Robert Benton’s recent films have been vexing combinations of gentility and stiffness, and despite a fair bit of nudity "Feast of Love" behaves itself all too well. It’s as neat as a pin; it ties up every loose end in careful "Playhouse 90" style. Despite some awfully smart actors, Benton’s movie made me long for a few interrupted sentences and the occasionally conflicted character.

If Steve Martin (“Cheaper by the Dozen”) and Eddie Murphy (“Daddy Day Care”) can’t make these PG-rated assembly-line comedies any fun, what chance does The Rock have?

The Kingdom has a heart and a viewpoint. It’s a thrill ride with a lingering thought or two in its wake. But the explosions, breakneck chases, daredevil escapes and predictability about which side will be victorious remain its foremost mission.

Outside the bedroom, the wartime swirl of intrigue never develops beyond postcard imagery, however. This is one of the major disappointments of the film-going year.

Good Luck Chuck is this year’s low-ender to beat.

It’s half-crock and half-sublime, which seems about right for its subject.

Director Joe Nussbaum (“Sleepover”) doesn’t do much with his cast; there’s a lot of standing around as he indulges Bynes’ tendency to mug.

It is a film, often breathtaking without settling for being pretty, filled with nervous silence.

Overall, The Jane Austen Book Club is an admirable mix of heady and fluffy, the kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy that needn’t make filmgoers ashamed of what they wished for.

If you're a Beatles fan who's not offended by people taking serious liberties with the arrangements of your favorite songs, the unrepentantly exuberant and seriously tuneful Across the Universe is pretty much a sure thing.

Juvenile viewers may well benefit from the movie. But, for the adult, it’s ultimately a film that arrives too early for the season in its title and too late in terms of style and impact.

An unusually strong crime thriller, Eastern Promises comes from director David Cronenberg, a meticulous old-school craftsman of a type that is becoming increasingly rare.

Tommy Lee Jones is marvelous in the film. He has one scene in particular, a simple two-person encounter, that's as good as it gets in the realm of American screen acting.

The film may be slight, but it is not stupid, and director Robert Cary keeps both stickiness and shtickiness at bay.

Let's say you find yourself at the multiplex, and the first 20 minutes of Mr. Woodcock happen to correspond with the 20 minutes you need to waste before your movie of choice begins. Those are the ideal 20 minutes to spend with this marginally promising--but ultimately unfunny--comedy.

The Brave One is "Death Wish" with a guilty conscience, and while it may be a bit of a hypocrite as vigilante thrillers go, the internal contradictions of the thing make for a very interesting picture.

It’s absorbing. The world came perilously close to losing so many Rembrandts, so many Klimts. The cultural casualties, near and actual, may be dwarfed by the millions slaughtered in the same churn of history. But we are what we create, and when emblems of a civilization are reduced to pawns of wartime, there is no victor.

The acting is its chief strength. Russell Crowe brings a cocky charisma to Ben Wade.

The idea that rich people are an alien tribe is just one of many that get lost in Wittenborn’s distracted script. Instead of exploring the concept, he throws out random incidents until he hits one that sends the film into a dark, grotesque spiral.

This is not a film intended for a wide audience. But B-movie fans who find their way to Adam Green's gory schlock extravaganza are going to like it.

It has the air of an officially sanctioned tribute rather than a probing study, but it's stirring all the same.

But by the end, when Gandolfini and Sarandon sing their sweet, hesitant little duet, it’s clear Turturro knew where he was going all along.

It sets a tone, all right. A lot of gamers (sorry, "filmgoers") may well enjoy writer-director Michael Davis' ultraviolent lark. It's not meant to be taken seriously. But films like this are worth taking seriously because they're genuinely cruddy and hollow and, yes, vile.

Not-funniest comedy of the year so far.

Director and co-writer Eytan Fox is going for a sexually democratic, politically aware variation on story themes familiar to "Sex and the City" viewers. (At one point Lulu is referred to as "Miss Israeli Carrie Bradshaw.") Surprisingly, it works, and the entire cast is excellent.

The title of The Hunting Party doesn’t evoke much in particular. “War Correspondents Gone WILD!” would be more like it if the film itself--messy, but fairly stimulating--had more of the scamp in its soul.

If you’re a Chicagoan, if you have just a smidgen of interest in the city’s arts scene and if you’ve been around a while, there’s no way to be objective about I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With.

The more you like Leone's work the more you'll likely respond to To's latest. Which is odd, considering Exiled is a gangster picture by strict definition.