Maitland McDonagh

What's most disappointing is the thoroughly cliched story.

The film rings so consistently false that it's more likely to induce snickers and eye-rolling.

Sentimental, formulaic, predictable and shamelessly manipulative, Marcos Carnevale’s tale of late-life love is also genuinely heartbreaking and heartening.

Ultimately, the more intensely you buy into the notion that golf is a complex metaphor for the human condition, the more susceptible you'll be to the film's insipid blandishments.

A caper comedy without chemistry is just a bunch of waiting around for something to get stolen.

Less a history of a specialty that scarcely existed before the '70s -- men habitually donned wigs and dresses to double for women -- than a portrait of two women, one beginning her career and the other in the twilight of hers.

The result is handsome and logical, but missing the spark that would make it thrilling.

The weighty themes of loss, regret and abdication of personal responsibility are undermined by the reverential use of baseball as a symbol of mankind's potential for selfless greatness.

First-time writer-director Rian Johnson's gimmick is that his SoCal teens talk like film-noir yeggs and dames, slinging hard-boiled shade and spitting out terse, rat-a-tat dialogue peppered with slang that was yesterday's news 40 years before they were born. But the result is, against all odds, marvelously entertaining.

It fails utterly as a horror picture, although it delivers plenty of PG-13-rated flesh and unintentional laughs.

Writer-director Henry LeRoy Finch's ripely overwrought exercise in Southern Gothic psychodrama, which happens to unfold in a picturesquely decaying house in Maine.

A slicked up, perfectly watchable update of a movie that was just about perfect on its own bleakly seedy terms.

The look is rough, but Bujalski's talent is evident.

Hokey, slow-moving thriller.

This tale may well weave a more compelling spell on the page; onscreen it's simply ponderous.

Smacks of a certain kind of TV movie filled with pious uplift, even as it makes token concessions to contemporary lifestyles.

Watching this string of sketches about small town wackos is like channel surfing a heavy sitcom zone.

The film's heart is Magdiel and the modest dreams that get him through the day but may also be the death of him.

Fincher gets it all right, and Donovan's hippie-dippy "Hurdy Gurdy Man," which bookends the story, has never sounded so hauntingly menacing.

A romantic comedy whose sour take on romance never manages to be comic.

The air of low-budget Eurotrash is unmistakable. Almost everybody has an unidentifiable accent.

Funny, thought-provoking and, yes, touching.

The result is slick, mainstream entertainment with just enough surprises that you don't have to feel like a fool for enjoying it.

Lacks the novel's drier-than-dry bite, but compensates with a strong ensemble cast and a series of glamorous party sequences in which the decor has at least as much depth as the guests.

Its high-definition video images -- are coated with a convincing sheen of disgust, and Huston's performance is riveting.

Shattering in its own quiet way.

Beautifully edited and, appropriately, the sound is unusually well recorded and produced.

The film looks great, but there's nothing under the high-gloss veneer.

The film's tone is hard to pin down, especially with the actors dubbed flatly into English.

This is less a movie than a lecture. Perhaps Lee simply should have made a documentary.

It works its gilded butt off to give you your money's worth.

The action is ridiculously overwrought, a state-of-the-art combination of CGI wizardry and Hong Kong-style wirework so removed from the laws of physical reality that it might as well be animated.

Both genuinely funny and authentically horrifying, it puts the average horror comedy to shame.

There's no downside to a reminder that not every beefy, God-talking sheriff is a bigoted cracker, and Kraus' short, no-frills documentary is a model of fly-on-the-wall filmmaking.

Lasse Hallstrom's leisurely drama about remorse, forgiveness and spiritual healing is a film of big emotions and ferociously small gestures.

A hip-hop reimagining of "The Great Gatsby" that fails both as an update of F. Scott Fitzgerald's dissection of American aspirations and class barriers and on its own boorish terms.

Most of the extreme Trek fans it features are obsessed in a big way, and if they were your children you'd probably be thinking therapy.

Herzfeld's sophomore movie is one long howl of rage over the relationship between criminals, journalists and thrill-hungry audiences.

While it doesn't miss a cliche, it also invests every one with vigorous conviction.

Before it goes down in a soggy mess of scary movie cliches and insultingly stupid plot contrivances, director and co-writer Nick Willing's adaptation of Madison Smartt Bell's novel Dr. Sleep gets in some good, seriously creepy licks.

Eastwood's slow-building story of loss and deliverance is a fine, understated piece of storytelling that earns every emotional body blow it lands.

As meticulously deranged as its paranoid protagonist.

The film's measured pace may put off impatient viewers, but the brilliantly underplayed ending is worth the wait.

Roberts fans will, of course, be delighted to see her in a role that plays to all her strengths -- fresh-faced looks, charming gangliness, air of infinite approachability -- and neatly sidesteps her glaring inability to act by having her more or less play herself.

With his spidery fingers and his velvet eyes, the lean, languid Snoop Dogg was born to be an undead player, and clearly relishes the role of Jimmy Bones.

Edward Zwick brings unimpeachable good intentions to his film about the bloody underbelly of the international diamond trade, but when social conscience jockeys for attention with movie-star glamour, glamour always wins. The result is a rip-snorting adventure set against the backdrop of African misery.

This film got made because Seinfeld is famous, but it's still hard not to wish the filmmakers had devoted a couple of years to following Adams instead. The guy's such a throbbing bundle of arrogance, raw nerves and self-destructive insecurity that you can see the flame-out coming.

Malkovich pulls out all the gaudy stops.

No two ways about it: The screenplay is derivative. But the location adds a little novelty to the standard-issue running and screaming.

An enthralling, suspenseful documentary about spelling bees.

The film's gotcha! payoff doesn't justify the gloomy journey.

Anyone looking for the comfort in a tense thriller ending in a satisfying restoration of order and psychological security will be bitterly disappointed, but Haneke isn't in the business of encouraging comforting illusions.

Everyone involved obviously had a blast, but in the end this is a one-joke movie, and the joke is stretched too thin.

It's a must-see for horror buffs and anime fans; and while it lacks the haunting thematic underpinnings of "Blood The Last Vampire," -- it's a more satisfying movie-going experience.

Though screenwriter Dianne Houston spent time observing the real-life Dulaine, her screenplay is a showcase for triumph-of-the-underdog sports-movie cliches and coming-of-age-through-adversity moral lessons.

Filmmaker Barry Hershey's impressionistic documentary about the casting process is the antidote to years of comic "audition montages," those guaranteed laugh-getting freak-show parades of no-talents mangling monologues and pulling nutty stunts in hopes of standing out from the crowd.

The film's most fully realized performance is Chris Cooper's.

First-time feature filmmaker Oliver Hirschbiegel maintains a riveting sense of simmering brutality.

A perverse mixed-martial arts film in which talk trumps action.

It's a gee-whiz kiddie movie imagined by pervy grown-ups who get a giggle out of mixing bloodless fight scenes with close-ups of rubber-wrapped butts and baskets.

The result is a beguiling mix of the familiar and the exotic, vivid proof that a good story can withstand endless variations without losing its fundamental vitality.

Robles and Hidalgo ring enough changes on a stock situation that you're never sure where it's going.

Anderson is a master of detail, from the film's ubiquitous fish motif to the elaborate carnival set piece that unfolds inside the claustrophobic confines of a spook-house ride called "Route 666."

Music video-trained director Francis Lawrence whips up a witch's brew of gray-on-gray atmosphere, but for all the end-of-the-world mumbo jumbo, nothing much ever seems to be at stake.

This is absolutely not a film for all tastes, but it's a masterpiece of pitiless power whose audacious, ambiguous climax strikes a note of insane romanticism as haunting as it is perverse.

In the end it's all seductive surface and no substance, but Lough has a bold eye and a vivid sense of uniquely urban beauty.

Suffers from an excess of material crammed into too little screen time. There's so much story that the characters get short shrift; you have to wonder, for example, what became of Siddalee's three siblings.

Catches you with a creepy sucker punch.

While the film isn't entirely amateurish -- shots are cut together and the cinematography is professional if not precisely stylish -- the story feels as though large pieces are missing and the characters behave so inconsistently that there's zero incentive to care about their tribulations.

The film's underlying themes dovetail efficiently with the action but don't generate the emotional gut punch the movie needs; overall it feels padded and logy.

The films of writer/director Francis Veber are a bracing reminder that French comedies can be every bit as broad, unsophisticated and cliched as their American counterparts.

A thoroughly respectable affair: Your high school English teacher would approve, and parts are terrifically enjoyable.

Delivers plenty of sharply funny moments.

Actor-turned-director Andrey Zvyagintsev's feature debut is haunted by an elusive past and suffused with dread about the future, and it's all suggestion without explanation.

For the first hour director Arau and his co-writer and wife, actress Arizmendi, negotiate the story's tricky mix of comedy, social satire and science fiction with surprising aplomb.

It features truly monstrous bogeymen in the Reavers, cannibalistic renegades who, legend has it, went to the edge of the universe and were driven mad by the abyss.

Johnny Depp's coruscating, rigorously uningratiating performance as debauched, self-destructive 17th-century aristocrat John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, is the glue that doesn't quite hold together first-time director Laurence Dunmore's adaptation of Stephen Jeffreys' 1994 play.

Despite its scant 48-minute running time (which many viewers will find frustrating), the film sets up a provocative equation between vampirism and American involvement in Asia.

Feels hokey, generic and dated.

Driven by sheer enthusiam (much of it for the worst excesses of Hollywood filmmaking), which makes it fun to watch in spite of its fundamental ridiculousness.

The film's poky pacing is a liability -- the setup takes an awfully long time.

Not funny at all.

The voice-over narration is obvious, but overall the message is integrated into an unusual story that's enhanced by Liberato's and Fulton's appealing performances as the youngsters who see through their elders' lies and help right a terrible wrong.

An utterly formulaic, teen-oriented romance whose greatest asset is charming leads Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas.

The satire is broad and easy, while the romance is thoroughly unconvincing.

Epic, meticulously researched and ultimately disappointing, Martin Scorsese's bloody valentine to the birth of his beloved city is less than the sum of its parts.

So clotted with back story that the Romeo and Juliet-style romance between a warrior vampire and a reluctant werewolf never has a chance to breath, Len Wiseman's revisionist horror tale is all look and no bite.

Comprehensive and reverential.

This shotgun marriage of coarse laughs and low-rent action cliches is, of course, utterly predictable: Cutting-edge comedy isn't lurking under the corpses of old TV shows.

None of this is especially funny, nor is it particularly exhilarating; at best it's throwaway entertainment.

Cocaine Angel may be a fine counterpoint to glammy cocaine-scare films like "Less Than Zero" (1987) and "Blow" (2001), but it comes on so strong it risks being dismissed along with the "this is your brain on drugs" school of dope-scare PSAs.

Though his film is breathtakingly art-directed, Greenaway wallows in epater le bourgeois nastiness -- his inner naughty child could use a good paddling.

And while it was always clear that Lucas cared more about special effects than acting, here his lack of interest has produced phenomenally wooden performances from newcomers and veterans alike: Only the imperious Christopher Lee, as baleful Count Dooku, emerges unscathed.

The trouble with director and co-writer Laetitia Colombani's debut feature is that the story isn't really interesting enough to be told twice, let alone dragged out another 20 minutes after that.

A slack combination of faith-based inspiration and broad 'hood comedy.

Formulaic but performed with some verve.

The horror of LaBute's articulate, self-deluded characters is that they're both sharply drawn and just vague enough that you can insert face here.

Contrived, meandering, clichéd and just plain preposterous.

The soundtrack, which ranges from Johnny Cash to Serge Gainsbourg to the Wu-Tang Clan, is admirably eclectic but can't be said to pull things together.

British documentarian Peter Bate frames a mix of archival materials and re-creations with a "trial" at which Leopold listens to testimony against him from within a wood-and-glass booth, like Nazi Adolf Eichmann at Nuremberg.

Indie director Bezucha has held on to just enough individuality to breathe a little life into the cliches.

Abel Ferrara's gift for getting actors to dredge up the ugliest muck in their souls and bare it onscreen is used to strong effect in this psychological thriller.

If the ending isn't conventionally happy, it's certainly deeply satisfying.

The bar scenes are the only reason to sit through this jello shot of a movie.

They're frank, funny, resilient and altogether captivating.

It's a great place to visit, even if you wouldn't want to live there.

There's no meat on this film's borrowed bones: They're polished to an exquisitely tasteful shine, but efforts to class up exploitation are pointless.

Everyone involved seems to have been operating from the presumption that gross and blasphemous equals hilarious. Would that it did.

Polished but oddly lifeless heist thriller.

The same super-heated visual imagination that made Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" such a darkly thrilling delight is very much in evidence in his sequel to "Hellboy." It's a shame that it's at the service of such a blandly conventional story.

For a mountain of muscle [The Rock]'s a surprisingly charming screen presence. And his low-key appeal helps nudge Peter Berg's derivative but good-natured light action picture in the direction of breezy entertainment, rather than painfully noisy macho posturing.

Engrossing documentary about the life and times of publisher Barney Rosset, who spent much of his career advancing the cause of free expression, is a flawless match of style and subject.

From her speech patterns to her body language, Roberts's performance is wrong for the period.

Moore's desperate need for attention is irritating, but it's also his strength as a gadfly; it drives him to needle sacred cows and received wisdom that would otherwise go unchallenged.

Though there's some trashy fun to be had in the film's first half, this cynical sequel -- devolves into space junk even faster than the unfortunate Ross.

Ultimately, the material is so familiar that it's hard to work up any enthusiasm for another trip though the seamy underside of glittering gaming life.

Increasingly preposterous, thoroughly credibility-straining escapades.

Kapadia's intelligent, nuanced performance is the film's highlight, balanced by Khanna's portrayal of Nashaad, who could easily be a patronizing, chauvinist caricature.

But the movie is long and didactic, undermined by the faintly pious air of an educational slide show.

A lightweight parody of the porn industry and daytime talk shows that has the look and feel of a middling direct-to-video feature.

Luis Orjuela's sweet, slight comedy is about a middle-class Colombian family and the huge, cherry-red Chevrolet Bel-Air convertible that conveys them through several years worth of life's little dramas.

Too long and its tone is disconcertingly uneven, but Perry never betrays or condescends to his characters.

Only die-hard and undemanding Chan fans need apply.

As a document of the ever-mutable musician's signature persona, a wraithlike androgyne with a head full of apocalyptic dreams, it's fascinating.

For all its crudeness, Phillips' tale of men behaving badly is remarkably toothless.

Culkin's Alig has the face of a debauched cherub, but the former child star never quite captures the charisma everyone swears was an essential component in Alig's success. Green's St. James steals the picture out from under him (poetic justice of a sort), and the supporting cast is nothing short of amazing.

Director Jesse Peretz, onetime bassist for The Lemonheads, cut his teeth on music videos and appears to have embraced the austere aesthetics of Dogme 95 filmmakers without comprehending that an interesting story and well-developed characters are supposed to be part of the package.

It's not the bomb on the plane that scuttles this film: It's the mugging, ham-fisted direction and total absence of comic timing.

This being a Michael Moore film, the filmmaker is as enraging as the subject: His belligerent court-jester shtick wears thin fast and undermines the segments on universal health-care systems in Canada, the U.K., France and Cuba.

As the mismatched interrogators, Travolta and Nielson seem to be in two different and incompatible movies.

This efficient but soulless funhouse ride eschews suspense in favor of frantic scrambling from disturbing specters, like the naked female ghost who lurks around bloody bathtubs.

Tim Burton's grand guignol fantasy transforms Stephen Sondheim's 1979 musical-theater piece into a cheerfully gothic morality tale.

This bare-bones plot is merely an excuse to string together a series of gross-out jokes involving bodily fluids, private parts, food and genetic deformities.

Chilly, muted and refreshingly free of cheap shocks, this stylish psychological horror tale is greatly enhanced by subtle (acting) performances.

Ejiofor's subtle, infinitely humane performance is the invisible glue that holds everything together and Chris Menges's darkly shimmering cinematography lends the story a gritty, coolly seductive glamour.

Duvall at his worst is still an accomplished performer; Pedraza is a modern-day Ali McGraw, lithe and beautiful but no kind of actress. For all her fluidity on the dance floor, she's a dead weight who drags the film down.

A delirious fever dream of pulp-western conventions by way of 1950s Hollywood melodrama, Thai filmmaker Wisit Sasanatieng surreal oddity unfolds in heavily manipulated colors so rich they seem ready to leap off the screen, punctuated by spasms of over-ripe dialogue, floridly dramatic songs and maniacal villainous laughter.

The result is gorgeous, if ultimately shallow -- much like Simone herself.

The storytelling is jerky (perhaps in part because the running time was trimmed from 185 to 142 minutes for U.S. release) and character development takes a backseat to a breathless rush through battles, assassinations and dynastic plotting.

The costumes are phenomenal, the set design ravishing and the sadistic inventiveness extraordinary.

Cross an episode of "Friends" with an issue-of-the-week movie about gay parenthood and you have this glossy vanity project.

Depending on your taste, either much hilarity or a tedious barrage of tasteless, juvenile pranking ensues. Trust your instincts.

Douglas and Sutherland do crackling hostility with devilish glee, and the fireworks are nothing if not entertaining.

There's nothing subtle about Pelegri and Harari's culture-clash romp, but it's sometimes frantically funny; that it's thoroughly forgettable is an issue only if you expect it to do more than poke easy fun at the thorny issues it raises.

Shot in gloomy shades of gray, this earnest but banal story about the legacy of bad parenting strands fine actors in a contrived situation and lets them squirm.

Dithery, nattering and a bit long for such a conspicuously airy trifle.

The acting is top-notch and some scenes are authentically well-observed.

The outtakes that accompany the end credits suggest that making the movie was a blast; it's a shame the same can't be said for watching it.

More isn't always better; everything feels slightly forced, and the funny bits -- make no mistake, there are several -- are all but lost in the noise.

Overall it's a harmless disappointment, hampered by the thin story and a surprisingly dreary looking video-game setting, heavy on the floating platforms, cartoony future-cityscapes and goofy gadgetry.

Burnett and Lee's graceful, sympathetic documentary focuses on participants who embody Burning Man's ideals without being blind to the opportunists and party animals it inevitably attracts.

There's a thin line between fable and twaddle, and this feel-good trifle veers dangerously close to the latter.

It can hardly help but outrage at least some of the people some of the time.

The sci-fi wonders, including an army of shuddering robo-soldiers and one-man, steam-powered bombers with delicate wood-and-linen wings, are truly marvelous and go a long way toward making up for the film's erratic pacing.

As for first-time feature director Mark Piznarski, he should be cited for excessive use of slow motion, sun-dappled trees and golden light; one more cliche violation and his license to direct would be forfeit.

With its brisk pace, breezy dialogue and gently jaundiced view of the rites of filmmaking, this is one of Jaglom's most accessible and genuinely enjoyable films.

For the first time, Allen's trademark shtick sounds less like the anxious kvetching of an endearingly neurotic New Yorker and more like the ramblings of a tired, elderly man fumbling for the right words.

Muddled tale of demonic hijinks and devil worship. It's terrible.

The person who can resist a formerly homeless senior citizen gradually restored to sufficient stability to the degree that he can take in his own "castaway cat" is hard-hearted indeed.

Pearce can sing, but Drum's trademark "speaking out" -- free-associative ramblings that recall Jim Morrison of the Doors at his most embarrassingly pretentious -- falls far short of the hypnotic effect Tyler describes.

Blanchett's insouciant but steely performance alone makes the film worth watching, but it's Brenda Fricker's quietly underplayed turn as Guerin's mother that makes your throat tighten.

If ever anyone earned the title "diva," it was the late singer Amalia Rodrigues.

While Kudlacek lets some of the elder statesmen ramble, their recollections are a vivid, firsthand window into a bygone era of American art.

It aspires to greater moral ambiguity than the average crime thriller, and if it doesn't entirely succeed it nevertheless avoids the lazy moral bankruptcy of movies like "Lethal Weapon 4."

An excruciating series of gags aimed at kids old enough to think it's funny when a grown-up acts like a small child.

The payoff fizzles, but the buildup is intriguing until it topples under its own weight.

The movie is simultaneously soft and icky; the gross-out effects are grafted onto a sub-"Tales from the Crypt" ghost story that never scares up any serious chills.

The character relationships are solid and there's blessed little in the way of smug, smart talk

Colorful and deceptively buoyant until it suddenly pulls the rug out from under you.

Its talky, sluggish script is so bereft of thrills -- intellectual or otherwise -- that even the film's one masterfully staged sequence... falls flat.

In stripping her potentially lurid material of salacious appeal, Martel also makes it murky and oddly arid, a mind-numbing exercise rather than an experience.

The movie's selling point is Schneider acting goofy, chewing on worms, making goo-goo eyes at a she-goat and licking his private parts.

The downside is that it all feels like a big in-joke, and you're not in on it.

And if the film's 11th-hour CGI effects aren't entirely convincing, the notion that oil itself is haunted by the restless spirit of every once-living thing that time reduced and mingled into the earth's black blood throws off a primordial chill.

If only the wit weren't overwhelmed by lame jokes about body parts, functions and fluids.

Sentimental and predictable, Meily's sweet-natured feature-film debut was hugely popular in the Philippines; its day-to-day details will be exotic to non-Filipino audiences but the characters' dilemmas are couched in the universal language of sitcom complications and fortuitous resolutions.

A reductive spook show in which a bunch of puny humans get chased around by scary monsters.

The "Bullet" is an amusement-park roller coaster, and the title is a ham-fisted metaphor for facing your fears.

Froemke and Dickson's film opens a window onto rural poverty so dire it's almost inconceivable that it exists in 21st-century America.

It's the rare action picture whose adrenaline-driven thrills neither overshadow the characters nor degenerate into cartoonish preposterousness.

Too elliptical to be convincing.

Bar-Lev also explores the freakish popular appeal of child prodigies, the family dynamics that come into play when a child's celebrity and earning capacity overshadows the adults', and the remarkably conflicted and contradictory admissions drawn from Brunelli about Marla's work.

Shot on location in Manhattan, the film is steeped in understated New York City ambiance and discreetly tinted by Jeffrey M. Taylor's subtle score.

The parade of eccentrics never ends, and Stone's near-miraculous achievement is to drain the life right out of material so sordid you'd think it couldn't help but be interesting. A must to avoid.

Witless farce.

Hopkins and Rock are a surprisingly good mix; Hopkins actually underplays his role as a company man with a barely acknowledged conscience, while Rock's manic impulses aren't allowed to run riot.

Like most contemporary romantic comedies, the film's plot works only if you accept that everyone behaves like a complete and utter idiot at all times.

A sweet-natured ode to rave culture saddled with a ridiculously clichéd plot line.

Unfortunately, the result is little more than a glossy parlor trick, a stripped-to-the-bone "Of Human Bondage" recast with two women.

More music and less melodrama would serve audiences better.

While the cast is uniformly committed, some are able to make more of the material than others.

The story is compelling enough that even glib phrases like "healing through hip-hop" can't drag it down.

It aspires to a documentary realism and keeps the focus on the characters at all times. Though the results can't really be called enjoyable, the intensity that bleeds off the screen is undeniably effective.

Though the material is familiar, Sciamma has a light touch and avoids many teen-movie cliches.

Affleck's gloomy, one-note performance exacerbates the problem, but the stellar supporting cast helps compensate.

So inconsequential that it starts evaporating from memory the minute it's over.

The story isn't much -- the ever-evolving aliens are better served by the cute-but-icky effects than the simplistic script -- but it skims along on the cast's chemistry.

The first full-fledged Indian musical coproduced and distributed by a major Hollywood studio, this fanciful love story takes its unlikely inspiration from Fyodor Dostoevsky's short story "White Nights."

Essentially an extended trailer for the 2008 Cartoon Network animated series.

Boursinhac and Bibi Naceri throw all the usual elements into the pot: Economic inequality, ethnic tensions, feverish family ties and the titular criminal code, which everyone invokes and everyone agrees is a load of claptrap.

Orenna, Thornton and Belton deliver strong, surprisingly subtle performances that make the modest fireworks genuinely engaging.

It's seldom boring and always beautifully photographed, but it's also considerably less than satisfying, perhaps because its internal logic never comes into focus.

While this cheerful film has nothing particularly new to say about the ties that hold family members together even when they're driving each other crazy, it's a pleasure to watch such a talented ensemble at work.

Situations don't come much more claustrophobic, and if the payoff doesn't quite live up to the build-up, the film is still an enjoyable exercise in claustrophobic suspense.

But for all the sound, fury and spectacle, the film feels vaguely hollow and unsatisfying.

Who knew the rock 'n' roll life could be so mild?

It's an amiable enough picture, and genuinely insightful about the emotional appeal of devoted fandom.

Fergus' thriller benefits from Pearce's high-strung performance and the stark New Mexico landscapes, but the story is familiar and the pacing much too measured for a slight tale of ineluctable fate.

For what could easily have been a slickly vulgar variation on "American Pie" or "Porky's", this libidinous comedy explores some unusually complicated territory, and benefits greatly from Verdú's unpredictable performance as Luisa.

The film is dull going, even for the pre-adolescents at whom it's aimed, and feels far longer than it actually is.

It's earnest, well-intentioned and scrupulously even-handed, in the style of made-for-TV problem movies.

Despite the absence of dialogue -- the mice squeak and the oak creatures caw like ravens -- Cegavske imbues her scrappy little creatures with disturbingly complex personalities. And if the tale's moral is less than clear, its haunting images speak directly to some dark, preverbal corner of the heart.

Slight and pleasantly predictable film coasts along on the considerable charms of its cast and exotic setting.

Hugely entertaining.

The film is meticulously crafted but frustratingly meaningless.

Palindromes read the same way backward and forward, and Todd Solondz' sour tale ends where it begins.

For all the updated riffs and personal noodling, it's best when it doesn't stray too far from the original material.

Were there more meat on the bones of this fable about hypocrisy and spiritual hollowness, Marsh's pacing might seem deliberate rather then merely slow.

Insipid, formulaic and suitable for the dumbed-down sensibilities of lowest-common-denominator couch potatoes.

Matheson's bitterly ironic ending -- which pivots on the nature of Neville's legend -- is gutted and turned into formulaic pap.

Sleek, pointless action picture.

Portabella has no interest in conventional biography -- it's hard not to suspect that he included the tale of Felix Mendelsson (Daniel Ligorio) discovering the score for the "St. Matthew Passion" wrapping a meat delivery precisely BECAUSE it's probably apocryphal.

Most of the scenes fall flatter than a lead soufflé, and the film's sight gags -- Andy dumping campers' bodies by the roadside, Gene humping the refrigerator -- are outrageous without actually being funny.

Margaret Brown's documentary is actually an examination of the racial divide in a city that claims there is none.

His epic reworking of their lurid conventions proved so long that it was divided into two parts, and this one ends on a hell of a cliff-hanger.

Walks a thin line between refreshing irreverence and shameless exploitation of offensive gay stereotypes.

Affleck is no more convincing as a flesh-and-blood action than as a superbrain, Thurman is cruelly photographed and director Woo appears to be imitating his own worst work.

Small children should be delighted by the menagerie of chatty critters, but their parents may be less than thrilled by what the animals have to say.

The aliens, meanwhile, are a fabulously nasty lot of slimy, tentacled, malevolent telepaths, but all their superior technology is no match for our red, white and blue ingenuity. Take that, space bullies!

Funny, eye-opening and ultimately very moving portrait by director Kirby Dick.

For most of its running time, this lunatic euro-thriller is creepy, stylish and occasionally suspenseful.

The script recycles clichés that go back to 1937'S "Dead End," the performances are one-note, and the whole thing has the flat, bright look of a TV cop show.

Eckhart is dazzling as a born phony.

Hauser and Miles go for broke, lobbing their every comic idea at the screen. Some work better than others, and overall tomfoolery like this is a matter of taste.

The result is strictly for those who like their comic-book movies short and stupid.

Jeremy Irons, giving what is, hands down, the worst performance of his career.

Often rings painfully true, but would have benefited from judicious editing.

It's so cool all the life has drained away, leaving nothing behind but a faint whiff of attitude.

(Salerno-Sonnenberg's) determination and resilience should speak to a broader audience.

Film's real sticky wicket is that the bad guys not only threaten to nuke a major American city but do it — a conceit that might have been more amusing before terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center using hijacked commercial jets. Witnesses said the WTC attack looked like a movie; they didn't say it was a movie they wanted to see.

It's ripe for an American remake, given the popularity of reality TV shows like "My Super Sweet 16" and "Bridezillas," but it's hard to imagine a better cast than this ensemble.

Though Estevez's achievement doesn't quite live up to his ambitions -- the climax of Altman's "Nashville" (1975) evokes the same brutal loss of innocence to more shattering effect -- it still contains enough powerful moments to balance the weaker sections.

This candy-colored animated fable is an awkward mix of corny bee puns, clever sight gags, kid-friendly action, adult-centric workplace angst and Seinfeld's distinctive navel-gazing wit. And what's up with those four-legged bees?

An excellent introduction to the subject, and a movie buff's delight.

The movie's tone fluctuates wildly, suggesting that no one was exactly sure what kind of movie they were making.

Breezy and eminently watchable.

A huge hit in France, this ensemble drama revolves around two very different social groups whose encounters with each other change several lives in surprising ways.

A behind-the-scenes documentary that manages to be unabashedly sympathetic without being a puff piece.

But it's also old-fashioned family drama that invites audience participation ("Don't you go making eyes at your cousin's husband, you little slut!"), and is surprisingly satisfying, in a gooey kind of way -- like macaroni and cheese or peach cobbler, perhaps.

Director Curtis Hanson keeps the hugely complicated story zooming along the boulevard of broken dreams without losing sight of the details that make the trip worthwhile.

Embry and first-time actress Sparks have charming chemistry, but Christopher's slight screenplay wears out its welcome long before the film - which runs a scant 80 minutes - is over.

This labored farce relies on an unpleasant collection of stereotypes for its comic effects, and Janger is a singularly unappealing leading man.

The film delivers what it promises: A look at the "wild ride" that ensues when brash young men set out to conquer the online world with laptops, cell phones and sketchy business plans.

Clearly a labor of love and a call to action, but it's undermined by the sheer volume of topics it tackles in addition to the main subject.

The bones of a great Western remain barely visible under the layer of mush he and screenwriter Ken Kaufman smooth over them, reminders of the viciously memorable film that might have been.

The result is often quite funny, without ever managing to say anything especially new or perceptive about fame and the culture of celebrity.

Caustic and despairing, Shrader's film lacks the delicate beauty of Atom Agoyan's "Sweet Hereafter," but has just as much bitter power.

The only famous person in the film, actor Peter Coyote, is an eloquent spokesman, but he was only a visitor to Black Bear; the stars are the full-timers, and their willingness to share their rich and sometimes painful memories is captivating.

It's sometimes wrenching to watch, but it's too gripping to turn away from.

This dark comedy of addiction, delusion and humor as a weapon marks the feature directing debut of veteran writer Peter Tolan.

Cheerfully gross, deliberately retro horror picture pays tongue-in-cheek homage to the kind of genre movies Charles Band and Roger Corman's companies turned out in the 1980s.

Though Hearst is the hook, Stone's unwavering focus is on the heady mix of social and personal dynamics that spawned the SLA.