I wish it were truly special instead of an interesting near-miss.

The court scenes are rarely funny, either in the trash talk or the slapstick.

Small but sure, the film is like Alejandro himself: quick on its feet, attuned to a harsh life’s hardships and possibilities.

Are teenagers really supposed to identify with a clumsy caricature such as Charlie, who, in spite of all his expulsions and school crimes, comes across as a gawping, perpetually surprised infant in an adult body?

The Signal combines the inconstancy of an omnibus film with the blandness of art by committee. The end result feels less like a blend of distinct styles than an opportunistic hodgepodge, a second-hand premise wedded to an attention-grabbing gimmick.

The film doesn’t hold together. But it’s the work of a real director, however fantastic his sensibility.

Swift and compelling, winner of this year’s Oscar for best foreign-language picture, The Counterfeiters may not be destined for the large international audience that embraced last year’s winner, “The Lives of Others.” But it’s the better, tougher film, with a more provocative moral dilemma at its center.

The performances reveal precisely what Rivette wants to reveal, which is to say, in conventional psychological terms, not a great deal.

With a less pedigreed international cast the whole thing would be a disaster, as opposed to a chilly new kind of disaster film.

The way Diary of the Dead chooses to deliver its gore, you know you’re in the hands of a grown-up uninterested in the excesses of the “Saw” or “Hostel” pictures. I mean, there’s gore, sure, and flesh gets eaten. But the way Romero shoots and cuts the shot of a girl’s reunion with her parents, one dead, one undead, it’s played for keeps--the right kind of gross, with a touch of mournful gravity.

Pulls you into a well-observed world and its characters.

Keeps you interested in its characters and isn’t afraid of complicating your sympathies a little. In these dog-day months for romantic comedy, that means a lot.

Jumper, the film, goes everywhere and nowhere.

A fast-moving adventure with more than dynamic glitz to recommend it.

Human-spirit cliches and all, the movie accomplishes job one: It moves. It also has a choice soundtrack, spiced by the likes of Missy Elliott’s “Shake Your Pom Pom” and Digital Underground’s immortal “Humpty Dance.”

You can watch The Band’s Visit for its political idealism, or you can watch it for entertainment value alone. In either case, it doesn’t disappoint.

A movie that keeps reminding you of its antecedents, all the way back to 1984 and the comic adventure “Romancing the Stone.”

Verdict: not so hot

After playing one too many sullen poseurs it’s clear Colin Farrell and Ralph Fiennes had a ball making an inky black comedy seething with grandiose invective.

Native Chicagoan Vaughn remains enigmatic, protected from the camera’s more candid intrusion. But you get a sense of his deep values, virtuous instincts and quiet love of ordinary people.

Under normal circumstances, too many comics spoil the show.

The film itself, while charming and gently funny, is entirely unexceptional.

The most vivid aspect of The Eye is its poster image, that of a huge female eye with a human hand gripping the lower lid from the inside. The least vivid aspect is the way Jessica Alba delivers a simple line of expository dialogue.

The slapstick is crudely executed. And the movie never makes up its mind regarding how nasty the ghost of Kate is going to play her revenge tactics.

Trachtman says she made the film to illustrate the plight of disabled Americans who must contend with houses of worship that lack handicapped access, but her documentary itself isn’t always so sensitive.

The Witnesses may be schematic, but it lets each character live and breathe. The film captures a time and place that seems very distant now.

Mainly it’s a very solid dance picture, which is the point.

The latest, Untraceable, owes everything to “Lambs,” and to “Se7en,” and to all the “Lambs” and “Se7en” knockoffs made by directors less talented than Jonathan Demme and David Fincher. In addition to being dull, the Portland, Ore. -set Untraceable is a monster hypocrite, wagging its finger at the mass audience’s appetite for strictly regimented, “creative” torture scenarios.