Megan Lehmann

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

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.

It's all entertaining enough, but don't look for any hefty anti-establishment message in what is essentially a whip-crack of a buddy movie that ends with a whimper.

Less of a "You go, girl" manifesto than its title would suggest.

Jenkins doesn't stint on the sickening reality of Wuornos' abhorrent behavior -- it's Theron's complex, deeply felt depiction of a thoroughly messed-up soul that forces us to look beyond the monstrous nature of her acts.

Fairly cringe-inducing, full of witless double-entendres and the requisite "gags" involving bodily fluids.

A joyous, toe-tapping celebration of a musical style born of sorrow.

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

The finished product looks like it was thrown together during a lunch break -- by a drunk person. The level of ineptitude on display in this urban version of "Three Men and a Baby" is simply gobsmacking.

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

A gentle comedy, brimming with hope and faith in human resilience.

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.

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

Amateurish, irritatingly gabby indie.

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.

Psst! Wanna vicariously experience a consciousness-raising LSD trip and watch Sarah Michelle Gellar star in some explicit sex scenes?

It is an important, thoroughly bewitching work of art.

Contains much more prosaic ingredients. Like props and sound effects that could have been borrowed from an off-off-Broadway play, a host of painfully strained performances and a plot that's almost unbearably stupid.

This pursuit farce is harmless (if stale) entertainment, but the sledge-hammer attempt to appeal to the country's fastest-growing movie-going demographic makes for a clunky narrative and one-note characters.

The animated, Hanukkah-themed musical is, in fact, 75 minutes worth of belching, barfing and poo-jokes braided into a Grinch-meets-Scrooge-meets-"It's a Wonderful Life" storyline that's as stale as last year's potato latkes.

Follows a narrative arc as choppy as a messy windswell, and the result is a dog's dinner of profiles, repetitive narration, safety tips and banal "insights" into the joys and dangers of cresting waves that sometimes reach 70 feet.

This witless action comedy begins to insult the audience's intelligence from the opening scene.

The film is lousy with cartoonishly off-putting characters.

Dialogue is sparse in this leisurely paced chase; instead, the bluesy vocals of indigenous singer Archie Roach -- singing de Heer's lyrics -- are layered over the action as a kind of musical narration.

This modest little film out of Africa suffers from largely rudderless direction, relying for any sense of profundity on the breathtaking beauty of Abraham Haile Biru's cinematography.

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

This Alfie has been castrated.

The documentary's director, Arnon Goldfinger, may have had a chance of expanding on the limited audience for such a film if said clan, the Bursteins, exhibited either talent or likability.