Maitland McDonagh

Though occasionally enlivened by fanciful sequences suggesting the surreal power of Kahlo's vivid inner life, it's often mired in the mechanical accretion of incidents that blights most biographical films.

Its imagery is never less than breathtakingly beautiful, and is occasionally truly awesome

Even the dramatic heavy hitters, who include Cox, Gleeson, O'Toole and Julie Christie, as Achilles' mother, are powerless in the face of Pitt's yawning hollowness.

Things quickly degenerate into a series of juvenile jokes about flatulence and bosoms, and by the end the cast is reduced to frantically manhandling a corpse for yucks. Not funny.

Even by the debased standards of preachy sports movies aimed at kids, this is pabulum.

The city looks breathtakingly lovely, the movie's Brazilian characters are charming and filled with joie de vivre, and using excerpts would take care of the fact that the pacing's a bit sluggish for such fluffy material.

The melancholy joke - if you can call it that - is that the pall of global mediocrity has erased national differences and turned women like Tamiko and Amanda into ghosts drifting through their own lives.

The film's tone - a mix of childlike directness, twee whimsy and arty sentimentality - is a matter of taste.

If there's a gay cliche who doesn't flounce through this feel-good German comedy, he must have been out of town when the casting call went out, but its fundamental good nature is tough to resist.

It's hard to tell whether Hyams' subjects are exceptionally nice guys or whether there's an excess of decency on the PBR circuit, but if even one were more conspicuously flawed, the film might be more compelling.

Sweet, goofy story.

Serrau effortlessly navigates the tricky transition from ruefully comic chick flick to gritty crime picture.

Ultimately, despite striving mightily to give everyone a fair shake, the film kindled the ire of conservative Christians and Muslims anyway.

Ironically, Faris' Samantha is the most convincing personality in the mix: She's a grotesque caricature of Courtney Love by way of Nancy Spungen, a vulgar, selfish monster of unbridled id, but you always know where she's coming from.

Like "Secret Things," the film is ultimately infuriating, subtle, self-indulgent, astute and disingenuous, which makes for great -- if divisive -- conversation.

Though glossy and smoothly directed, this limp concoction has all the sparkle of flat champagne.

Puerile, gross and pandering to the lowest impulses of teenage boys.

Yes, the story is pure formula, though given less twinkle and lip gloss than Hollywood would have brought to bear on it; the film is so remake-friendly you can cast it in your head.

This is pure big-budget formula filmmaking.

The stepping is terrific and the climactic sequence, a knowing nod to the infamous Bollywood "wet sari" number, is a knock out. But the united colors of we-can-overcome cuties, predictable class conflicts and sanitized keeping-it-real bluster bring the story's intensely formulaic nature into the.

Sweet-natured charmer in its own right.

D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus's record of the event is an invaluable document, its technical limitations notwithstanding.

The story is simple enough for young children to follow, and the computer-animated images are both bright and surprisingly complex. Adults won't find the action heart-stopping.

It's familiar, undemanding and not as bad as it could have been, but you can't help thinking that somewhere else, there's a real party going on.

Painfully cliched. The music is throbbing and the leads are cute, but there's nothing here viewers haven't seen before.

Anderson strikes a near flawless balance between looseness and structure, and indulges the occasional flight of cinematic fancy without undermining the movie's emotional integrity.

The actors -- especially Klein and Bernthal -- deliver startlingly powerful performances.

The movie's gossamer-thin plot, padded with dream sequences and flashbacks to scenes you saw less than an hour earlier, exists only as an excuse for obvious homages to better films, stunt casting...and what pass for clever remarks in circles unfamiliar with real wit.