The bulk of the film merely yearns for lucidity and magic. At its worst, Respiro resembles My Big Fat Italian Nervous Breakdown.

In its peak moments, the movie delivers, all at once, genuine street wisdom and psychology and wrenching expressions of family and friendship.

Brimming with values that should serve its young audience well: altruism, friendship, self-sacrifice, responsibility.

L’Auberge Espagnole (The Spanish Hotel) is unexpectedly entertaining because it captures the point in young adulthood when life is unseriously serious, or maybe seriously unserious.

As a whole, The Matrix Reloaded is thin on magic, charm, surprise and fun. It's less like an all-out escape, or even a thrill ride, than a sensory workout. At best, it's a treadmill-like bridge to the hoped-for splendors of episode three, The Matrix Revolutions.

The film is hapless. The gap between the moviemakers' ambition and their wit is dizzying. It's as if they thought they were filming The Importance of Being Unimportant.

Man on the Train may be a modest film, but it offers privileged glimpses of transcendence.

The movie fails at the primary steps of turning Rejas' mind inside out and dramatizing the contradictions in his heart and soul.

This may be the quietest addict ever to hit movie screens, as well the most disturbing.

Captures the feel of a first-rate comic book. It puts the pop back into Pop Art: It blows viewers away with a blast of kinetic energy.

How much adorable can one person take?

There are no surprise twists, no characters who rise above themselves, no cheap happy endings. There are just people struggling with emotions and situations they think are beyond their control.

The film mixes the psychological with the supernatural, the profane with the ridiculous, the self-indulgent with the understated, and dares you to assume anything. It's all great fun.

Even as trick movies go, Confidence feels surfacey to a fault.

It's so wispy that at the end you wonder: Exactly what runs in the family?

The only question is how many levels of meaning can be plumbed from the phrase "Let's party!"

Malibu's Most Wanted mines a well-worn comedic vein, but does so with a consistent good humor and surprisingly deft touch.

Those who come to the movie cold will find it an exasperating assembly of brutal pedantry and whimsies, boasting far less charm or grace than even the first Harry Potter picture.

Watching this movie, you can dream with open eyes.

No visual style, amateur effects.

The triumph of A Mighty Wind is that it makes an audience love the sing-along catchiness of folk and still break up at its banalities. This tiny titan of a movie is a perfect melding of form and content.

With Nicholson and Sandler aboard, we want to love it madly. But instead of a tickle, this big-name comedy just grates.

Has a vitality and novelty rare in any youth movie, let alone one that claps fresh eyes on a cliched vision of a model minority.

In an age when light-and-easy racial farces have become mainstream hits, he remains a tough-love comedian.

The Man Without a Past has the slenderness of a folk-tale -- also the clarity and charm.

Movie lite, a clueless, formulaic paint-by-numbers comedy.

Phone Booth may not be awful, but it's puny.

Standard-bore action stuff, in which a macho stud superstar blows away lots of bad guys while struggling to make the world a better place.