Phillippe does a dark, searing turn with a character that could have easily been little more than Taps-era hubris, and Gordon-Levitt, as one of King's more fragmented former charges, is riveting and convincingly small-town Texas.

It's a tonally confused comedy which, for once, doesn't go far enough comedically.

Alexander's script considers context anathema, leaving us to wonder, among other puzzlers, why these two jerks are friends to begin with – and, perhaps, on what bad breakup or neglected childhood one may blame the film's dispiriting misanthropy.

Much to my dismay this is not an unauthorized sequel to Abel Ferrara's 1979 East Village art-world freakout "Driller Killer." This is instead a dispiritingly mediocre tweener comedy from some very talented people who appear to be experiencing a delayed sophomore slump.

There's a lot of truly hilarious material in The Grand.

Perry tosses everything at his disposal into his movie gumbo, even a completely gratuitous appearance by his signature, self-performed, alter-ego in drag Madea – most likely to set up the premise for his next film "Madea Goes to Jail."

The very Thai-specific charms that made the original Shutter such an unforeseen, unpredictable delight when I first saw it – and when I screened it again, last night – are almost entirely absent here, eclipsed by the annoying blonde highlights of Taylor, ex-Transformer babe and forever, as the Thai say, farang.

It turns out globalization has its good points after all, and they're sporting Chucks, Kangols, and post-Gomi DIY gear. Spin again.

Its parallel stories of two lost souls seeking each other across geographical divides is never more than one small step away from mawkishness and cliché, and oftentimes less.

Marshall, like his characters, does not mess around: Good people do bad things to not-entirely bad people while the Man (in this case No. 10 Downing St.) seeks ways to screw everyone.

In the mold of their previous films "Ice Age" and "Robots": a nice blend of rudimentary and inventive touches.

Borrows from other movies almost shamelessly.

Unfortunately, Sleepwalking isn’t content being a character study of damaged adult siblings (if it were, it would have made a nice companion piece to Kenneth Lonergan’s "You Can Count on Me," which is a far less sobering, but far more effective, movie).

You can take a page from Wes Craven before he went flat and keep repeating, "It's only a movie; it's only a movie; it's only a movie." But is it?

The only evolution in question here is that of Emmerich's skills as a director of motion pictures.

Unlike the other great caper films of the last 10 years, like "Ocean’s 11" and "The Italian Job" – stylish affairs in which punishment is close enough to give the audience a sense of lingering danger but never so close that it gets in the way of the technological fetishism and love of tailored shirts that apparently make grand larceny such a kick – the blowback in The Bank Job is real and ugly and involves some sort of pneumatic paint-stripping machine that would freak out the Coen Brothers.

Osmond is all teeth and no talent. You’d think that his presence here might provide an opportunity for some tongue-in-cheek humor at his expense, but Osmond plays the comedy so darn straight that it’s painful to watch.

With its 1950s decor and upbeat ending (clever camouflage all), Married Life probably won’t show up on the radar of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family anytime soon, but at the risk of supplying the enemy with ammunition, I have to say they might be giving a pass to one of the more ethically dubious films to come out of Hollywood in years.

The comedic success of this pair of dramatic archetypes, the radiant flibbertigibbet and the gray, lumpen elder spinster, in a lightweight bit of piffle such as this is a testament to both Adams' and McDormand's smarts. It's tough to play dumb when you're not and even more difficult to dial down your own innate brilliance.

Paranoid Park shows the Portland-based director to be working at the pinnacle of his art in every frame, in every composition. It's breathtaking, heartbreaking, tragic, gorgeous, and true all at the same time.

Few filmmakers these days are as capable and assured with the fumbling ambivalence of human conversation as Green is; his ear for the half-truths, misapprehensions, and long-simmering defensiveness of everyday dialogue is a wonder to behold.

Chow's loyal fans are sure to be disappointed by CJ7, and the film faces one other significant problem in traveling to these shores: Any kid who is the right age to appreciate this pap is going to be too young to read subtitles.

Counselors and campers' moms tend to tear up when they talk about the lessons these girls are learning, lessons that go way beyond how to tune a bass, but this isn't exactly a "rah-rah" film.

Intriguing.

Equal parts tragedy and comedy, high drama and low farce.

Works both as an engagingly sordid meditation on protofeminism and contemporized sisterhood set in a time and a place where either/or were grounds for, at the very least, defenestration.

It’s as if Caveny had so many ideas that she simply couldn’t bear to leave any of them crumpled up on her office floor.

But basketball … basketball doesn’t deserve the Ferrell treatment. Basketball is a sport of kings, a thing of beauty and elegance, America’s game. Which doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be mocked but that if it must be mocked it deserves to be mocked well, and Semi-Pro, unfortunately, isn’t up to the challenge.

The result is an expansive and ambivalent testament to human ingenuity, human intransigence, and nature’s endangered yet enduring power to move.

Sequences like the silly montage of Charlie on Ritalin (which just looks like the precious doodles of a former editor), grievously underdeveloped characters, and heavy heapings of sap instead of snark keep Charlie Bartlett from making the dean’s list.

Both apocalyptic and suitably vague, The Signal's only serious weakness comes from some borderline histrionic performances; then again, it's tough to call hysteria anything other than a sane response to a world gone mad. Crazy, man.

Gondry’s well-meaning but too soft, too structure-less picture.

The Counterfeiters differs from most Holocaust movies in that the emphasis is on the personal moral choices that are made rather than the overall horror and despair.

If you can work your way past Vantage Point's goofy casting that places a bland, blank-eyed Hurt in the White House, then I suppose you can manage to forgive this "Rashomon" rip-off's other glaring idiosyncrasies, of which there are many.

Balibar and Depardieu make a compelling duo who exude an animal magnetism that's undeniable.

Though the history and the palace intrigue are not at all difficult for Westerners to grasp, a tighter running time would probably help this epic reach more eyes in America, where it has received the biggest release ever for a Bollywood

Diary of the Dead is meant to scare your pants off, blow your mind out the back of your skull, and then deposit you ungently back into reality, quaking a little, maybe, but still alive and, unlike the undead, thinking.

A curiously unaffecting amalgam of the archetypal coming-of-age tale, here twinned to "outsider" religious overtones (in this case São Paulo's Orthodox Jewish community) and a small but deadly dose of uneasy political melodrama.

There’s a surprising – and truthful – melancholic undercurrent to Definitely, Maybe – the one commonality between the three women is the heartbreak they induce – but Brooks undermines that truthfulness with a dogmatic insistence upon romantic mythologizing. No maybes about it: The reality is far darker, and more interesting.

The whole production does reek a bit of origin story filminess, but even so, it's light sabers beyond Christensen's sad, revengeful fate in "Episode III" and does offer a nice view of the top of the Sphinx's head no less than three times.

Starts off promisingly by empathetically depicting the fear and anger children feel when their parents separate, but ultimately its human emotions are dominated by goblins, trolls, and other CGI-generated creatures running amok on the screen.

If we don’t stop these public dance-offs here and now, before too long we’re going to have an entire generation of kids seeking salvation as back-up dancers for Justin Timberlake

By the time Tawfiq, Dina, and the band’s boy Lothario, Haled (Bakri), commiserate over “My Funny Valentine” in the film’s sublime third act, writer/director Kolirin has created a remarkable world where no struggle is too severe to overcome with a little empathy and the Great American Songbook on your side.

Fool’s Gold is the latest romantic comedy from Tennant, who is very possibly the worst director working in Hollywood today. "Fools Rush In." "Ever After." "Sweet Home Alabama." Hitch: I ask you, has anyone done more in the last 10 years to make love seem totally unappetizing?

The film's light comedy and dark morality make for an unsettling mix.

Onscreen it all plays out like some sort of self-coronation, a celebration of the boy Vaughn’s rise to the heights of superstardom.

At its best, Roscoe Jenkins is about the crushing influence of the past and one man’s attempts to free himself – by hook, crook, or Hollywood – from underneath it. At its worst, however, the movie is content to just explore the apparently infinite comic potential of dogs having sex, people getting sprayed by skunks, and men getting beaten up by overweight women.

The first-time feature director, co-writer, and star of Caramel, Labaki, can be forgiven the commonness of her dramatic setting because of the gracefulness of her storytelling and the strength of her vision.

Most unforgivably, this Eye culminates not with the mounting dread and spectacular tragedy of the original film's decidedly downbeat vision, but with the trademark LASIK laziness of Hollywood's stylistically blank remake factory.

The show delivers with its corps of dancers, backup singers, elaborate runways, and a couple tunes by boy group, the Jonas Brothers, who do their thing while the fictional Hannah makes the backstage transition into the flesh-and-blood Miley.

Where Over Her Dead Body should soar with blistering verbal gymnastics, it limps with empty sass about weight gain and skin blemishes; where it should race with inventive comic set-pieces, it slogs with extended flatulence sequences and gags about lifting overweight dogs.

This one has the feel of being penned on rolling papers, with room to spare.

There will be blood in the ultraviolent Rambo, a movie that depicts both heinous acts and righteous reckoning with equal degrees of flying body parts and arterial sprays.

This kind of a dance film lives and dies by the routines, and this one wins: Mixing elements of gymnastics, karate, and break with the almighty step – an exceedingly polite term for what is really an awesome stomp.

Hey, guys, when you repurpose a disco hit to poke fun at gay men, not only do you look like assholes, you look like assholes who rip their jokes off of YouTube.

Tepid, borderline offensive cyber-serial killer thriller.

A curious filmgoing experience: Virtuosic, assured, and possessed of undeniable aesthetic force, it’s also hard not to turn away from.

Turnabout is fair play, to be sure, but ultimately virtually everyone in Teeth ends up using sex as a weapon, edged or otherwise, to the detriment of all concerned. Just say "Ow."

At this point, I guess we should just applaud Allen for his work ethic. Even at the ripe, old age of 72, he’s still making movies at the rate of one a year, come rain or come shine. The problem, of course, is that he doesn’t make good movies at the rate of one a year. In fact, by my count, he hasn’t made a good movie for almost a decade (1999’s "Sweet & Lowdown").

Cloverfield is the most intense and original creature feature I've seen in my adult moviegoing life, and that's coming from a guy who knows his Gojira from his Gamera and his Harryhausen from his Honda. Cloverfield isn't a horror film – it's a pure-blood, grade A, exultantly exhilarating monster movie.

Move over, Gordon Gecko: The new poster boy for American greed in the movies isn’t a silver-tongued corporate hustler with pomaded hair and a closet full of $10,000 suits. In fact, the new poster boy for American greed in the movies isn’t a boy at all. I know you won’t believe me when I tell you, but you’ve been replaced by Diane Keaton.

The jokes hit about half the time – the best bits have an off-the-cuff feel – and it’s pocked with the kind of rom-com clichés that are practically written in stone (screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna's script for "The Devil Wears Prada" was far sharper).

Impossible to shake off.

Tyler Perry has already been here and done that to such a degree that this particular cinematic field should now be plowed under and salted so that nothing might grow thereupon forevermore. Amen.

Who among us can explain the enigma wrapped in a riddle surrounded by fierce, ravening, razor-toothed conundrums that is German director Uwe Boll?

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of … V8? That’s what you get when you cross VeggieTales characters with a pirate yarn.

Do yourself a favor and go rent any Miike film other than this one.

Honeydripper’s story isn’t anything you haven’t seen a dozen times before, but where Sayles succeeds (where Sayles always succeeds) is in his ability to dramatize the psychological and linguistic details that give identity to a subculture struggling for survival.

Ultimately the composition comes off as both overplayed and underdone.

There Will Be Blood is not a movie that disappears quietly.

An orgy of mindless violence, a random collection of bloody bodies, alien misanthropy, and slobbering carnage designed to bore straight into the pleasure centers of 13-year-old boys and leave the rest of us wondering when the movies got so damn loud.

Though you might have a hard time discussing some of the film’s verbal descriptions of torture with young ones, Persepolis will prove a worthwhile movie for thoughtful teens.

White-bread storytelling made by, for, and about people who think joy and meaning can be acquired by simply taking a step or two out of life’s comfort zones and into African-safari packages and skydiving excursions.

The film is hobbled by the narrative predictability that inevitably governs this type of drama.

A family film in the best sense.

Almost insufferably sufferable. It's a chick flick of the tallest order, with schmaltz galore and the sort of ongoing romantic hubris that practically screams, "This is codswallop, right?"

Perhaps there was some confusion – should we play this as a lark or a lesson in geopolitical unrest? – or maybe there was some studio involvement to defang the politics; whatever the case, the noncommittal Charlie Wilson's War treads a good-natured but yawning in-between.

Book of Secrets isn’t so much a romp as a long trudge through American history factoids and conspiracy-theory gobbledygook. Cool car chase, though.

Obenhaus' documentary on extreme, "big mountain" skiing feels, despite its jaw-dropping camerawork and patently fearless subjects, like a relic from 1998.

Burton's gorgeously grim film (his sixth with Depp) is loyal to Sondheim's original, both in spirit and structure; it's dark and gothic and drenched in blood, and it forgoes excessive dialogue in the name of getting quickly to the next murky, malevolent, yet strangely forgettable tune.

It’s apparent that the sharp comic forces behind this epic are simply a couple of juvenile men who think it’s hilarious to show a man’s penis on screen just for the sake of itself. But the embarrassing truth is that, well, sometimes it is.

They shoot rodents, don't they?

Unfortunately, after those first 10 minutes it’s all downhill for I Am Legend, as the film descends into a monster-movie malaise starring a horde of balding CGI monsters that look like refugees from a video game and that will scare absolutely no one, save those who worry that green-screening is ruining the movies.

An example of how good intentions don’t necessarily make for a good movie.

Coppola never manages to get his themes to coalesce into anything terribly coherent.

Far from perfect and about as much fun as a holiday in Cambodia, this is lightweight yuletide fluffery, offensive neither in tone nor spirit but entirely unnecessary.

It’s not quite as brutalizing as McEwan’s brilliant source novel – it bears too much of a Great Art buff – but it ravishes nonetheless in its grand exploration of the sins of the daughter and a lifetime spent making reparations.

There are significant stretches of talky tedium, more than a few “huh” moments for neophytes – especially whenever anyone starts nattering on about Dust with a capital D – and the ending plays abruptly, but there’s plenty here to hang a franchise on.

Guilty of the most mortal of all movie sins: It's dull.

As with "Sunshine," I'd call Juno a family film if only it didn't make teen pregnancy look so sporting. Instead, we'll settle for that rare bird, an indie comedy that uplifts – funny and smart, totally trying to be cool and succeeding, and heartfelt to boot.

Could easily have tipped over into melodrama, but Schnabel is too much an artist to let that happen; he realizes that in order to make his hero truly substantial, and not just sympathetic, he has to present him as an ordinary man making the best of extraordinarily lousy circumstances. By doing so he’s created a character we not only marvel at but identify with.

With a running time of 78 minutes, Awake is relatively painless, playing a little like a lesser story from one of EC Comics Shock SuspenStories – or a lot like Joseph Cotten's "Breakdown" episode of Alfred Hitchock Presents – updated for the Fangoria generation.

Badland's only commercial potential lies in the possibility that people may confuse it for Terrence Malick's incomparable "Badlands."

Jenkins' superlative work proves her first film was no fluke; let's hope it doesn't take another nine years to hear from her again.

It's also and most interestingly about the writing process itself, a difficult feat to pull off on film, which Wagner and co-screenwriter Fred Parnes manage to display with unvarnished realism.

August Rush is a rather prosaic, oddly anxious, contemporary take on Dickens' Oliver Twist, with Williams – in nasty-man twee mode, a newish one for him – thrown in for bad measure.

Though writer Bill Kelly’s script takes extreme liberties with plot development and never really leaves you guessing about who’ll get the girl, the jokes rarely miss and the result is a refreshingly sardonic fairy tale.

To be sure, Hitman is a lousy film, but like the video game that inspired it, it's also great fun, drawing as it does on everything from James Bondian Eurotrash panache to Vin Diesel's moribund XXX character.