For much of the movie Morris simply lets the loquacious McKinney talk, and she never, ever stops. And she never disappoints.

There are scenes here and there that are worthy, but many that aren't. Lipsky tries to use dialogue to cover up weaknesses in other areas - such as why these people behave the way they do. Some of the movie is inviting, some of it off-putting.

By the time the film reaches its implausible climax, it is far too late to rescue the story from the limbo that lies between ugly history and slick entertainment.

Director Ruben Fleischer, who directed Eisenberg in the worlds-better "Zombieland," never finds that kind of successful groove here, instead bouncing from one set piece to another, with vastly inconsistent results.

It's entertaining at face value, but they never let it be just that.

The acting is uniformly excellent, and the cause - dragging the beginnings of civil rights into Jackson, Miss., at great risk - couldn't be nobler. What the film lacks is a strong point of view.

One of the things that pushes Jig beyond what it might have been otherwise is that not everything works out as you might have liked.

Thanks to a particularly even-handed job by director Michael Rapaport, the story emerges as compelling, even for non-fans in the audience.

Shot in verite style with handheld cameras and rule-breaking quick cuts, Cahill's film moves slowly between moments of heartache and quiet beauty.

Terri is almost an anti-teen-coming-of-age teen-coming-of-age movie. And it's terrific.

Once you see that ape, named Caesar, riding a galloping horse in triumph, it's awfully hard not to get sucked in. It's not dumb fun, exactly. It's smart dumb fun.

It's hard not to be disappointed with The Change-Up, which in the end follows the basic conventions of the switched-identity genre, if more profanely, changing up not much at all.

He's always on - this is a documentary, after all, so even when O'Brien is offstage, he's still performing in some capacity, cracking wise at the camera, of whose presence he is acutely aware.

Shown in flashbacks, the story of 10-year-old Sarah Starzynski is powerful, thanks in large part to the luminous screen presence of young Mélusine Mayance.

Stone is becoming a dependable go-to choice for comedies, brimming with charisma.

Exactly what it sounds like: a cowboy movie and an alien movie thrown together, a genre mash-up that's more fun than good, but pretty good nonetheless.

Wayne Wang directed "The Joy Luck Club," a fine, sentimental look at Chinese women. Now he presents another look at Chinese sisterhood in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, and it feels like a shallow imitation: Imagine getting Kate Hudson when you expect Goldie Hawn.

A Little Help is worth watching, mostly for Fischer.

Patricia Clarkson is kind of funny as Jamie's mom, an unreformed hippie. And Timberlake and Kunis get in a few good laughs before it's over. But with such a well-worn story, you can't shake the idea you've seen this kind of thing before.

None of the characters, save Ada, is interesting enough to sustain the creaky joints of the convention of the story mechanism.

At times hilarious but ultimately heartbreaking, Project Nim is a great chronicle of the 1970s and all the nutty ideas that implies; academia in particular comes in for a hard reckoning.

Sweet, gentle and defiantly retro (the 2-D hand-drawn animation is superb), the movie is irresistibly charming.

With shifting loyalties, unlikely heroes, truths revealed and a little help from friends, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 winds the series up in a most-satisfying fashion.

For most of the film, Weitz, riding a fantastic performance by Demián Bichir as the landscaper in question, succeeds in showing the day-to-day struggles that exist beneath the political rhetoric and upper-case headlines.

Let's not pretend otherwise: The comedy here is profane, juvenile, silly. Fine by me, because some of it also is hilarious.

It's stupid, then it veers toward the absurd, but with James at its center it remains sort of sweet throughout. You can't hate James or the movie; both are just sort of dopey but well-meaning.

The film is interesting and at times enlightening, but it's all over the map.

Queen to Play falls somewhat into the "Pygmalion" template, but watching Bonnaire's Helene find herself makes it worthy in its own right.