The true story of Kimani N'gan'ga Maruge, an 84-year-old Kenyan who entered primary school in hope of learning to read, inspired this pleasant but routine exercise in third-world uplift.

William Golding's 1954 allegory on man's innate inhumanity is too facile by half, which makes it ideal for high school English classes but rather too gaseous and predictable for the movies.

The film is all but crushed by Tom Cruise's screen-hogging demand that everything collapse and swoon around him. If the star gave us more of a rest, we might have more of a movie.

Sluggish comedy drama.

Serreau directs for maximum freneticism, with her actors rushing around and regurgitating great torrents of imperfectly subtitled dialogue (a gratuitous subplot involving drug traffickers seems to have been inserted just to double the hysteria), and while there are more than a few laughs, most of them are laughs of recognition—seeing these gags again is like coming across long-lost (and vaguely embarrassing) relations.

Like so many secular, big-studio Christmas comedies, this isn't naughty enough to be funny or nice enough to be uplifting; it's just an ugly sweater from a distant relative, thoughtlessly sent and destined to be thrown away.

The movie is notable for its perceptive take on issues facing immigrants, and atmospherically photographed by Robbie Ryan (Red Road), but its flat, static quality belies the novel's richness.

Paul Giamatti plays himself in a dark indie comedy that's distinguished by a sci-fi theme and surrealistic touches but ends without a payoff.

This is eye-catching and forgettable in the patented Bruckheimer manner, which means you should be entertained if you're not expecting anything new.

The real drama is the city itself, steeped in history yet undergoing a Western face-lift.

The violence is suggested in a way that's neither overwhelming nor insulting to a child's intelligence as this crafty fairy tale ultimately finds a way for human and vampire characters to live and let live.

Alexander Payne has won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay (Sideways), but you'd never guess that from this clumsily written drama: characters keep explaining things that their listeners would already know, and the first couple reels are so thick with expository voice-over that you may think you're listening to a museum tour on a set of headphones.

An innocuous, passably entertaining effects extravaganza.

For the grown-ups there are sweet, sincere performances by Ginnifer Goodwin, Sandra Oh, and, as Ramona's endlessly game father, the likable John Corbett, relieved for once of his drippy rom-com duties.

Differs from other authorized Hollywood musical biopics in one striking detail: its subject, still alive when most of this was made, is almost never shown as a likable person.

It's extremely competent, shot in 'Scope (Boorman's best screen format), and though it kept me absorbed it failed to win me over.

This is mildly entertaining for its cheery sacrilege (crucifixes that turn into throwing stars, etc), but once the premise has been rolled out, the movie is about as surprising to watch as the Stations of the Cross.

The punchy, nonstop visual effects (including an animation segment and stylized subtitles that sometimes suggest an online chat) crowd out coherent storytelling.

You can tell from the credit sequence—when Paul Newman takes four minutes to execute a simple expository gag—that this Stuart Rosenberg sequel to Harper is likely to be an interminable drag. And the opener is really the high point of an alleged thriller that wastes the talents of Newman, Joanne Woodward, Murray Hamilton, and Tony Franciosa, and telegraphs all its narrative twists with the subtlety of a Chicago building inspector explaining how to avoid a violation.

Unfortunately the complicated thriller plot--with the regulation suitcase full of illicit cash--hinders the characters' emotional interactions without ever becoming credible on its own terms.

The film is soon bogged down by fake hugs and a faker climax.

"The Illusionist" also centers on a 19th-century magician, and the elegant contours of its story are even more impressive compared with Nolan's clutter of double and triple crosses.

An effects vehicle disguised as a metaphysical meditation (or a metaphysical meditation disguised as an effects vehicle?), this strikingly unimaginative 1998 movie contains visuals that can barely assert their niftiness amid the vacuous themes.

This documentary tells this story reasonably well, though one might question whether director Eric Bricker's jazzy montages, collages, and rapid camera movements are appropriate to the contemplation of still photographs.

Newly updated but shamelessly hokey, Steven Spielberg's version of the 1898 H.G. Wells yarn about murderous invaders from outer space starts off as a nimble scare show like "Jaws."

A story that's reminiscent of the seminal "Panic in Needle Park."

The vile sadism of the Saw movies has been replaced by decorative references to Saint Augustine and Immanuel Kant, and there's a beautiful but brainy police profiler (Waddell) on hand to dispense a thick layer of psychobabble.

Though the climax of the story is a little forced and sloppy, with both lovers behaving way out of character, this movie is aware enough of the conventions it's using that it's more moving than cloying.

On the whole there's not a lot of flesh on these cynically haphazard bones.

The modeling of human figures and the sense of depth are both impressive; the characters themselves are mainly idiotic.

By the time Herzog tried to pass off jellyfish as Dourif's old pals, my indulgence was nearing its end--but then so was the movie.

This manages to make the real seem generic, rather than the other way around.

Something in me admires George Stevens's perversity in shooting this film about entrapment and compression in 'Scope, but that's the only interesting quirk in this otherwise inert work, which represents Stevens at the height of his pretentiousness and the depths of his accomplishment (1959).

Poor execution sometimes points up the difference between the telling of a story and the story itself--in this case, without diminishing the power of the latter.

Sometimes it's hard to tell what's mere overreaching and what's nostalgia for Hollywood's former grandiloquence.

With its flashy, pretentious visual effects, this is really a 98-minute dream sequence--though it's worth recalling that the most effective dream sequences tend to be only a few minutes long.

Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) pelts the viewer with so many factoids and allegations about the early Catholic church, goddess worship, the Crusades, painting, cartography, and code-breaking that the movie's big revelation turns out to be neither grand nor shocking.

It might have worked if Apted were as adept at creating an emotional atmosphere as he is in his portraiture of the suburban milieu, but too many unshaped scenes and redundant dialogue passages take their toll.

The movie seems unusually honest in portraying the no-option existence of the working poor, but the story slips into melodrama in the last reel.

It preserves the peculiar machismo of Ayer's earlier projects: the alpha male dominates not only because he's the most powerful, but because he's the most jaded.

Here, as too often in his career, Stevens is aiming to have the last word on a genre: everything aims for “classic” status, and everything falters in a mire of artsiness and obtrusive technique.

Routine war adventure, imitating the callousness of Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen but without Aldrich's nihilist zeal. Still, you have to admire any film that casts Clint Eastwood opposite Richard Burton; the real violence is in the clash of acting styles.

Given the talent on board, there's an undeniable flair and effectiveness in certain scenes (such as Pacino dancing the tango with a stranger in a posh restaurant), but the meretricious calculation finally sticks in one's throat.

This sort of thing was considered high art not so long ago; now it seems forced and ponderously symbolic.

This singing-along-to-the-radio effect has a dingy charm that honors the blue-collar Italian setting, yet Turturro spoils it by turning the movie into a hip star party, with a cast of indie-acting royalty.

The obsessive conjunction of lesbian sex and flowing blood suggests a deep-seated misogyny, but neither this nor any other theme is registered with enough clarity to offend.

I love Franken and wish there were more funny liberals in the chattering class, but his crushing sarcasm wouldn't exactly elevate the national debate.

Jay Craven's stilted adaptation of a novel by Howard Frank Mosher lacks the urgency, the poetry, or the feeling for period that might have brought the material to life, while the cast seems to be largely squandered.

Agreeable but overlong.

First-time director Penny Panayotopoulou's approach to the delicate subject matter is commendably tactful and tasteful--it's also underdramatized, monotonous, and short on humor.

Even though it's scripted by a woman (Kelly Masterson), this tale of buried family resentments rising to the surface as the brothers plot to rob their parents' jewelry store is concerned only with the guys, and it's marred by an uncharacteristically mannered performance by Albert Finney as the father.

A macabre comedy of manners with the sting of dry ice, this 2007 ensemble piece captures the social climate of America in the late 40s, when a new anxiety and restlessness began to undermine the postwar optimism.

Surrounding and ultimately subsuming this ethical struggle is a fair amount of pediatric-cancer horror and mush, though Cassavetes is frequently bailed out by his cast (Diaz is admirably unpleasant as the controlling mother, and Joan Cusack is unusually tough and restrained as the presiding judge).

The whole thing's so worthy that I wish I liked it more. It makes time pass agreeably, but Square John still seems about as innocent of fresh ideas (aesthetically and otherwise) as most of his characters, and for this kind of leftist multiplot I found his "City of Hope" more engaging.

A lot of superwimp gags executed by Luke Wilson grow out of this premise, as do some tacky 50s-style special effects. The movie's too slapdash to keep its characters consistent, but this has its moments.

Though the basic brains-versus-beauty tension suggests a female variation on "The Nutty Professor", this is a softer version of the dilemma than Jerry Lewis offers -- easier to take and easier to forget.

Unlike Stanton's memorable animation features, this is surprisingly devoid of humor or winning characterization, though the special effects are fantastic.

This story of a girl growing up in the occupied territories never finds its footing.

It's like being locked in a roomful of blaring transistor radios—a lot of sound and no evidence of life.

As in the Rocky films, Avildsen's only directorial strategy is to delay the final confrontation for so long that all the audience's pent-up frustration explodes with it. It's primitive, predatory stuff.

Like many sequels this is actually a remake, and it suffers from the law of diminishing returns.

Both actors work hard to give this disturbing crime story some flavor and substance, but the narrative is overextended and poorly organized.

Pivots on the characters' racism and xenophobia, playing tricks with our own biases and ultimately justifying an extravagant array of coincidences and surprises.

Despite the fitful energy and the beauty of the settings, the ugliness of the mise en scene and the crudity of the editing tend to triumph.

Director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) and cowriters Andrew Birkin and Bernd Eichinger preserve some of the novel's storytelling flair, and Dustin Hoffman does a swell turn as the antihero's Italian mentor. But despite a fairly spectacular climax, the material's generic limitations eventually catch up with the plot.

This is pretty thin soup, but the players are spirited and the jokes generally offbeat.

No movie with access to the Cole Porter songbook could be a complete waste of time, but this biopic of the great tunesmith by producer-director Irwin Winkler is all upholstery and no chair.

Writer-director Robert Shallcross believes in it so passionately that he came close to convincing me too.

It's hard to be diverted by a tale whose emblematic romances and terminal cuteness serve an agenda that seems particularly dated today.

One of the film's most poignant moments comes when he and his father discuss his compulsive attraction to young boys.

Plays a bit better than it sounds. I miss the show's mangy, minimalist sets, but the slapdash narrative construction and good-hearted schmaltz survive intact.

This revisionist western by writer-director Andrew Dominik makes a wan attempt to present the Jesse James legend as the dawn of celebrity culture in America.

I hate to rap this serious-minded filmmaker, but I'm beginning to wonder whether her scripts aren't better realized when they're held in check.

Watchable exercise in Zen hokum.

As his wisecracking roomie, Smith keeps this contrived chick flick afloat, managing to steer past the kind of egregious product placement that would have capsized a less agile performer.

Weird anachronisms (cars, telephones, home computers) contribute to the craziness, but despite the copious imagination on display, this is a fairly long haul.

The film never strays much beyond the obvious, despite a conscientious effort by Tim Robbins to humanize a white security officer.

Canned racial uplift and tear-streaked faces abound, though they're offset somewhat by a nicely funky blaxploitation vibe.

This is the usual cartoon of hound dogs, roadhouses, antebellum mansions, and Civil War reenactments. Aside from that, it's not a bad date movie.

Only loosely connected to the story, the visuals quickly grow monotonous, and as the chronicle arrives at Cobain's late years of curdled fame and fortune, his bitterness and cynicism make even the narration hard to take.

Decent 1961 adaptation of the Bernstein-Robbins musical, if you can handle Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood in the leads.

All the comedy, tragedy, and various obstacles to romance seem to have been contrived to divert the story from its tendency toward pulp erotica.

Pederson has no smoking gun that connects Nashi to dirty tricks or violence, but there are plenty of both swirling around Moscow.

You don't have to get too far into Kazuo Ishiguro's brilliant 2005 novel Never Let Me Go to realize it's hopelessly unfilmable.

This culinary fantasy is mildly inspired.

Robert Altman's busy, detailed mise-en-scene, flattened cartoon-style through space-compacting long lenses, does capture some of the frenetic atmosphere of the Fleischer cartoons, but it tends to crowd out, and neutralize, the story values.

The setup for this Oliver Stone drama keeps its iconic villain so far removed from the financial action that he seems like a dog tied up outside a restaurant.

If Bertolucci had restricted himself to Siddhartha’s story he would have remained on solid ground, at least as a storyteller, for the interpolated religious tale is far and away the best thing in the movie, full of enchantment and wonder.

The behind-the-scenes tragedy gives Gilliam an easy excuse for the dull chaos that engulfs the story, but he might have generated it all on his own.

The movie lapses into a listless romantic triangle.

Though the questionable motives and bad planning of offscreen characters who far outrank Gibson make it difficult to take at face value one soldier's last words -- "I'm glad I could die for my country" -- some viewers will, which may be as the filmmakers intended.

Compulsively mainstream as only 50s Hollywood could be, and never very funny.

The unusually thoughtful dialogue and soul-searching performances make this romantic drama seem deeper than it is.

A lumpy stew of weak characterization, lame gags, ADD-afflicted storytelling, and dazzling visual.

The whole thing is rather forced and antiseptically cheerful.

As a cautionary tale about the perils of nation building, this is both creepy and provocative, but director Rodrigo Cortés blows it in the last few minutes with a rushed ending that feels like a cheat after all the escalating tension.

What ultimately prevents it from being something more is the fact that Annaud isn't a better director. Even the film's virtuosity as a technical feat is frequently undercut by the fact that one is too much aware of it as a stunt to accept it as a story on its own terms.

Sublimely stupid.