Megan Lehmann

Unfathomable balderdash.

Snoozy and unconvincing.

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.

A pleasantly diverting period romp that Annette Bening turns into a wickedly funny tour de force.

There is much sadness in this finely wrought drama, winner of nine prizes at the Israeli Academy Awards, but the family's hard-won escape from emotional lock-down is ultimately uplifting.

Without Branagh's pitch-perfect comedic skills the entire movie could have been crushed under the avalanche of quips and wisecracks tumbling from Kalesniko's too-clever-by-half pen.

Metallica brought back the rights and funded the project, and it's their honesty and willingness to front the cameras, warts and all, that makes this well-edited, often very funny, documentary so compelling.

S.W.A.T. boasts the kernel of a good idea - but it gets buried in the chaff of half-baked plot threads, partly realized characters and unstructured pandemonium.

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.

More than a ripped-from-the- headlines drug drama, Maria Full of Grace is like a horror movie made real.

While immersed in the horror of their plight, you might forget to breathe.

A sublime variation on the buddy road movie, infusing the midlife crises of the two main protagonists with hope and poetry.

It wouldn't matter so much that this arrogant Richard Pryor wannabe's routine is offensive, puerile and unimaginatively foul-mouthed if it was at least funny.

An exercise in drudgery... The whole thing is so patently uninteresting it's hard to see it as anything but a Douglas family vanity project.

Sometimes teeters on the verge of going completely over the top, but it's mostly saved by its own self-awareness.

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

Kicks off with an inauspicious premise, mopes through a dreary tract of virtually plotless meanderings and then ends with a whimper.

From the incessant rain that blurs the joyless Boston setting to the mysterious decision to make a brunette Hudson look as plain as possible, it's an evanescent fancy devoid of sparkle.

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

Nasty, borderline bigoted, stunningly amateurish film.

There's a carnivalesque medley of subplots scampering about the screen, but Serreau manages to emerge triumphant with all the threads nimbly stitched together.

The promising tension between Gypsy and the arrogant Lucian never amounts to much, and the climax is comically melodramatic.

The problem is that there's not a sympathetic character among the nasty, brutish males. And the women, except for a flashy cameo by a swimsuit-clad Paris Hilton, are given short shrift.

Anselmo handles sensitive issues not with kid gloves, but with a metaphorical baseball mitt, fumbling with tone and obviously laboring to force quirks upon characters and situations.

Indulgent, tedious documentary.

This genre-busting hybrid is a scattershot affair - bad jokes land with a thud that seems to echo, but the winning ones prompt hearty laughs.

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.

The majority of Dickie Roberts winds up looking like a tame episode of the "Brady Bunch" -- spiked with Spade-esque crudity.