Megan Lehmann

An amusing side dish to the sober political documentaries flooding the art houses, The Yes Men effectively uses high farce to mock the status quo as a way of questioning it.

Very funny. It's also heartbreakingly sad.

The feel-good finale -- an ending even less in doubt than that of the most predictable Hollywood fare -- is as rousing as you'd hope and the fast-paced, on-ice action is satisfyingly authentic.

Presumably, Deville wants to show life returning to normal after WWII, but in the context of this inert movie, "normal" equals "tedious."

A tour de force that is weird, wacky and wonderful.

Behind the glitz, Hollywood is sordid and disgusting. Quelle surprise!

A fanciful little indie brimming with emo music and curious little vignettes, marks a self-conscious but very promising debut for "Scrubs" star Zach Braff.

A worthy addition to the cinematic canon, which, at last count, numbered 52 different versions.

Paints a vivid portrait of a compelling young man but, perhaps inevitably, goes overboard on the deification.

Keaton's overamped girlishness, and the adolescent shenanigans she engages in, make a mockery of this overlong romantic comedy's stance as a celebration of mature love.

Big crashes, lithe women and roiling testosterone, not to mention the addition of The Rock as a fire-and-brimstone federal agent – there's plenty to pull in the (mostly) young male audience.

If it weren't for the estrogen-fueled action scenes -- choreographed by director Cory Yuen with wit and style -- So Close would be as disposable as the shampoo ad it all too often resembles.

Its "I see dead people" premise is shopworn, but Hong Kong brothers Oxide and Danny Pang manage to deliver real skin-prickling jolts with their minimalist horror film.

An energetic, feel-good blend of comedy, romance and benign drama -- with a side dish of social commentary -- that works despite its strict adherence to the culture clash/generation gap formula.

The concert footage is stirring, the recording sessions are intriguing, and -- on the way to striking a blow for artistic integrity -- this quality band may pick up new admirers.

At once, a joyful celebration of female friendship and an unusually honest look at newly responsible young women wistfully saying goodbye to the dreams of their youth.

If you like your language blue and your humor coarse, Margaret Cho is for you.

Ferrell's manic, overgrown-kid energy sweeps all before it, announcing him - after his standout turn in "Old School" - as a major leading-man talent who can charm as well as amuse.

Indie hipster Jarmusch's distinctive brand of effortless cool and quirky humor percolate through each of 11 vignettes, all shot fairly statically in crisp, aesthetically pleasing black and white.

A good-looking, if imperfectly plotted, coming-of-age feature -- that doesn't quite manage to sidestep the clichéd sport-as-metaphor-for-life trap.

Walking a tightrope between high farce and emotional truth, writer-director Gabriele Muccino's breathlessly paced Italian comedy The Last Kiss manages to stay just this side of melodrama.

A weird hybrid of cloning thriller and futuristic love story, with hints of "The Godfather" and "Ice Castles" - and it wears its disjointed nature like a badge of honor.

De Villa has created a truthful representation of a colorful community.

It's hard to go wrong with documentary subjects as articulate and intriguing as childhood friends John Flansburgh and John Linnell.

There's also enough laconic humor, warming camaraderie and hopeful stabs at dignity to keep the story from assuming the glum gunmetal gray of its setting on the coast of northwestern Spain.

Builds steadily from its smarter-than-your-average-horror-film beginnings to a genuinely cunning psychological thriller with a third-act twist guaranteed to shock even the most eagle-eyed watchers.

Who's going to love it? Anyone with a sense of humor: Team America: World Police is hands-down the funniest movie of the year.

Lee gives his childhood hero altogether too much face time to defend himself against the numerous allegations and charges of assault, both physical and sexual.

Ultimately, though, the lively whirl of debauched, drug-fueled parties and toffee-nosed exchanges between heiresses and aristocrats fails to mask the essential hollowness of the narrative.

The meta jokes come thick and fast - some clunk, but there's no time to mourn - and the references are far from limited to the Warner Bros. world (at one point, Bugs exclaims, "Whaddya know - I found Nemo!").

It all falls apart when the Wendigo unleashes its fury - no doubt upset at being neutered to look about as frightening as Bambi.

Against all odds, director Steven Shainberg has managed to craft an oddly compassionate -- and often very funny -- tale of an emotionally symbiotic affair.

The film - dimly lit and with an ominous soundtrack that verges on overkill - is largely a showcase for the heavy-lidded Renner.

McCann weaves in a somewhat toothless condemnation of a bureaucracy that forsakes the mentally ill, but Revolution # 9 works better as an inside look at one person's slide into madness -- and, more particularly, the impact of that on his loved ones.

Often so silly, it's surreal.

Conforms to many of the tropes of a formula thriller but, aided by an evocative Philip Glass score and Tim Orr's beautifully naturalistic cinematography, it transcends the genre.

Makes its biggest misstep in failing to persuade the viewer the five family members are charming eccentrics rather than irritating weirdos.

An overlong melodrama-by-numbers.

When the world gets too big and scary, the Hundred Acre Wood remains a clearly delineated comfort zone.

At some point, all this visual trickery stops being clever and devolves into flashy, vaguely silly overkill.

Bell has added unexpected shadings to what could have been simply a sordid tale of highway prostitution, gradually revealing surprises to the characters that keep a murmur of unease thrumming throughout.

It's a simple tale of father-and-son bonding that director Huo Jianqi injects with a quiet power, and it benefits greatly from the gorgeous lushness of its backdrop.

Delivers a sugar rush without the calories.

Offers an idyllic, comforting surface of tree-shaded lanes and sunshine-dappled fields - but a disturbing tale throbs beneath.

Delivers one of those classic movie moments in which two screen legends go toe to toe, both barrels metaphorically blazing.

Devoid of 21st-century irony, this visually stunning, action-packed yuletide treat is sweet and, yes, magical in a way that will enchant kids and give older viewers a twinge of nostalgia.

A compelling look at a vexa tious question, Taking Sides is, at times, hamstrung by its own ambiguity.

Bale, one of the most intriguing actors of his generation, plays a young man rebelling against his liberal upbringing with a mix of bemusement and lost-puppy anguish, making this film as much about mothers and sons as struggling couples.

A stunning display of a filmmaker adventuring on the far side of what's possible.

A postcard-pretty psychological drama that's too moody and enigmatic for its own good.

Most of Ultimate X is comprised of truly exhilarating footage of men -- and one woman -- pushing their bodies and their nerve to the edge.

De Palma fools around with split screens and slo-mo, but no amount of cinematic artifice can varnish over the fact that this is simply a bad film.

Commendably, Carrera steers clear of preachiness in his exploration of a timely and relevant issue, and Bernal's transformation from naive priest to tortured adulterer to hard-nosed careerist is riveting.

Seem to have spliced together two different concepts which, on paper, may have seemed complementary but wind up giving the film a schizophrenic feel.

In trying to straddle both the grown-up and kiddie worlds with this inappropriately sexualized effort - their first theatrical release since 1995's "It Takes Two" - the Olsens have lost their footing.

They resort too often to infantile flatulence jokes and fairly obvious gags about errant G-strings, with the anorexic plot culminating in the brothers having - yawn - learned to respect women's feelings.

Basinger appears to be literally phoning in from another movie in the highly improbable, maniacally action-packed thriller-cum-comedy Cellular.

Wants to be an epic in the mold of "Saving Private Ryan," but it's hindered by its modest budget.

One of those all-too-rare cases in which a riveting premise is expertly executed.

An atmospheric and subtly engrossing relationship saga, which wowed the critics when it played on British TV and is just now getting a theatrical release.

There's really nothing new here, though, and lacking the drama and humor of "Fahrenheit 9/11," it is even more likely to be preaching to the converted.

A stinker.

Enough SpongeBob-meets-Monty-Python silliness to give adults a kick as well.

Although deft editing provides neat segues, "Safety" suffers from a case of too many dramas, too little time. Characters are given no chance to develop and, too often, their behavior turns on a dime, hurtling off into a parallel universe of extreme acts.

Even with Burton's imagination turning its trademark cartwheels, the film's big beating heart holds the whimsical offshoots steady.

The character of ZigZag is not sufficiently developed to support a film constructed around him.

Combined with the eyestrain produced by the cheap cardboard 3-D glasses, the resulting vertigo is decidedly unpleasant -- although having moon rocks and blobs of cream pie flying out from the screen is kinda cool in a retro way.

This contemplative drama manages to dodge mawkish potholes to emerge as a strangely life-affirming work.

It's a credit to the actors, particularly the superb Campbell, that completely preposterous material can be made strangely touching.

Suffers from an air of frosty detachment and a disappointingly stiff performance from Jagger, who also provides an unnecessary voice-over narration.

An intelligent and entertaining exploration of racial and sexual politics that brings alive the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, and draws parallels with African-American identity crises of today.

Has a desolate air, but Eyre, a Native American raised by white parents, manages to infuse the rocky path to sibling reconciliation with flashes of warmth and gentle humor.

Phoenix gives an electric performance as amoral Army supply clerk Ray Elwood.

Lizzie McGuire's "Movie" doesn't try to be anything more than a superficial escapist fantasy for fans of the show.

Aside from a jarringly fake computer-generated avalanche scene that momentarily challenges the necessary suspension of disbelief, the big-bang set pieces are superbly crafted.

It's the addition of Depp's corrupt CIA agent, Sands, that really makes this violent, over-the-top action film, with its maze-like plot, sing.

This frigid and inaccessible period piece wears its glumness like a shroud.

Coppola sure knows his late-'60s cinema and he's meticulous in reconstructing the style of the era.

Just Brit filmmaker Shane Meadows having some fun with the conventions of the spaghetti western.

Middleton deals with the various male and female perspectives in an even-handed way, concocting a slice of New York life that's frothy as meringue pie.

The gay sex scenes that punctuate Eloy de la Iglesia's limp Spanish comedy, Bulgarian Lovers, are frequent and graphic, and it often seems as if the lackluster story exists solely to showcase them.

The frantic nuttiness of the stylistically dynamic Huckabees is often laugh-out-loud funny, but amid the pandemonium there's a sense of truly rigorous soul-searching.

An earnest undertaking that unfortunately plays like a trite Lifetime movie.

Ironically, what's lacking in Howard's stark, often brutal, late 19th-century chase drama is emotional punch.

Ben Stiller's overbearing schtick officially reaches its expiration date with the desperate and puerile Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.

Despite a crafty premise and a clever kink in the tale that almost saves it, Connolly isn't dexterous enough to achieve the Hitchockian level of suspense the movie needs.

The two leads have strong singing voices, but they're not helped by songs with titles like "It's Time to Disco."

Occasionally stagy and flat, "Die" is worth seeing for Busch's grand performance, which won him a Special Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

The tiny stage can barely contain Reno's gale-force personality, as she paces and rants a stream-of-conscious monologue.

Bart Everly followed Frank around for two years, yet his film seems to consist mostly of regurgitated C-Span and news footage from the period, interspersed with asides from the outspoken liberal.

Diva du jour Beyoncé Knowles may be the draw, but the real star of The Fighting Temptations is the sensational gospel soundtrack.

Nair makes Vanity Fair an elegant showcase for an unforgettable heroine.

Twinkles and glows, but all the surface razzle-dazzle fails to mask the emptiness at its core.

Predictable and uninspired romantic drama fizzles like a wet squib.

The spaniel-eyed Jean Reno ("Ronin") infuses Hubert with a mixture of deadpan cool, wry humor and just the measure of tenderness required to give this comic slugfest some heart.

Has laugh-out-loud moments of inspired idiocy. The problem is that this one-joke skit (done first and better by Britain's Ali G) has been given the Hamburger Helper treatment and stretched to feature length.

It's awkward, listless and fails to reach any sort of climax.

The problem lies with the paucity of sizzle between the romantic leads, Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor. They just don't look like they're having any fun together, particularly the bony Zellweger, who has trouble filling out the wow-worthy ensembles and perpetually looks like she's sucking on a lemon.