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.

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?"

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

There’s an undeniable thrill to watching something so experimental and yet totally accessible to those of us who speak only layman’s Dylanese, and it’s Haynes’ warmest film yet.

Unlike King, Darabont ends this story with a drop kick to the cerebellum, a change from the original that shocks the viewer and leave little doubt that Darabont thinks we're all headed to hell in a hand basket.

It’s redemption through sentimentality, salvation through schmaltz.

Although this version of Beowulf (the script, ricocheting between thrilling, heroic, and hilarious, is by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary) does take some liberties with certain heretofore undreamed of aspects of parentage, it's as faithful to the extant version as it needs to be.

True believers make for sloppy documentarians and that What Would Jesus Buy? is stuck in neutral because of its director’s almost total lack of intellectual and psychological curiosity.