It may not advance the art form, but it's a movie with pleasures for the whole family, and nowadays that's saying something.

Only David Lynch could make the incomprehensible so compelling.

Other than portraying Mary as an overwhelmed teenager, mystified that God has chosen her to be the mother of his child, it doesn't offer anything that hasn't been playing out in grade-school pageants for decades.

The unique, serious fun of this movie - and forbidding reputation aside, it is exhilarating - lies in the way that Wiesler, Dreyman and Sieland end up collaborating unknowingly on their own Design for Living (for a while, it's like Noel Coward for moral cowards).

Director John Stockwell ("Blue Crush") and screenwriter Michael Ross have only two things in mind: titillation and giving young audiences something gross to whisper about in school the next day. On that limited basis, Turistas may well succeed. But that's nothing to brag about.

This Filthy World does many things, including transform tabloid commentary into comic art. But at its best, it shows that the child is father to the wild man.

Darren Aronofsky labors awfully hard to get across a pretty simple message in The Fountain. But his efforts are so ethereal and extreme, it's almost impossible to turn away.

There isn't an earned moment of uplift or laughter in the movie. Everything in it is prefab.

The film is tense and engrossing. But it lacks exactly what the title advertises: the sense of inexplicable familiarity that should haunt you as the story unfolds and leave you all a-tingle when it ends.

No matter how "mock" this epic gets, it isn't mock enough. The "D" in the title must stand for dead weight.

In The History Boys, as in all of Bennett's work, irony is what the characters live and breathe - and I mean irony in its truest sense, of using language to present opposite and often sly alternatives to accepted wisdom.

Casino Royale marks a shrewd relaunching of a franchise. But Campbell and company show too much of their sweat. If these movies continue to follow Fleming's profane pilgrim's progress, the next Bond movies should be more emotional and funny, with a bit of brass-knuckled charm.

Let's just say this is a perfect film for penguin lovers who also are devoted members of the Green party - and leave it at that.

Fast Food Nation offers no easy answers, but plenty of food for thought.

Emily Dickinson wrote, "Hope is the thing with feathers." When Woody Allen published his second collection, he called it Without Feathers. Guest is as sharp and original as Allen, but he hasn't lost hope. For Your Consideration -- disillusioned but also fresh and ticklish -- is a thing with feathers, too.

The film's impact and poignancy are undeniable.

Apart from the movie's moments of flesh and fantasy, it lacks the lyric impulse that would make the swank fantasy take flight.

For most of its meandering running time Harsh Times is just a rough South Central L.A. buddy movie.

In a feat of performing imagination, Ferrell turns his usual extroversion inside out and his usual zaniness into precision, and makes it all work for him.

Save for Jesus' skin color, which he shares with some of his fellow Jews, little about the story is re-imagined or re-evaluated.

Borat is a terrific, risky comic creation: a village idiot for the global village.

The best sections of Flushed Away, those featuring a nefarious French operative known as Le Frog (a hilarious Jean Reno), are also the most peculiarly British; no one lampoons the French with a better mixture of hard-earned loathing and grudging respect than the Brits.

Penelope Cruz is sensational in Volver - she's its lifeblood, its raison d'etre and its meaning.

Both a condemnation of torture as a political tool and a tribute to the bravery that exists within everyone.

Comes across as more willfully clever than profound, leaving us to applaud the message while pondering why the messenger had to strain so hard to get it across.

The Dixie Chicks may never regain their prolonged eminence on the country charts. However, the art and entertainment value of this movie (and of their latest album) is off the charts in the best way.

The excitingly well-made Death of a President imagines the assassination of President Bush as a way of analyzing political violence. And Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, sight unseen, has labeled it despicable.

Despite the dominant air of foolishness, the filmmaking is lush, lively and intelligent, but the gap between the direction and the script is appalling.