This comedy drags its feet, while the sappy sweetness will make you wince.

Half Nelson, with its bleakly hopeful view of humanity both damned and redeemed – simultaneously – is uncomfortably, almost exactly right.

It takes so long to get going and fails to generate the necessary suspense to keep viewers engaged, that the horrific final act is too little, too late, while at the same time nearly being much too much.

The House of Sand is a more transparently ambitious, prestigious "woman's picture" than Waddington's previous feature, 2000's "Me You Them."

Although the conclusion is heavily sentimentalized, Stone finds the common ground Americans can rally around for relief from the devastation: We are, in the final analysis, good people.

Its view of mankind is unkind, to say the least, but any race that can produce such remarkably garish gore as this is perhaps salvageable somehow, someday.

The Descent may not be everything you've heard, but man, it's also a lot of things you haven't.

It's a fine message, but, in the case of the film itself, a little originality would have gone even further.

It's unlike anything else out now, and Williams, to his credit and our immense relief, has for the moment foresworn his usual giddiness in favor of a muted, hunched acting style that befits both the character of Noone and the overall tone of the film.

Silly, inconsistent, and completely frivolous, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby also happens to be one of the funniest movies this side of 2006.

The final payoff is a good one and relates to something tossed out in the film's opening minutes. Still, this is middling Chabrol, not as tight and suspenseful as his best work.

Even the most ardent of neoconservatives might find this intimate and nuanced documentary about life in occupied Iraq difficult to shake – all politics aside, it is the human element that ultimately defines a nation as a people.

The film is a wonderful choice for older teens and has considerable crossover appeal for adult audiences.

Thanks to Susan Seidelman for reminding us that romantic comedy is suitable for any population or age group.

For venturesome viewers, Jailbait would make a potent late-summer palate cleanser in preparation for festival season, even if you wouldn't make a meal of it.

Perhaps vice isn't what it used to be, or maybe Crockett and Tubbs just aren't all that interesting when removed from their appropriate time slot, but this may well be the dreariest and most monochromatic time you'll have at the movies all summer.

Years ago, when Allen's inimitable comedy style still seemed fresh, Scoop may have joined the ranks of "Sleeper" and "Take the Money and Run" as a comedy classic. Today it provides a pleasant diversion.

John Tucker Must Die will undoubtedly fade into obscurity like so many silly and sentimental teen comedies before it.

It all adds up to a peculiar whole; fun I suppose, but not what you'd call a picnic.

One wonders what its objective is other than the cynical obliteration of all hope.

It’s good to see that passionate cinematic rabble-rousing does not rest solely in the hands of the left.

It ends up seeming more real and more artistically, morally, and spiritually honest than any dozen bedrock documentary films you'd care to name.

The result is a climactic scene that is pretty near perfect: both laugh-out-loud surprising and endearingly inevitable.

Clerks II will find Kevin Smith's detractors saying that the filmmaker simply regurgitates the past, while his loyal fan base will applaud his return to the tried and true.

There are moments of great beauty throughout (the film was lensed by Wong Kar-Wai cinematographer Christopher Doyle), and Shyamalan's heart is nowhere if not on his sleeve, but even these moments cannot steer Lady in the Water clear of its director's zealously over-earnest pretensions.

Equal parts Ray Bradbury and rickety carnival spook show, this animated tale of a carnivorous, haunted house and the band of neighborhood kids who decide to put it out of commission feels maddeningly unfinished.

The conventional plot and absence of character dimension will most likely get the better of even the biggest Uma fans.

97% of the movie will make you need a shower. Possibly two.