M. E. Russell

With the exception of one long improv riff on a campground basketball court, Williams nicely underplays his role. Unfortunately, Sonnenfeld also underplays his. We should expect more of him.

It's charming, funny, exceedingly well-made and features enough comically thrilling flying-lizard mayhem to cause your child's head to lightly explode.

It's horrible. It's wretched. It's Limburger pickled in castor oil.

Night at the Museum ends up being a pretty fun all-ages comedy -- if you can survive its first 20 minutes.

Taken as a whole -- and it kills me to write this -- it just doesn't add up to much.

Duplicity is perfectly titled: There isn't a second of this smart, twisty, grown-up thriller in which someone isn't lying, cheating or stealing, often from someone they claim to love.

Director Kim Ji-woon creates a funny, fast-moving pastiche of Spielberg, Woo, Leone and George Miller, but it's really a must-see for its three big action set pieces -- which go on for a million years each and become almost hallucinatory.

Imaginary Heroes feels like an endless series of wakes, awkward cocktail conversations and teen house parties, which would be fine if Harris wrote less cartoony dialogue.

The film is flat and false in the exact same way that director Anne Fletcher's last rom-com, "27 Dresses," was flat and false.

Basically "Before Sunrise" for middle-aged people, only with less interesting conversations and a more formulaic construction.

Beautifully acted and accomplishes exactly what writer/director Alan Ball set out to accomplish.

A funny and sincere indie about what happens when an acerbic teen finds herself "in a fat suit I can't take off."

The flashback itself is a romantic dramedy that's far smarter than junk like "27 Dresses." Unfortunately, to enjoy that flashback, you have to ignore two gargantuan idiocies: No sane father would twist his daughter into knots by telling this story. It's full of booze, cigarettes, infidelity and sex with women who aren't Mom.

It's been fascinating to watch the "intellectual" subgenre of the serial-killer movie -- the one where poetic evil geniuses elude the cops while leaving trails of art-directed crime scenes -- run out of ideas and start feeding on itself.

Ends up being one of those heartbreaking movies that gets off to a promising start but never quite creaks to life, despite everyone's obvious best efforts.

This may be the best work we've seen from either actor, which is saying something.

Succeeds only in fits and starts.

Watts is a champ for seeing this through now that she's actually famous.

If you're willing to have your patience tested, Twohy and his cast reward it.

I cared enough about these characters to follow "Exorcism" to tense and occasionally goofy places, even if the setup proved a bit stronger than the payoff.

C.S.A. has a love-it-or-hate-it bite that probably will lead to a few passionate post-screening discussions.

One doesn't want to oversell the film; you could catch it on DVD and regret nothing. But, frankly, in a marketplace that tends toward cranked-up action thrills, it's just nice to watch a level-headed crime movie aimed at actual grown-ups.

I still kind of find myself admiring the actor, and the film. Love Guru is insane and self-indulgent but also fully committed, and there's a surprising undercurrent of earnestness to its philosophy portions.

Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig are adequate leads, but no great actor will be more squandered this year than Jeffrey Wright, who does nothing but speak in vast paragraph blocks of exposition while looking haggard and bored.

If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like.

It's a shame The Matador isn't a better movie, because this semi-dark comedy contains one great, cackling, self-loathing performance by Pierce Brosnan.

The movie starts out as a potboiler with a troubling character arc; unfortunately, it ends up becoming a goofy, story-overwhelming Rube Goldberg contraption that would make the producers of the "Saw" series blush.

At one point during the big race, the kids get passed at close range by a team of pros so seasoned, they wrote the navigation software the kids use. I was begging the camera crew to follow them.