The sequel to the 2008 hit “Twilight” makes no effort to satisfy outsiders. It's strictly for devotees who won't balk at plot absurdities, clunky dialogue and patchy characterizations.

The best war movies don't preach against war: They remind us of the costs for soldiers and families and ask us to consider whether those costs are worth paying. The Messenger does that without firing a bullet or putting us on a battlefield.

The writing is haphazard at times, though the situations are funny enough in themselves to sustain our interest.

Mature folks may wonder why a simple and simply beautiful story from their youth has been buried under layers of emotion Woody Allen's psychiatrist might want to pick over.

The movie should come with the tag line “Don't try this at home,” because the method has near-fatal pitfalls. Yet the characters' clumsy emotional growth shows us there's hope even for a stumbling father and two sons groping toward peace.

Ang Lee adds to the mythology with the sweet, gentle Taking Woodstock.

South African director Neill Blomkamp set and shot the film around his native Johannesburg, so parallels to apartheid leap to mind. Yet the script he wrote with Terri Tatchell applies to any culture that bluntly excludes another.

You know the feeling you get when you make a meal of two mildly savory appetizers that don't quite go together, and you leave you wishing you'd eaten one hefty entrée? That's Julie & Julia. Half an hour later, I wanted to watch another movie.

The most thoughtfully satisfying of the first six books.

Granted, it's great action. Terrific special effects. Pulse-pounding pacing. But it's a case of diminishing returns. Salvation so keeps its characters at arm's length that after a while it really doesn't matter what happens to them.

Naive but ambitious, it comes across as a "Battlestar Galactica" vetted by pacifists, "Clone Wars" neutered for Saturday morning kids' TV.

Ghosts finishes well, and the familiar McConaughey heel-grows-a-heart story arc is engaging.

The director plays a visual game of three card monte on us for this silly, weakly acted and yet sometimes entertaining variation on the “Big Fight” movie formula.

It's a terrible muddle unless you take it as a satire on the Age of Ellis, the Jacqueline Susann for that Flock of Seagulls era. That way, the unintentional laughs seem almost ironic.

The Soloist does have the courage to be true to the real Ayers' fate at last, after the exaggerations end. And the smart, hard-working Foxx and Downey ensure that their scenes all stay grittily honest.

Nothing too graphic, but it creates drama, as it’s only natural to root for the hunted in a film like this.

As dense as a Watergate-era newspaper and as immediate as a blog, State of Play is an absolutely riveting state-of-the-art "big conspiracy" thriller.

As a remake of "It's a Wonderful Life" or "Back to the Future," the movies it borrows from most heavily, the relive-your-senior-year comedy 17 Again falls a little short of the mark. But as a funny, sweet and smart star vehicle tailored for Zac "High School Musical" Efron, it's right on the money.

You can't root for Ronnie. You can't identify with him. You can't hope he gets the girl – any girl. But you may want to look on with stunned fascination as he ticks away, ready to explode.

Mottola also wrote the screenplay, which is most fresh and honest when dealing with supporting characters.

The movie may best be appreciated by people who know the references. All five monsters come from low-budget science fiction films of the 1950s.

Sinks or swims with the actors. Gallner makes a very convincing boy-about-to-die; Madsen is his properly stricken mom; and Donovan, an under-used leading man, plays the stressed, guilt-ridden dad well.

Jon Favreau, J.K. Simmons, Thomas Lennon and half a dozen other capable comedians drift in and out. Yet the movie seems long even at 105 minutes.

Duplicity sparkles with wit.

Reviewers sometimes insult actors by saying they don't vary their expressions across an entire movie. But until Knowing, I never thought that could literally be true. Nicolas Cage does widen his eyes with about 15 minutes left in the film.

Watchmen is a fitting tribute to Alan Moore's fascinating graphic novel, even if he refused to let his name be used in the credits.

The movie feels operatic at times. Tempestuous arias play on the soundtrack, and Puccini figures directly.

Selick's fantastical adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novel will be too dazzlingly rich for many; it'll be like "caviare to the general," as Hamlet said of a complex play enacted for a public with lazy minds.

I think the movie intends to empower all of its female characters, but it ends up chaining them to stale, timeworn ideas.

The director is a cinematic equivalent of his subject, but a man who was able to reach middle age and examine that culture's good and bad points with a clear, detached mind.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet do exactly what’s asked of them as Frank and April Wheeler, who may be ironically named: They spin emotional wheels constantly but get nowhere.

Button has a wide-eyed innocence that almost never palls. It strays far from the mind of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but often enough it came near to my heart.

It's slickly executed, handsomely acted for the most part and utterly easy to forget.

It's encouraging to see a nation so aware of its public image and defensive about its military decisions examine a dark day in its history.

Gripping but gap-filled Seven Pounds will have half your brain asking "How could this be?" and the other half saying, "Shut up and go along for the ride!" Listen to the latter voice.

The film's a little more accessible than "Requiem for a Dream" and a lot easier to understand than "The Fountain," but its low-key grunginess may restrict its appeal to people who have liked professional wrestling and/or Rourke.

I can't explain the film's main problem without giving plot points away; suffice to say that, after decades of watching Earth, Klaatu's team of observers has missed a crucial event you and I witness every day. I can tell you about the secondary problem, though: too much money.

Blessedly, the kernel of the writing remains undisturbed, and its arguments are still powerful.

Nick Schenk's well-intentioned script employs the creaky old Hollywood device of reversing everything set up in its first half.

This coming-of-age portion is the less interesting half, though it has the more interesting Michael. We have seen Fiennes play an emotionally detached introvert so often that he brings nothing new to the role, apt though he is.

Langella has always been a cerebral actor, one who never gives away all he's thinking. What comes through in this portrayal is how smart Nixon was, whether he's cunningly probing Frost's weaknesses or pitching himself to TV viewers as an avuncular, misunderstood Cold Warrior.

Vaughn delivers every line with his usual deadpan glibness, which suits the part. But I smiled as I watched the big-bellied, multi-chinned actor connecting with the porcelain, model-thin Witherspoon.

Whatever you think of gay people (or politicians), you may find the movie compelling viewing.

Bolt has the magical quality of great animation, the ability to touch us without the hint of preachiness or manipulation.

Pattison grows on us as he grows on Bella: His weird mannerisms and nervous delivery stop seeming like quirks and acquire an intensity that's hard to resist by the end.

Really should have been made 60 years ago. It would have been timelier, with its tale of life in the remote north of that country during World War II. The juicy overacting, stereotypes and dramatic exaggerations would have been more in keeping with the style of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Solace is especially frustrating when it moves down interesting paths, then stops.

Though its grosses may not soar into the realm occupied by "Superbad" and "American Pie," it has more sympathy for its characters.

You'll respect him more as an actor if you see this film – and you should, even if you haven't enjoyed the action movies he's made over two decades.

A sweet, innocent look at an impossibly idealized high school world.

A brazen title card declares this " true story." (Wow, not even "based on.") However many facts may be accurate, the movie feels contrived, with climax piled upon climax.

The most violent scene is dreamlike, and more direct killings are often seen at an angle or from a distance. The camera placement is thoughtful and effective, never titillating.

Watching the film is also wearying, like assembling a puzzle from a box into which a sadist continually pours new pieces. I was still processing details when the abrupt ending snatched the puzzle away.

You'll be disappointed if you expect famed leftist Oliver Stone to apply a coup de grace to this man.

The best way to sit through Max Payne is by using minimal brain.

It warms the heart in the hands of such sensitive storytellers.

The romance seems tacked on as a way to humanize this character; there's no reason the nurse would take up with a brash, secretive American.

The film, which covers Graham's life roughly from the ages of 16 to 30, presents us with characters so uncomplicated they belong in a pop-up book.

RocknRolla is a copy of a copy of a valuable original, and you know how faint and unintelligible those can be.

Performances are rather beside the point in a movie where dogs carry the acting burden, but Perabo is especially bland.

A feel-nothing movie – a series of disconnected, implausible incidents that end as arbitrarily as they began, in an effort to inspire emotions the picture never justifies.

Alfred Hitchcock once said, "Drama is life with the dull bits left out." Well, Rachel Getting Married is drama with the dull bits left in.

Monaghan gives a solid performance, and Billy Bob Thornton has sarcastically funny bits as an FBI agent.

This is one of the increasingly rare Hollywood films that treat people in middle age as though their feelings were just as intense and their needs just as valid as those of people half their age.

It's a smooth journey across familiar territory to a safe emotional harbor, always professional and occasionally delightful.

If you're fond of wigs, you may be in heaven. If you're more interested in Whigs, you may wish the movie had dug deeper under the lovely powdered surface of Lady Georgiana Spencer.

It's as pitiless and brutal as any of their pictures and funnier than any except "Raising Arizona."

This documentary makes a terrible kind of sense. It reminds us that something we take for granted, like air, can be sold to us – if we can afford it. And if we can't, what happens then?

A thriller that's frequently implausible but almost always thoughtful. It asks us to rethink the way we see Muslims

OK, so no plot, really.

An unforced, sweet-natured story about people who find small ways to touch others and rediscover the good in themselves.

When George Lucas last pulled off an original idea for a feature film, Bill Clinton was still thought of by many voters as overweight and chaste.

Allen's laziness is startling, even in so mechanical a filmmaker. He uses a monotonous narrator to tell us what the characters think and do, though he then shows them performing the actions that have just been described.

If inciting boredom is the worst sin a filmmaker can commit, being timid is right behind it. Whether I agree with your point of view or not, I want to hear it.

If you wait through the credits, you get one last joke in the fine print: The actors shot the whole movie in Hawaii, on the fabulously lush island of Kauai. So while they were shooting a story about indulged prima donnas, they were working themselves in one of the most tourist-friendly spots on Earth. You've gotta smile at that.

The movie's a crazy quilt of pot jokes, sarcastic put-downs and pop culture references both obvious and obscure.

I'm afraid it just stinks.

The film seems like a loose and uncredited updating of "The Great Man Votes," a more serious 1939 entry.

Melissa Leo is one of America's most underrated character actresses, and Frozen River confirms that opinion.

We waited 10 years for a sequel to the movie version of "The X-Files" – and the best Chris Carter could do is The X-Files: I Want to Believe?

Often powerful, though presented throughout with British understatement.

Wallenda once said, "Life is being on the wire; everything else is just waiting." This film makes that motto ring true.

Succeeds as an action film, character study and metaphor for our own terrorism-obsessed time.

The chorus backs the soloists powerfully, and they are as fresh as the rest of the film: fat and fit, homely and handsome, young gods and old codgers – in short, people you might really see in Greece. Reality in a musical? That alone makes it worth your open-eared attention.

Fanboys won't mind the absence of depth or emotion; they may even welcome it for making the film more representative of its comic-book origins. The rest of us, however, cannot rejoice at the overspending and overkill likely to come in Hellboy III.

So the science in this film of Jules Verne's science fiction classic is ludicrous. Well, how's the fiction? Not terrible.

So I was curious to see why we needed a two-hour documentary about the three-hit wonder who cast away his career halfway through life and coasted on celebrity status for 30 years. After seeing Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, I'm still not convinced we do.

One of the rare action films that needed to be longer. Then changes in mood wouldn't be so abrupt, and director Peter Berg and writers Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan would've had more time to reveal things we want to know.

The result is one of the twistiest thrillers in recent memory.

A potent environmental message wrapped up in an irresistibly cute romance between robots.

His movies are thrilling and ridiculous in equal measure, and I often laughed with incredulous approval as he wreaked havoc.

Has its heart in the right place and its head shoved well down into a box of clichés.

It's neither dull nor stimulating, neither off-putting nor engaging.

Edward Norton's a more evocative actor than Eric Bana, and he supplies all the emotions required by Leterrier and writer Zak Penn.

What director Jan Hrebejk and writer Petr Jarchovský are talking about is the Czech Republic, ravaged for decades by communism and then left to fend for itself in a world to which it can scarcely adjust.

The voice cast includes Angelina Jolie as a tigress, omnipresent Seth Rogen as an acupuncturist who's a praying mantis, David Cross as a nasal crane and Lucy Liu as a cheerful viper.

Sandler proves even a hardened Israeli secret service agent can be an imbecilic juvenile.

Proves eye-opening in two ways: Sweeping, bloody battles will make your orbs pop, and you'll re-evaluate this supposedly “uncivilized” man who unified quarrelsome Central Asian tribes to create one of the largest empires in history.