Michelle Orange

As Mr. Albert Nobbs, Close wears a discreetly waved cap of cropped ginger hair and the bright, blank expression of a small animal caught mid-nibble.

Number of chipmunks who speak fluent chola when necessary: three. Number of Spider-Man/Pepe Le Pew mash-ups I can't really get into: one.

In another light the group's - and the film's - portentous resolution looks a lot like quitting, in true slacker style.

There's something immobile at the center of The Lady, a kind of Botoxed biopic with an unlikely director - Luc Besson - manning the syringe.

Arthur Christmas is a Grinch-style story of rekindled Christmas spirit told from inside Santa's compound at the North Pole.

Embedded in The Lie is a sharp look at the moral limbo of a complacent life, the self-defeat of committing by halves, the self-interest of false equivalencies - but only the shallowest attempts are made to chip its themes out.

A few shots of full frontal and an actual devil to point to are poor substitutes for exposure and depth of character.

Farmiga closes in on moments that express mood and character so lightly and perceptively that you don't notice them gently - sometimes too gently - moving the story forward.

In catsuits, swimsuits, and skimpy underthings, Saldana is as potently elusive as a shadow can be.

The film is being released in both 2- and 3-D, and from what I could tell the 3-D version is still almost 50-50. What use is made of the technology is hardly worth the effort, unless you've always wanted to experience a cascade of cheesies in 3-D.

The result is the double shrift of a thinly sketched background and a story that has trouble standing up on its own.

Fright Night glides into its first climax with some funny touches but without building much structure or suspense.

Aside from the showy, overwrought credits sequence, it's silly and self-conscious and still scary as hell.

I'd say you had to be there, but over the course of Magic Trip we learn that the majority of the people who were there didn't want to be there.

Tainted by a script (by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore) so risibly broad it makes "Wedding Crashers" look like Bergman in the Hamptons.

July is more of a presence than an actress, or even a believable persona.

Like the recent "Perrier's Bounty," The Guard feels like it might play better at home than overseas.

As it is, The Devil's Double, a handsome and occasionally dazzling thriller with at least one dynamo performance from its star, is ultimately dominated by its style.

Like the Inuit and their many words for "snow," Jake has a thousand squinty faces and they all mean "Bugger off."

It looks more like your teenage world than such films generally allow, and it's not pretty. It's beautiful.

Though the picture is lovingly and often quite strikingly shot and styled, there are too many dangling and swiftly clipped threads for the film to amount to more than another tasteful Sunday matinee set against one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century.

The scenes between the young actresses are the film's most compelling: Both first-timers, Manamela and Makanyane are possessed of extraordinary faces and plain attitudes.

The effect recalls the beguiling lightness of the good old Disney, where clever visual and thematic feats are deftly interwoven and yet tossed off with an insouciance that favors playfulness above all.

The story's obvious and various potential is left to stand on its own, and the scares are largely uninspired.

The talking animals, though less tough to look at than those in "Marmaduke," are murder on the ears: Maya Rudolph as a neurotic giraffe and Sandler voicing a monkey could take the paint off of a Buick.

"A chimp could not have a better mother," Terrace declares of his decision. The people in this film say stuff like that a lot.

As in "Country Strong," Meester's crack timing and irresistible poignancy illuminate a part that would leave other actresses simpering themselves off the screen.

The film is so busy rifling through genres that it fails to develop a coherent flavor of its own.