Holdridge is clever enough to keep his characters from slipping into outright narcissism, or when they do, he's familiar enough with the art of mainstream moviemaking to balance the exhausted with the ecstatic.

Hauntingly beautiful film.

They've become deadly dull, these two once-keen buckers of bureaucratic BS, and watching them interact on screen is akin to having your pleasure centers removed by knobby little aliens whose only knowledge of mankind comes from Jack Webb's stoically unvarying television incarnations.

Step Brothers has comic fuel to burn, some of it unashamedly non sequitur and stupid-brilliant, but it still feels like a post-"Talladega" flameout.

Kind of funny and kind of scary, Baghead's central horror motif is merely a structure on which to hang its four-character story about the depth of relationships and the drive to find meaningful work.

The film, a distinctly secular take on Waugh's religiosity, is far more interested in the battle of blind faith vs. rigid unbelief and its devastating effects. Herein, everyone is complicated – by their station, their philosophy, their God – and everyone is complicit.

"They have their Mardi Gras; we have ours," the explanation goes on both sides, but everyone seems to realize it's just a rationalization aimed at covering over Mobile's docile perpetuation of segregation.

At times it's almost like "Lord of the Flies," with the camera serving as the flypaper dipped in the honey of the promised land of celebrity.

The only thing here that feels truly, utterly alive is Ledger's maniacal, muttery Joker. The last laugh is his and his alone. It's enough to make you cry.

I COULD do without "Dancing Queen" stuck in my head, but that will unstick soon enough, and with any luck so too will the memory of Streep noodling on an air guitar.

Who doesn't love an animated, anthropomorphized-chimpanzee-starring, sci-fi romantic comedy?

A dreadfully misguided movie.

With top-notch performances (especially that of Mortimer) and the gray of the Siberian wilderness providing an apt backdrop for the movie's gray zones of morality, Transsiberian is on a great track.

It's not perfect -- thank Satan! -- but Hellboy II: The Golden Army is by far the most splendidly imaginative and creatively uncorked piece of fantastic cinema since the director's "Pan's Labyrinth" netted an Oscar trifecta in 2007.

Provides tepid but fun entertainment.

After his disastrous outing in 200X with "The Adventures of Pluto Nash," there was no direction for Murphy to head but up in terms of another space alien movie. Indeed, Meet Dave is a step up, but that's only in relation to Pluto Nash.

Pearl, in other words, is one of those guys put on earth to make the rest of us feel like we're wasting our lives.

There's a nagging sense throughout Gonzo that, despite his late-life decline into caricature, Thompson was too complex, too self-mythologized, too big, too American to ever fit onscreen – especially in a movie aiming for "objectivity," which was, for Thompson, the worst of all possible words.

Quirky and undisturbed, unaffected and unaffecting.

A crowd-pleasing portrait of boys-who-will-be-men-who-will-be-boys.

Has everything a great personal-paranoia/persecution movie needs.

A godforsaken (possibly literally) mess.

This is Pixar's finest and most emotionally powerful film yet, and it draws on a wealth of cinematic resources that run the gamut from Chaplin's best to Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, and even Martin and Lewis.

With every bit of sliced flesh and every punctured skull I found myself wondering who exactly this movie is for. Its unflinching violence has earned it an R rating, meaning its desired demographic – teenage boys – is out of contention. That raises the question: Are there really adults who want to sit through this kind of mindless, bullying mayhem?

Will likely warm the cockles of your heart, even though it's hardly the stuff of great romance.

It wouldn't feel out of place on a double bill with "Dangerous Liaisons," given Breillat's unrepentantly nihilistic attitude toward the battle of the sexes in which all are pawns, every knight is errant, and the only queen is Queen Bitch.

The film reunites Carell with his "Little Miss Sunshine" co-star Arkin, who, as always, delivers the goods, as do most of the other supporting players. Too long by at least 15-20 minutes, Get Smart is nevertheless a giggly summer movie.

It recycles gags from earlier and better Myers movies and hopes that the audience won't notice because they're too busy staring at Timberlake's bursting Speedo.