If only Condon kept up the Q&A format, because when he ditches it the movie turns flat and familiar.

If you have a chance to see the 3-D IMAX version of the movie ignore any objections. But if your only choice is a regular 2-D screen, The Polar Express is still three-fourths of a great movie.

This new version, which retains nearly every character and echoes nearly every scenario, is somehow its complete opposite--a slight, breezy incarnation that tries like hell to dishearten, which only makes it disingenuous.

This Jay-Z documentary is too much of a good thing, really.

Yes, yes--The Incredibles is beautiful to look at, but even more lovely beneath the computer-generated surfaces.

Were it not for the performance of Foxx, the movie, which touches every base and slows to a crawl near home plate, would sink even when the score soars.

It's brutal horror, where anyone can die at any time, and gorehounds will love it. Average folks may find it too intense.

You're almost tempted to laugh at Birth by the end, but by then you're too busy cursing it to bother.

The result is creepy and unpleasant.

The overall effect is scintillating and very engaging -- literally history in the making.

For the most part, Sideways is a great movie--impeccably written, directed and acted--that takes its characters on a journey toward something new.

Despite the tighter rewrite and the slicker production, it's obvious that Shimizu is still searching for what scares him, and until he finds it, he doesn't stand--ahem--a ghost of a chance of frightening us.

Wrenches paltry giggles and cheap warmth from a screenplay that makes "Son in Law" seem like Sam Shepard. But wretched Affleck is the real liability.

Like all good concert films, it's the next best thing to being there.

Director Brad Anderson (Session 9) is usually really good at humanizing ambiguous characters, and he ultimately succeeds, but he has to fight against Scott Kosar's script.

To call Undertow a '70s-style revenge movie is accurate, but those unfamiliar with Green who expect a typical genre picture may wonder why it takes so long to get to the action.

Succeeds in scaring you and boring you at the same time; unlike Moore's movie, it's agitprop bereft of artistry, porn for Republicans.

Bottom line: It's hilarious, vicious, offensive, thoroughly profane and a joy to watch, just like you'd expect. Be sure to sit through the end credits for a bonus song from Kim Jong-il to Alec Baldwin.

Runs out of breath and collapses into a heap of feel-good endings that turn a soaring feeling into a sinking one. But by then, the audience that adores it will forgive it its sins.

Maugham's signature wit and tragic colorations are well served by director Istvan Szabo (Mephisto) and screenwriter Ronald Harwood (The Dresser).

Turns out to be one of the most original and imaginative children's films in a long time.

Feels like a quirky sitcom -- "Arrested Development" without the development.

There is still plenty to like about p.s. , including its smart humor and its surprising ability to absorb.

It's not easy to pull off a good morality tale. That's why Moolaad, the new film from 81-year-old Senegalese writer-director Ousmane Sembene, feels like such an exceptional success. Its moral center is painfully clear, but so is its humanity.

Imagine a feature-length version of the "Large Marge" sequence from "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" and you won't be too far off, only that was scarier.

What this Reagan movie really needed was . . . more Reagan. None of his admirers have his charisma, and none of the footage here is surprising. Fox News could easily produce a better film.

A satisfyingly eerie thriller.

Vera Drake is so patient, assiduous and attentive to emotional accuracy that it betrays the utter sloth of most of what we see when we go to the movies.

The movie works because Berg never forgets to keep his heart in the game and not just his head.

Fame this film ain't.

The movie comes off as willfully eccentric when it should have been charmingly touching.

Love it or hate it, you won't be able to leave it alone.

The design is gorgeous, the dialogue delicious, and even the supporting characters prove resonant.

It would take the ghost of Stanley Kubrick to get great performances out of Jimmy Fallon, Queen Latifah, and supermodel Gisele Bündchen, and Tim, you're no Stanley.

In this case, the subject and director are one and the same, and the result is a degree of intimacy--really of rawness--rarely achieved in film.

This resolutely old-fashioned movie is less a drama of the streets than a kind of recruiting film.

It's stunning, really, to consider how much time and expense went into something so chintzy and dull--a script full of non sequiturs shouted by a screen full of chum.

Russell, a former student of Buddhist monk-philosopher Robert Thurman's, is reaching too far, straining too hard, saying too much that adds up to so little after all the mumbos and jumbos tallied up by film's end.

Whether or not you like this film may depend on how much interest (or patience) you have for the antics of a self-proclaimed prophet.

It's hagiography, yes, but also powerful and poignant.

The strength of Woman is its unflinching look at people trying to grab onto a little dignity in their lives.

What about the activists (gay and straight) who want to secure legal benefits for all citizens, not just married ones?

Good, goofy fun, but given the attendant hype, there may be a danger of excessively high expectations from horror fans.

Part of the problem is that this First Daughter is modeled on good-girl Chelsea Clinton; a movie based on our current two party-girls-in-chief trying to embarrass their reformed alcoholic dad would be far more fun.

Ultimately only Moore, with her eyes always half-damp and voice half-cracked and body language half-mad, keeps the movie on the ground, when it too often threatens to fly into the thin air, where the audience would laugh it off the screen.

Provides a smart, insightful prologue to the career of the man who continues to inspire countless people around the world.

Most of it is decidedly lame. The actors, however, are ingratiating.

The very best thing about A Dirty Shame, a giddy sex farce from John Waters, is the credits.

September Tapes, with its torturously high-minded narration and ludicrously low-road shenanigans, uses the terror attacks of 2001 as the setup for an infuriating gotcha finale.

It never attempts to know more than they do, or to encourage them to look deeply into themselves. As a result, the film is a little flat.

Just another baseball movie hitting for average -- very average.

The movie is smart, funny, romantic, and rousing.

The filmmakers' investment in their weird visions is wildly unorthodox, but the payoff is oddly satisfying.

The lavish drama spans England, France, and Spain (shot mostly in Montreal), and Duigan elegantly paints a moving romance of errors amid torture, bloodshed, and terrible tragedy.

This vivid exploration of the human animal creates a romantic alchemy that's raw, unsettling, and touching.

It wears out its welcome well before its halfway point, by which time you're either so tangled up in plot points you're strangling, or so bored you just wish you were being strangled.

Andrew Litvack, whose inability to direct is outweighed only by his inability to write anything remotely witty, enlightening, or engaging. Calling this a farce would be, well, a farce.

There's a lot of imagination at work here; too bad just a little bit of it couldn't have been channeled into the creation of a better narrative.

If you can cast all semblance of logic aside, it's sort of fun.

Several visual nods to the game are amusing, but it's tough to recommend the movie to anyone who doesn't already own a PlayStation.

This plodding mediocrity displays none of the flair or the compelling trickery that enlivened its 2002 prototype.

The actors are capable, but the direction feels stilted, the pacing sluggish, and the story obvious. The film plays like an ABC after-school special.

This intriguing jigsaw puzzle is visually arresting, narratively inventive, and psychologically enigmatic.

It's unfortunate that, nudity and all, this is one of Toback's absolute worst efforts.

A surprisingly efficient B-grade revenge pic.

If Alfred Hitchcock were retarded, lobotomized, and freshly dug up, he might possibly c--- out a movie like this one.

There might have been a decent comedy here if someone had remembered to insert some actual humor.

While the film bubbles with humor, sensual detail and heaps of plot, it never quite becomes more than the sum of its parts. It's well worth seeing, but it isn't transcendent.

Despite its formalistic failings and truly absurd Porn Moment, there's a morbidity here that feels quite genuine, and, after the movie is over, it amounts to rough-hewn poetry.

Hero keeps its characters stiffly archetypal, like chess pieces sent whizzing through outrageous maneuvers. Unfortunately, this apparent choice of spectacle over intimacy put me at a slight remove.

Director Dwight Little, who has made many mediocre films as well as the gleefully gory Robert Englund version of "The Phantom of the Opera," gets at least one thing right -- he really does take time to establish the characters.

The first Baby Geniuses, released in 1999, was one of the most inane, humorless, ill-conceived, poorly acted comedies of the year. As difficult as it is to imagine, the sequel is even worse, earning an F.

Merhige is too talented to be dismissed as a wannabe, but here his gifts for clever angles and oogy feelings are tethered to blasé genre redundancies and clunky storytelling. Looks great, less thrilling. I blame the screenwriters.

The movie, which feels as amateurish as a student film made for cable access, doesn't deliver the goods; the gotcha moment never comes.

It's the solipsistic, obvious, misogynistic, and occasionally redeeming tale.

Every situation, every bit of dialogue, comes straight out of the Big Book of Movie Clichés.

Here's a popcorn movie with soul, welcoming the masses to consider how much can change in popular culture over 30 years, as the horrific becomes the familiar.

Fry establishes himself as an inspired, world-class talent behind the camera and delivers my favorite film of the year thus far.

What the books suggest, the movie reveals and revels in--the songs, in other words, those brilliant, backbreakingly fast anthems.

It is unfortunate that von Trotta does not trust her audience enough to think for themselves -- her themes are carved on a sledgehammer en route to our skulls.

The acting is remarkable across the board, undoubtedly a combination of a strong script, gifted actors and exceptional direction.

It plays like a parody of suspense movies, then occasionally becomes serious, then boring, then makes a jarring 180, then frustrates, then gets vaguely interesting again.

The only thing worse than second-generation Guy Ritchie is fourth-generation Quentin Tarantino, and this movie has the musty smell of 1995 all over it.

Well, Sanaa Lathan's in there somewhere as the smart and sexy ass-kickin' chick, but it's really all about the monster disembowelments, which happen often.

An hour of dour stagnation is a lot to take, even with good acting. So when the action finally does shift, toward the end of the film, it is a welcome relief.

Garry Marshall is at it again. He disguises an insidious worship of wealth and privilege as a "feel-good" comedy about a wacky girl whose transition from ugly duckling to swan is supposed to inspire feelings of empowerment. In three words: It's a crock.

A breezy romantic comedy, boasting a shameless silly streak.

Suffice it to say that Cruise never seems right in this part--never as treacherous as he should be, nor as mysteriously tortured. Foxx has his moments, but there's no room for his trademark humor, and we can never quite get our minds around the idea that the hit man has beguiled the cabbie.

It's a self-satisfied, self-loathing mess that demands you adore and cheer for the very person you come to hate well before its 105 minutes are up. Little Black Book will leave you feeling skuzzy.

Astonishing, haunting and lyrical on its own terms.

It's moderately compelling drama, but also fairly static stuff, image-wise.

The movie is stirringly, thrillingly animated; Stander, as some say around Johannesburg, lives.

Just as you feel the numbing, clammy clench of paranoia on your neck, you realize, nope, the grip is just the director's attempt at tickling you to death. Demme's movie had no right to work. It does, and then some.

This special-effects-crammed action blockbuster is not rocket science. It's more like rocket fun.

The result is his (Shyamalan's) most meditative and lovingly rendered offering thus far, if also his least fun.

A piece of rock-and-roll history--but it isn't perfect.

Funnier when high -- what isn't? -- Harold and Kumar may also serve as the first infomercial for weed and burgers.

Props to translator Nigel Palmer for keeping the subtitles witty instead of blindly literal.