Lou Lumenick

Repeatedly shoots for laughs -- but ends up mostly firing blanks.

Ron Howard's bio-pic is an Oscar-baiting fairy tale that manipulates the audience at every turn of the clich.

Filming in gritty, black-and-white 16mm, Riker gets terrifically natural, often moving performances from his mostly non-professional cast.

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

A creepy, depressing and leering "comedy" that's a virtual collection of "What were they thinking?" moments.

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

If a more incoherent and self-indulgent movie has been released so far this century, I'm not aware of it.

Has its moments, but overall the effect is uneven.

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

May not be a masterpiece, but it still had me in tears at the end.

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

A lot of preaching to the converted.

Mostly unfunny, extremely silly pingpong comedy.

A gut-wrenching experience.

Has precious little to add to the canon -- and does so in a highly melodramatic manner.

A flaccidly pretentious and snooze-inducing trilogy of allegedly racy tales.

This maudlin, fact-inspired and anti-feminist dramedy is no "Far From Heaven" or "The Hours."

This painfully unfunny mockumentary about obsessive collectors of frozen-food entrees takes potshots at anti-abortionists, Christian rockers, aversion therapy for gays and the disabled -- and misses almost every time.

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.

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

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.

This unlikely micro-budgeted project is written and directed by Marianna Palka, who also plays the female lead. The guy is portrayed by her real-life boyfriend, Jason Ritter (son of the late John). Their performances are quite remarkable and their chemistry is palpable, even if Good Dick is primarily intended for more adventurous moviegoers.

A feast of great acting, although in the final analysis it's a filmed stage play rather than a brilliant movie.

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

If M. Night Shyamalan sold his soul to the devil for the success of "The Sixth Sense," I think His Satanic Majesty has finally collected in full with The Last Airbender.

A real high in a season filled with unfunny comedies.

To describe Love, Honor and Obey as a cross between "Duets" and "Snatch" doesn't begin to suggest how desperately unfunny this musical gangster comedy is.

This flick is fast and ferocious, his (Sidney Lumet) sharpest and best since "Prince of the City" (1980) - and surely one of the year's finest.

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

Mostly it's worth seeing Alien, which established Scott as an A-list director, in a theater because his brilliant and often expansive visuals have always worked better on a big screen than on video.

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

A shipwreck. They say a dead fish stinks from the head first - but the animated shipwreck Shark Tale arrives reeking all over.

Amenta draws from the diary that Rita kept in the nine months before her death in 1991, interviews with survivors and news footage to tell a riveting and inspiring story right out of "The Godfather."

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

The MPAA's rating explanation for this PG-13-rated snoozer misleadingly claims it contains "intense sequences of terror/violence"; it would be more accurate to state that Boogeyman contains "virtually every horror-movie cliché of the past 30 years."

An intoxicating attack on the homogenization of wines around the world - a "Fahrenheit 9/11" for the oneophile set.

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.

So consistently silly and overwrought that it flirts with the elusive so-bad-it's-entertaining category.

A relentlessly dull film that's shot on eyeball-gougingly ugly digital video.

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

More "it stinks" than *NSYNC.

In monotonous narration, Rosette rants that the vendors' right to free speech should allow them to obstruct sidewalks, but the portrait of his subculture is so vaguely rendered, it will likely put audiences to sleep rather than change minds.

An exquisitely crafted Civil War epic that combines the epic romantic sweep of "Gone With the Wind" with a more intimate voice that speaks eloquently to the war-weary nation of today.

The film's flaws probably won't bother less jaded kids one whit.

Contains large helpings of Hollywood schmaltz, stereotype and clich‚, but it's also pretty impossible to resist.

Rarely since the tale of the Corleones has a movie presented such a compelling, sympathetic portrait of a criminal lowlife.

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

Operation Filmmaker is eventually about Muthana blackmailing Davenport by withholding access to him as she fruitlessly seeks a happy ending for her film. "Now, I'm just looking for an exit strategy," she finally concludes.

Gives a harrowingly accurate portrait of the indignities sometimes suffered by hospitalized patients - and the sacrifices their families make.

Overlong and heavy-handed.

A glitzy and shallow satire about shallow people.

The Price of Milk, which boasts a lush classical score recorded by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, has a few more twists that make this a Valentine's Day delight.

For all of Linklater's acrobatic camera moves, you never quite escape the feeling you're watching a barely adapted TV version of a somewhat gimmicky stage play.

The material in this spy spoof is, pardon the pun, awfully frayed.

This Canadian-South African labor of love has its heart in the right place, even if the leads seem to have been cast more for their hunky looks than their stiff acting.

A glacially paced, extremely moist, terminally gloomy and cliché-laden romantic drama with a supernatural twist.

Open Range could easily have lost 20 minutes in the editing room, but its very casual pacing and beautiful vistas - gorgeously photographed in British Columbia by James Munro - are a soothing alternative in a season of movies seemingly aimed at sufferers of attention deficit disorder.

Does briefly sizzle in the scenes between Newton and French actress Christine Boisson, as the bisexual French police commander assigned to the case.

A guaranteed crowd-pleaser for the whole family.

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

So nasty, hysterical and long-winded -- and unintentionally makes capital punishment foes look so twisted -- you wish someone had administered a lethal injection to this dreck in its planning stages.

A disappointingly superficial treatment of a fascinating historical incident.

You’re a Big Boy Now is no “The Graduate” but it holds up far better than most comedies from this era I’ve revisited.

Aeon Flux is by far the year's worst movie, a most dubious achievement.

Despite a fierce lead performance by Naomi Watts, The Painted Veil is a quaintly bloodless, picture-postcard adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 China-set novel - more Merchant Ivory than David Lean.

Suspenselessly directed by Robby Henson, Thr3e commits the eighth deadly sin - boredom.

t's an exciting, well-directed thriller that, while providing more than enough action and gore to satisfy genre fans, also offers the political commentary that has characterized zombie movies going back at least as far as "Night of the Living Dead."

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.

Drawing inspiration from anime and vintage Looney Toons, this beautifully drafted, offbeat charmer is hip, funny - and a bona fide heart tugger for the whole family.

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.

The scariest, creepiest and most elegantly filmed horror movie I've seen in years - it positively drives a stake through the competition.

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

It's certainly a lot more charming than the last attempt at a Peter Pan sequel, Steven Spielberg's star-laden, ham-fisted "Hook."

Slyly funny.

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.

Skin-crawlingly awful.

So smooth and satisfying it makes the similar "Ocean's Eleven" look like a game of three-card monte.

A genuine oddity that's more watchable than it sounds.

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.

A lighter hand would have enhanced some very good performances.

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.

Pure magic.

A trite, incoherent and pretentious bomb.

Hopkins' larger-than-life performance as the crusty and crafty Burt rivets your attention for two solid hours in this most entertaining labor of love.

Exceptionally intelligent and powerful contemporary adaptation.

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

Never decides whether it wants to be a black comedy, drama, melodrama or some combination of the three. The acting and direction are all over the map in this consistently depressing, if occasionally interesting, slice of life.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, crosses over from thriller into magic realism for a lavishly staged climax that's a bit much.

Surprisingly funny and sweet, despite some missed comic opportunities and curious casting choices.

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

A gorgeous snooze, somewhere between imitation Terrence Malick and a feature version of star Brad Pitt's notorious Vanity Fair layout with Angelina Jolie and their faux kids.

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

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.

Crashing chandelier, crashing bore.

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

Way too long, too convoluted and too peppered with title cards...Even so, it's hard to dislike Don Roos' "Magnolia"-inspired triptych of interconnected comic tales about lies, sex and video.

Constantly battling, Hoskins and Dench have terrific chemistry together.

An utterly beguiling tale.

The funniest "SNL" movie since "Wayne's World."

Though overlong, there are many stunning special effects, including a car chase up the side of a building, as well as the sort of wild animated subtitles that turned up in "Night Watch."

Relentlessly depressing.

Features a riveting performance by Michael Shannon as oldest son Son. He's definitely an actor to watch.

A preposterous mix of sentiment and brutality that casts martial-arts star Jet Li as a music-loving killing machine, turns out to be his most entertaining movie in quite some time.

Any way you slice it, A Tale of Two Pizzas is so ineptly written and directed that it's pretty soggy entertainment.

Tremendously affecting on several levels, In the Bedroom is must-see viewing for anyone who complains Hollywood doesn't make movies for grownups.

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

Leguizamo knocks it out of the park as an armored car driver in The Take.

The film is extremely well-acted, and Berri is very good at demonstrating why the relationship is doomed.

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.

Well worth seeing for Walters, whose comic and dramatic gifts are showcased to very entertaining effect.

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.

Comes as close to perfect as any movie I've seen lately.

Some of the plot twists don't really stand up to close scrutiny, but the sometimes over-the-top Joy Ride plows through them with such joyful glee, you don't really care.

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.

A slow-moving, dirt-dull narrative crammed with clunky expository dialogue and obscure Biblical references.

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.

Depicts the bleak suburban milieu in a manner that avoids exploitation.

A lark for anyone who's willing to check their brains at the concession stand for 100 minutes.

Solidly old-fashioned entertainment.

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."

Some advice: Don't even bother trying to figure out what's going on in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence -- just sit back and enjoy the lush, trippy visuals.

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 total disaster.

Even if it weren't three years too late to parody Moore (ineptly played by Kevin Farley), Moore's ridiculous tribute to Cuban health care in "Sicko" is far funnier than anything in this desperately laughless farce from David Zucker ("Scary Movie 3").

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.

A messy -- but uproarious, timely and provocative -- farce.

Dear John is the sort of movie that gives tearjerkers a bad name.

It's the worst of both worlds as Disney cash cow Miley Cyrus makes the most dubious "dramatic" debut of any singer since Britney Spears.

Isn't particularly funny, romantic or well-acted. It drags on endlessly.

A shallow, stilted romantic thriller.

An oddly endearing little chamber piece that provides a terrific showcase for Hoffman, surely the best actor who has never been nominated for an Oscar.

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

The enchanting voice on the phone, who delightfully shows up in person halfway through, belongs to Zooey Deschanel. In real life, she hooked up with the composer of the lively score, M. Ward, to create the pop duo She & Him.

As you might suspect, the 2012 dialogue is pure Velveeta.

Wildly uneven, but contains moments that are right up there with "The Player."

Hands-down the best movie of the year.

Shlocky, sloppy and crass adolescent comedy.

Far more worth seeing than most of what's out there.

Lethargically paced, badly edited and shot in hideous digital video.

Wholesome entertainment that will please the under-10 crowd without boring their parents.

Rather morbid.

Well worth seeing for the incandescent Portman.

Easily one of the year's best movies.

A thoroughly mediocre dramedy.

Safe in Hell doesn’t offer anything extraordinary in the way of skin or innuendo, but it’s chockablock with the kind of situations and characters that would be verboten on screen for nearly three decades commencing in mid-1934.

Two stars for adults -- 3 stars for kids. The under-5 set should take to The Country Bears like bears to honey - even if anyone much older will find this broad-as-a-barn-door Disney musical bear-ly tolerable.

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

It's a totally inept and unfunny parody of the TV show "Cops."

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.

The skillfully acted and directed The Lives of Others is a timely warning about governments that seek to repress dissent.

Woody Allen certainly hasn't managed anything remotely this funny lately.

Rock appears to have edited I Think I Love My Wife with a roulette wheel.

To get to the best part first, Tarantino's adrenaline-pumping "Death Proof" is actually a good movie that - unlike Rodriguez's "Planet Terror," - rethinks its genre in ways that say something to contemporary audiences. And it's got some of Tarantino's best dialogue since "Pulp Fiction."

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

A tabloidy, nail-biting thriller.

A bland, dull and only occasionally funny waste of time that will very soon be gathering dust in the remainder bins.

Lethally dull and self-important remake.

Tasteless but sporadically uproarious black comedy.

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.

So consistently involving because the excellent cast delivers their lines with the kind of utter conviction not seen in this kind of movie since the first "Star Wars."

The Edgertons pile on the plot twists a bit thick, but the director steadily ratchets up the tension until a climactic shootout.

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.

For all of its laughs and a star-making performance by Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky represents a serious philosophical inquiry by Leigh, who has illustrated a consistently pessimistic view of humankind in his semi-improvised movies.

This movie depicts an unlikely intersection of sports and leadership in ways that manage to be inspiring and insightful without ever becoming schmaltzy or preachy.

Stands in stark contrast to the quickie political documentaries that have flooded into specialty venues since last year.

This one is often more interesting than involving.

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.

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.

Wastes some veteran performers in a slight, silly musical fantasy with two left feet.

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.

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 sluggish and prototypically earnest little indie on the not exactly fresh theme of a woman undergoing a midlife crisis.

Most of the interviews are as brief as they are obvious, and it doesn't help that none of those interviewees, including clergymen who served as technical advisers, are identified.

Delightfully quirky.

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

In his directing debut Battle in Seattle, actor Stuart Towns end does an impressive job (on a shoestring budget) of re-creating the massive street protests that forced the cancellation of the World Trade Organization summit in 1999.

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

Excruciatingly unfunny.

The movie equivalent of a lavish coffee-table book, a love letter to the Golden Age of Hollywood from one of its foremost students.

A big, loud, proudly brainless popcorn flick that blows up cars, trucks, tanks, boats, helicopters and even a train.

Sputnik Mania has a happy ending, thanks to German scientist Werner von Braun, who had been recruited for America after designing Nazi rockets that rained terror on England during World War II.

Hammer, whose blunt name belies the movie's many subtle touches, has his own distinct style. He also has an enormous trust in the audience to sort out this wounded family's miseries without the assistance of narration or even a musical score.

There's no excuse for a thriller as lame, leaden and unthrilling as Godsend, which manages to take a potentially interesting subject - human cloning - and use it to put audiences to sleep.

Woody Allen's most purely entertaining film in years.

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

Seems almost like a self-parody of Williams' earlier work.

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

Don't even think of visiting this French fiasco.

Funny and frothy sex comedy from Spain with a very appealing cast -- and mediocre musical numbers.

What's cutting- edge comedy for one generation can become generic filler for the next - that's the lesson to be learned from The In-Laws, a strenuous attempt to recycle a vastly funnier minor classic.

Darkly hilarious, brilliantly acted.

Amidst the ennui, there are some fine performances.

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."

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

There are precious few laughs in this poorly written and directed "unromantic comedy" - the sort of dire date movie you'd take somebody to if you wanted it to be a LAST date.

Androgynous Clea DuVall's performance shines through a foggily told, vaguely acted coming-of-age tale.

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

Perabo gives a fairly impressive and flashy performance, even when the script descends into melodrama.

A hard-hitting exposé of a shameful episode.

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

The most depressing date movie since "Random Hearts."

A classic social drama in the proud tradition of "Norma Rae," "Silkwood" and "Erin Brockovich."

Laughless, pointless and downright creepy, Say Uncle is a would-be black comedy.

A gripping reminder of a brutal chapter of 20th-century history.

Will Ferrell's terminally stupid, sloppy, campy and cheesy -- and thoroughly unexciting and unfunny -- experiment in "family entertainment."

What makes The Blind Side a Thanksgiving treat is director Hancock's subtle touch and admirable refusal to yield to sports movie clichés, something he did previously with "The Rookie" and "Remember the Titans."

Fast-moving, psychologically savvy.

The acting is solid, especially Whaley, whose nasty variation on Norman Bates is his showiest role since he memorably played Kevin Bacon's assistant in "Swimming With Sharks."

A truly repulsive piece of trash that says far more about the absence of values from contemporary filmmaking than the waywardness of teens.

A beautifully shot film with a funny French-twist ending.

The season's first guilty pleasure, Shoot 'Em Up is a joyously silly, R-rated, John Woo-in flected Looney Tune, with Clive Owen as a carrot-chomping, gun-toting Bugs Bunny matching wits with Elmer Fudd-ish assassin Paul Giamatti.

Interesting enough that you wish it were better.

So haphazardly written and directed that it barely qualifies as a movie, The House Bunny is watchable solely for the comic stylings of the blond veteran of the "Scary Movie" series.

It's also a terrific, career-capping role for Eastwood, who claims he's now retired as an actor. He shows off his comic chops more fully than in any film since "Bronco Billy" more than a quarter-century ago.

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.

Dumbed down to the point where it's barely recognizable as coming from one of Donald Westlake's John Dortmunder novels.

Very slowly builds to a powerful climax for this arty cross between "Straw Dogs" and "First Blood."

It's in the teenage section where the film goes seriously wrong and veers from an absorbing family story.

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."

The beautifully crafted Adam offers no pat or easy answers.

There is only one joke here, milked endlessly.

Isn't great. But I had fun watching.

Yet another murky film about the 1970s that's watchable mostly for its cast rather than the story.

Good value for the money, a funny, character-driven action comedy with three disparate stars -- who have great chemistry together.

The acting is uniformly superb, the camera work and set design are haunting, and The Orphanage delivers well-earned tears at its beautiful conclusion. Go see it already.

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.

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.

Depp's nonsense-spouting Mad Hatter, decked out in a red fright wig and possibly more makeup than Michael Jackson, is an unlikely resistance leader.

Full of action and silliness that will delight rug rats, but it's still hip and absurd enough to entertain grown-ups, too.

You'll laugh, you'll cry -- the year's best movie.

Shannon is wonderful as a woman pushed over the edge by the death of her pet in Year of the Dog, a very low-key, well-acted dramedy.

Truthfully, it's all incredibly boring. Noé tosses in some dime-store existentialism ("Time destroys everything"), but this is a movie with not a whole lot on its mind except rank exploitation.

Hanks is terrific giving his first flat-out comic performance in years as a wildly eccentric criminal mastermind.

A rare drug-crime movie devoid of violence, and pretty much anything in the way of excitement.

A cheerfully crude, well-cast (and frequently uproarious) campus comedy in the tradition of "There's Something About Mary."

This is a cheap-looking lowbrow comedy that likely would have gone straight to home video.

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

Aside from one tasteful nude scene, this well-meaning if bland romantic drama plays and looks a lot like a "special" episode of "Dawson's Creek."

Best movie I've seen so far this year? Hands down, it's Tom McCarthy's superb The Visitor, which turns Richard Jenkins, one of the best character actors in the business, into a full-fledged star.

The Class offers no Hollywood ending, but is rewarding for those up to the challenge.

Multiple Sarcasms happens to be the title of the play within the movie, and it turns out to be by far the most interesting thing in the film. Not that many people will want to suffer through the first 90 minutes of this vanity production to get there.

A witless, stale and half-hearted rehash of cliches borrowed from the likes of "The Wedding Planner," "The Wedding Singer" and "Four Weddings and a Funeral," this pathetic, alleged comedy certainly wasn't improved by clueless direction by Clare Kilner.

More than a few will agree with the penguins, who netted the film a PG rating with the utterance, "Well, this sucks."

The bottom line of Last Days seems to be, fame's a bitch. Yes, Gus - now start making movies again that tell stories, please.

A hilariously deadpan black-and-white slacker comedy, Duck Season is sort of like "Wayne's World" directed by a Mexican Jim Jarmusch.