Robert Koehler

Heartfelt and formulaic in equal measure.

The film is never quite as startling or mysterious as it seems to want to be, leaving it in an uncertain cinematic limbo.

Without Smith's graceful presence, which more than once resembles Zach Braff's slightly older but observant New Jerseyite in "Garden State," Nearing Grace would be pure video fodder.

Even by the standards of the recent "Saws," which have enjoyed considerably larger budgets than the first pic, the new edition is more frenetically cut (by editors Kevin Greutert and Brett Sullivan), more dimly lit (by lenser David A. Armstrong), sweatier in terms of perfs by the grimly serious cast, more madly packed with micro-incidents and action, and more brazen in requiring suspension of disbelief.

This makes the film feel perilously close to widescreen sitcom, as do montages of New York set to Beethoven's Sixth Symphony.

Sometimes veering close to being a promotional film for the Special Olympics, pic will be applauded by the disability community and its advocates but quickly ignored by longtime fans of the Farrellys and Knoxville.

Conceit often stretches -- and breaks -- the limits of what the tales can handle, though the implication of viewers as voyeurs gives pic a subversive edge.

There's remarkably little done with a premise snatched from high-concept heaven, adding yet another file to the growing cabinet of under-realized comedies.

Exudes a pre-fab quality.

Pic's future as a cult item is a sure bet.

Apparently needing to release some private thoughts, musings and images to the world, Anthony Hopkins takes a leap into stunning self-indulgence with his directorial debut, Slipstream.

A meandering, semi-improvised tale of a terminal Gotham loser who works as Santa when he bombs as an actor.

Too self-serious to work as a straight-ahead whodunit and too lacking in imagination to realize its art-film aspirations.

Story's spurts of violence are designed to tear Seymour's world apart , but Rosenfeld's scripting and directing choices tend to lessen impact of a potentially gut-wrenching urban tale.

The tilt here toward a hyperactive, buddy-movie action-adventure with loud comic archetypes is a poor fit for a film that relies on fairy tale icons and themes.

Great for ADD-style viewing but not for advancing Iranian cinema's currently challenged profile.

Leiser flexes his animation muscles with a bewitching stop-motion technique, but it proves a poor fit with a scattershot storyline that includes quasi-interview and improv segments that never coalesce into a coherent whole.

New pic lets the air out by divulging the startling mystery that concluded the original. Add this to problematic juggling of police procedural and group-in-distress storylines, and Lions Gate has what looks like a sequel rushed for Halloween.

Preaches purely to the converted.

If anything, this Canadian production misses a great opportunity to dig into its setting and examine the dark side of seemingly pristine Toronto, even as the script by Elan Mastai and director David Weaver labors over a mostly boilerplate storyline.

Limp comedy-drama.

After a long, glum slide, pic becomes an unconvincing story of redemption.

Judd now is top-billed, but her performance is so resolutely humorless and businesslike that Freeman's gruffly affectionate warmth becomes doubly valuable, though not nearly enough to lend this generic project any special character.

A strenuously solemn film that wants to create some kind of American pastoral tragedy out of the nation's current angst with the war.

A blandly conceived youth adventure lacking zing or style.

The live event was hopefully more engaging than this dull adaptation.

The filmmakers seem split between doing it straight and gleefully ripping up the genre, and never make up their minds.

Can't decide whether to be an eccentric black comedy or a middle-of-the-road diversion.