Megan Lehmann

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.

This is an egotistical endeavor from the daughter of horror director Dario Argento (a producer here), but her raw performance and utter fearlessness make it strangely magnetic.

The central narrative is ultimately too one-dimensional to sustain interest.

A visual treat diminished by lifeless dialogue and self-conscious acting.

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.

A leisurely, scene-setting start, peppered with authentic banter and winning localized humor, fleshes out the characters in Manito so well you feel as if you live alongside them.

Can that achingly abstract thing called love be captured in a beaker or dissected like a frog splayed on a slab? That's the belabored premise of this dorky, clinically structured romance cooked up in the Sundance Institute's screenwriter and filmmaker labs.

Uber-hip technique triumphs over substance in Reconstruction.

Harmless, if slightly hyperactive, fun.

Often so silly, it's surreal.

Only really little tykes will find the surplus of pratfalls and poo and fart jokes a hoot.

In place of elaborate sets, clever filmmaking gives the impression of a central London emptied of people and cars, to eerie effect - and this opening reel is nothing short of magnificent.

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.

Simultaneously funny and frightening, Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satirical masterpiece. [25 Apr 2004, p.3]

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.

Any one episode of "The Sopranos" would send this ill-conceived folly to sleep with the fishes.

Kosashvili's clear-eyed approach to the cultural tradition of arranged marriage balances respect and scorn, and he reconciles the comedy and tragedy inherent in Zaza's tug-of-love with finesse.

Ryan spends much of the grubby-looking boxing drama Against the Ropes with her face screwed up in distaste, as if a dirty sock is being waved under her nose. Perhaps it's because the movie she's in stinks.

Kicks off as a cheap piece of retro schlock and quickly devolves into a putrid bloodbath with a thin narrative made utterly indecipherable by the first-time director's clueless approach to filmmaking.

It's mostly a political thriller, contingent on a love story. It's kind of noirish, subtly humorous and intermittently confusing.

There's little action in this snail-paced bore, you'll need a high-powered magnifying glass to spot the comedy and the "buddies" have about as much chemistry as a pair of wet socks.

It's a chaste "Austin Powers," a less ridiculous "Casino Royale," a more subtle "Spy Hard" — in other words, yet another James Bond parody.

Some solid performances and pretty scenery don't do much to conceal that there's a whole heap of nothing at the core of this slight coming-of-age/coming-out tale.

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.

This slow-moving Swedish film offers not even a hint of joy, preferring to focus on the humiliation of Martin as he defecates in bed and urinates on the plants at his own birthday party.

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.

A confusing mishmash.

It actually works as a sometimes funny, occasionally scandalous, but mostly involving narrative.

One of the year's most engaging films.

It's a simple-minded celebration of speed that pretends to be nothing else, even throwing in the occasional wink to acknowledge its own silliness.

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.

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.

"Schindler's List" it ain't, and the whole is rendered occasionally surreal by Janusz Stoklosa's laughably heavy-handed score.

A hilarious, pitch-perfect comedy.

The script is so overstuffed with painfully obvious clues (the constant patina of sweat on the cocky doctor's face, for one) that we don't need the ominous rumbles on the soundtrack to tell us where we're headed.

It's a wistful yet penetrating film, shot through with magic realism and life-affirming humor, that gets you deep down where you live.

The dirty old man who became a cult poet and author was a true original, and every minute he's on screen, whether it's reading from his brutally honest work or musing on a hard-lived life for the cameras, it's hard to look away.

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.

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.

Hokey, overstuffed plot and a messily hand-stitched, often illogical script.

Doesn't have the polish of "Ocean's Eleven" - but it does have George Clooney.

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.

Much of the action is strident and cartoonish -- but the romance at the core remains tender and true.

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.

Stevens has a keen sense of the absurd, but the whole thing is too forced - and his use of "rotomation" (last used in Richard Linklater's "Waking Life") to give a Timothy Leary-swirl to key dramatic moments winds up looking incongruous.

A good edit would have allowed the film's worthy, obviously heartfelt, message to shine.

A comedy as black as the asphalt desert of a mall parking lot.

Essentially an hour-long monologue, but this talking head is so engaging that you can't blame director Lech Kowalski's camera for not wanting to stray from the late Dee Dee Ramone's party-ravaged face.

Possibly the most unintentionally hilarious film since Ed Wood's "Plan 9 from Outer Space," Steve Irwin's big-screen debut is destined to become an instant cult classic.

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

A sensual performance from Abbass buoys the flimsy story.

An exploration of the way the sins of the father trickle down to his offspring, is dense with quirky characters and subplots all woven into a rather heavy-handed meditation on the evils of globalization.

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.

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!").

Tries to be many things -- romantic comedy, mockumentary, a satire on beauty and aging -- but ends up succeeding at none.

Another big, dumb action movie in the vein of "XXX," The Transporter is riddled with plot holes big enough for its titular hero to drive his sleek black BMW through.

All the elements are in place for an entertaining murder mystery, but as Bigelow meanders aimlessly back and forth through time, the plot becomes increasingly water-logged.

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.

The only feeling the character seems capable of is lust -- and when he hits on the male nurse looking after his newborn baby in the hospital, this hollow, unfunny "comedy" moves from merely tedious to nasty.

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.

It's a hushed work of restrained emotions, elliptical storytelling and spare dialogue, peopled with smart, authentic characters who have drawn you into their lives before you know it.

Some of the visual flourishes are a little too obvious, but restrained and subtle storytelling, and fine performances make this delicate coming-of-age tale a treat.

A likable trio of actors struggles valiantly but ultimately fails to keep this dopey buddy comedy afloat.

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.

Self-indulgent folly.

Chance encounters and fated love are the stuff of fairy tales, which is what makes the deliriously romantic sequel Before Sunset a small miracle.

Along with co-writer Emmanuele Bernhein, Ozon...has crafted a contemplative blend of fantasy and reality that illuminates the mysteries of the creative process.

It's not surprising that This Thing of Ours -- the title refers to the literal translation of La Cosa Nostra -- rings with authenticity and solid acting.

Like a bomb exploding in a fireworks factory: It's fierce and shocking and dazzling and wonderful.

Boasts one of the most ludicrous plots ever committed to digital video.

When Gilliam is finally forced to admit defeat, it is nothing short of heartbreaking - for audiences, too, as the few shots that made it into the can hold such promise.

Makes a powerful case against the wisdom of budget cuts at universities everywhere.

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

Frustratingly superficial.

What the filmmakers do to the splendid Moore is simply criminal.

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

Clayburgh is the most dignified thing about this dreadfully overwrought, often preposterous romantic comedy.

The movie is saved by its well-trained four-legged stars and the likable Liam Aiken ("Road to Perdition"), who plays 12-year-old loner Owen Baker.

The trouble with authenticity in a punk rock film is that it comes off as amateurish, and while "Dolls" has a feverish energy -- and some good songs -- it suffers from crude performances and a trite rise-and-fall plot.

A promising film that is dragged down by the weight of its gray morbidity.

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

Makes an earnest stab at illustrating the hardships and sacrifices humanitarian workers contend with - but in the end, all the suffering merely forms an amorphous backdrop for a Harlequin romance.

Uniformly excellent performances keep this destabilizing tale ticking, yet one can't help wishing Hollywood had combined this cast and these timely themes with a little bit of imagination to come up with something fresh.

Delivers its provocative message in the measured tones of a college professor -- yet there's no danger of falling asleep in this lecture.

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.

This furious finger-pointer's doc is so one-sided, it undermines its own integrity.

The story is so slight, a low-wattage hair dryer could blow it away.

Apart from the slightly sanitized look of Reagan-era Harlem, this raw ghetto drama rings true, from the smooth dialogue to the unaffected performances of the central actors.

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.

If you give yourself over to it, this romantic tale of a liberating one-night stand proves oddly seductive and generates a warm afterglow.

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.

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.

Where Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" radiates freshness and vigor, Man on Fire feels vaguely like something left over from the 1980s, when action heroes were one-note tough guys methodically picking off baddies.

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

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

Much of the movie's gentle charm comes from Mehta, the director's younger brother, making his acting debut.

Spun is quickly exposed as being all flash, no substance.

A cheerfully trashy, dead-on spoof of the B-movie genre, boasts the kind of cheese-tastic effects, overcooked dialogue and rigid performances that would make Ed Wood proud.

A cheaply made, occasionally repetitive, but passionately argued documentary.

Very funny. It's also heartbreakingly sad.

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.

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

A hit-and-miss affair.

Has just enough fairy dust to charm its target audience.

Kidman gives an other stunning performance in Birth, but it is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma that ultimately reveals . . . not much.

A documentary mosaic of kooky Americana.

As if the witless cultural stereotypes weren't bad enough, misogyny is rampant -- bare-breasted women abound, yet the protagonist remains fully clothed while having a bullet removed from his butt.

Light, doggedly formulaic romantic comedy that's almost instantly forgettable despite the sunny presence of teen queen Mandy Moore.

Screenwriter Tom Schulman, who won an Oscar for "Dead Poets Society," gives us a narrative reminiscent of a pup chasing its tail, as characters struggle to catch up with inexplicably chopping and changing motives.

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

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

How do you inject life into a film whose central character is dull, slow, stupid and grim?If you're Arnaud Desplechin, you don't.

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

Disaster movies, from "The Poseidon Adventure" to "Towering Inferno," are impossible to take seriously and "Day" is no exception - it's simply a fast-moving pageant of end-of-the-world eye candy.

Delivers a sugar rush without the calories.

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

Not as bad as rumor would have it. It's worse.

Despite its shock value, Thirteen rises above dysfunctional-family-drama cliches, thanks to the truthfulness of its script and the keen eye of a sympathetic director.

This is what IMAX was made for: Strap on a pair of 3-D goggles, shut out the real world, and take a vicarious voyage to the last frontier -- space.

Beautiful Brit actress Sophia Myles ("From Hell") is so arch, canny and amusing as the posh, pink-obsessed spy Lady Penelope, it's as if she is acting in the movie this should have been.

Infused with the hazy golden glow of nostalgia and unfolds at a leisurely pace, reminiscent of "The Virgin Suicides."

Despite oblique references to "Psycho" and "Children of the Corn," Freddy vs. Jason lacks the knowing wit needed to keep it afloat in an age when even the horror spoofs have been spoofed.

Hilariously overblown, "Cruelty" fairly pops at the seams with the beloved eccentricity of Joel and Ethan Coen, from the fiendishly ludicrous scenarios and casually tossed off visual gags to the razor-sharp repartee.

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.

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.

This one-joke comedy vehicle is flying through a laugh-free zone.

Instructive, cathartic or just too painful? You decide.

This wonderful party of a movie, as totally original as its hero, stamps on a smiley face that will linger for hours.

There's obviously some philosophical comment on the alienating effects of ho-hum toil buried somewhere in this weird mess, which features an irritating, theremin-heavy score. But can you be bothered stifling a yawn and searching for meaning? I would prefer not to.

Settles into an unflinchingly honest coming-of-age portrait.

Enough to give you brain strain -- and the pay-off is negligible.

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

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.

The strapping Damon's lived-in performance makes us happy to follow Bourne wherever he may go.

A love letter to a New York neighborhood that is rapidly disappearing -- a tight-knit Dominican community.

It's really just about a bunch of pathetic losers whiling away the hours with their hands jammed down their pants.

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

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.

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

A sluggish meander through the life of the man considered by many to be a deity of golfing.

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

If you can overlook its TV-episode look, occasional lapses in logic and detours into lurid overkill, this old-school psychological thriller, which marries a tracking-the-serial-killer narrative with occult themes, is a creepy diversion.

Anderson gives The Machinist a sickly noirish look that contributes to the creeping horror - but it's the emaciated Bale's spectral presence that leaves the imprint.

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

More than a celebration of Chaplin's art; it is a thorough examination of what made this gifted artist, the world's first true celebrity, tick.

Corcuera's unflinching documentary Back of the World is a real-life horror story told in three parts.

Khouri seems never to have met a "chick flick" cliché she didn't like, from the ubiquity of emotional telephone conversations to the lachrymose (but entirely predictable and dramatically flabby) reconciliation at the end.

Part urban thriller, part unorthodox love story, this well-acted portrayal of the shadowy realm occupied by London's illegal immigrants is buoyed by stinging social commentary and a surprising twist of intelligent humor.

Falls far short of capturing the hedonistic spirit of this ephemeral art community. It's more like a routine home video with arty pretensions.

The cheerfully inane comedy Connie and Carla all but suffocates beneath a high-stepping, show-stopping, ear-splitting deluge of musical theater staples, from "Cats" to "Oklahoma!," "Jesus Christ Superstar" to "Fiddler on the Roof."

The biggest problem with the corny horror film Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid is that its titular reptiles are about as scary as jellied eels.

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

The jaw-droppingly nasty second act is intriguing, but it veers into territory so dark that it sucks the air out of the bouncy chick flick that surrounds it, making for one confused -- and confusing -- comedy.

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

Predictable and uninspired romantic drama fizzles like a wet squib.

Kalem's grasp of dramatic storytelling is no firmer, and the disorderly film merely chases its tail for the second half, going nowhere fast.

Purists will probably have a conniption at the mere idea of messing with the form, but the worst thing about Jacquot's post-modern treatment is that its incongruity wrenches you out of the story.

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.

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

A stinker.

Chases its tail for so long, it morphs from a whodunit into a who-cares.

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

Pray will force you to look at the music as more than just gobbledygook created by musical-bower birds who can't spell.

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

Apart from some irritating and redundant camera tricks early on in the film, director Blair Treu plays it white-bread straight, delivering an uncommonly inoffensive, after-school-special-style teen flick.

The film is ultimately a one-man show -- and when that man is the singularly crafty Depp, it's hard to look away.

Incoherent, laugh-free comedy.

Prywes has produced a technically accomplished nostalgia piece on a shoestring budget, but the plotting is too sitcom-lite to support its aspirations to magic realism.

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.

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.

A true fan's nirvana.

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

Overripe dialogue and a fevered score fail to inject any real tension, and the accentless English spoken throughout a film set entirely in France is ludicrous and jarring.

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

Leigh's uncanny ability to mine emotional truth packs the usual punch. And the trademark flashes of humor sprinkled throughout ease the bleakness of the landscape.

Seems to exist solely to drive this observation home in the most heavy-handed way.

An overlong melodrama-by-numbers.

A sporadically amusing curiosity that falls short of effectively satirizing the public's fixation with the minutiae of celebrity lives.

See it only for Paul Bettany's performance.

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

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

Another repulsive, fetishistic trawl through the life and crimes of a serial killer.

Clarkson, the reigning queen of the indies, is simultaneously funny and heartbreaking, following up killer performances in "The Station Agent" and "All the Real Girls."

As this Woodstock-on-wheels careens through the countryside, stopping only to play for thousands of hirsute revelers -- and, once, to stock up on booze in Saskatoon -- its famous passengers celebrate with delirious joy the pure, unadulterated magic of music.

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

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

It manages to be both kinetic and dream-like at the same time -- "Run Lola Run" by way of David Lynch.

So serious-minded it occasionally teeters on the brink of absurdity.

No light leavens the ashen wash of writer-director Tim Blake Nelson's relentlessly downbeat Holocaust drama The Grey Zone. None.

Lurches so wildly and meaninglessly between genres and time frames that all it creates is motion sickness.

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.

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.

Exploitative rubbish.

Smarter than your average serial-killer movie, thanks to unusually fleshed-out characters inhabited by a high- pedigree cast.

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.

A compelling portrait of a matchless man, who's still going strong at 72.

Riddick-ulous.

Violent and unoriginal actioner.

A thumping soundtrack, including David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel" and Pink Floyd's "Us and Them," fuels this high-energy look at a pack of underdogs who sowed the seeds for today's extreme sports craze.

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

A well-intentioned, semi-autobiographical pastiche, is trapped in a straitjacket of political correctness, self-conscious acting and spurts of try-hard dialogue that come off as precious.

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.

Brilliantly idiosyncratic.