't think we're expected to take After.Life any more seriously than Ricci's last extended (near) nude role in the immortal "Black Snake Moan." That one was more fun.

“Risky Business” it’s not, and Delevingne is no Rebecca De Mornay.

The film at least achieves the level of mediocrity thanks to the professionalism of two slightly younger participants — Kline and Mary Steenburgen, who also have Oscars on their mantels but go well beyond phoning it in here.

A fussy piece of schmaltz that makes you long for "Stand By Me," a vastly superior coming-of-age tale from King's pen.

There are a few decent jolts in Disturbia, but overall this ultra-predictable thriller doesn't live up to the hype.

Out of the Furnace is much longer on style and belligerence than actual substance.

Seriously lost in the woods. This aimless epic about a pair of charlatan brothers sinks under the weight of a problematic script, questionable star casting, hamfisted editing -- and penny-pinching by Gilliam’s latest patrons, the Brothers Weinstein.

A glacially paced, emotionally frosty epic (with a top-drawer cast).

Becomes almost laughably melodramatic and wields just about every rock-movie cliché in the book.

The Secret Life of Bees showcases Fanning, who is growing into an impressive teenage actress - even if a scene where she licks honey off an older boy's finger is, well, creeptastic.

Infuriating grab-bag of a movie.

It isn't the laugh riot of the year.

Slight and unremarkable.

A glossy, empty and ultimately unsatisfying — if undeniably entertaining — movie.

The once-funny Robin Williams is still stuck in his excruciating touchy-feely mode.

Disappointingly skin-deep and almost shockingly wholesome, Mary Harron's The Notorious Bettie Page lives up to neither its title nor its advertising slogan, "the pin-up sensation that shocked the nation."

McKellen, Csokas, Bonneville and particularly Richardson are so good and convincing in their characterizations that you can almost overlook the increasingly unbelievable twists that Asylum takes. Almost.

It's a reasonably funny religious satire that takes potshots at easy targets but is quite watchable due to the participation of two Oscar winners and two Oscar nominees.

District B13 looks great, but don't let those subtitles fool you. At heart, it's every bit as proudly dumb as its American counterparts.

Was Alma a masochist? Repressed? Neurotic? A pre-feminist? Don't look for insight here.

Amusing without being particularly biting.

To put it as positively as possible, there's never a dull moment in this flick - and that's not something you can take for granted at this time of the year. At the same time, though, there's rarely a believable moment in the script.

Sometimes painfully sincere male weepie.

Too much of the film is given over to the soap opera of Elmer's life.

Sporadically entertaining, occasionally quite funny.

James Van Der Beek plays the same suspect over a 50-year period, sporting some of the worst old-age makeup in memory in the present-day sequences.

Writer-director Patrick Hasson whips up a surprising amount of fun.

You can't get much more perverse than asking Julia Roberts to wear fright wigs, do her own frumpy makeup and costumes -- and then shoot her scenes in eyeball-gougingly ugly digital video.

Johansson never looked more beautiful, nor gave a lamer performance, than in A Good Woman.

The film isn't remotely scary. That's a shame, because it has top-notch performances by Peter Mullan and David Caruso.

At 52, Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) still looks a treat and, more important, effortlessly wields her double entendres like a Romanian Mae West.

Shot on ugly digital video with Troma-grade special effects, campy humor and frighteningly bad acting, Zombie Strippers should provide many laughs for stoners watching it on video.

By far the best scenes are shared by Sneider and his struggling but devoted mother, played by the seldom-seen Amanda Plummer.

Overall it's got two left feet - and charm is in dangerously short supply.

Despite an empowered female protagonist, manages in its own way to be as misogynous as "In the Company of Men."

Has its moments, but overall the effect is uneven.

Alas, the complications don't arrive nearly quickly enough for the overlong and slow-paced Lucky to really cook.

Pretty dry stuff that verges on an infomercial, despite cameo appearances by Sarah Jessica Parker and Mizrahi himself.

Filmmakers Sam Green and Bill Siegel tend to shy from tough questions, allowing their subjects to wax nostalgic about bomb-throwing as yet another youthful folly of the '70s. That's tougher to swallow than some boomers' claims they didn't inhale.

A cheerfully dopey snobs vs. slobs teen comedy.

Roth goes to town with this juicy part, and seems to enjoy herself immensely in this merry farce, which runs out of gas toward the end due to an over-complicated plot.

Dangerously low on laughs and sex, not to mention believability.

No surprises here, though the stars make it surprisingly watchable.

Starts promisingly, but Jonas Pate directs his fine cast straight into a swamp of schmaltz as every loose thread of plot gets patly resolved.

Deserves high marks for political courage but barely gets by on its artistic merits.

Anyone who regularly watches caper flicks will likely quickly figure out what's wrong with this picture, though the twist ending is likely to be a surprise for the less jaded.

A calculating crowd-pleaser aimed squarely at the under-25 crowd, who can feel free to add a star or two to my rating.

I found this more elaborate, play-it-safe sequel far less fresh or funny.

Interestingly for an Israeli movie, the bombers are not Palestinians -- they're young, ultra-Orthodox fanatics.

Overlong and heavy-handed.

A glitzy and shallow satire about shallow people.

Ranks somewhere between the barely watchable "The Back-Up Plan" and the good but wildly overrated "The Kids Are All Right."

A disappointingly superficial treatment of a fascinating historical incident.

I might be able to get past that if Hathaway and Sturgess had any chemistry. There are no sparks whatsoever, and that's always a deal-breaker for me in romantic films.

Pigs fly and perform a Busby Berkeley-style water ballet. Maggie Gyllenhaal sports a posh British accent. Everybody steps in dung repeatedly. These are the high points of Nanny McPhee Returns.

On the plus side is a good cast, including Eddie Marsan and Helena Bonham Carter as Bernie's hapless parents and Stephen Rea as a sympathetic doctor.

A disappointing erotic thriller from director Jane Campion that amounts to an implausible update on "Looking for Mr. Goodbar."

The erstwhile crack dealer born Curtis Jackson may be a prot‚g‚ of Eminem, but this shapeless and derivative gangsta saga is no "8 Mile."

Entertaining, if maddeningly superficial.

Though this is the rare documentary that admirably admits recording "reality" on film actually shapes how people behave under the camera's gaze, I think Eleven Minutes is going to appeal mostly to hard-core fashionistas.

Those looking for another "Showgirls" will be disappointed - writer-director Steve Antin avoids the seamy side of the business, and the same-sex flirtation is mostly between guys.

A lighter hand would have enhanced some very good performances.

The star is Luke Benward, a dead ringer for the young Kurt Russell.

There are lots of special effects, but sadly, no real magic.

Not even a compelling performance by Al Pacino as Shylock can make The Merchant of Venice work in its first major big-screen adaptation.

Unfortunately, this ultra-glossy romantic drama derived from a best seller twists into very dark territory — a drastic tonal shift that neither its stars nor debuting director, Thea Sharrock, a respected stage veteran, manage with dramatic credibility.

There are nice cameos by Joan Chen and Kyle MacLachlan as Li's mother and lawyer, respectively.

Like the recent "Sex and the City" movie, this spinoff not so subtly tries to have its cake and eat it by ALSO suggesting that a woman is nothing without a man.

A shameless heart-tugger from France, The Chorus leaves no cliché unturned.

Surprisingly watchable because of its cast - especially Jack Klugman, who steals every scene he's in as Dad's paranoid survivor father. All he has to do to stand out is underact.

A ho-hum male weepie/road comedy that's worth watching mostly because of a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of England's greatest working-class actors.

About as edgy as a cup of Ovaltine, A Walk to Remember is an old-fashioned teen romance so sweet and free of irony that criticizing it feels like taking a baseball bat to a sack full of newborn kittens.

Despite excellent performances by Kevin Costner, Octavia Spencer and other cast members, Mike Binder’s racially tinged custody battle drama Black or White never achieves much in the way of dramatic credibility.

Rambling, mildly engaging micro-budgeted indie.

Seven Days in Utopia obviously isn't targeted at us cynical New Yorkers. But it goes down more smoothly than you'd imagine thanks to Duvall and an excellent supporting cast.

Suddenly topical because of parallels to the kidnapping and death of Daniel Pearl.

A mildly raunchy comedy that might be more accurately titled "Love: Canadian Style."

The fresh-faced Noonan tries very hard to rise above the material, but it defeats her and her fellow cast members.

Despite some remarkable unembedded footage, Andrew Berends' is yet another disappointingly superficial, unfocused and one-sided documentary on the conflict in Iraq.

This morbid and self-consciously literary adaptation of E. Annie Proulx's Pulitzer-winning novel is no crowd pleaser.

A shallow, stilted romantic thriller.

It's basically a Middle Eastern version of "The Princess Bride" with an assisted-suicide subplot.

Beautifully shot but a soulless cash machine, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 delivers no dramatic payoff, no resolution and not much fun. Hopefully we'll get that in the final installment next summer.

Rather morbid.

A thoroughly mediocre dramedy.

Chicago 10 has interesting moments, but basically it's a teaser for Steven Spielberg's upcoming feature on the trial.

Its message is sugarcoated in a schmaltzy, clichéd story line about Smith's conflicts with streetwise black minister (Jeff Obafemi Carr) - and sabotaged by hackneyed dialogue, sluggish pacing and a listless performance by Smith, who only springs to life when he's singing.

Works its way to an improbably cheerful ending, but getting there is a slow trip.

Don't you hate movies where one character is so much smarter than everyone else? That's only one problem with Spy Game, a glossy, suffocatingly predictable star vehicle for Robert Redford and Brad Pitt.

Ultra-glossy weepie turns out to be something of a guilty pleasure.

Hot Summer Days makes a lukewarm case for global warming. It's a better argument that the production of mindless fluff is not just limited to Hollywood.

Has its moments of interest, including two excruciating vocals by Arquette and Caan -- and a George Clinton score that contains a theme eerily similar to that of "American Beauty."

As plodding and pretentious as it is ambitious.

Though Lohan doesn't embarrass herself in a film in which she appears in virtually every frame, this tepid tribute to girl power hardly represents a step forward from Lohan's breakthrough roles in "Mean Girls" and the remake of Disney's "Freaky Friday.

A credulity-straining thriller featuring a few good paranoid moments — and, perhaps most important, Rebecca Hall running in high heels.