Garry Marshall, old pro that he is, couldn't be more endearing as the grandfather, struggling gamely to make things right.

Russian Dolls never resorts to sitcom moments as it explores the transformation of friendship into love. All the characters here are believably appealing and refreshingly three-dimensional, and the situations they find themselves in have the ring of truth. You leave this film wanting to know these people, wanting the best for them.

A film that climaxes in Shanghai shouldn't go down like a meal in Shanghai. But an hour after you see M:i:III, you may be hungry for a real movie.

Intelligent and robust contempt has become so rare in movies that the first half of Art School Confidential is intermittently exhilarating.

As it is, Hoot doesn't accomplish anything a picture book of the Everglades and a few well-chosen Jimmy Buffett tunes wouldn't do better.

Jacobson and his actors do so much with the characters that they leave an ambiguous residue of blood-streaked regrets and sadness.

By turns grisly and hallucinatory, The Proposition is one of those grand, mythic Westerns, full of wide-open spaces and dank little hellholes, detestable bad guys and virginal women, laconic lawmen and wary natives.

There's no cheap uplift to their victory, no pop catharsis. What's great about United 93 is that you never feel it's just a movie - even though, as a movie, it's terrific.

A movie like this could easy slide into Shirley Temple territory, showcasing a child actor so full of sweetness and light and good, old-fashioned spunk that audiences wince. But Palmer, whose enthusiasm and energy never seem forced, avoids all those traps; her Akeelah is never less than believable.

What makes RV work are some genuinely funny bits (one of which is not an overlong sequence in which Bob has trouble emptying the R.V.'s toilet) that should ring especially true to any parent forced to cajole a recalcitrant child into having a good time.

Watching The Lost City is like falling into a delirious dream on a marathon train ride only to be roused every 15 minutes by a conductor punching your ticket or barking out the next stop.

It's infuriating in more ways than one. Yet it's also somehow touching in its melange of melodrama and modernism.

A masterpiece.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu runs the same 2 1/2 hours as "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," but what a difference a comic-dramatic purpose makes.

Weitz's idea of satire is generally both ludicrous and mild: exaggerating types, then sentimentalizing them.

The Sentinel moves quickly and never becomes a bore. It does become something of a cartoon, though, which proves a major letdown for a movie that aims for something far more intelligent.

It's hard, bordering on impossible, to evaluate this movie without stepping on people's beliefs.

Anna Faris, her deadpan comic timing still a joy to watch, returns as Cindy Campbell, one of two main holdovers from the first three movies.

The Wild suffers from a breakneck pace that seems to exist only so that director Steve Williams can earn his nickname of "Spaz."

The movie is so determinedly lightweight that it floats above the fray, stopping only for the occasional mild chuckle.

As gripping as Hard Candy is, one can't quite shake the feeling that we're the ones being exploited by its mordant blend of kinky revenge fantasy and push-me-pull-you moral vision.

This movie will be remembered not for the notorious Bettie Page but for its showcase of the burgeoning Gretchen Mol.

If only La Mujer de mi Hermano had a dollop of humor and at least one character worth rooting for.

The whole movie is too predictable, its conflicts either forced or simplistic.

Features lots of cool dialogue but doesn't provide much of a movie in which to showcase it.

Put the tango in "To Sir, With Love," and you've got Take the Lead.

There's a self-loathing at the center of Friends with Money that makes it a tad unpalatable, as well as a sameness, a dependence on cliche, that makes it seem trite.

It's turned Stone's Catherine Tramell from a warning sign for the dangers of wanton sex into the last thing you'd figure - a bore.