Walter Addiego

An exceptionally fine movie that plays out on a large and leisurely scale.

The director takes an unpromising premise - the switched-at-birth plot - and gives us something that's touching and unexpected.

The glory of the picture is the eye-popping, surreal backgrounds that blast the conventional characters off the screen.

It's full of visual flash, and can be enjoyed as a giddy ride, but you would waste your time trying to puzzle out the nuances of the story.

Metroland is a provocative rumination on how relationships are warped by two people's inability to be truthful with each other.

I can't help thinking, though, that maybe Thornton was too ambitious in trying to wear three hats.

You may find yourself weeping toward the end, and, later, you may also find yourself wondering why. The revelations are staggeringly obvious.

It's not as good as the original - which was fresher, funnier and scarier - but if it were, then by the criteria of the film's resident movie scholar, it wouldn't be a genuine sequel.

Lacks the spark of the best recent Disney spectaculars, like "Beauty and the Beast."

Speaking of bangs, the special effects include one of the better mega-blasts in recent memory: vast fireballs tear through the busy tunnel at dizzying speed and with devastating results. This is the money shot, what the Stallone audience is paying for. It remains to be seen if they'll buy a Stallone who's been downsized and reformulated - about a teaspoon's worth of added complexity.

It's soft-edged fun that loses direction (or, given the scattershot plot, directions).

His good-natured slob routine compensates for a lot of the film's dead spots, and the picture winds up a modest cut above the usual vehicle tailored for a would-be film star.

Some delightful surprises, but the sort of heavy-metal, high-definition sci-fi look that dominates the proceedings, plus the relentless pace and endless morphing, are somewhat tiring.

Cher is an inspired bit of casting, while the talented Dench is underused. Smith seems to be going through the motions as the fatuous and deluded aristocrat, while Tomlin has a ball as Georgie. But what really stays with you is the work by Plowright - she is a beacon of good sense (both as actor and character) and plucky as you please.

Director Troy Miller, making his feature debut, does a decent job with schmaltzy material.

There seems to be a pretty good film lurking around inside Bullhead, which makes what we actually see on the screen all the more frustrating.

A bonbon, not of a full-course meal. Foodies will smack their lips over many delectable shots of victuals prepared by the film's engaging protagonist, a provincial woman chosen to cook for the president of France. As a story, though, it's insubstantial - there's conflict here, but it feels perfunctory.

The film raises significant questions about manhood and offers a few gripping sequences, but isn’t fully satisfying.

Taking a stand would have made the film stronger, and might even have been helpful to young Pug and his peers.

The title comes from Indian legend in which Lord Rama tests the purity of his wife by a flaming ordeal (which we see enacted in an open-air pageant with comic overtones of Bunuel). This bit of mythology too handily prefigures a major element in the film's conclusion.

The film was clearly a labor of love, for good or ill. At one point, Galinsky jokingly refers to the production as “semi-unprofessional.” This is unusual and welcome frankness from a moviemaker.

A modestly entertaining martial arts melodrama with impressively staged fight sequences that help compensate for a stale plot and some less-than-stellar acting.

A doleful melodrama. There are some intense, moving sequences, but too much emotional badgering and a general shortage of finesse.

Although this leisurely tale of an aged French sculptor offers a few other small pleasures, in the end it lacks heft.

In short, a nice, predictable film unlikely to linger in the memory.

Trying to be provocative with a capital "P," Anne Fontaine's Adore undermines itself by provoking unintended laughs.

Turns into a pedestrian slice 'n' dice feature.

The New Zealand feature Boy almost pulls off the trick of merging cartoonish humor and '80s pop culture with a story glancing at deeper family issues. The film has an appealing 11-year-old hero, but in the end feels half baked.