Scott Brown

Gibson stages the movie episodically, as a series of quiet actors' moments; his direction is scrupulous, tasteful, and, I'm afraid, rather sodden. By the end, he wrings a tear or two, but more from the story's sentimental outline than from anything he does to fill it in.

Zathura is a rarity: a stellar fantasy that faces down childhood anxieties with feet-on-the-ground maturity.

So Much So Fast (spanning five years) elegantly presents both a critique and a celebration of American optimism.

The music's sensational, but you keep waiting for the pledge number to flash up.

''Kid'' seeks to ''empower'' its target audience of recent Pokémon grads with an adult antihero desperation that feels preemptive and inappropriate.

12:08 East of Bucharest is a shrewdly built comedy, but the characters are broad-verging-on-cheap unholy hick fools.

Far be it from me to dismiss a man's effort (Uwe Boll) in a sentence, but the film on your teeth after a three-day drunk possesses more cinematic value.

A few gags are brilliantly staged, but most have a smug, collegiate take-it-or-leave-it quality that makes full-on belly laughter feel optional.

Jaw set but never stiff, he (Fillion) gets both the Whedon wit and the Whedon grandiloquence between cheek and gum, and gives the whole enterprise the heft of a real saga.

The film is a furious full-court press, its subjects aflame with the kind of passion only youth can furnish.

Yes, it's all a harmless lark. Which is why the only thing that could redeem this sour patch of candy-coated crud would be a final shot of Earth exploding.

The somewhat rococo songs and earthy pop-art animation tread a very fine line between heady and headachy.

Danny Boyle's glittering, deadpan, nihilistic little thriller.

Ken Takakura, a great rain-creased oak of an actor, delivers a quietly massive performance.

Blessed with excellent turns by Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne, this feel-gooder revels in its hip-to-be-square hyperliteracy, and neatly exceeds its own PSA-ness, practically amounting to a black, preteen "Good Will Hunting."

For 20 years, Megumi's family doesn't know where she is; when they find out, the frustrations and uncertainties only mount. But as thickets of history and culture are (too) neatly avoided, the viewer is also left in the dark.

Aims for the junior stargazer in a release coinciding with NASA's new moon-by-2018 initiative. The movie is unmistakably a pitch, and an honorable one.

East of Havana picks at these politico-philosophical threads rather than pulling them, and the sense of a larger movement is fleeting. There's a beat, but we never quite see who's dancing to it.

The collection can be summed up in four words I never thought I'd see together: science-fiction chamber music.

Pooh's Heffalump Movie is a harmless little ''ex-po-tition'' (to use a Pooh-ism). Still, making this your kids' first Pooh experience would be like weaning them on New Coke.

As a documentary, Jesus Camp could lose its haunted-house score and contrapuntal Air America refrains and still deliver its message: that, here and elsewhere, fundamentalism is no longer content with a separate peace. It wants the meat.

The flick is best in its bittier moments (watch for the stellar cameos), and there's nothing to trouble the tots.

Here, he's (Damon) the ultimate enigma machine, a man willing to erase himself for his country. Does that make him a hero? The Good Shepherd is too closemouthed to let on.

Feel-good ethnocomedy.

Here's yet another self-consciously ''Almodóvarian'' confection, studded with small odes to the glory of self-creation.

As for our heroine (Lohman), her archetypal struggle with crusty Pa (uncrusty Tim McGraw) feels attitude-heavy and life-lesson-light.

It's a canned clip reel of Heartwarming Sports Comedy, intermittently redeemed by its easygoing boomer vibe. And at its center is the redoubtable Bernie Mac, nicely aged, as he says, ''like USDA beef.''

It's a soothing stoner tableau, a fine dropout fantasy.