The quest for sexual happiness is a radical notion in these repressive times, as well as a legitimate basis for storytelling, but Shortbus doesn't quite delve as deeply as it ought into its characters' emotions.

The Queen is palace intrigue at its finest.

A surprisingly engaging character-driven picture: not quite Ingmar Bergman, of course, but not Michael Bay either.

Little more than paint-by-numbers filmmaking, and it fails in the most important charge of any children's movie: to transport its young and impressionable audience to a world where anything is possible, rather than to one where everything’s been thought of already.

School for Scoundrels varies between taking itself seriously and not, leaving the viewer alternately confused and disappointed.

Bottomless sermonizing would have played better in Sunday school than on the big screen.

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is inchoate, but it demonstrates that instincts and brio can compensate for a lot.

Apparently fit and reasonably trim, Deal's honesty touches a nerve that the band's music only gnawed on back in the day.

This veteran actor is always great, and it's just a little bit sad that he has to play a big, scary demon for us to sit up and finally take notice.

Despite an A-list cast and director, it's astonishing how bad this movie is.

While director Bill nails the sheer spectacle of squads of SPADs dovetailing in flames into the wide blue yonder, the earthbound action (much as it was in another sputtering epic, Michael Bay's "Pearl Harbor") is strictly laissez faire.

Just the kind of vicarious excitement for which the movies were invented.

Billed as Li's final martial arts epic (would that Jackie Chan be so thoughtful), Fearless is fittingly peripatetic, finding the Hong Kong superstar ricocheting across the screen.

It's a call to arms, a call to pick sides in the deepening cultural, political, and spiritual schism between the two Americas of the 21st century.

American Hardcore encapsulates a largely forgotten (by the mainstream, that is) moment in maximum rock & roll history.

Great movies can make you believe in a life beyond the frame; Zen Noir can't even convince you that what you're seeing onscreen is actually happening.

I think it's a mess, but - and this is a major caveat - an endearing, beautiful, hopelessly honest mess that's supported by a pair of performances so unnaturally natural that they draw you in and clutch you, struggling, to their flipping, flopping hearts.

Old Joy is an accurately observed slice of that moment between postadolescence and parenthood, when friends cling or scatter, and circumstances force buried feelings to the fore.

Forty-five minutes in, I was already glancing at my watch and wondering why the only lively actress in this film was playing the dead girl. Go figure.

For anyone over the age of nine, Yankee's journey is ultimately a dull one paved with good intentions.

The film is a pleasant surprise.

Thanks to Haggis and the cast, who are convincing, often bitingly so, in their willingness to dive into the dark and unknowable depths of the modern American romantic relationship, The Last Kiss mirrors reality with remarkable faithfulness.

The film veers toward sheer silliness at times, losing the sweetness that defines its strongest moments.

Foulkrod's film instead airs some of the hard-won truths learned by American soldiers from experience.

Lacking purpose or thoughtful complexity, Flowers' film is an overly ambitious mess.

A refresher course in the perils of celebrity and activism, but its syllabus and insights are purely remedial.

Smith is excellent as the potty Grace, with both Atkinson and Thomas equally fine in their roles. But the fact is plainly seen: The Ealing of yore is gone.

Neither as adroitly funny as Franken's comic routines, nor as notable as his conversion to the fine art of politics, this is a 90-minute "What If?" with no discernible answer.