Al Pacino chews up so much scenery it's surprising there's any left by the end of this fetid thriller.

Brothers Brad and John Hennegan track six thoroughbreds in the qualifying races running up to the 2006 Kentucky Derby, yet the horseflesh isn't as interesting to them as the owners and trainers, an odd assortment of moneymen and equine gurus with a culture all their own.

Pairing Jackie Chan and Jet Li would seem like a slam dunk, but this big-budget martial arts drama, which borrows liberally from "The Wizard of Oz," is something of a disappointment.

In the Apatow manner, Segel mines a mother lode of painful personal memories for his breakup gags, and the vanity of entertainment people proves to be another rich vein.

Perelman never overcomes the disjuncture of having two familiar actresses play the same grown character, and despite the endless crosscutting, the two halves settle respectively into ghoulish foreboding and murky psychological drama.

The talented Gleeson, who had a breakthrough role in Boorman's "The General," returns the favor here, carrying the whole movie on his broad shoulders.

The narrative emphasizes how much danger Spurlock is in and how noble he is to embark on all this while his wife is back in the U.S. expecting their first child; it's a little insulting to all the real reporters who've died in the field looking for hard information, not weak indie comedy.

A straightforward account of the debate between evolutionists and ID proponents might have been both entertaining and enlightening; instead this follows the avuncular Ben Stein (who cowrote the movie) as he jet-sets around the globe trying to prove that a cabal of Darwinians has conspired to destroy academic freedom.

First-time director Chen Shi-Zheng shows great sensitivity to the pressure and isolation felt by Chinese brains at American universities, and the relationship between Liu and Quinn provides a rare look at the intellectual serfdom of graduate study.

Poirer and director Noam Murro have trouble bringing this to a satisfying climax, but the characters are credible and sharply observed and all four actors go to town.

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.

Powerful second film by writer-director Thomas McCarthy (The Station Agent).

The comic scenes can be arch or shrill, but director Marcos Siega (Pretty Persuasion) does better when the story turns somber and the emotions feel genuine.

Simpleminded indictment of every senator who voted "yea."

The project reeks of commercial calculation, which is just tolerable until Walker, in search of a story arc, follows two chorus members with serious illnesses into the hospital.

There's not much story here, but the characters are substantial: a single mother (nicely played by Juliette Binoche) who runs a local avant-garde puppet theater and is preoccupied with such matters as a downstairs tenant who refuses to pay rent or leave, her neglected but mainly cheerful son, and his Taiwanese nanny, a filmmaker in her spare time.

The overlapping stories pulse with a tidal rhythm, the film's sensibility flowing between serious and wry, and there are memorable turns from Assi Dayan as the waitress's henpecked dad and Tzahi Grad as a cop with a nonchalant attitude toward babysitting.

In these dusty American settings, the wistful melancholy of Wong's earlier movies seems fairly contrived.

Naturally, age and infirmity are a major subtext of Shine a Light (and, really, any movie featuring Keith Richards). No matter how cadaverous the Stones appear, they keep climbing onstage, and I’ll miss them when they’re finally gone.

This 2006 drama is refreshing not only for its gentle comic touches but for director Wang Quanan's refusal to sentimentalize China's vanishing nomadic culture: life is harsh and no one's a saint, including his outspoken heroine.

Dylan Moran has a few funny moments as Pegg's shiftless pal, and Mike Leigh regular Ruth Sheen puts in an all-too-brief appearance.

No movie with Kevin Spacey as a heartless prick can be all bad, but this gambling thriller, based on Ben Mezrich's nonfiction book "Bringing Down the House," hasn't got much else going for it.

This drama, about the three days leading up to the murder, never overcomes its inherent ghoulishness, largely because Chapman, like so many mentally ill people, is a huge bore.

The cultural cock-strutting gets to be a bit much, but Neville handily captures the excitement of an art scene percolating, breaking wide open, and finally burning itself out.

The rough-and-tumble tone is bitterly entertaining but in the end doesn't contribute to a convincing historical portrait, and a pileup of half-baked resolutions spoils the buzz.

The outcome is never much in doubt, but Salvadori artfully choreographs the endless table turning, and the Moroccan-born Elmaleh capitalizes on his striking resemblance to Buster Keaton with a similarly comic composure.

Though its intentions are noble, it's hampered by a stock romantic subplot (Phillipe falls for his friend's squeeze, Abbie Cornish), a familiar structure (since The Best Years of Our Lives soldiers invariably come home in threes), and a lack of symmetry (some of Gordon-Levitt's story seems to have wound up on the cutting-room floor).

The gags are consistently weak, though actor Miles Fisher turns in a hair-raising impression of Tom Cruise.