100 minutes spent watching children struggle and delight in learning is, at least in my book, 100 minutes happily spent.

It's not perfect - infrequently the comedy and drama rub up against each other too much - but it is the genuine article: a wholly unique family film that can moisten your eyes even while it quickens your pulse.

Can someone dial down Cuba Gooding Jr. a few notches? He's so hyperactive during this MTV Films production - which is comedically indistinguishable from "Sister Act," but with more marketable music - that his Vegas-showgirl drag act in the dreadful "Boat Trip" looks like Bressonian minimalism by contrast.

It is the perfectly cast Beckinsale who lifts Underworld out and away from the film’s many moments of silly gravitas and steers it into a truly interesting take on the whole vampires 'n' werewolves genre.

Millennium Actress has more layers to it than the proverbial onion, but Kon’s sure hand keeps things moving right along and into the next historical period.

You can easily lose five minutes making sense of it - and another 10 poking holes in it - but what of it? The preceding 100 minutes pass so pleasurably, the few false moves barely register - maybe the biggest con of all, but consider me happily snowed.

Ultimately, Cabin Fever isn't going to win any awards for originality - it's too busy twisting the conventions of the genre back in on themselves for that - but it does provide a jarring battery of scares (often depressing ones at that) that make it severed-head-and-shoulders above the spate of recent shockers.

A lovely, quietly thrilling thing.

The movie gets goofy from time to time -- as when payola arrives in a vintage "Clash of the Titans lunchbox -- but the filmmakers and cast have the style and the swagger to back it up.

The movie offers glimmers of truth about the aging process, but there is always the sense that Moss only wades knee-high into this river.

Yaar has enough heart to redeem its cruder moments, and it turns out to be quite a little charmer.

Ill-suited to casual viewing. But its challenges are worthwhile, and the gifted Gleize is one to watch.

A colorful mess, all style and substances and little else.

The best bit, however, is not even in the movie, but in the film’s end credits: an expletive-filled parody of We Are the World in which a host of has-beens croon about their halcyon days as child stars.

In the end, Meadows' film lacks the bite it needs to make us care about this oddball trio, endearing though they are.

Hopefully, someone will grab the torch and, if not run with it, at the very least track down and set fire to the highly combustible prints of this inexcusably inept yawn-a-thon - it's not so much bad as it is unfathomable.

Director David Zucker once upon a time made a very funny movie called Airplane!. Twenty years later, he’s made a movie only a 13-year-old horndog could appreciate, and for all the wrong reasons.

One of the Peking Opera-trained superstar's most mediocre films, rivaling last year’s God-awful "The Tuxedo" for sheer messy filmmaking and brazen acts of tedium... Abysmal.

Skateboarding is not a crime, but the subject of this exhaustive documentary... is very much a criminal.

Just plain unforgettable.

None of it is handled with any emotional believability or grace. Well-worn phrases and plot developments are repeated here as though the world had never heard of "Cinderella."

The first "Nightmare on Elm Street" was wickedly surreal, but the wacky dream sequences were offset by the sitcomlike, almost satirical flatness of ordinary suburban life; that was the really scary part. Freddy Vs. Jason is innocent of such nuances.

Remarkably fresh and exciting.

Though visually lovely and ambitious, never soars to the heights achieved by "Unforgiven." Costner’s film lacks the moral complexity that might earn it a solid berth in the canon of the American Western.

Eager to please, but it’s so lacking in real-world skate politics that it more resembles the chugging PG-13 mediocrity of Top 40 pop-punk-lite than the hard-core Black Flagisms of Peralta’s scathingly real doc.

Backed by a soundtrack of hip-hop and edited to within an inch of its life, Kennedy’s film has sleek gutter charm to spare.

There are flashes of wit and flair here, including two stylish sequences detailing the French obsession with food and scarves, but they are but brief respites from the film’s near-pathological drear.

The Princess Blade opens with one of the most note-perfect action sequences ever committed to film.

Absolutely unlike any documentary you’ve ever seen, Step Into Liquid nearly qualifies as a religious experience.

Surely something more original than this could have been mined from the history of North America’s largest and most professional police force. As it is, though, Johnson’s film is just firing blanks.

There’s enough intelligence and wit here to sustain your interest, especially when Curtis and Lohan are in peak form. They put the freak in this Freaky Friday.

All told, it’s two-plus hours of trinkets and baubles and clever repartée beneath a perfect summer sun and beside the whitewashed walls of Fez, not inconsequential but as ephemeral as the sky above.

It all adds up to a portrait in decency, which isn’t nearly as sexy as the title would suggest.

While it’s perhaps not the best date film of the year, it is a grim and unmistakable masterpiece of bleak, black sorrow.

Suffers from a lack of good gags. That’s not to say there aren’t scads of chuckles scattered throughout – Dylan and his cast are nothing if not gluttons for the fast and cheap yuk (not to mention yuck) – but the howls of laughter that arose from Paul and Chris Weitz’s original slice of Pie just aren’t there.

Wretched. And while the dirtiest, low-rottenest part of me wouldn’t mind watching the institution of Ben/Jen get reamed, the heft of the blame should be shouldered by Hollywood vet Martin Brest, who wrote an incoherent, incompetent script and further mangled it with his direction.

Bombastic it may be, but it’s rarely boring, as was the first Tomb Raider. Keep your expectations in line with the source material and you may be pleasantly surprised.

Bardem injects a shaggy, compassionate humor throughout, aided by a wry and moving ensemble cast and co-writer/director Fernando León de Aranda's eye for the offbeat.

You’ve heard of guerrilla warfare? Buffalo Soldiers is all about guerilla capitalism.

Taking a cue from the horse in question, Ross’ film takes its time getting into the race, but once it gets going, the going gets good.

Serrano's frequently mystifying device of having Lucía's cardboard psyche mess with the audience's minds is ultimately a confusing bore that detracts from what might have been a more eloquent (and interesting) take on middle-class midlife crises, telenovela-style.

The climax, like the film itself, is big, loud, and looks cool enough, which is what we’ve come to expect from summer movies … but not from Robert Rodriguez.

Camp has also been compared to Alan Parker’s "Fame," which operates with a similar love of behind-the-scenes melodrama and youthful idealism, but different in that it doesn’t induce brain-swelling revulsion in the viewer.

Bob Dylan might have been wrong when he sang that "there’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all." His new movie, although a complete narrative mess, is a thoroughly Dylanesque escapade.

This is strictly dull chuckles from dull wits, and while there are a few genuine laughs to be found amidst the dross, they’re as rare as Francophiles in Crawford, Texas.

It’s just too much drama for one modest film to service adequately. In an effort to cram it all in, scenes abruptly jump from one to the next with nary a smooth transition in sight, relationships evolve far too quickly, and certain subplots drop out of the mix only to resurface, jarringly, much later.

A fascinating sight to behold.

The movie’s length forces our suspension of disbelief for at least an hour more than is comfortable and pushes mindlessness to a dangerous longevity.

As a whole, September 11 never reaches any conclusions or ready insights. But as a collection of moments, the film often soars.

The movie treats all its characters kindly -– especially in moments where it would be easy to go for the cheap shot -– but there’s either not enough froth or meat on its bones to sate the appetite.

Gets under your skin with its graceful edits and poetic elisions, lovely performances, and faded imagery.

A pleasant, often beautiful, and surprisingly light-hearted film that affirms the human traits of resilience and intelligence while clearly denouncing the bellicose tendencies of nations and factions.

Falling in love with the wrong person makes for a far more toothsome melodrama, a fact this small, satisfying picture rightly recognizes.

Although the narrative hiccups in The Holy Land can be chalked up to the mistakes of a beginning filmmaker, they are not disruptive enough to diminish the film’s realistic impact.

Simply put, it’s too much of a good thing, this unreined tumult of chaos.

As a biopic, the movie has several shortcomings, but as a background story Madame Satã is full of atmosphere.

Bruckheimer -– always eager to egg on the public’s thirst for bigger, louder, stupider –- has done a scandalous amount of damage to contemporary cinema, but for once, his dubious talent for big-buck bombast is exploited for good rather than evil.

As atypical a summer film as they come -– no explosions, no car chases, no Arnold -– but immensely more pleasing than films with all three of those summertime staples.

Reality has overtaken the movies here, which, I suppose, makes T3 all the more cathartically appealing. At least onscreen we have Arnold Schwarzenegger in our corner.

Feels like the little animated adventure nobody loved.

Midway through, there’s a truly riotous set-piece involving Bruiser’s gay love affair with a Great Dane, but not even a Chihuahua in leather bondage gear can zest up a franchise that has degraded from sleeper to snoozer.

Never makes the leap from a little fantasy about sex with a stranger to a larger story about a woman settling down for life.

A less cohesive action-comedy than its predecessor, Full Throttle is instead a freewheeling collection of random action sequences strung together with little or no discernible rhyme or reason.

There’s gore, all right, although the real terror lies in the tease, and the often dark, herky-jerky DV format ratchets up the tension to an almost unbearable degree.

Although the story and imagery are absorbing to watch, the details of the plot are sometimes hard to follow and fully digest. But enough of it survives to make this extravagant production a delightful experience for Westerners to watch.

Astonishingly dull. The leads have zero chemistry, the supporting actors are even worse, and the script is a lifeless, draggy thing.

No one has ever succeeded with anything approximating the sheer energetic brilliance of what Lee has managed here. For all intents and purposes, this is a comic-book movie in the very truest and most vibrant sense of the phrase.

If you shy away from that sick feeling in the pit of the stomach that comes when watching good people make bad decisions, then best to steer clear of Manito, a low-budget indie that reaches near-Greek proportions of tragedy brought on by lousy decision-making.

Works quite well for what it is: a wooly crime yarn with touches of humor and a satisfying, well-developed relationship between the schemers.

Jet Lag's romantic fluffery is somewhat beneath these old pros, but they make its meet-cute scenario work, mostly -– and most especially when crusty, grumpy, grizzled Jean Reno announces he's "totally in love."

It’s all veddy stiff-upper-lip -– this is romance from a masochist’s point of view -– and the intimacy of the emotions often feels cramped.

Fact is, good looks will go a long way in masking mediocrity, and Hollywood Homicide capitalizes on that fact doubly so: Co-writer/director Ron Shelton’s latest boasts two pretty faces, and all across the country, mothers and daughters sigh alike.

It’s a message movie, as are all kids films these days, but these environmentally-aware messages are sweet and unforced, and well worth hearing.

It’s too didactic to be a spaghetti Western but lacks the moral compass required of a more evolved philosophical statement.

Even with its scant running time, this nightmarish travesty barrels along with all the whipcord speed and nimble comedic grace of a loved one’s funeral.

Although Love the Hard Way is saturated with a doomed romanticism that feels more fictitious than real, the actors lend the movie a potency that it would not have had otherwise.

This moody Hong Kong thriller puts a stylish new spin on the old "Hands of Orlac" horror motif.

It’s all very nice to look at, sure, but pretty colors and molten intercoolers aside, 2 Fast 2 Furious is about as exciting as a Yugo in quicksand.

Castle-Hughes and Paratene are nothing short of remarkable in their roles.

Proves to be a wonderful reality check.

The performances are all terrific, but Together never jells as a compelling narrative.

A zippy, energetic, automotive free-for-all, a caper extravaganza minus the bleak overtones that have come to figure in so many 9mm movies these days.

This was already tired stuff when cult fave "Sleepaway Camp" came out in 1983, and it’s downright comatose by now.

By the end of the movie, it’s no longer possible to know anything with certainty -– so convoluted, contradictory, pathological, and long ago have the events become. It’s a movie that will have you talking and thinking for hours.

Pixar's Finding Nemo may well have the best casting of any animated film of the past 30-odd years.

It seems downright unfair to harp on the remake’s differences from the original when both films are having such a ball.

Will likely test the patience of all but the most devoted fans.

Respiro scores high -– if strange -– marks, but I think it’s more in love with the quirky nature of life on a small island, which, unsurprisingly, echoes life in any small town, be it here or on some faraway Sicilian isle.

Bruce Almighty attempts to blend both sides of the actor – comedic and dramatic – and while Carrey achieved that balance quite wonderfully in "The Truman Show," Bruce Almighty doesn't so much straddle the fence as impale itself on it.

There’s not a sympathetic character in the bunch.

A couple of the cinemaniacs are less defined than others, but the portrait that emerges is a detailed composite of life on the fringe.

A dodgy, hit-or-miss affair that never quiet seems to gel: too many lumpy bits, and not enough crème.

Kids will revolt, parents will snooze, and I will be downright giddy if I never encounter another Pokémon movie as long as I live. Ack!

Suffers mightily from sequelitis. Forced to explain what’s going on and what’s going to be going on in the next and final installment (due out in November), the Wachowskis have laced the film with a series of crushingly dull and often incomprehensible scenes of exposition and yakky gabfests.

It’s far and away the most original symphony of terror since F.W. Murnau raised hackles and Schrecks with his 1922 Nosferatu.

If the film had allowed them to fall in love in real time, instead of to the drumbeat of history, their relationship would seem immeasurably more nuanced.

Loses something in its transposition to America where the two leads are not nearly as widely known as they are in their home country of France.

Across-the-board, the kids are extremely adorable to watch (not an easy thing to pull off) and will appeal to the other kids in the audience who might identify with them and see the story from the kids’ point of view. But looking at this film from any other perspective, will give you brain rot.