It's a rather lifeless re-telling of the Nativity, with greeting-card imagery and stiff performances.

By the end, 10 Items Or Less has the obnoxiousness of a vanity project. Freeman is having a better time than we are.

The director is fortunate to have cast actors who fully embody their roles. Muehe, who once played Josef Mengele in Costa-Gavras's "Amen," has the ability to let you see far beneath his masklike countenance. Koch, dashing and intense, is entirely believable as a man of the theater; Gedeck exudes a sensuousness that this covert society cannot abide.

Just because The Fountain is different doesn't mean it's good. In fact, it's borderline unwatchable, though this hasn't prevented the Oscar buzz from buzzing.

This may be the first crime thriller to explicitly utilize superstring theory but, in its woozy romanticism, it's not that far removed from this year's other time-warp movie, "The Lake House," about two lovers living in parallel years - or "Frequency," which starred Jim Caviezel as a good guy.

Black and Kyle Gass started their acoustic/heavy metal rock music comedy act back in the late 1980s. Gold albums and HBO shorts followed, now this. Still, any movie featuring Jack Black with an appearance by Sasquatch is not a total loss, and, for those who care, we learn the origin of the group's name.

If the literacy of The History Boys is deemed uncinematic, then give me uncinema anytime.

Craig makes you aware of something that the Bond series, in its pursuit of steamy sex and cartoon action, quickly lost sight of: 007 is a killer. That's what he's licensed to do.

There has to be a good reason to put yourself through yet another junkie odyssey and Candy flunks the test.

Viewers expecting a blistering attack on the fast-food business, or an Altmanesque panorama, will be disappointed, but it's a sensitive and humane piece of work.

For Your Consideration is, except for "Borat," the funniest film of the year. Or, it's the funniest film that you don't have to watch through parted fingers.

It's a sideways view of a national trauma. The large cast includes standout performances from such unlikelies as Demi Moore, playing an alcoholic crooner, and Estevez himself, as her long-suffering husband. Everyone in this film is powerful.

Because Crowe is hamstrung by his role, he never strikes the requisite sparks with Cotillard. This is quite an achievement, since her beauty is on par with Provence's.

Like Jim Carrey, Ferrell seems to think that the way to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor is to drain himself of everything that audiences love about him.

The result is this metabiography that says almost nothing about the great photographer's life or art.

Adams has a good camera eye and a fine feeling for the regional mores of the South, where she's from. Judd, who for a change isn't being terrorized in a thriller, is more nuanced and intense than she's ever been.

I hate to sound blurby, but Borat is the funniest comedy I've seen since I don't know when.

This computer-animated feature is consistently inventive, if a bit busy and overlong.

I have always felt that Almodóvar was at his best as an artist when he was at his most playful. Volver is about deadly serious matters of the heart, but it often has a screwball spirit. The darker things are, the funnier.

Lindo gives a powerhouse performance of immense feeling and subtlety.

Philip Noyce's anti-apartheid drama is tense and thoughtful, if somewhat marred by Hollywood-style thrills.

Messrs. Iñárritu and Arriaga have played this card one too many times. If they really want to appear radical the next time out, my advice is: Tell a single story and tell it well. What a concept.

The film may be subtitled "Shut Up & Sing," but you can't sing with your mouth closed.

There's something foul about staging the assassination of a sitting president in order to push a political agenda that could just as easily have been put forward without resorting to such sensationalism.

Destined to become this year's love-it-or-hate-it movie. Is it OK to say I merely liked it a lot?

Eastwood has made an honorable movie about honor, but the naivete of the conception - which some will call purity - keeps "Flags" at arm's length from greatness.

Has its moments.

Levinson made a great political comedy once, "Wag the Dog," but that had a script by David Mamet. Here, Levinson seems to be torn between making a political jest and a suspense thriller. Neither works.