The more moralistic 21 gets, the less enjoyable it is.

What we're left with is outrage in a vacuum. It's impossible to separate out the stop-loss tactic from the misadventures of the war itself, and that's what this film, to its discredit, accomplishes.

This latest whiffle ball from Team Apatow is a mildly amusing comedy.

The filmmakers are smart enough – or cynical enough – to realize that we don't watch movies like Under the Same Moon in order to be surprised. We go to them for a good cry.

I don't wish to give offense here, but it certainly doesn't hurt that Mary Lou is voiced by that famously small bundle of energy Isla Fisher. (She's 5-foot-2.)

Despite its deficiencies, and the inadequate screen time allotted to Theron (who's quite good), Sleepwalking has a core of feeling. It's about a do-gooder who, lacking all skills for it, does good anyway. His emotional odyssey has real poignancy.

This is the kind of movie where a character can't just say "the fire's not out yet," they have to say "the fire still lives in these stones." It made me yearn to see "Caveman" again. At least that was INTENTIONALLY funny.

Nothing more than an efficient time-killer with the added bonus of being based on a real misadventure. But, unlike its benighted cast of characters, it gets the job done without a hitch.

A faltering attempt at black comedy mixed with romantic melodrama, Married Life is always on the verge of being interesting but never quite gets there.

Based on the 1938 novel by Winifred Watson, it's a deluxe romance that most of the time plays like farce.

Worth seeing for the expert archival selections, but a decidedly mixed bag for anyone familiar, or unfamiliar, with the times.

A richly appointed period piece, it features kingly tantrums, mistresses, bodices, roaring fireplaces, incest, and mutton. It also features sharply enunciated, period-perfect dialogue in which nary a contraction can be heard.

This half-baked fairy tale always seems to be on the verge of becoming charming but despite a good cast it never quite succeeds.

None of Ferrell's movies have ever really done justice to the best of his "Saturday Night Live" work, but those of us who love his comedy have learned to take the good with the bad.

No doubt Be Kind Rewind will soon make its way to – um – DVD.

How can we take this doomsday scenario seriously when we keep waiting for Bruce Willis to rise from the ashes?

Writer-director Cao Hamburger works well with child actors and has a spare, unforced style. But too much of this film is desultory and thin.

Isn't terrible exactly, but it's bland, and in some ways that's worse. It's a romance posing as a detective story in which the solution is obvious and not worth the fuss.

I'll say this much for Jumper – it's got a great premise. Or at least the beginnings of a premise.

Director Mark Waters does a fine job meshing the fantastical with the quotidian.

The treasure hunt in Fool's Gold is, of course, meant to be about more than money. But the only reason for this movie to exist is to make money.

It's a showpiece for that Belgian city's medieval splendor. You may want to book vacation reservations upon leaving the theater, although the memory of this underwhelming movie may tarnish the sightseeing.

In some ways, this glossily enjoyable movie is a lot closer to Hollywood than Beirut. At times, I thought I was watching some oddball Lebanese variant on "Barbershop."

The New Wave of Romanian cinema is the most exciting in the world right now. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days is its latest masterpiece.

What we get are themes and variations on previous good work, to lessening effect.

It's been a while since we've had a good monster movie, and while Cloverfield probably won't give you sleepless nights, it will certainly keep you awake in the theater.

The best thing you can say about Mad Money is that it has a good cast. The worst thing you can say about it is that the cast is extremely ill-used.

The romantic comedy 27 Dresses will work best for people who have never seen a romantic comedy. If you have, you might find it amusing to tally up the steals – I mean, homages.

There is a great movie to be made about the first stirrings of rock 'n' roll. Honeydripper is not that film, but it certainly whets your appetite for it.

Delivers more goose bumps than anything Hollywood has served up in years – which I hope does not mean that Bayona, a first-time feature director and music video whiz, will be enlisted to direct "Saw V."

Sprawling yet cramped, There Will Be Blood may not be the best movie of the year, but it's certainly the strangest. It evokes passing comparisons to everything from "Giant" to "Citizen Kane" but it's impossible to pigeonhole.

The Bucket List is a movie for oldsters that, paradoxically, looks as if it was made for 15-year-olds. If this is what is meant in Hollywood as "thinking outside the box," then it's time to get a new box.

Succeeds in bringing a lump to the throat without, as is de rigueur these days, insulting our intelligence.

It's nice to watch a political movie that, for a change, isn't trying to save our souls. It's possible to have a good time with this movie while, at the same time, regretting all that it isn't.

No better than the first – which means it will probably be creamed by critics and make a jillion dollars. But really, standards are standards.

A considerable achievement even if, on balance, it's more of a Tim Burton phantasmagoria than a Sondheim fantasia.

Smith, it should be noted, has compared Neville in interviews to Job. Tone down the highfalutin references. In the end, this is a sci-fi zombie movie, folks.

This is one of those stories that, on some primal level, goes straight to the heart. Be aware that the film features a child rape scene.

Nanking, directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, does justice to this tragedy even though it makes the mistake of mixing the testimony of actual participants with staged readings from actors subbing for real people.

Vanessa Redgrave, as the adult Briony, appears at the very end in a monologue that rounds out the film with heartbreaking force.

The Golden Compass is a blatant attempt to duplicate the success of the "Harry Potter" franchise. The only thing missing is richly imagined characters, a comprehensible story line, good acting, and satisfying special effects.

At its best, Juno is about the messy things in life that are not so easily summarized.

In a film that overwhelmingly avoids happy-faced pronouncements, this one sticks out.

As thin and jokey as this movie often is, I prefer it to the serioso treatment that usually encrusts this type of material. At its best, The Savages captures the lunacy that comes with coping with sorrow.

Director Andrew Wagner, adapting a novel by Brian Morton, is sometimes understated to a fault, but his work with the actors, who also include Lili Taylor as Leonard's daughter, is impeccable.

Poetic conceits only work if they're poetic.

It may sound like faint praise to say that Enchanted is the movie of the year for smart and spirited 11-year-old girls. But a movie that genuinely respects that audience is not to be belittled.

Zemeckis has converted the epic poem about the warrior who slays the monster Grendel into a species of computer game. He employs the same motion-capture technology that he first used in "The Polar Express," to slightly better effect.

Obviously a movie made by smart and talented people but sometimes you can outsmart yourself.

At its best, the movie makes you feel like a kindred spirit.

He intercuts documentary sequences from a French news crew and also includes Arab website footage of insurgents and YouTube confessions from soldiers who witnessed a barbarous act, which we also see, involving the platoon and a young Iraqi girl. The concept is audacious but the actors are too theatrical.

Few things are more dispiriting than a holiday movie straining to become a perennial. Such is the case with Fred Claus, an insipid Christmas comedy.

Like many a Hollywood political drama, Lions for Lambs carries a full head of steam that is indistinguishable from a lot of hot air.

The movie is true to its own fierce vision and it's the better for it. I haven't seen a stronger or better American movie all year.

The filmmaking style is annoyingly slick, but the testimonies of these children are excruciatingly moving.

Often best around the edges. Without making a big deal about it, Scott reveals how the Mafia, while putting up a businesslike front, deplored the incursion of black gangsters into the drug trade.

Best viewed as an oddball career move rather than as a successful movie.

One of the great American films of the past decade, and the crowning masterpiece of Lumet's long career.

Bad movies invariably stem from bad ideas, and the worst of the several rancid ideas packed inside of Dan in Real Life is that Steve Carell could be the new Alan Alda.

About two-thirds of the way through, Rendition takes a bad turn and sells out most of what made it worth watching in the first place. Witherspoon is given little to do except look weepy, Freeman's change of heart is Q.E.D., and the radical Islamist subplot overwhelms the action, which becomes so confusingly structured that I thought the projectionist had misplaced a reel.

There is no reason why Reservation Road could not have been great. George has co-written some powerful films in the past, including two for Daniel Day-Lewis, "In the Name of the Father" and "The Boxer." He is not wrong to want to mainline intensity here, but the inner lives of these men have not been explored, only displayed.

Blanchett miraculously gives a good performance, even when saddled with lines like this one, to Clive Owen's Sir Walter Raleigh: "In another world, could you have loved me?"

The movie is an idyllic view of life as it ought to be, rather than the way it is.

It's awfully difficult at this point in film history to come up with a car chase that's startlingly new, but Gray pulls it off. It's the best of its kind since "The French Connection."

Even by Farrelly standards, the film is a washout.

Without the steadfast intelligence of Clooney's performance, Michael Clayton wouldn't work half as well as it does.

Amir Bar-Lev's documentary is fascinating on all kinds of levels: as a movie about the nature of art, the lure and pitfalls of celebrity, and the complicated conundrums of parenting.

Anderson can't quite rise above his own quirkiness. It's not that he can't respond to the beauty he places before us – he can – but his jokiness keeps undercutting his own best efforts. The Darjeeling Limited is a transitional film for him: He's outgrown a comic style that can no longer accommodate his deeper feelings.

Most of the love in Feast of Love is unrequited, untapped, or unfulfilled. The fine cast, which includes Jane Alexander, Selma Blair, and Radha Mitchell, is also somewhat underused.

The filmmakers's attempts to balance out the gung-ho shoot-'em-ups with an overlay of "fairness" are rudimentary. The movie works us into a frenzy of righteous revenge, it makes us cheer each kill by the FBI warriors, and then it tells us that this violence only breeds more violence.

Set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during World War II, Ang Lee's uneven new film is a bit like a Chinese variant on Paul Verhoeven's "The Black Book." The sex scenes in this otherwise overly prim period piece are extremely graphic.

Smart and charming.

Penn has a real feeling for the stray moments in life that suddenly rush up and overwhelm us with emotion. He also has an eye for beauty in the wilds, of which this film has many. And he's very good with actors. What he lacks is a sharper eye for the wooziness of romanticism, and that wooziness, despite some truly breathtaking moments, infuses Into the Wild.

I wish this movie wasn't so purposefully elegiac and attenuated – at times it's like a middling Terrence Malick fantasia – but it's well worth sitting through.

The entire enterprise ultimately seems designed to turn Austen into a self-help guru.

Taymor's flower-powery phantasmagoria is ambitious but ultimately tiresome.

Cronenberg has a distinctive style – deadpan absurdism laced with fright and all executed with slow deliberation. But too much of Eastern Promises is cultish and silly.

As the movie moves through its murder mystery mode and begins racking up political points, Hank becomes a stand-in for all those Americans bewildered and beleaguered by the war. He becomes a Symbol.

The end result, at best, is high-toned pulp.

What Alfred Hitchcock once said about thrillers also applies to Westerns: The stronger the bad guy, the better the film. By that measure, 3:10 to Yuma is excellent.

After seeing this film, try reading Norman Mailer's "Of A Fire on the Moon," its perfect companion piece.

The movie often seems glib in the face of tragedy. And when, near the end, Shepard tries to pour on the hearts and flowers by showing us just what made Simon crack up on camera, the bathos is icky. The whole movie is icky.

At times this indie is as repetitive and self-indulgent as its protagonist, but it captures a bit of the madness of being unrequitedly in love.

Since Mr. Bean rarely speaks a complete sentence, the effect is of watching a silent movie with sound effects. This was also the dramatic ploy of the great French director-performer Jacques Tati, who is clearly the big influence here.

Awash in spurious sentimentality and sniping.

By skewing the film into a father-son inspirational saga, the filmmakers sell out the best possibilities in their material. Lurie clearly wants Resurrecting the Champ to be "more" than a sports movie, or a newspaper movie. Ironically, he ends up with less.

It has the requisite amount of knockabout silliness.

Considerably less slick than "An Inconvenient Truth," and no less urgent.

At times, The Invasion comes across as a mishmash of "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Stepford Wives."

Too many different stories are vying for attention here, and none of them are very good.

Much of the nattery byplay seems improvised, and the results are very hit and miss – inspired contretemps alternate with gabfests that seem to go on forever.

Blitz captures high school atmosphere well – not an easy thing to do – but overall the movie coasts on quirkiness.

Ratner, who has been accurately dubbed a "fauxteur," does an OK job keeping the action swirling, especially in the finale atop the Eiffel Tower.

Danes doesn't quite fit into the mindscape – she's too bland for a human star – but Cox comes of age quite convincingly, De Niro is a hoot, as is Ricky Gervais as a slimy tradesman. Pfeiffer has a field day.

It's movie-making as match-making.

Director Paul Greengrass downplays the movie's travelogue aspects by repeating the bobbly, hand-held camera style he used on "The Bourne Supremacy." It's not a style I'm fond of.

Anthony doesn't have a large emotional range as an actor, and neither does Lopez. Still, the musical numbers, which constitute a hefty portion of screen time, are thrilling.

As Molière, Romain Duris is frisky and, playing the wife of his benefactor, Laura Morante proves once again that she is one of the most intelligent and attractive actresses in the world.