Lou Lumenick

Sort of "West Side Story" set in 1958 Brooklyn -- minus the music or competent storytelling -- is clearly not dealing from anything close to a full deck.

Makes the most of its wintry settings and never insults the audience's intelligence -- no mean feat for a family film. It's a real crowd-pleaser.

If you thought Matthew Broderick looked uncomfortable playing “himself” in “Trainwreck,” wait till you get a load of the actor portraying a married man who wonders if he’s gay in Neil LaBute’s mean-spirited comedy Dirty Weekend.

Through it all, Clayman struggles to keep himself, and OC87, on track - and it's easy to cheer his ultimate triumph.

Solid family entertainment, a handsomely crafted and well-acted new film version of Natalie Babbitt's classic 1975 children's book.

Gorgeously detailed animated adventure.

More amusing than laugh-out-loud hilarious, but is never boring.

Jeremy Piven's infamous "sushi defense" for skipping out on a Broadway role is easier to swallow than his performance as a scuzzy auto liquidator who sees the light in The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard.

Shankman's staging of the numbers - especially the leaden choreography and hackneyed locations such as the Hollywood sign - was far sloppier and less creative than for his last musical, the vastly superior "Hairspray."

A visually dazzling summer treat.

Ken Marino of "Dawson's Creek," who wrote the somewhat autobiographical script, plays one of Rudd's pals.

Never reaches the heights of "Short Cuts" or "Magnolia" -- two multi-story films that clearly provided inspiration -- but it's a thoughtful road trip well worth taking.

Short, sweet, raunchy and often screamingly funny.

A surprisingly upbeat look at that Middle East hotspot.

Like the Master of Suspense's best films, Double Take (which makes great use of Bernard Herrmann's haunting "Psycho" score) is an intellectual puzzle that also works as a thoroughly accessible entertainment.

If I weren't already being paid to watch this movie, I'd feel entitled to compensation for having to sit through this many product plugs.

Truth also ignores Rather’s famous showboating, pettiness and hubris. He’s worked in lower-profile gigs since, but trust me, there’s a good reason why no news organization will touch Mapes with a 10-foot pole.

an overstuffed, overlong epic with a tongue-in-cheek approach.

A yawn-provoking little farm melodrama.

This wacky former Andy Warhol superstar more than holds your interest in an offbeat documentary.

A blood- freezing German thriller, a very stylish variation on "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Seven."

Comes perilously close to being a vanity production for the obscure singer Isabel Rose, who stars and wrote the autobiographical screenplay with neophyte director Robert Cary, based on her own struggles as a cabaret singer.

At heart a rather chilly and clinical portrait of four very selfish people.

The poster art for Nanette Burstein's American Teen, which follows five students through their senior year at a high school in Indiana, is modeled after the one for "The Breakfast Club." So, to a large extent, is this ultra-slick and predictable documentary.

I've had root canals that were more enjoyable than Margot at the Wedding, Noah Baumbach's hugely pretentious, ugly and annoying follow-up to "The Squid and the Whale."

Strikingly photographed, Maelstrom, which explores its nautical themes in non-linear fashion, is not for all tastes. But I, for one, was hooked by this fish's tale.

Rambling, mildly engaging micro-budgeted indie.

Overlong and grim to the point where some scenes are virtually unwatchable.

Basically a watered-down collage of scenes from "Heathers," "Clueless," "Sixteen Candles" and numerous other teen flicks.

Overall, it's a hand-tailored job in a marketplace filled with off-the-rack movies.

The Good Dinosaur is no instant classic like its sublime predecessor “Inside Out,” but is modestly pleasing in its own way.

Thanks to the extraordinary performance of Cotillard, who expertly lip- syncs to Piaf recordings and disappears into the part, few will regret seeing La Vie En Rose, named after a famous Piaf tune. Just brace yourself for a film of unvarying intensity that seems longer than its 140-minute running time.

There are probably enough moments to satisfy hard-core fans, but for the rest of us, this amounts to the Middle Earth equivalent of “Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones,’’ a space-holding, empty-headed epic filled with characters and places (digital and otherwise) that are hard to keep straight, much less care about.

Even with a clever final twist straight out of "The Twilight Zone," this crummy-looking two-hander is a tough sit.

Sometimes dull and mostly uninspired, it's much less a satisfying reboot like "Batman Begins'' than a pointless rehash in the mode of "Superman Returns.''

Smart, scary -- and at times very funny -- horror movie.

Has enough heart and smarts to recommend it as one of the season's worthier family entertainments.

A muscular, endlessly twisty homage to film noir capers like "The Asphalt Jungle."

Combines big laughs, a big heart and thoroughly winning characters to become the first big surprise of the fall season.

Though the story may be cut from the same cloth as the female-empowering "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," it's never as cute, cloying or overbearing as that movie eventually became.

Cynics need not apply, but I found Bella a real heart tugger.

The recent trend in political documentaries is for filmmakers to heap ridicule and sarcasm on people they don't agree with, a la Michael Moore. Waiting for Armageddon (which has nothing to do with the 1998 Michael Bay movie) demonstrates that sometimes it's far more devastating to simply point the camera at your subjects and let them talk.

Fairly entertaining, if hardly surprising, results.

Tasteful and gorgeously photographed coming-of-age story.

Though dated and unsophisticated compared to the much cooler Bourne spy thrillers, M:i:III will probably hit the sweet spot at the box-office - and give Cruise a whole new reason to start jumping on couches.

The Infiltrator satisfyingly builds to an improbable but ripped-from-the-headlines climax.

Newcomer Joey King is funny and adorable as daydreaming 9-year-old Ramona Quimby.

Hope Springs could have been unbearably schmaltzy or crude. Instead, in the hands of these expert actors and filmmakers, it's a warm and wryly affecting mid-summer treat.

This absorbing documentary, which has already been shown on cable, is getting a theatrical run to capitalize on the Broadway musical "Taboo."

Aimed squarely at the under-6 crowd, is basically the pilot for a Nickelodeon series with an already heavily merchandised character.

Nowhere near as funny as you’d expect with its stellar cast.

Does a solid job of documenting the life and art of the drag grand dame, whose life has been almost as tumultuous as the characters played by the Hollywood divas he channels.

Perhaps the most fascinating vintage footage...depicts what happened in 1961 when the city sent police into Washington Square Park to stop the longtime Sunday practice of singing without a required permit.

Sticks to reporting. Unlike most political documentaries, it doesn't preach - to the choir or to anyone else.

Although director Lee Daniels dials things down a bit here, subtlety is not what he does. That strategy worked for “Precious’’ but turned his more recent “The Paperboy’’ into a feature-length howler.

This is one of those movies that's too cool to have a plot.

Not always totally credible and it cheats a bit on the fixed point of view. But a terrific and brave performance by Talancon makes this far superior to the generic thrillers churned out by the big studios.

It's a far more effective leftist argument than the bombastic "Fahrenheit 9/11."

When Will I Be Loved would rate no stars except for Campbell's brave, totally committed performance -- which deserves a far better movie than this.

An impeccably acted and directed - but quite icy - portrait of deception and betrayal.

There are touching interviews with a couple of former inmates...The most riveting part of The Decomposition of the Soul is their return to the prison, which was closed in 1989 and turned into a memorial to its victims.

Theron is very good as a woman struggling for respect in a sexist environment. There are also small but telling performances by Susan Sarandon as Hank's worried wife, and Frances Fisher as a topless bartender who aids in the investigation.

Formulaic but entertaining, My Best Friend climaxes with a lengthy, surprisingly heartfelt sequence set on the French version of "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire."

The Good Lie may not be anything like Witherspoon’s version of “The Blind Side” (as the ads also imply), but it’s a heart-tugger that’s definitely worth seeing.

There's an air of extreme predictability and inevitability in the script - which takes liberties like moving the climactic debate from the University of Southern California to the grander precincts of Harvard.

The Oscar-winning director of "Rain Man" - whose last film, the abysmal documentary "PoliWood" never went much further than the Tribeca Film Festival - demonstrates he can make a shakycam found-footage horror movie every bit as fake-looking, clumsy and unscary as your average college student working on a $200 budget.

Relentlessly mediocre cartoon.

The acting is OK, but none of the leads has the kind of sizzle that might have turned this into something as special as another film set roughly in the same era, "Diner.''

The Conjuring 2 belongs to Wilson and Farmiga as the sincere, loving, slightly square Warrens, with Wan tightening the screws for a rousing series of cliffhangers that should have audiences screaming. Expect another sequel for sure.

Clearly a labor of love for all involved. Listen carefully on the soundtrack and you’ll hear the voice of Joanne Woodward as Ellie’s mom. Woodward is one of the executive producers of this lovely little film, which is dedicated to her late husband, Paul Newman.

There's nothing you haven't seen before - and better - in Deadfall, which would seem to appeal mostly to fans of snowmobile chases.

The Depp sequence is especially poignant, apparently rewritten with references to other celebrities who died before their time -- Rudolph Valentino, James Dean and Princess Di -- and who will remain "forever young" in our imaginations.

Brilliantly playing doomed '50s sex bomb Marilyn Monroe, Michelle Williams gets under the skin of the troubled yet vulnerable icon in a way no one else ever has.

Works because they really are the focus - and they're excellently voiced .

It’s much more lively than “On the Road,” last year’s snoozy adaptation of the Kerouac novel that presented fictionalized versions of some of the same characters.

Often thrilling, sometimes charming, occasionally clunky family entertainment that perhaps wisely doesn't attempt to scale the heights of "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

It's a welcome alternative to the homogenized Hollywood releases that proliferate during the holiday season.

You could make a worse choice for a late- summer popcorn movie than Takers, a Michael Mann-ish heist thriller with a pulse-pounding foot chase and some terrific stunt work offsetting its hackneyed plot and dialogue.

Fairly shapeless story.

Except for a couple of isolated, mildly subversive moments, Hanks is basically playing the genial host of “The Wonderful World of Disney’’ rather than an actual person.

Sally Hawkins is the heart and soul of Made in Dagenham, but another actress to watch for is the equally wonderful Rosamund Pike. She steals every scene she's in as the sympathetic wife of Rita's sexist boss (Rupert Graves).

The best evidence of this troubled man's genius is provided by ample samples of his music, much of which will be familiar to fans of Warner Bros. cartoons from the '30s and '40s.

A wonder to look at, even as its increasingly pretentious manga-inspired story line outstays its welcome.

Less an awful movie than a totally uninspired one. The under-5 set may find it funny, though I suspect their parents will be checking their watches a lot, as I did.

Generic variation on the overworked serial-killer genre.

Rambles on for nearly two hours with subplots that go nowhere -- and half-baked leftist political commentary -- before focusing in for a quietly devastating climax.

Acceptably diverting Saturday night at the movies, especially if you're willing to check your brains at the popcorn stand.

Merely a passably amusing excuse to pass a couple of hours in an air-conditioned theater.

Tender and often extremely funny.

The film's most memorable performance is by Eamonn Walker, who is scarily good as the singer known as Howlin' Wolf.

Thanks to Jordan's bravura storytelling, Breakfast on Pluto is one of very few movies this year truly worth remembering.

This lame teenage James Bond will leave audiences neither shaken nor stirred.

Find Me Guilty belongs to the odd couple of Dinklage and Diesel, whose volatile performance finally proves he is much more than an action star.

There’s no shortage of brains, brawn, eye candy, wit and even some poetry in this epic battle between massive lizard-like monsters and 25-story-high robots operated by humans.

At times, writer-director Cedric Klapsich seems to be trying to copy the frestyle of "Amelie," but L'Auberge achieves only a fraction of its charm.

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.

Nearly totally laugh-, chemistry- and coherence-free, this fiasco from the director of "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle'' has a script whose sensible parts would fit on a napkin with enough room left over for the Gettysburg Address.

What is Dick's excuse for outing one cable news anchor but not a rival counterpart who is far better known? The anchor isn't antigay, but Dick likes the other network's politics better. Hypocrisy? Your call.

There isn't a surprising moment, and it's an affirmation for hard-core fans and pretty much everyone else of William Shatner's immortal exhortation to Trekkies: "Get a life!"

There's nothing startlingly original about Estevez's screenplay, yet it has a modesty you seldom see when Hollywood tackles spiritual subjects.

Altman and Rapp skirt the fine line between satire and caricature, stopping just short of ridiculing the women who pack Dr. T's office.

Thanks to Hudson and the other women, it's a moderately beguiling date movie.

A collection of such dazzling digital illusions you can't wait for it to hit DVD so you can freeze individual images.

Refreshing for its simplicity and its originality in a marketplace dominated by soulless blockbusters.

Weds half-hearted thriller elements to the self-absorbed, no-budget mumblecore films pioneered by Katz in efforts like "Dance Party, USA."

The best end-of-August movie I've seen in years.

Genuinely creepy Southern Gothic thriller that once again proves that in horror movies, sometimes less is actually more.

Adoration, which hinges on a number of coincidences, contains some really fine performances.

Weitz keeps the schmaltz in check, but it's clear pretty much from the outset that this immigrant family is fated never to find A Better Life north of the border.

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."

Strictly a love it-or-hate-it proposition, it requires viewers to work at a movie with a narrative that could support at least half a dozen interpretations.

Williams triumphs by exceeding both in sheer actor's craft - and the depths he plumbs in his character's tortured soul.

Though there are moderately interesting interviews interspersed throughout, Deadheads will want to see the numbers, in which Grisman's more formal style complements Garcia's looser approach to his music.

If you were wondering what “12 Years a Slave” might have been like as a two-part episode of “Masterpiece Theatre,” you might want to check out this unsatisfying but not uninteresting oddity. It renders another historical story about race with exquisite taste but not much in the way of passion.

The most gut-bustingly funny movie so far this year.

Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel do some of the best work of their careers playing longtime friends navigating their twilight years in Paolo Sorrentino’s witty, wise and swooningly beautiful dramatic comedy Youth.

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

The kind of small gem that's becoming increasingly rare in American films.

"Love, Actually" meets "Trainspotting" in Intermission, an edgy Irish romantic comedy that deftly juggles a dozen interconnected story lines.

It's the best role in years for Leoni, but You Kill Me really belongs to Kingsley, whose character's deadpan reactions to his new environment are priceless. He really kills.

Cam (based on the director’s real-life father) is so charming and gifted in various ways that it’s easy to enjoy this fanciful look at a bohemian mixed-race family.

Don Cheadle gives one of the best performances of his career as jazz legend Miles Davis in Miles Ahead, even if his debut as a director ends up being an unfocused disappointment.

A real old-fashioned crowd-pleaser.

Clever, racially and sexually provocative variation on "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

One of our best actors, Turturro surpasses his past fine work as Alexander Luzhin.

Vastly more explicit (be warned) and intelligent (than "Angel Eyes"). It also leads to much darker - and more interesting - places.

A thorough but highly entertaining documentary details the making of the notorious 1972 film, the series of legal battles that helped make it immensely popular and the flick's considerable cultural legacy.

The Road to Guantanamo is a missed opportunity. This is a subject that deserves a more thoughtful documentary or docudrama, not a hastily thrown together amalgam of the two.

Veteran character actor Dennis Farina gives one of the best performances of the year in a rare lead part as an aging, down-on-his luck small-time hood in The Last Rites of Joe May.

Hopefully Jennifer Lawrence will actually be given something worthwhile to do next time around. That would actually be worth paying to see.

Documents the Nixon administration's failed, almost comically inept attempt to deport the most political of The Beatles and his wife, Yoko Ono. Given the latter's cooperation with the filmmakers, it comes as no surprise the Lennons come off as saints.

Mock didn't find room for any of the many critics who accuse Kushner of being an anti-Zionist - and the film unfortunately ends in 2004, just before its subject began working on his controversial script for Steven Spielberg's "Munich."

Lee hasn't given an interview in 45 years, and even her 99-year-old sister (still practicing as a lawyer) only hazards a guess in Mary Murphy's old-school documentary: Her younger sister had nothing to prove, and nowhere to go but down after her astonishing debut novel.

A bittersweet confection that few holiday filmgoers will be able to resist, thanks to melt-in-your-mouth performances by Juliette Binoche, Alfred Molina and Judi Dench.

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

Frequently hilarious, occasionally sweet and often graphically violent, Pineapple Express may not be the greatest stoner movie ever made, but it will do perfectly well until we get another hit of Harold and Kumar.

The crowd-pleasing St. Vincent provides Murray with his first comic vehicle in years. It’s a tour de force and a cause for major celebration.

Beautifully photographed by Dean Semler, Appaloosa is the best Western since "Open Range" and shows there's still life in this most unfashionable of genres.

Tries to be a gay version of "Sex and the City," which was pretty gay to begin with.

An exceedingly silly historical fantasy.

The ruefully funny Jack Goes Boating, which, refreshingly, takes a generous view of its flawed characters, is a must for us many Hoffman fans.

Overall, though, this new Peter Pan does really soar.

As in genuine porn, most of the acting (except for Skarsgard, who deliberately tries to be funny and sometimes succeeds) is as flat and uninteresting as the script — even when the older Joe narrates a montage of flaccid penises.

It's an intriguing setup, filled with colorful characters, lots of humor and well-developed scenes.

Mitchell's adventurous, big- hearted, pansexual mosaic of New Yorkers looking for love and orgasms (not necessarily in that order), is a rare example of a nonporn film that doesn't exploit graphic sex as a gimmick.

Achieves the odd distinction of being the first post-9/11 NYPD corruption movie - complete with a shootout in the Criminal Courts building. Cool.

Story of Tobias Schneebaum, a gay New York artist famous for living with, sleeping with - and, gulp, eating with - cannibals in New Guinea.

Though it comes from a director whose résumé includes "Flashdance" and "9 ½ weeks," these smoke-filled interludes are less erotic than today's average car commercial.

The only thing remotely scary about Monsters is that Magnolia is releasing this boring scare-, suspense- and gore-free horror movie (which reportedly cost less than $100,000) on Halloween weekend.

Abysmal performances, limp direction (Will Gould) and a heavy-handed script drive a stake through a semi-interesting idea about the persecution of gay werewolves in a remote English village.

Return comes briefly to life when John Slattery of "Mad Men'' turns up as an acerbic yet sympathetic reclusive drunk whom Kelli meets during court-mandated rehab. But it's not enough for a film that limps along to a pretty much preordained climax.

Godardian title not withstanding, Zeina Durra's not-uninteresting slice of the downtown Manhattan demimonde is too concerned with being cool to work up much in the way of political outrage, much less narrative drive.

Quirky and sometimes hilarious Canadian comedy.

Steamy and solidly entertaining.

It's a tribute to the sheer professionalism of this crossover charmer that it holds your interest for two solid hours.

Twohy serves up a hard-to-swallow second-act twist and an unconvincing back story, but the slightly overlong A Perfect Getaway recovers with a pulse-pounding climax.

I loved both "Walk the Line" and "Ray," but it will be hard to watch either one with a straight face again after the skewering they get in this Judd Apatow production, which quotes scene after scene to hilarious effect.

It goes down as smoothly as a milkshake thanks to an impressive cast.

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

A rousing, politically correct, Muslim-sympathetic, $140 million take on the Crusades.

Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic works best when this equal-opportunity offender is on the stage.

Slight and unremarkable.

Covers three years in the Public Defender's office with a fast-paced, tabloid gusto.

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

As cleverly adapted by Tom Stoppard, this is an Anna Karenina that's pretty much guaranteed to polarize audiences.

Demonstrates that not only is sisterhood powerful, it can be awfully entertaining.

The movie is a visual feast, with Oscar-caliber sets and costumes that for many will justify the trip to the Paris Theatre.

Chemistry is the usually misfiring engine that drives romantic comedies, so it's a pleasure to report that Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis are practically combustible together in Friends With Benefits.

The 3-D effects are among the most effective ever shot.

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

There's not a moment of true wildness in It's Kind of a Funny Story, which never gets any more outrageous than projective vomiting.

What makes Storm Surfers 3-D mesmerizing is jaw-dropping footage shot inside brute waves that’s unlike any I’ve ever seen before.

While type-A Pierson worries about his projectionist showing up and a break-in at his family's home, his wife frets that the mass importation of American films will contaminate the local culture.

This multi-pronged labor of love doesn't always work, but it often does, sometimes in ways that take your breath away.

It's worth seeing the movie for Hathaway alone.

A raunchy, endearing and often hilarious cross between “Back to the Future” and Reagan-era cheese-fests such as “Hot Dog: The Movie.”

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.

Another remarkable addition to Eastwood's directorial canon.

A bizarre quasi-documentary that more or less tries to rationalize bestiality as a harmless quirk.

Rob the Mob, which is more fun and more tightly constructed than “American Hustle,’’ romanticizes the clueless couple, whom the columnist dubs “Bonnie and Clyde,” and moves their inevitable Christmas Eve date with fate from Ozone Park to a far more attractive location.

Trimming half an hour from this bloated, 143-minute blockbuster would have highlighted the film's treasures, not the least of which is Johnny Depp's endearingly eccentric performance as Captain Jack Sparrow.

The Congress doesn’t fully live up to its lofty ambitions, but it does attempt something most filmmakers wouldn’t even dream of — a dystopian blend of live-action and animation that acidly comments on some of Hollywood’s touchiest issues before drifting off into an existential fog.

This time out, Broomfield comes up with maybe enough halfway decent material for a 10-minute segment on a second-rate tabloid TV show.

Mixes fact and speculation in a way that's already raised the ire of some on the right as well as on the left.

Screenwriter Steve Kloves still seems overly dedicated to cramming in every detail of J.K. Rowling's novel - while tacking on a schmaltzy Hollywood ending.

Perhaps the most sobering statistic in The 11th Hour: Some 50,000 species a year are disappearing. Someday, it might be humans.

I adore Frances McDor mand, but she's seriously miscast in a title role Emma Thompson could play in her sleep.

A solid documentary that examines the art's roots, from ad-libs by black preachers to "toasts" delivered by Jamaican immigrants over instrumental tracks in the '70s South Bronx.

Admittedly, I’m far from a fan of Korine’s “Gummo,’’ “Julien Donkey-Boy’’ and the absymal “Trash Humpers.’’ But that he is proud of making intentionally sloppy and tedious movies doesn’t make them any easier to watch. Or all that much fun, for that matter.

Unfortunately, director Marc Foster (who co-wrote the screenplay) never allows anyone except Mitchell to play more than a one-dimensional character.

Their often touching stories of how their lives - and livelihoods - were disrupted are effectively intercut with excerpts from press conferences in which Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The only character who makes much of an impression is a crazed, cannibalistic cockatoo voiced by Jemaine Clement ("Flight of the Conchords"), who gets the best of the handful of musical numbers.

A small-scale charmer that provides a tailor-made role for Malkovich, who is always fun to watch.

To call Jackass: The Movie the worst movie of the year is practically a compliment. This plotless, crudely videotaped collection of moronic stunts is a movie in the same sense that those hideous, velvet depictions of Elvis are paintings.

Sweet, funny, well-acted and nicely shot on locations in the south of France -- but on the dull side overall.

Binder has allowed Allen, a brilliant actress, to go overboard with Terry's obnoxiousness, just as Brooks (his apparent role model) did with Téa Leoni in "Spanglish."

One of the 10 best American movies released so far this year, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl is the surprisingly satisfying first theatrical film inspired by a long-running series of historically themed dolls.

It's not exactly going to be on PETA's 10-best list.

So full of solid performances and appealing characters that I wished writer/director/producer Preston Whitmore (“The Walking Dead") had considered the dictum “less is more."

A dispiriting return to the tired, star-driven, pop-culture-ridden formula that DreamWorks Animation ran into the ground before its best feature in years, this spring's "How to Train Your Dragon."

Scorsese has great fun with a story that in the final analysis does not really demand to be taken any more seriously as history than "Inglourious Basterds."

Zellweger dusts off her Bridget Jones accent - and a constellation of annoying vocal and facial tics - for Miss Potter, an unrelentingly mediocre, TV-movieish biopic of beloved children's author Beatrix Potter.

It's highly entertaining, even if it's almost entirely one-sided.

Pays off with emotional dividends well worth the time investment.

Disappointing.

The overlong Amigo has its heart in the right place, but its approach to complex issues is too simplistic to win over unconverted minds.

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

I have to confess that this surreal departure by the iconoclastic filmmaker tried my patience more than a bit.

One of the more interesting low-budget experiments Steven Soderbergh has indulged in between flashy Hollywood entertainments.

Mostly a second-rate action picture that's content to use apartheid as a colorful background.

An entertaining piece of pulp fiction.

42 may not be a home run, but it’s certainly a solid three-base hit as worthy family entertainment.

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

Quickly devolves into a nonprescription alternative to Ambien.

Strange and quirky.

An OK kids movie passing through on the way to video.

Burt Reynolds and Sally Field they're not, but you could do worse for mindless late-summer entertainment than Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell in Hit & Run.

The second half of Godzilla is definitely more fun than the first part of a film I enjoyed overall, if less than last year’s similar dip into giant monster blockbusterdom, “Pacific Rim.”

Writer-director Schwarz has a lot of fun with this nutty premise. And more important, the twisted dynamics of this particular family ring true.

The heavily symbolic The Dying Gaul doubtless worked better as a play, but the film is worth seeing for its peerless cast.

"Precious" worked partly because it did not wrap its sordid tale in Christian uplift and dime-store psychology -- elements that have made Tyler Perry a rich filmmaker but have turned For Colored Girls shrill and manipulative.

Luke, who seems to have been marking time since his impressive debut in the title role of Denzel Washington's "Antwone Fisher" four years ago, is fiercely good as this reluctant warrior and devoted family man.

A real high in a season filled with unfunny comedies.

It's skillfully rendered fun, but don't expect to remember much the next day.

Tries, with much less success, to do what "Witness" did in exploring an Amish town.

Does not offer much in the way of exciting boxing footage.

While the performances are often engaging, this loose collection of largely improvised numbers would probably have worked better as a one-hour TV documentary.

Slyly funny.

Curious George skews very young, but parents should be warned that it arrives not only with the worst ad slogan in recent memory ("Show me the monkey"), but a full line of plush toys and related tie-in merchandise.

Klown turns out to be one long, brutal life lesson for Hvam's hapless character until it finally crosses the line into just plain creepy at the end.

Seems more like a merchandising ploy than a successful attempt to entertain kids and their parents.

Emotionally honest, feel-good saga with a universality that stands out in a season of singularly depressing and cynical Hollywood product.

The best parts of this awkwardly paced film are Bell’s scenes with Enrico Colantoni, who returns as her private investigator dad, concerned she’s throwing away a bright future by getting sucked back into her old life.

The Yellow Handkerchief tells a timeless fable, and tells it extremely well.

The biblically themed Seraphim Falls moseys along very slowly, climaxing with a lengthy series of flashbacks and an appearance by Anjelica Huston as a medicine woman who may or not be the devil.

A not particularly revealing documentary.

An interesting - but very slow paced - thriller.

Aside from an uninspired script by Frank Cotrell Boyce, is that none of the assembled actors really has enough star presence to compete with the sheer spectacle.

Disney's best comedy in years.

A lavishly mounted blockbuster that has little personality of its own except on a purely visual level.

The title of the overlong Fifty Dead Men Walking refers to lives saved by Sturgess' character, who is still in hiding years later.

CSA would have benefited from a bigger budget and better actors and it gets weaker as it goes along, but it's still thought-provoking stuff.

They should sell antidepressants along with the popcorn at theaters showing Cecilia Miniucchi's Expired, one of those Sundance "comedies" that make you contemplate slitting your wrists.

Especially worthwhile for the chemistry between Bell and Myles.

The dazzling 14-minute chase includes cars, motorcycles, a couple of 18-wheelers - and nonstop martial-arts battles and leaps inside and on top of the vehicles. That scene alone will justify the price of admission for many.

Beautiful Boy ends up being an endurance test.

The actors are engaging enough that you only occasionally remember that there really isn't much going on. Then, unfortunately for the audience, something does actually happen.

Erstwhile boy wizard Daniel Radcliffe works no magic as a grieving lawyer in The Woman in Black, a creaky haunted-house story that's strong on creepy atmosphere but woefully deficient in the scare department.

Yet another teen comedy that tries to have it both ways -- basically, "Mean Girls" with crucifixes instead of designer jewelry.

A thoughtful, old-school documentary.

It remains for a tougher documentary to more forcefully trace exactly who benefits from this shameful practice -- multinational corporations and consumers who don't ask enough questions.

As Kym, Hathaway runs an astonishing gamut of emotions, from anger to fragility and from hurt to regret - without ever seeming actress-y, like Nicole Kidman. Start clearing that mantelpiece, Anne.

It might not have as many gut-busting laughs as "Bridesmaids,'' but there are still plenty - and for once in Apatow's phallocentric universe, most of them don't come at the expense of female characters.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the French di rector of "Amelie," is back to more lighthearted whimsy with the delightful Micmacs.

Patrick Stewart knocks it out of the park as a Juilliard School dance teacher forced to spill his biggest secrets in Match, which playwright Stephen Belber effectively directed and adapted from his own Broadway play.

Dan Schechter's no-budget comedy about the romantic and professional travails of a pair of financially struggling film editors offers a few laughs, all served up on eyeball-gougingly ugly digital video.

This movie takes its sweet time wrapping together three related tales set in various regions of North Carolina -- to ultimately devastating effect.

Isn't as sharply directed as "Jessica Stein," but it's still a formidable crowd-pleaser.

But while the belly laughs are few, there are numerous chuckles and it's quite watchable, thanks to solid performances by Damon (who plays it mostly straight in a rare comic role) and Kinnear.

In-depth performances by De Niro and Gooding Jr. provide the oxygen for this extremely shipshape biopic.

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

"The Sixth Sense" was no fluke. Unbreakable, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's dazzling reunion with Bruce Willis confirms he's one of the most brilliant filmmakers working today.

Intermittently brilliant, intermittently hilarious -- and occasionally tedious.

Thornton is in great form as the sardonic Vic, whose disposal of an apparently dead body in a trunk is a hilarious set piece.

The unusually explicit dungeon scenes with Pablo, a leather daddy and a fellow slave may whip a rather specialized audience into a frenzy. But for others, A Year Without Love will be a less pleasurably painful experience.

But at the risk of sounding ungrateful, Sydney Pollack's latest film should have been a lot better.

Kids will love African Cats, which is full of "aw" moments. Their parents will appreciate that narrator Samuel L. Jackson keeps things from getting too schmaltzy in this true-life depiction of the circle of life.

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

Molly Shannon is dementedly charming as Eva.

Visually striking but portentous and pretentious.

It's an exciting, charming and often quite funny family film.

Even after he manages to get out of the car and slowly starts recovering his memory, Wrecked keeps you guessing.

It's hard not to like a PG-rated 'toon that works in references to "Pulp Fiction" and "Fargo," even if Meet the Robinsons, a delightful, quirk-filled riff on "Back to the Future," proceeds in fits and starts.

Mena Suvari has her best role since "American Beauty" as Brandi, a self-centered nursing home employee distinctly lacking in sympathy for anyone.

This bittersweet comedy is a fine showcase for a pair of distinctive and appealing talents.

Nostalgic for those bad old days, The Wackness was shot at a time when it actually looked like "America's Mayor" was going to be in a position to perform a similar cleanup on the entire country. That, of course, turned out to be a pipe dream.

It doesn’t add up to much of anything exciting, even with an appearance by Isabella Rossellini (of Lynch’s “Blue Velvet’’) as the mother of one of the doubles.

Really belongs on Lifetime rather than in theaters.

Morgan never reaches the heights the film probably would have hit if had been directed by Tim Burton, whose style is frequently evoked -- especially Shirley Walker's playful score, which seems channeled directly from Burton's frequent collaborator Danny Elfman.

This is the time of the year movie studios traditionally dump their mistakes into theaters -- and boy, did Disney make a whopper with The Count of Monte Cristo.

It's not exactly a surprise the makers of Reign Over Me feel compelled to manufacture a happy ending for a story that really has none. Pity.

The first conservative documentary to join the bumper crop of liberal political films riding Michael Moore's coattails into theaters.

If you’re going to invest three hours watching a movie about a convicted stock swindler, it needs to be a whole lot more compelling than Martin Scorsese’s handsome, sporadically amusing and admittedly never boring — but also bloated, redundant, vulgar, shapeless and pointless — Wolf of Wall Street.

Like the similar, and slightly superior, "The Conjuring" last summer, Oculus eschews the buckets of gore common to R-rated horror movies and takes a relatively subtle, psychological approach — even if the somewhat disappointing ending leaves the door open for a sequel (or three).

Posey is a delight throughout, and Zoe Cassavetes is clearly a filmmaker to watch.

With much help from an exasperated off-screen prompter - the only other performer in this small gem - Plummer's Barrymore shows flashes of glory as he delivers bits and pieces of various Shakespearean roles.

The year's most beautiful movie -- and surely one of the dullest.

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.

Some of the year's most arresting female performances justify White Oleander, a highly episodic melodrama.

Tedious and tawdry.

A fabulous and often hilarious variation on "American Pie" that substitutes quiche, gerbils and various sex toys for apple pie.

Such astounding computer-generated effects you'll suspend disbelief and root for the hero, a 3-inch talking mouse.

A rare dud in the Shooting Gallery series.

The dance routines are so hilariously spectacular — and the film is such good-naturedly inclusive fun — that you may not miss the absence of anything resembling dramatic conflict in what’s close to a feature-length concert film.

A pretentious, unsatisfying and ultra-slow-moving thriller.

Like the prototypical "Shine," this is a film that romanticizes mental illness.