It's an intermittently amusing parable about an outcast's ascension, as performed by a pack of digitally manipulated dogs. Next.

Living in Emergency, then, is like a hard slap to the face: There is nothing remotely romantic about this grim depiction of two missions in Liberia and Congo in the mid-2000s.

Jeunet's Micmacs resembles a live-action cartoon, one in which the set-pieces, the characters, and their actions all have the flavor of physical impossibility and unfettered imagination.

By no means a great film, but it is an entertaining one, a nearly bloodless, family-friendly throwback of sorts to a cinematic age when Persian palace intrigue, winsome princesses, and ambitious princes ruled the back lots and Errol Flynn was in like, well, Errol Flynn.

Aside from the ridiculous dialogue, of which there is much, and truly crappy CGI gore, of which there is even more, Survival of the Dead feels like the single weakest link in what is otherwise the strongest, smartest, and most transgressively revolutionary horror series in cinema history.

The problem lies with the unimaginative story premise and the quip/reverse quip dialogue that just may be better-suited to half-hour television shows than this nearly 2½-hour movie feature.

Yet even though Forever After is not as fresh-seeming as its predecessors, it provides passable entertainment, especially for the kids who won’t be familiar with the George Bailey storyline retread – or midlife crises, for that matter.

The film goes by in a wash of uninspired action and unmemorable comedy.

The story is so meandering and unbelievable that Westerners are still likely to roll their eyes. I have no idea what Indian audiences will make of Kites. The film is rousing, but it does not soar.

The actors are all charged up, too; there’s just nowhere in this script for them to go.

Scott’s is the story of how Robin Longstride (and, no, that’s not a name made up by Mel Brooks), an archer in Richard the Lionheart's last Crusade, became Robin of the Hood, the wily defender of the overtaxed people of Nottingham.

Is Gary Winick atoning for his sins? If “Bride Wars” was an acid spill -- and that’s putting it generously -- then Letters to Juliet is like the safety shower in your high school chemistry class, delivering an unsubtle blast of sanitized sentimentality.

Pleasant but dull formula film.

It's certainly one of the most beautiful costume-drama/historical-romance naps you'll ever have, but this effortlessly evocative, endlessly ennui-inducing paean to Hawaii's final princess is, ultimately, a dull, "Upstairs Downstairs" affair.

Despite its high tech sheen and overstuffed cast of characters, played by some of the best actors in the land, this mega-mecha melee manages to give short shrift to both the airborne action set-pieces that define Iron Man's zoomy panache and incoming supervillain Whiplash, aka Ivan Vanko (Rourke).

Tonally, it all makes sense, but there’s such a thing as overmuchness. Gibney laudably launches a withering attack here on the pay-to-play relationship between lobbyists and lawmakers. But this viewer felt withered, too, by the end of his battering ram of a movie.

If the mother-child bond is the core human relationship, then this movie implies that we are an emotionally doomed species, though I do not think this was writer-director Garcia’s intent.

This documentary is as soothing and edifying as watching a video loop of the Yuletide log.

Furry Vengeance would be innocuous enough if only it didn't look as though no effort was made to expand the images past the storyboard phase.

Exploitative and crass, the film paints an ugly portrait of youth gone wild and the ineffectuality of the police to curb the menace.

A stroll with these characters is a refreshing break from from the usual film exercises.

Coprophiliacs looking for a movie that really rings their chimes will be positively tintinnabulating from this arthouse horror number.

Just as marriage does not banish aloneness, proximity to the characters onscreen doesn't unlock any special connection to them.

Part unfunny sitcom, part post-"Gigli" career resurrection strategy, and all bad.

It's not rocket science making nonstop action feel semi-fresh, and The Losers’ script by Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt manages to render each individual, um, a loser in the broadest and most memorable strokes. It's not a masterpiece, either, but it'll do until Hannibal, Murdock, and the rest the A-gamers start blowing things up come June.

The piece is a tribute to the 1992 film "Troll 2" and its many fans, who have dubbed it the "best worst movie" ever made.

Mines the traditional Western genre and infuses it with fresh, frequently hilarious life.

The camera may dive deep, but the content skims mere surface.

Slight but agreeable picture.

Vaughn did a cracking good caper film with a pre-007 Daniel Craig called "Layer Cake" six years ago, but Kick-Ass has little of that film's heady panache and instead batters you about the face and neck with wildly over-the-top fountains of gore, bone-cracking slow-motion, and, yes, Cage, who dials his acting down a few notches from the kicky Herzogian mindf---ery of "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans."

Borte may have lost his way on this film, but there is one thing he has done for America: He has demonstrated the correct way of spelling the plural of the surname Jones. Grammarians, if few others, will be satisfied.

When you get to the end of The City of Your Final Destination, you may discover that there is no there there.

It’s endlessly arguable and open for debate. At the very least, we can all agree that Banksy has found a new wall on which to plaster his art – that of the silver screen.

Campanella’s script (which is adapted from a novel by Eduardo Sacheri) bogs down, however, when the focus of the story is on Benjamín, who is dogged by his memories and his inability to make a play for Irene.

Never breaks out of its dullsville rut.

A solid, intermittently excellent, and extremely exsanguinatory take on what Stephen King famously referred to as the "Spam in a cabin" genre.

This romance isn't a sunshine-dappled meadow, it's a thicket of thorny rosebushes atop a rocky precipice. Both actors are alarmingly natural in their roles and Ade's direction is a model of subtly shifting tones and tempers.

Benjamin Bratt ably depicts both sides of this character and creates a memorable portrait in the process.

I’ve seen sick kids exploited for all sorts of reasons – usually as easy ploys to manipulate emotions but sometimes to sell things or encourage philanthropic outpourings – but Letters to God takes the cake (make that the holy wafer).

It's a finely calibrated, spiraling lesson in what NOT to do when engaging in adultery, blackmail, arson, and general antisocial behaviors, and in its best moments it recalls the everyday darkness of James M. Cain: average people doing awful things in an amoral and uncaring universe.

The images are vivid, their meanings much less so.

Could have used a touch of Madea’s down-home, self-reliant wisdom to spice up the marital doldrums of these four buppie couples.

There are a number of cheeky winks from the filmmakers specifically aimed at Harryhausen fans; in the end, though, Leterrier's Clash of the Titans is nearly as messy an assemblage of mythic odds and ends as the original.

The title, The Last Song, may be wishful thinking for some, but the best they can probably hope for is the close of the era of Hannah Montana movies.

Consider this yet another nail in the Eighties coffin.

While Chloe may seem reminiscent of Egoyan’s outlandish thriller "Where the Truth Lies," it also calls to mind another would-be thriller about marital infidelity that starred Neeson and was utterly ludicrous: "The Other Man."

The swarming dragon attacks may truly frighten the littlest viewers, but the depiction of the pleasures of flight and the conquering of one’s fears should make How to Train Your Dragon a perennial delight.

Where has all the fun science-fiction filmmaking gone?

Barely worthy of a legitimate theatrical release.

Easily the smartest, snarkiest, and most honest depiction of that tweenage wasteland known as the "middle school years" that this former wimpy freak and geek has come across since having survived the daily derision afforded those of us who chose to spend our lunch periods perusing J.R.R. Tolkien, playing Dungeons & Dragons, or just hiding out in the boys' room.

This is not your mother's murder mystery, unless your mother's maiden name is de Sade and she has an appallingly bleak vision of modern society that occasionally fixates on the historical misdeeds of the corporate/industrial world and the correction thereof.

Going dramatic, Stiller commits to the role completely; there's something rather admirable in his refusal to pander or soft-pedal the self-serious, frankly unlikable Greenberg.

It's an out-of-this-world, real-life adventure for kids of all ages, budding Neil Armstrongs and Ray Bradburys alike.

The Runaways nails both the glammy, SoCal temper of the mid-Seventies and the metallurgic tempering of the first all-girl rock band in America.

It has a basic goodness of heart that counteracts, if not entirely cancels out, the film's broadness and busyness.

A gripping presentation of a little-known true story and its historical lessons.

These women are marvelous, with ancient, creased faces and the kind of admirable f...-all attitude that comes with age. I couldn't take my eyes off them.

Kazan appears in every scene of The Exploding Girl’s perfectly paced 80 minutes, and you’d miss her if she ducked out for even a moment.

Even though She’s Out of My League ends exactly where you think it will, it does so without ever having actually gone anywhere at all.

No matter where your political gullibilities lie, Green Zone is a riveting piece of actioneering.

Moments of great suspense are sometimes invested with intrinsic humor, moments of trauma can yield great compassion. Often, these seemingly conflicting tones exist all at once, while the oblique mystery never clearly identifies the correct emotion.

A formulaic wedding comedy about mismatched families, but thanks to several appealing performances this rote exercise turns out better than most.

There is, quite simply, a rather refreshing ordinariness to Remember Me in the unflashy, knuckle-down attention it gives to character development and the building of plausible and involving family and friend dynamics.

The first act is very nearly unbearable, leaden and doomy and generically plotted.

Brooklyn’s Finest is mo’ wrong than right.

An equally tired and wearisome buddy-cop movie that might as well be a forgotten leftover from the era of "Turner and Hooch." Now there's a film with classic Kevin Smith scrawled all over it.

A Prophet is the kind of film that makes you remember why going to the movies can be a thrilling experience.

To call The Crazies the most original horror film in a long while only serves to point out just how lousy mainstream, studio-released horror has become. It's a solid thriller, sure, but there's precious little in it that hasn't been seen countless times before, and in the end it plays it safe … by not playing it safe.

Still, when The Yellow Handkerchief finally hooks into the meat of Hamill’s source story, the narrative tension puts enough wind in the film’s sails to arrive at its corny but sentimentally satisfying conclusion.

While The Art of the Steal makes a very convincing – even bone-chilling – argument that the people and foundations that essentially hijacked the Barnes Foundation are primarily concerned with tourist dollars and not the preservation of Barnes' legacy, the film fails to even ponder why easier access to some of the world's greatest art treasures might not be an entirely bad thing.

It's pure Bedlam, but for genre fans, Scorsese makes it feel like coming home.

The Ghost Writer hasn’t the complexity or breadth of such stunners as "Chinatown" or "The Pianist," but it is nevertheless a solidly built little roundelay of intrigue with a veracity that seems torn from newspaper headlines.

There's plenty of doom, gloom, and outright despair on hand here but very little genuine human emotion.

Aggressively unfunny and unromantic, Valentine’s Day’s chief concern appears to have been the corralling of its cast of a thousand stars; it seems far less attention was paid to what to do with that cast once assembled.

As scripted by Craig Titley, this first in a presumptive franchise is a dull, scattershot affair that owes much to both "X-Men" and Greek mythology, but which never seems to slow down enough to make any sense whatsoever.

The film is so self-referencing, however, that a running gag about Wax/Travolta craving a “royale with cheese” moves the film’s energy backward rather than forward. Perhaps instead it was a reference to the film’s nutritional value rather than its screen precedents.

He is meant to be brooding, I think, but Tatum’s vague features read more “meathead” than anguished young lover. He has to carry the film, but he’s the least interesting thing going on here.

Due in large part to its cultural relevance, this is also one of the few sequels that nearly succeeds in topping the original.

Terribly Happy isn't, but it is wonderfully unhinged, and a painstakingly constructed meditation on a place where good and evil meet, mate, and make sour times sublime and, dare I say it, beautiful.

Electrifying and decidedly downbeat slice of life and death in Ajami.

Edge of Darkness has the look and feel of a Brit film shot in America – it's all dark, boxy rooms with powerful white men in impeccable black suits discussing how to tidy up the minor mishaps of their game over brandy and cigars.

How do movies this bad still get made?

You watch and wait for this underachieving film to ignite, then grow more and more exasperated as you witness its many misfires.

North Face is a gripping, at times downright epic, account of men vs. mountain vs. other men (and, what the hell, one woman).

As for Legion, well, if you've seen one plague of flies and death and angels at war with each other, you've seen 'em all.

Looks and tastes an awful lot like a TV movie of the week.

A well-meaning but ineptly made message movie.

How many screenwriters does it take to screw in this dim bulb? Five – no joke – and another one credited with “story by.”

Much has been made of the film's ending, vis-à-vis whether or not it's a pro- or anti-organized religion commentary of some sort. The Hughes Brothers, for two, say they just wanted to make a kickass piece of contemporary entertainment, and I, for one, believe them.

Fish Tank isn't an easy watch – it's like two hours of ache – but there are rich rewards to be had in the many ways Arnold and her terrific team rend us to and fro.

Nobody of Chan's legendary stature should ever have to play second banana to George Lopez, and certainly not in a film that was already made five years ago with Vin Diesel (see: The Pacifier).

It’s a little bit silly – as is Dafoe’s Kentucky-fried cowboy mechanic named Elvis – but silly is fun. In fact, one wishes it were sillier still.

It’s an enjoyable enough exercise in teen angst triumphing.

This film is unquestionably the most unromantic and downright despairing romcom since "Made of Honor" or, possibly, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

Haneke (Caché) has created a morality tale that concludes with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand: one more example of a solitary act of violence that unleashes a cataclysm.

Here's hoping that younger members of the audience will seek out Conan Doyle's original stories to further explore Holmes' official amanuensis, Dr. John Watson, whose brilliant case studies regarding his friend, roommate, and fellow rationalist are the stuff dreams are made of.

Christopher Plummer is delightful as this movie’s master magician and impresario of the rickety Imaginarium.

Meyers has a good feel for contemporary comedy; it’s reality, however, that slips through her grasp.