Neil Genzlinger

The Viral Factor wants to be both an action movie and a soap opera. But the merging of the two genres by Dante Lam, a director based in Hong Kong, is clumsy, and so is the film.

Someone involved with Beneath the Darkness has either watched too many horror movies or not enough. There is not an original thought in this story, written by Bruce Wilkinson, or in the way it is directed by Martin Guigui.

It's a Christmas present for cat lovers. Miss Minoes, the tweaked title of a 2001 Dutch film by Vincent Bal, is being given an American theatrical run (dubbed into English), and it's a pleasantly quirky, family-friendly fable with lots of meowing.

This might be more entertaining if any of the three main characters were at all likable.

No swear words here; just harmless fun.

Characters this nicely etched deserve a more complete conclusion.

Some fine performances and an embrace of understatement make Matthew Leutwyler's oddly titled Answers to Nothing a respectable entry in the multiple-stories-that-interlock genre.

The plot may be a little too cluttered for the toddler crowd to follow, but the next age group up should be amused, and the script by Peter Baynham and Sarah Smith has plenty of sly jokes for grown-ups.

If the film doesn't measure up as a piece of historical scholarship, it does manage to be a rather touching exploration of the troupe's life cycle: achieving notoriety, then being torn apart by fame, then being destroyed by forces beyond its control.

The film, though generous with doses of Heifetz in performance, isn't entirely successful at illuminating the man.

Steve Guttenberg is probably supposed to be a lovable loser in A Novel Romance, a drab, clumsy film by Allie Dvorin, but he can manage to be merely annoying. Mr. Guttenberg, though, deserves only part of the blame for this unrewarding movie.

N.P.H, as he's often called in these films, does indeed return, singing and dancing. And talking dirty. He, that stoned baby and a stunning riff on the tongue-stuck-to-a-pole scene in "A Christmas Story" will, for fans of this franchise, make this a blissful holiday season indeed.

A drippy ending erases all the hopes you've built up and forces you to conclude that this wasn't such a well-thought-out film after all.

The script, by Mr. Marshall and R. A. White, doesn't contain enough that's genuinely funny, which leaves everybody trying too hard. Only Ann-Margret, as the fair's reigning queen, retains her dignity.

Sometimes a film feels a bit too pat and yet is impossible to resist. The Mighty Macs, based on the national championship run of the 1972 women's basketball team at Immaculata College near Philadelphia, is such a film: lots of button pushing, but in the end you're glad you saw it.

The film, by Constance Marks, is a little light on details of Mr. Clash's personal life once he broke through, but otherwise this is a winning tale of the persistence and creativity behind one of the most famous and fuzziest faces in the world.

Its scenes frequently feature Africans machine-gunning other Africans or hacking them to death with machetes. This is a disturbing sight indeed. Maybe it was intended as a metaphor, but this movie isn't nearly sophisticated enough to pull off that kind of commentary. It's not really even sophisticated enough to be an absorbing zombie movie

Ms. Mann (Michael's daughter) does stage a bracing car chase, and Mr. Morgan makes an impression despite a story that's sometimes hard to follow.

The beauty of the movie, in fact, is that Mr. Estevez does not make explicit what any of them find, beyond friendship. He lets these four fine actors convey that true personal transformations are not announced with fanfare, but happen internally.

American Teacher doesn't come close to doing what it sets out to do, but it does end up as a heartfelt, bittersweet portrait of several teachers.

The impalement is a nice touch. The death by wood chipper, pretty sweet. But the best bit of comedy in the ridiculously gory Tucker and Dale vs. Evil eviscerates the field of psychology with no bloodshed at all.

Somebody must think Joe Swanberg's mumblecore mush is worth the time it takes to watch it, because he keeps making it. But anyone who sees his insufferable Art History and doesn't wish for the 74 minutes back has an empty life indeed.

Pitched awfully young, without a shred of the satire or subtlety that is generally found in films aimed at tweeners and above. That's not a bad thing; it just means accompanying grown-ups or older siblings will have to choke down a sizable dose of schmaltz with their fish milkshakes.

Mr. Fuller is working on some kind of redemption theme, but he sabotages the story with underdeveloped plot threads: a bartender with cancer, an old car crash, sibling rivalry. Everything is annoyingly oblique; why?

A dandy little documentary whether you view the story it captures as a precursor to the flash fame of the Internet age or as one of the last genuine underground phenomena before the Internet made that whole concept obsolete.

The six actors in the central, edible roles seem as if they could have pulled off a "Scream"-like satire, but since they weren't asked to, there's nothing much for them to do but follow the clearly visible paths to their doom.

Those who care less about such stuff than about being entertained will find plenty to like in this ghoulish comedy, a droll take on one of the most notorious mass-murder cases of the 19th century.

Some of Kevin Hart's fans may be disappointed that Laugh at My Pain, a film version of his recent stand-up tour, offers less than an hour of Mr. Hart onstage. But a couple of adornments - one before the concert footage, one after - flesh out this funny, profanity-heavy movie nicely.