The movie’s glib trafficking in illness, death and pinched little faces to jury-rig our emotional responses (Gibb was inspired by the equally likable, equally pandering Czech film "Kolya") lost me at hello.

Absorbing tale of coming of age in a multi-ethnic Paris suburb.

The stadiums and performance halls of Pyongyang become staging grounds for massive, highly choreographed political pageants that make the Nuremberg rallies look like dinner theater. You’ve never seen anything quite like these dazzling displays of groupthink.

The Tsuk children, with remarkable equanimity, evince the least surprise at their parents’ later actions. Hebrew speakers may be better able to appreciate nuances that the sometimes stilted, distracting subtitles seem to obscure. But those open, honest faces — the story they tell transcends words.

Albaladejo turns his film into a banal, mildly entertaining trifle of affirmation, eliciting a shrug more than any real emotion.

Their access is far broader than any TV network's, and in the end, they transcended the body counts and bland abstractions that characterize most Western reporting on the war.

There's something magical about seeing a packed house of 300 Taveuni locals laugh equally uproariously, and, without a nanosecond’s worth of culture shock, at Queen Latifah in "Bringing Down the House" and Buster Keaton in "Steamboat Bill, Jr."

Slight but enjoyable documentary.

The supremely attractive leads, exotic locations (Vietnam, Berlin and Beirut) and fetishized violence imbue the whole intelligence game with undeniable glamour.

Annaud presents a meticulously structured fable about the importance of family, particularly the relationship of fathers and sons, to both man and beast.

Anchorman has one amusing character, a dumb weatherman played by Steve Carell, and a nicely observed set piece about what newscasters really say to one another when they're shuffling papers between segments. Otherwise it's a long string of heavy-footed sight and sound gags.

So riddled with unanswered questions that it requires gargantuan leaps of faith just to watch it plod along, while McCann's overly broad strokes miss crucial details as he tries to mount an attack on both the power of the media and an indifferent medical profession.

There’s nothing postmodern about this "family," unless postmodern means never having to grow up.

What gives Rocky Balboa its unexpected pathos is the titanic humility of Stallone's performance, the earnestness with which he plays a man knocked down (but not out) by the ravages of time.

The booty here is 100 percent fool's gold.

Lunacy feels programmatic, the repetitive working through of an idea that had me checking my watch.

Deceptively rambling, shrewdly ragtag documentary.

Niftily shot and edited, The Grace Lee Project isn't just a witty unpacking of stereotype. It's also a welcome freshening of the old documentary saw that there's no such thing as an ordinary person.

This often gripping but also unremittingly grim and drab account of these events is a "Taxi Driver" without the cathartic finale.

Although he's invisible, his poignant desire to overcome his isolation makes this film an interesting, frequently funny, and cautionary riff on our increasingly computer-bound society.

At times the picture feels like an affectionate parody of recent Iranian films.

Columbus' sequel is faster, livelier and a good deal funnier than his original, due to the presence of some new characters.

Ultimately a triumph of redemptive ideas that DiCaprio ­-- God bless his celebrity -- may finally succeed in transporting from the environmental fringe to the mainstream moviegoing audience.

In Fitzgerald's hands, freestyling is an all-good means of personal expression and communal identification. The dark side of rap he treats only superficially, shortchanging a well-rounded discussion in favor of wholehearted celebration.

Undertow seems to be straining to say something at once tragic and heartwarming about fathers, sons and brothers, but I'm damned if I know what it is.

Mitchell -- gives a harrowing, beautifully conceived performance, the depth and arc of which can't be fully appreciated until the film's final scene.

An inert, respectable bore.

Open Water is just one tedious scene stretched out to feature length. It's terrifying all right, but only for what it says about the extents to which a couple of hungry actors and a bullish director will go to turn themselves into overnight celebrities.

Anchored by two fine performances, this bittersweet comedy about second chances just might signal a new beginning for the director as well.

Benicio del Toro’s a squinty-eyed genius, and the only reason this film is halfway worth seeing.

Like most of the men in the film, we would happily follow her anywhere.

Jacquot seems unwilling to either shape his story or offer commentary, a standard New Wave strategy that, in this instance, makes for a tale as vague as it is nouvelle.

It would all be too obviously feel-good if Ducastel and Martineau weren't also tuned in to the liberating drift of the open highway and a sharp native humor that adds needed flesh and blood to their walking metaphors.

The 26-year-old Argentine director Diego Lerman shows a sure hand in his debut, from his contrasty black-and-white compositions to his sly, jumpy edits, reminiscent of Godard.

Wise and moving.

Demme (Monument Ave.) brings a sure hand with pace and structure to the soft-at-heart script by Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone, allowing Murphy, Lawrence and company to sit back and focus on the job at hand -- making us laugh.

One senses that this is an intensely personal project for Binder, who is not as forgiving as he might be toward the mercurial mother. Still, the film is carried by Costner and Allen, who project a chemistry so incrementally built on reluctant camaraderie, they almost seem like siblings.

Among the pleasures the film evokes, as few films have, is the bliss of conversation.

A movie with a premise and an ad campaign promising sexual outrageousness, Sleeping Dogs Lie turns out to be rather tame.

Core has a touch with actors, too, and there are surprisingly fine performances here.

You come away from Boiler Room eager to see what Younger will do next.

Though spiked with nice performances (Marquis herself is a natural, no matter how lame her lines), This Girl's Life succeeds more as a nudie curio.

The story is so flat and transparent in the telling, so empty of psychological mystery and depth, it skates dangerously close to condescension.

What starts out as a lively reconsidering of the thug-life mentality ends up having as much depth as, well, one of Robinson's videos.

It can be thrilling to watch Stander and his gang of gentlemen bandits rack up the loot without ruffling their (or anyone else's) shirt collars. The movie isn't content to rest there, though; it wants to be a caper with a conscience.

Lovely, lovely, lovely.

A very cynical exploitation of the current Hollywood vogue for things queer. Still, the film is a must-see.

V for Vendetta is a dud - far too long at nearly two and a half hours, with flat, grungy visuals, choppy editing and no sense of urgency. But as a political work, it's something else - heavy-handed, reactionary and flat-out stupid. (For the record, Moore has publicly distanced himself from the film, saying it bears precious little resemblance to his original creation.)

Far from an arthritic exercise in hippie nostalgia. There is a seasoned richness and vivid specificity to these lives, for all their hurts and losses. Yet the movie is shot through with an undeniable note of elegiac wistfulness.

A screenplay that not only has a way with genre cliché, but manages to score some deviously witty political points

This film is brave enough to admit that not all failed movie careers are the result of evil corporate suits, and Affleck makes us care that this likable but weak-minded man threw away what was solid and good in his life for the chimera of fame.

A profession of faith, made with the confident disrespect of a true believer.

Baldwin's perfectly impacted performance as a tough-love provider (the actor gets some of the best lines in the movie).

By the time Princesa finally slides into halfhearted melodrama in its last quarter, we're only too happy to follow Fernanda back to the rim and a little excitement.

Charming, animated retelling of stories from A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books.

Saving Shiloh takes place in 2005, but in its setting and sensibility, it feels like 1930s Walton's Mountain.

Incorporating surrealist humor and an ironic patina, Lord of War tries for irreverent satire, but the film (and especially Cage) is too muted and distant.

This glorified infomercial glosses over the underlying tension of a young man's introduction into a society whose materialistic, capitalist tendencies are diametrically opposed to his country's values.

If you cut through Lucas' thickets of self-reflexivity, metaphysical mumbo jumbo and banal potshots at media violence, there are three ace performances here by actors who can elevate and enliven even as mediocre a piece of material as this.

There's something refreshing about a film set in Los Angeles that gets its L.A.-ness right -- the difference in vibe between Silver Lake and the Hollywood Hills, or the types of people at CityWalk versus Saks. It is that sense of specificity, both geographic and emotional, that gives Shopgirl its pull.

The less rosy message of Catch a Fire is that aggression breeds aggression.

It's a fresh installment in what appears to be a self-perpetuating sitcom of British life.

The film quickly becomes a vortex of father-son bonding and rivalry, and what could have been a mere travelogue becomes a bumpy exploration of male identity and communication.

Made may look like a Wong Kar-Wai movie -- the cinematographer, Chris Doyle, has brought to the film the dark, rich romanticism of the movies he's shot for the Hong Kong prodigy -- but the sensibility is Woody Allen, only sweeter.

The small-town Irish feel of the movie is infectious, and McGrath uncovers some great supporting players.

Bell forces us to see characters from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks in a distinctly human light, neither ennobling nor pitying.

Now, Soderbergh has made a movie so cool it's practically comatose. Sputtering along from one half-cocked gag line and self-satisfied in-joke to the next, Ocean's Thirteen is as slapdash and slipshod a three-quel as any in this summer's box-office sweepstakes.

This crazily ambitious film is saddled with a musical score that's often jarringly jolly and a screenplay so busy jumping from platoon to platoon that no single story ever takes hold. Yet, all is not lost. The photography and period detailing are excellent, and Taub, who displays real feeling for the innocent bystanders of war, finds the occasional small, surprising moment.

The imperfect yet affecting new film Beautiful Boy, based on memoirs by the real-life Nic and David, examines addiction and its effects on one family. But it’s also a meditation on memory and the difficulty of reconciling the happiness of the past with a present that’s become too sad to bear.

Pablo Berger's subtle satire Torremolinos 73 is almost there. Almost.

Slow and stately.

The first 20 minutes of Wolfgang Petersen’s new action adventure, Air Force One, are so thrillingly choreographed (and so very, very loud), it’s all the more disappointing that the balance of the movie tends to move less like a Stealth bomber and more like a jalopy — jerking fitfully from plot hole to plot hole, only occasionally finding momentum.

Here, it's the creepily quiet stuff, the stuff that might be rushed over in a different movie -- Annie shivering alone in bed or being visited by her dead grandmother as she hangs out the wash -- that makes the film more than a generic distraction.

Some amusing new characters are added (love the Russian doorman), and the 2-D animation, simple and serviceable after a tortured production history, is fine. But the jewel in the movie’s crown is its gorgeous pastel palette, alternating with warm earth tones.

The film offers an impressive melding of quietly radical images and ideas with, yes, an old-fashioned, crowd-pleasing holiday tearjerker.

A running spoof of "The Godfather" is especially hilarious, as are numerous, sly digs at all things Disney.

Director Tony Kaye may be reaching for opera, but screenwriter David McKenna has set his sights distinctly lower.

The laugh always comes first, and Myers' puppy-dog tenacity to that cast-iron tenet of low comedy, disarming and even somewhat charming in the first film, now has an air of careerist desperation about it.

Exchanges overheard in bars, crisp dialogue between characters and a wistful tone underscore both modern isolation and the age-old need for connection.

The flawed, fascinating Land of Plenty is easily Wenders' most vital work in more than a decade -- a troubling meditation on terrorism paranoia, poverty and homelessness.

On a Clear Day is in most respects "The Full Monty," only with swimming, not stripping, and no bursts into song or dance - only the usual canny sequencing of tears and laughter, interspersed here with fetching underwater photography and father-son issues up the wazoo.

The Roost advances a nifty man-vs.-nature scenario that harks back to Fessenden's own "Wendigo" and provides a nice chaser to a summer movie season populated by cuddly penguins and benevolent cheetahs.

A superb film by any measure, as deep and harsh as the sin Dillon committed to become great.

Excellent performances.

Kawajiri's doom-laden action epic is a heady brew indeed.

Has moments of real interest, but they require wading through a lot of dead air.

Silberling and writer Robert Gordon have made the fatal error of trying to jolly up the novels, which are often funny but never, ever cute.

Off the Black gradually establishes its own peculiar cranky rhythm, fighting to resist the usual male-bonding sentimentality. But despite some nice touches, this is the sort of too-precious indie film that gives its characters unnecessary quirks.

C.S.A. isn't subtle, but its undisguised indignation places it in the same bold polemical tradition as Peter Watkins' incendiary "Punishment Park" (1971), that nightmarish slice of speculative sci-fi about government-sanctioned manhunts for hippies and dissidents.

Increasingly, reviewing the latest Woody Allen movie has taken on the feel of a dreaded ritual, an annual excursion into careless filmmaking, desperate shtick, and vainglorious misanthropy disguised as cuddly neurosis.

Although (Reeves) acting inclines toward the wooden, it's always been his weird genius (if that's the term) to exude a charmed aura, an uncanny sense of being the chosen one -- remember, he's been the Buddha. I'm not sure any other actor could play Neo nearly so well, for the others would all be working to seem like The One (as he's known), while Reeves conveys that quality just by showing up.

There are so many good ideas at the visual level that you can't help wishing the narrative elements had been more cleverly worked out.

The actors are superb -- especially Smith, who exudes some of the live-wire charisma of the young Sean Penn in Rosenthal's "Bad Boys," and the smoldering Brewster.

If you're out shopping with the brood and need a 40-minute break, you could do worse.

Seen in the bowl's metaphoric reflection, Nolte's Adam, with his patronizing wish to build a great art museum to "give something back" to the poor laborers who built his fortune, is a complex American monster.

A story as creaky as the sub that gives the film its name.

Though Saved! is funny and irreverent, Dannelly isn't just taking potshots at fundamentalism. He creates a viable world, then riddles its surface piety with underground transgressions that call into question not Christian belief but slavish, intolerant religious practice.

A serious work of analysis, rooting the resistance to reform in Third World government corruption and Western profiteering.