Until it detours into dysfunctional-family comedy-drama, Transamerica rides cross-country without ever running low on bracing, cactus-spined surprises.

Overflowing with comedy and drama, The Boys of Baraka unfolds on the mean streets of Baltimore and in the wide-open spaces of Kenya.

It's a rhythmless, graceless piece of filmmaking. But if you have an ounce of misanthropy in your body, a picture like this can draw it to the surface the way a leech draws blood.

Whenever Just Friends threatens to become a total drag, Faris bops onscreen for some serious comic business - either saving the film, or making things worse by pointing out what could have been.

In the movie, the unconverted will hold their ears as the banal tunes blare out in multichannel sound. And they'll wince as the camera closes in on every heart-tugging moment.

The best thing that can be said about this Yours, Mine and Ours is that it's inoffensive.

But by the end, you're only watching to see how far Wilmot's pustules will spread, or whether his various diseases will really make his nose fall off.

The movie comes together like a nihilistic jigsaw puzzle - with a few pieces removed for that special, indefinable dash of pseudo-density.

Too bad the bulk of Rowling's humor goes down a black-magic drain.

What Phoenix and Witherspoon accomplish in this movie is transcendent. They act with every bone and inch of flesh and facial plane, and each tone and waver of their voice.

At over two hours, Breakfast on Pluto is too much of a merely pretty and pretty good thing.

Was the Swedish director, Mikael Hafstrom, taking revenge on the American star system?

Cool!

Director Joe Wright's new movie version of Pride and Prejudice is more Gene Kelly than Fred Astaire: more earthy and athletic than balletic.

The film ultimately is a letdown, leaving too many questions unanswered and ending in a gesture that doesn't really solve anything.

Sarah Silverman says things you wouldn't expect a nice, attractive Jewish girl to say. But that's only half her appeal.

Terrence Howard has stolen 50 Cent's thunder - and his lightning, and his storm clouds, too - twice in one year.

Chicken Little is relentlessly cute. That's the good news, and those who consider the word cute anathema may want to look for entertainment elsewhere.

Caught up in its own macho symbolism, Jarhead fights a losing battle to show the human cost of warfare.

While the film is obviously meant as a call to arms, the very single-mindedness of the approach could work against it.

Director Martin Campbell and a quartet of screenwriters dump in everything from the rise of the Confederacy to the development of Weapons of Mass Destruction. What escapes them is the cool, clear line of action that would enable Banderas and Zeta-Jones to flaunt their amorous charms without huffing and puffing and stretch their swashbuckling muscles with dash, not balderdash.

Prime serves as yet another showcase for Streep; to prove how expertly she plays a Jewish mother with a Ph.D. in psychology, just imagine Barbra Streisand in the role -- you'd have a farce only a step above slapstick. With Streep, you get a smartly observant comedy that never overplays its hand.

There's an honesty to the film that elevates it a cut above standard slasher fare.

The movie mostly proves that cutting-edge humiliations are best absorbed in 25-minute segments on HBO.

It gives you such an intense hit of creativity that afterward you may find yourself trying to jete out of the theater and into the street.

The latest failed Hollywood attempt to make a movie from a video game.

Heartstrings are pulled mercilessly in Dreamer.

Martin's script offers plenty of opportunities, but Martin the actor never takes advantage of them.