Robert Koehler

Thesping and production values are solid and sometimes even attractive, but pic's overall American-style gloss becomes extremely odd and discomforting given the setting.

Giving Jonathan Rhys Meyers the kind of manly yet paternal role Spencer Tracy once mastered, this carefully wrought international production relates the basic story of reporter George Hogg without any vibrancy, emotion or style.

Unconvincingly attempts to update the futurist dystopian traditions of Orwell, Huxley and William Gibson.

Seems to be playing the author's music, but like a string quartet that plays a half-beat off.

Even with ties to the true story of high school hoops coach Jim Keith and his unlikely triumph with a 1960s Oklahoma high school girls' squad, the hackneyed, overlong Believe in Me is much too similar to a recent flood of inspirational basketball pics to distinguish it.

A textbook case in which the parts are greater than the whole.

Respectfully modest effort.

The picture's first 35 minutes sizzle until a Byzantine plot nudges the story toward near-parody in the final act.

Another superficial film about music from Scott Hicks ("Shine"), picture runs a distant second to the superior new film on John Adams and Peter Sellars, "Wonders Are Many," which really captures how a composer works.

It's a wipeout once the pic skids into melodrama and an overly schematic sense of how success tore the group apart.

Frustratingly fritters away what fascination it develops and bows to the basic conventions of a standard detective story mixed with the theme of a physician healing himself.

Picture's tendency to lecture on the power of faith and religion and on the demerits of science seems to assume an almost childlike audience that needs to be spoon-fed Pablum.

Not content with a straight psychological police procedural, Alvart mixes in distracting -- and unconvincing --Biblical symbolism in a curious bid for weightiness.

Michele Maher's Garmento appears more shocked at the fashion industry's cynical side than moviegoers are likely to be, making its drama of corruption a preordained snooze.

Director Mark Pellington hardly lets a moment pass without suggesting some bad vibes creeping onto the edges of the screen, but he's let down by Richard Hatem's script, based on John A. Keel's book, which delivers an ounce when it promised a gallon.

Plays closer to an after-school special (with HBO-standard dialogue) than a satisfying feature film.

While the picture's reporting on government repression of alternative cultural ideas and lifestyles is noteworthy more than anything, it's a blatant promo for Chong's career.

Saddled with more industry/celebrity baggage than a high-class safari voyage, Sahara is a rousing and only occasionally ridiculous adventure yarn.

While there's the sense that this old guy/young guy spy angle has been done better by films like "Spy Game" a decade ago, Gere, never looking tougher or handsomer, and Grace, adding some action skills to his relatively cerebral persona, invigorate the proceedings in roles that would seem to benefit the actors' career arcs.

As insistent as its heroine to get its point across, She's the Man gathers up enough energy and likeable goodwill that it almost skirts past some extremely strained passages in which Bynes plays out being a boy.

The wild, unhinged life of Andy Warhol's favorite "superstar," Edie Sedgwick, is refashioned in Factory Girl as a tame biopic with little feel for the 1960s New York Underground.

Shows both how far Hollywood's tech departments have advanced in 40 years and how shallow the pool of solid action thesps has become.

Interesting structure provides pic with plenty of opportunities for social satire, human comedy and chance encounters, but few setups are ever dramatically fulfilled.

A family melodrama that becomes less authentic as it progressively takes itself more seriously.

Though it lacks the sheer, depraved intensity of similarly themed pics like "The Gambler," Ride shares much of the sunlit sadness of "Save the Tiger," also populated by desperate, middle-aged men plying their trade in Los Angeles' garment district.

The rush of watching images made in such rare locales as Andorra and Sao Tome quickly wears thin as the montage whips through considerably meaty topics (water issues, climate change, immigration, religious faith) like an impatient Web surfer.

Functional if thoroughly uninspired movie. Because it clings to the comedy-action template of "48 Hrs.," pic feels like it could have been made 15 years ago.