Competent if unremarkable tragedy.

Viewers with a low tolerance for sentiment may balk, but the emotions are so true and the characters so appealing that the film should completely win you over.

Director Pieter Jan Brugge makes us feel their impatience and frustration even as they do. He's aided greatly in this by the casting of the wonderful Helen Mirren as Mrs. Hayes.

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

This romantic tragedy has the measured gentility of the M.I. classics, but its sheen of crass melodrama is startling, and its many metaphors run amok in a tangle.

Banal sit-comedy masquerading as religious deepthink dolled up as boy-meets-goy love story.

It's possible that Gloomy Sunday is more "significant" than it is compelling.

Unfocused. We feel cut adrift amid the various plot threads. This is exacerbated by some murky exposition. Characters, events, and the passage of time are not always clearly established.

The movie's a bust in myriad ways, especially because almost every scene possesses the oily feel of manipulation and condescension.

The Governess, a surprisingly luminous film that deftly stands somewhere between a Harlequin paperback and Jane Campion's "The Piano."

Levin's on-camera presence is warm, wry and even-tempered, and he never feels the need to rub anything in.

Do not read too much into Burger's mockumentary, then; it's just having a lark, poking fun at conspiracy theorists, taking the piss out of the dozens of docs out there that present themselves as The Real Story About the Killing of John Kennedy.

The problem with Spartan isn't so much that it's mediocre, but that it could be a whole lot better.

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

Thankfully, Emily Watson comes to his rescue with her spot-on portrayal of the killer's blind girlfriend; her rich performance works wonders in the absence of Jodie Foster. Now, if only they could remake Hannibal before they assemble that boxed set.

Don Cheadle is wonderful, as always, as the former drug-addict-turned-psychiatrist who worries it's all hopeless but refuses to stop trying. Sounds clichéd, perhaps, but for the most part it works, thanks to piercingly authentic performances.

There are many winning moments here, but director Nigel Cole (Saving Grace) sometimes imparts to the thing a terrible case of the cutes and an overeagerness to please.

Zucker!'s a bona fide hit in Germany, where, apparently, there's been a shortage of Jewish comedies since, oh, 1939, give or take. But it deserves its imported rep; rare's the movie that has an Orthodox Jew tripping on Ecstasy while getting a massage from a Palestinian prostitute hours before his mamala's funeral.

Co-directors and writers John Musker and Ron Clements doll it up so marvelously you're sucked into the screen and forced to confront the fact that at their best, these filmmakers can make the two-dimensional astonishingly warm and full-bodied.

It may have been the perfect storm, but this is the imperfect movie.

Johnson, who was computer-generated in "Mummy" and only looked it in "Scorpion King," keeps it engaging, displaying a comedic knack first revealed during his Saturday Night Live appearance in 2000; he has the timing of a Rolex, even when playing straight man to American Pie's Stifler.

For Jordan, this is a return to top form.

Overstuffed (three villains), overlong (at more than two hours and 20 minutes) and undercooked (plot points include amnesia and alien goo).

Abandon all hopes of common sense, and enter the theater with high expectations for visceral entertainment. You won't be disappointed.

A pensive, reflective movie, more or less equal in tone to Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm," yet, because of its temporal breadth and tight emotional focus, it packs a more intimate punch.

There are times when one suspects that this film potentially could be the raunchiest sitcom pilot ever.

Slick, glossy, and artificial.

Oddly, the film's strengths -- its quiet, understated manner; its non-plot; the awkward speech patterns and uncomfortable pauses that suggest emotional isolation -- are also its weaknesses.