Lou Lumenick

Not unpleasant, but you've seen it all before.

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

Ryan's heart is definitely in the right place and his film has good performances and flashes of talent. But, overall, it plays like the world's longest — over two hours -- after-school special.

You won't find a movie that's more fun this season -- but at 2-1/2 hours, it's probably too much of a good thing.

As irresistible as movie-theater popcorn - a lavish, reasonably intelligent, well-acted sequel with kick-butt effects that outdoes its predecessor, 2000's "X-Men," in almost every department.

Heavy on slapstick and may appeal to very young viewers who won't need to bother much with the subtitles.

Nicely photographed and has impressive sets; too bad there's so little going on that it seems long even at 78 minutes.

These candidly shaken macho guys recall scenes still haunting their nightmares two years after 9/11.

Winning performances by Roger Rees and Mary McDonnell, as well as colorful Virginia locations, lift Crazy Like a Fox slightly above the TV-caliber script by its director.

Hits one out of the park.

Another ridiculous anti-American screed by the minimalist Danish director Lars von Trier, who has never set foot in this country.

Thanks to Scott's charismatic Roger and Eisenberg's sweet nephew, Roger Dodger is one of the most compelling variations on "In the Company of Men."

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.

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.

Moves in a predictable path that includes some remarkable coincidences.

Rappaport does a yeoman's job in this tonally confused oddity. The wonder is that Hal Haberman and Jeremy Passmore's Special is making it off the festival circuit and into theaters at all, however briefly.

Me and Orson Welles is, in effect, a sequel to Tim Robbins' star-filled, self-important film about "Cradle," but it's far lighter on its feet.

A worthwhile choice in a crowded marketplace.

Fairly sexy and stylish. Alas, it's also quite silly and not especially scary.

A sincere but underwhelming dramatization of one of the biggest news stories of 1956.

The Sketches of Frank Gehry will appear this fall on PBS' "American Masters," which seems a more appropriate venue than theaters.

There are more than ample rewards for discerning adults: Some of the best dialogue in a recent movie and a gallery of unforgettable performances.

Luke Wilson, who has appeared in a long run of bad movies, seizes on his juiciest role since "The Royal Tenenbaums" here.

Admirable for venturing into very dark places rarely glimpsed in big-studio comedies.

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

Produced with the best of intentions by a California church and directed without distinction by first-timer Brian Baugh, To Save a Life would be bland and boring even as a half-hour after-school special.

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

THE mesmerizingly awful The Kid & I is a historic first: a comedy about the making of a vanity production that is ITSELF a vanity production.

You rarely see movies as dramatically uneven as The Weekend, which has a dreadful, one-star first half - followed by an interesting, three-star conclusion.

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

Given the rarity of such movies, and such opportunities for an actress like Clarkson, Cairo Time earns some indulgence for a pace that Westerners may find languid.

Mind-blowing and headache-inducing. But the kids loved it.

Quickly devolves into a nonprescription alternative to Ambien.

Audacious, thought-provoking and ruefully funny.

While Fienberg's direction is no great shakes, the film showcases its veteran cast.

Vigorously played as a young man by Chris Pine, Kirk is a brilliant, sports-car driving, bar-brawling rebel who is finally shamed into joining Starfleet Academy.

A mockumentary that veers unsteadily between satire and an infomercial for Dash's Roc-A-Fella records.

A joyful celebration of Louisiana music in all its permutations.

Heavy on celebrity voices, pop culture references and rock tunes and low on memorable characters or imagination, Chicken Little is on a par with such mediocre but popular CGI films as "Madagascar" and "Shark Tale."

This movie sends you into the night thinking, maybe even a little afraid. Bravo, Mr. Fincher.

Hilarious sweet and sour David Mamet comedy.

Generic variation on the overworked serial-killer genre.

One of the year's most consistently entertaining and ingratiating movies, building to an inspirational climax that's as rousing as it is predictable.

There are a lot of grace notes in That Evening Sun, including Barry Corbin's hilarious work as Abner's neighbor, a vivid sense of landscape and a visually arresting climax.

Watchable even when what's going on makes no sense whatsoever.

A wry, "Rashomon"-like tale.

HUGELY tedious and mostly incomprehensible.

Cannily weaving cross-cultural comedy with we-can-do-it humor in the spirit of "The Full Monty," the film builds to a rousing climax.

A satisfying Irish stew made from very familiar ingredients.

The lackadaisical pace of CD3 is a disappointing surprise.

Draggy and incoherent.

One of the year's best.

Shoddily made, boring and, most shockingly, without a single decent scare.

The best dance movie since "Flashdance."

After the Wedding is full of enough plot twists to supply a whole season of "Desperate Housewives."

Generally rises above the easy clichés you find in most such movies.

It's almost worth the price of admission to see Allen paying homage to "Singin' in the Rain" in the final sequence. Almost.

This partially animated, charm-free atrocity is awful enough to instantly cure any remaining nostalgia for the rodent trio.

One of the big problems here is that, despite much exposition, the nature of Klaatu's mission on Earth isn't at all clear.

A verité collage of indelible images Sauret collected in and around Ground Zero, beginning moments after the planes hit the World Trade Center.

No "Schindler's List," to put it mildly.

A rousing, garage-band-style documentary.

Pulse bears more than a slight resemblance to a 1994 American horror called "Ghost in the Machine." They didn't screen that stinker in advance for critics, either.

Peter Krause, the fine actor from "Six Feet Under," gives a one-note performance that seriously undermines Civic Duty, a thriller mining minimal dramatic payoff from the potentially potent subject of post-9/11 paranoia.

Only sporadically amusing. (review of re-release)

At heart a cliché-strewn melodrama about a bunch of white, upper-class Manhattan kids who aspire to ghetto culture.

A not particularly revealing documentary.

A ragged piece of filmmaking, but the odds are you'll have as good a time watching it as Nicholson and Sandler seemed to have making it.

A disarming Spanish dramedy of late-life love, speaks a universal language.

Another remarkable addition to Eastwood's directorial canon.

Tedious and tawdry.

An ugly-looking mismash of a fairytale.

Poor Keaton, a capable actor who was absent from the screen for several years, is hamstrung by the material even more than in last year's dismal "First Daughter."

William H. Macy lends a little class as a snail, but Smith nails it in the closing-credit outtakes: "Don't expect Robin Williams-caliber work."

Glossy, big-budget thriller that qualifies as the season's biggest and most rewarding surprise.

You can see better stuff on TV any night of the week.

Someone describes his writing as "snarky, bitter, witless." The last part pretty well sums up this movie.

A gut-wrenching, politically neutral documentary that spends more than a year with a platoon of American GIs in a valley that's been called the most dangerous spot on Earth.

It's Gordon-Levitt's pitch-perfect work that makes Brick a hardboiled treat.

A genially silly gay date movie.

A beautifully crafted, white-knuckle, roller-coaster ride of old-school filmmaking -- the kind that believes that the less you show, the better.

Overall, this gorgeously designed and photographed movie artfully depicts the immigrant experience in ways that transcend its setting, melding Hollywood and Bollywood storytelling techniques to weave a tale a large audience will relate to.

Holland lets things peter out midway, but it's notably better acted -- and far less crass -- than some other recent efforts in the burgeoning genre of films about black urban professionals.

Terrific performances by Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth as a comic duo clearly modeled on Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin get swallowed up in Atom Egoyan's muddled murder mystery.

Anyone expecting a hard-hitting biography will be disappointed by Julian Schnabel's soft-edged, dreamy and relatively nonpolitical film.

Less grim than it sounds, Southern Comfort ends on a note of triumph for its endearing, gender-bending hero.

A head-clearing, mind-blowing blast from the past - one of the year's best.

Disney's disappointing Atlantis, sadly, is a lot like much of the studio's recent animated output: eye-popping visuals and great vocal characterizations sunk by a dead-in-the-water script.

The flaws of Flash of Genius are worth putting up with for Kinnear's committed performance.

In their overly earnest attempt to flesh Sendak’s story out to 100 minutes, Jonze and his co-screenwriter, novelist Dave Eggers, have laboriously spelled out motivations (divorce is bad!), elaborated back stories -- and added reams of less-than-inspired dialogue.

Butler's film still manages to accomplish what the candidate's foundering campaign has utterly failed to do.

While it obviously isn't for all tastes, this is a big, thematically rich step forward -- mostly it's about tolerance and forgiveness -- from the empty provocation of Solondz's "Storytelling" and "Palindromes." About time.

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.

Director McLean doesn't let up on the suspense, which builds to an electrifying climax that is greatly abetted by Will Gibson's gritty cinematography and Francois Tetaz' nerves-inducing score.

It certainly has its moments (erotic and otherwise), but there just aren't enough of them.

A moribund attempt to exhume the Jack Ryan techno-thriller franchise with a severely miscast Ben Affleck, is truly the 20-megaton bomb among this summer's blockbusters.

This superb documentary about the Catholic Church's worst pedophile scandal is in many ways far scarier than any fiction.

Director Uwe Boll and the actors provide scant reason to care in this crude '70s throwback.

The ineptly made Animal Cannibal isn't remotely convincing as reality, and worse, isn't remotely entertaining as fiction.

Director Paul Greengrass - who directed the superb "United 93" between the second and third "Bourne" installments - knows how to stage and edit bravura action sequences, generating almost unbearable suspense while deploying a superb cast.

The joke is on arthouse audiences who show up for Funny Games, which is basically torture porn every bit as manipulative and reprehensible as "Hostel," even if it's tricked out with intellectual pretension.

One part cabaret, one part travelogue, one part comic heist, one part romantic tearjerker -- and all pretty tedious.

While the film has impressive 18th-century trappings and vivid battle scenes, the plotting and acting are rudimentary.

Should have been stopped at customs -- as family entertainment, it constitutes child abuse.

There is much more of an emphasis on action in this nicely crafted, fast-paced sequel, which at its best shares the antic qualities of classic Warner Bros. cartoons.

A truly superb courtroom drama. [02 Jan 2008, p.35]

A spare, exquisitely realized masterpiece about faith, redemption and boxing that beautifully illustrates his longtime philosophy that "less is more."

Me and You takes a couple of neat swipes at the pretentiousness of the art scene, but as a commentary on the difficulty of connecting in contemporary society, it's too precious by half.

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

Strong contender for the weirdest movie released this year.

Many of the kids seem to be social outcasts of one kind or another, but Spellbound, which will show on cable later this year, doesn't dig deep enough to disturb the movie's relentless feel-good tone.

That still makes Broken Embraces superior to at least 99 percent of the movies released in 2009. Run, don't walk.

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

Autumn wants to do for Jean-Pierre Melville what "Reservoir Dogs" did for Hong Kong cinema, but this new film is a joyless exercise in film appreciation.

Amply demonstrates how even a movie with wall-to-wall action can be a crashing bore.

Dennis Rodman isn't half bad as a blond, multiply pierced Interpol agent.

For those with a high tolerance for violence, Asssault on Precinct 13 is a thriller that actually thrills.

Lame spoof.

If you go with the flow, there's seductive imagery and a terrific performance by John Malkovich as a decadent baron.

Like many first films, Boricua's Bond is wildly uneven.

First-time writer-director Mark Hanlon lands only glancing blows in this grim black comedy.

Recycles every cliché of the genre to sleep-inducing effect.

Manages to build interest as it goes along, leading to a spectacular climactic battle with all those elephants.

Nolan blurs the distinction between dreams and reality so artfully that Inception may well be a masterpiece masquerading as a summer blockbuster.

Chop Suey is, in the end, as much a tease as Weber's photographs -- not much substance, but rather sweet and with style to burn.

Black, who all but stole "High Fidelity," is disappointingly bland and one-note in his first starring role.

A better than adequate date movie.

Great fun for the first 20 minutes - which include Kubrickian tracking shots and music from "2001" and "A Clockwork Orange" - but seems long at 86.

Lee's incendiary and brilliant new film.

This long and overly genteel adaptation of Peter Cameron's 2002 novel never quite comes to a boil.

Has a secret weapon in Winger, whose part is small but crucial. Looking a bit older and with redder hair than previously, she brings an earthiness to a movie that could use a lot more of that quality.

Strictly summer schlock.

Devotes most of its energy to its costumes and makeup, which are fabulous. But that and a tabloid-worthy star just aren't enough to revisit this sordid tale as a kind of twisted comedy.

Hurt, who starred in Kwietniowski's earlier study in compulsion, "Life and Death on Long Island," is oily perfection as the devious Victor.

The funniest and arguably most envelope-pushing episode stars Winona Ryder as a newlywed who falls in love on her honeymoon - and steals the object of her lust: a ventriloquist's dummy.

A low-end scam by Lions Gate Films -- whose recent "The Wash" was a masterpiece by comparison.

It's impossible to conceive of this ruefully funny entertainment without Bill Murray, who is nothing less than brilliant.

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."

Basically a two-hour argument for regime change that isn't half as incendiary or persuasive as its maker would have you believe.

A mild, slow-moving drama that belatedly tries to argue that graffiti writers are political artists, not an urban blight.

This poorly acted, directed and written (but slick-looking) vanity project was produced by Andrew Lauren (Ralph's son also ineptly plays G's major-domo) and shot at least four years ago.

Fresh, fast and funny movie.

A satisfying, big-hearted celebration of diversity that will brighten holiday moviegoing.

The apolitical and well-meaning Home of the Brave is predictable and maudlin.

The Notebook is well worth the risk of diabetic shock for the sake of superb acting that transcends its teary milieu.

Hokey, inept tear-jerker.

A gritty, well-acted, documentary-style drama.

May be the steamiest lesbian romp in recent memory.

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

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."

The cast includes Oscar winner Louise Fletcher (Nurse Ratched herself) and Henry Thomas of "E.T.," and the special effects look like they were executed on somebody's laptop.

Has a generosity of spirit and a wonderfully upbeat ending that makes it a nice little antidote to a bleak season.

Somewhat refreshingly aspiring to be nothing more than a disposable summer popcorn movie, this is a flick that delivers more smiles than laughs and has some wonderful special effects.

Mostly it fails to score. Maybe that's why no one has attempted summer-camp comedy since the third "Meatballs" sequel a decade ago.

Well, nobody said The Grand was another "Best in Show."

This mostly laugh-and scare-free turkey offers an utterly bored -- and boring -- Eddie Murphy taking a back seat to special effects, elaborate sets and a wispy story slapped together by David Berenbaum (the overrated "Elf").

Charmless and underdeveloped knockoff of "The Santa Clause."

About as exciting as watching someone else's home movies -- albeit, beautifully photographed ones.

Seriously flawed - and choppily edited in the worst Harvey Scissorhands style - but there are enough good moments to anticipate a second film from writer-director Katrina Holden Bronson, whose parents were Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland.

Splendidly spectacular, intelligent and very well-acted.

It's so incoherent that at first you wonder if the reels are being shown out of order.

I can't claim to have followed the story line of Paprika any better than I did "Pirates of the Caribbean," but this mind-blowing, adult animated adventure from Japan is half the length and maybe five times as much fun.

A lesson in the perils of trying to cram a hefty Canadian novel that spans decades into a movie running just under two hours.

Molly Shannon is dementedly charming as Eva.

Quite unlike anything I've ever seen before.

Tends to run low on steam well before the end, though Waters gamely tries to pump things up with filthy novelty tunes and clips from old stag films.

After a promising start, writer-director Daniel M. Cohen pours on schmaltz straight out of the similarly themed "Diamonds," including the proverbial hookers -- with hearts of gold.

Relentlessly grim.

The movie fails to add up to the sum of its laborious parts. There's no emotional investment in any of the characters, and you can see the writer-director's windup con coming a mile away.

Disappointing, curiously uninvolving.

A vile and laughless follow-up to Schneider's 1999 hit.

A silly, boring supernatural thriller that squanders a potentially interesting premise and the rapper Snoop Dogg in his ostensible starring debut.

A tad slow by American standards, but so extremely well-acted and emotionally truthful, it's right up there with "In the Mood for Love" as prime romantic fare for the Valentine's Day weekend.

The plot contortions that very slowly unfold under Michael Radford's arthritic direction in Flawless are not much more entertaining.

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

Laughs are few and far between in the innuendo-laden script attributed to Dana Fox, who's also responsible for the reprehensible "The Wedding Date."

An exceedingly silly historical fantasy.

A lazy coffee-table book of a movie,

Evokes such deja vu, you'd swear you'd already fallen asleep on the damned thing in the middle of the night on HBO.

Coincidences and plot contrivances pile up. What starts out as a delightful black comedy and social commentary ends up, at best, as a guilty pleasure where I had a hard time sorting out the intentional from the unintentional laughs.

Tasteful and gorgeously photographed coming-of-age story.

Though Water Lilies endlessly teases the audience with its sapphic subtext and young female flesh, Sciamma seems most interested in showing how extremely cruel adolescent girls can be to each other.

Variously been described as a thriller, a muckraking exposé and even a satire -- and its refusal to fit neatly into a genre is only part of why it's so utterly disturbing.

If Carrie Bradshaw ever trades her Manolos for sneakers and starts blogging about raising children, I pray she wouldn't be as tiresome as the heroine of Katherine Dieckmann's insufferable comedy Motherhood.

Played by Logan Lerman -- the Zac Efron look-alike who was young George Hamilton in "My One and Only" -- Percy is a Manhattan high-schooler who learns he is a demigod.

Most experienced filmmakers wouldn't even attempt a film that's so blackly funny, that so rapidly shifts genres and tone, and that layers late '80s cultural references so thickly, from "E.T." to Smurfs.

A soggy cannoli of a domestic dramedy.

A marginally funny comedy at best, recycles themes, scenes and even lines from Allen's own old movies - like many of Allen's later efforts.

The most interesting parts of the movie are the long, sexy and well-staged dance sequences, some of them involving a very nimble Duvall.

Unfortunately, the bulk of the three-hour epic is third-rate schmaltz that pays only lip service to history.

Tacky-looking, incoherent, badly acted and hopelessly directed disaster is easily the dullest adventure film of 2000.

Jeff Goldblum is a hoot as Hatosy's pot-smoking shrink, who also happens to be his mom's boyfriend, but Dallas 362 is basically a road movie that doesn't really go anywhere.

Grows on you like kudzu.

Harris can be a brilliant actor, and there are flashes of that here. But he's done in by a script that lacks any subtlety.

No classic like "The Big Sleep," another famously impossible-to-follow Los Angeles thriller. But for those willing to hang on for dear life, Lynch makes it worth their while.

Like its monstrous hero, The Incredible Hulk gets the job done with minimal artistry and a lot of noise.

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

Winslet (Mendes' wife) once again demonstrates why she's one of the best actresses working today.

Gorgeously detailed animated adventure.

The story is also engaging and hip enough to make it a far easier sit for parents. And it's hard not to like a hero who takes public transportation to a showdown with the bad guy.

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.

So udderly mediocre.

It’s only fitfully entertaining as an all-star indie team led again by director Jon Favreau, who gets swallowed up by the same sort of overproduced overkill as “Spider Man 3.”

A loud, coarse and witless family comedy.

A great-looking but torturously slow and often hokey cross between "The Exorcist" and "Dirty Harry."

Demonstrates that sometimes letting subjects and the facts speak for themselves can be quietly devastating.

Uncommonly well-acted and beautifully shot on location in southern India, but it's not exactly riveting.

Well-acted and nicely photographed, and has good action sequences, even if the screenplay (by M'Bala, Jean-Marie Adiaffi and Bertin Akaffou) is simplistic and there are slow stretches.

An impressive supporting cast can't save this painfully unfunny, ham-fisted mockumentary poking fun at reality TV shows.

Among the variations of gags from the original are a threesome involving Harold, Kumar and a giant bag of marijuana.

Much of Finding Amanda doesn't stand up to close scrutiny, but at its best the still-boyish Broderick suggests his most famous character, Ferris Bueller, going through a midlife crisis.

Starts out as a thriller inspired by that city's 2005 Tube and bus bombings but gets bogged down in a family soap opera.

Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke and a host of other notables sing the praises of the estranged siblings, whose work is illustrated by copious film clips.

The film’s cool-looking desaturated look (not unlike “The Road”), plentiful action and Washington’s charismatic gravitas as the taciturn hero make it relatively easy to overlook the pretensions and implausibilities in the script.

A murky, vaguely fact-based melodrama that quickly sinks into the same swamp as such recent De Niro mistakes as "15 Minutes" and "Showtime."

An overstuffed menu from a master chef who's trying way too hard to please himself.

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

You might not want to watch all of "The ABC of Love and Sex Australian Style," "Turkey Shoot" or "The True Story of Eskimo Nell," but the clips on view in "Not Quite Hollywood" are a hoot.

This small gem takes a basically optimistic view about the struggles that generations of immigrants have endured.

The kind of stand-up-and-cheer movie Hollywood is supposed to have forgotten how to make.

Following his triumphs in "The Constant Gardener" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," Fiennes is superb as Todd.

Mostly about extending a Hollywood franchise with ever-diminishing returns.

Smart, funny and ingeniously detailed with terrific vocal teamwork.

Sharper and far more entertaining than most political documentaries.

In execution, this clever idea is far less funny than the original, "Killers From Space," which was directed by W. Lee Wilder, the vastly less talented brother of the great Billy.

It's déjà vu all over again for Aussie actor Guy Pearce, returning to motel rooms in the American Southwest to sort out metaphysical issues in the thriller First Snow, to somewhat less original effect than he did in "Memento."

Not an easy movie to watch, and it's far from perfect - but it does have an artsy integrity and a fascinatingly intense performance by Paul Giamatti.

The script, attributed to Mark Schwahn, Marc Hyman and Jon Zack, is as confused as it is confusing, and the aimless direction by Brian Robbins doesn't help. It was apparently edited with a roulette wheel.

Intermittently brilliant, intermittently hilarious -- and occasionally tedious.

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.

A strained, ultra-predictable and headache-inducing mockumentary.

Penn makes us take the leap required by Kristine Johnson and Jessie Nelson's screenplay -- you end up deeply caring about Sam and Lucy.

Harden and Pantoliano (especially) can be two of the most over-the-top performers in the business, but they don't strike a false note in Canvas - and neither does this heartbreaking movie.

An uninspired recycling of themes that were far more gripping in "The Lion King" and countless other earlier Mouse House classics.

Scott Thomas' reserve as an actor - which probably helped keep her from top stardom after an Oscar nomination for "The English Patient" (1996) - makes her perfect casting for this French film, the auspicious debut of director Philippe Claudel.

It’s often hard to figure out who’s winning, much less care about it. One thing is certain: Nobody is going to be demanding a rematch.

One of the year's worst movies.

Picks up steam when it finally arrives in Cannes just in time to wreak yet more havoc at the big film festival, but getting there is pretty tedious. A little of the wildly mugging Atkinson goes a long way.

Crudely animated, badly dubbed, incomprehensible, boring -- and headache-inducing -- attempt to wring a few more yen and dollars out of a thoroughly spent franchise.

Perhaps the year's most daring and fully realized movie, is a pitch-perfect re-creation of '50s melodramas, showcasing a four-hankie performance by a peroxided Julianne Moore.

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.

Barely watchable, despite the presence of such pros as Michael McKean and Jane Lynch.

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.

There is much more suspense in this sequence than a similar scene in last week's "The Sum of All Fears" -- which wasn't intended to be funny.

Endearingly offbeat romantic comedy with a great meet-cute gimmick.

Doesn't shy from the ugly side, though it's far from the no-holds-barred exposé being touted in the ads.

Solid cast notwithstanding, 10th and Wolf is a generic, direct-to-video-grade gangster movie.

A boring and violent French crime thriller, is the sort of routine potboiler that generally goes straight to video in this country, if it's seen at all.

Gut-bustingly funny.

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

Heck, it's great to have the big guy back.

The two male actors are very good, but Juuso is particularly amusing and touching as the earthy heroine.

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.

Garage Days is fun, but it would have been even more entertaining if Proyas had taken an unplugged approach.