Sails along on a slipstream of pleasant scenery, amusing incident and the boundless charms of its appealing leading men, Jackie Chan and Steve Coogan: It's an unexpectedly buoyant spectacular.

A thoughtful look backward, a summing up that attempts to understand what is ephemeral and what truly lasts, what it is that matters in the final analysis.

The film stands up well to the inevitable comparisons to "Spellbound," a riveting documentary about young spelling bee contestants.

Severely marred by a plot device so ludicrous it turns a serious drama into something silly.

Moving and invaluable.

Not since John Travolta sprouted a head of dreadlocks and strapped on platform boots for "Battlefield Earth" has cinematic science fiction been such good-bad fun as in The Chronicles of Riddick.

It was somebody's nitwit idea to rip out the story's guts and brains for a sour sellout of a finale -- which finds the filmmakers behaving exactly like Stepford men and turning an original into a dummy.

Bill Murray completists, tots under 5 and their unfortunate chaperons are the only ones who need experience the soulless excuse for an entertainment called Garfield: The Movie.

It's a simple collection of sight gags and pratfalls that mines the overly familiar turf of awkward adolescence without bringing anything truly original to the experience.

Diaz has said that she hopes the film asks the right questions. But it seems, in this case, that the questions are leading - and rightly so. Marcos is given all the tape she needs to hang herself.

"Weeping" is a simple tale of animal estrangement and reconciliation that in its own quiet way manages to be soothing, hypnotic, even magical.

The Corporation takes great and successful pains to be as visually diverse and clever as it is intellectually provocative.

Azkaban breaks free of all these shackles in its final hour. Working with the persuasive Thewlis and Oldman, able to focus his gifts on what's distinctive, dramatic and surprising about the story, Cuarón creates on screen the heartfelt magic that has enthralled so many on the page.

Does little to unravel the riddle of the title. Unless you are already a fan of Castaneda, the film is likely to leave you feeling as though you've just watched a very long, lost episode of that old TV series "In Search of ..."

Accomplishes beautifully what it sets out to do, which is to reveal the man behind the crusty, hard-drinking, tough-talking persona Charles Bukowski so artfully crafted.

Flashy production design can't save Soul Plane from crashing and burning in a debris field strewn with stereotypes and raunch.

It's no great surprise that after a tough beginning, Saved! soon starts to sound a lot like the inspirational TV movie (with Valerie Bertinelli).

Every element of The Mother, directed by Roger Michell and written by Hanif Kureishi, fits together with perfection. The film's staging -- the way its settings create a world that allows for striking images that echo the psychological interplay of its people, the way in which every performance could not be any better -- is awe-inspiring.

In its spirit and execution, Baadasssss! lives up to its forebear.

The story is too silly, too woefully underwritten, to stake a claim on seriousness.

Far more troubling than the documentary's lack of data and analysis, its refusal to pose even basic questions -- whether, for instance, the so-called war on drugs is a total farce -- is the sense that these seven lost souls are principally on display for our viewing displeasure.

Nothing is allowed to build, so there is no tension or surprise left for the film's climax, resulting in a reductively pulpy rehash of 20th century American drama.

A bittersweet, wryly amusing "dramatic fiction"

A complete original. This ingenious, almost indescribable film won't remind you of anything else because there's nothing else like it.

The agreeable cast led by Hudson and Cusack manage to extract a handful of laughs from the forgettable dialogue, but at nearly two hours, the film goes on far too long.

The attempt to find humor in mean-spiritedness is way beyond Paris and Fejerman's abilities, and their last-reel attempt to portray Sofia as an ultimately liberating force for her daughters is as contrived as My Mother Likes Women is repellent.

The film is plagued by Anselmo's inability to focus on the heart of his story.

The film is loaded with striking visuals, high energy and all-stops portrayals from its actors, but for all of Samuell's imaginative cinematic bravura, it is, finally, mainly exasperating. Phooey on Julien and Sophie's excruciating l'amour fou.

Think of Control Room as a through-the-looking-glass movie. Like Lewis Carroll's Alice, viewers of this remarkable documentary will be disconcerted by a glimpse of a world where everything is reversed.

Under Tierney's admirably low-key, unexploitative direction all his actors are memorable and never seem to be acting. Twist is decidedly dark but consistently engaging.

Its cleverness and its good heart enable it to overcome a slow start, which is how all good fairy tales end.

Rather than merely chronicling the events leading up to the May 17, 1954, Supreme Court decision that ordered the desegregation of public schools in the U.S., the film explores both its effect and ways in which it has fallen short in creating true equality.

Carandiru is Babenco's fourth film set inside some type of incarceration facility and meshes his documentary style and fondness for realism with the escapism of storytelling found in "Kiss of the Spider Woman." It plunges us deep inside a corrupt system and its sincere empathy creates a stirring mix of emotions.

The hard-sell comic delivery one expects from contemporary date movies is pleasantly tempered here.

The casting of Taylor gives the film a powerful center, a bright light that keeps it on course.

What makes this film special, as in his other films, is the getting there. Téchiné is the master of subtle shifts in mood, an acute delineator of psychological interplay, and therefore demands the utmost of his actors.

For Tian, who was banned from directing by Chinese authorities for a decade, it marks a triumphant return; for those who have loved the filmmaker's work in the past, few resurrections have seemed as welcome.

Much of the humor is overly familiar, and the broader elements feel strained when it veers toward melodrama in its final third.

A deeply personal film that is also a mature, assured work rich in telling details and shot through with humor to offset its serious concerns.

Known for an elegant visual style, Jarmusch has a great gift for playing actors against one another, for finding complementary eccentrics (Murray and RZA) and uncovering rare gems (Bill Rice and Taylor Mead in "Champagne").

Given everything, it's no surprise that the verdict on the film has to be a split decision. Troy is a movie you believe in physically...Believing in Troy emotionally, however, presents a greater challenge.

There's some technical dexterity in melding the various formats and capturing some impressive surf footage, but the shaggy dog nature of the story proves exhausting.

A deadly earnest drama tripped up by clumsy plotting and unintentional bursts of humor.

Neither funny enough to be a comedy nor serious enough to pass for drama, and it ambles along aimlessly before grinding to an unconvincing halt.

His constant chatter may grate, but Noya does the wide-eyed wonderment thing very well.

An unforgettable experience from yet another filmmaker who is making South Korean cinema one of the most vibrant of any emerging on the international scene.

Packs a lot of good information, witty visual aids and expert testimonials into its fast 96 minutes, and all the bad eating certainly makes for compelling if at times repugnant viewing. But the film ends up too short and, as a consequence, frustratingly glib.

Kind of like a basketball team of all-stars -- no names, please -- that has difficulty jelling into one smooth and efficient unit.

Along with the performances, there is a languid truthfulness in some of the dialogue that keeps Seeing Other People from being one of those completely forgettable indie romances that play in perpetuity on cable.

A coy, frantic attempt at screwball comedy, lightly seasoned and more than a little gummy.

The film is full of flamboyant personalities, and they all contribute to the impression that Highberger above all wants to pay tribute to Curtis' brave determination to discover and express his ever-changing identity at all costs.

Sly, swift, succinct -- and very sexy.

Unlike Tracy and Hepburn, the loving and loathing here are absent music and wit and tend to imply that what Moore's character really needs is a good frolic.

Working with excellent site-specific music and this trio of exemplary -- and exceptionally well-cast -- actresses, director Bertuccelli does a superb job of touching just the right emotional notes in recounting the consequences of deception and the importance of family.

A consistently underused and often underrated actor, Kinnear gives one of those sympathetic performances that prevent you from believing the worst about a movie despite the sounding alarms.

A woeful little comedy that runs out of steam shortly after its opening sequence.

The film strains to be hip with its sterilized pop soundtrack and perky graphics. The humor that isn't lifted from the novel is equivalent to that of a subpar situation comedy.

Marred by a flat, conservative script and an overreliance on the tried and true. It feels like a movie we've seen before.

It's all terribly tortured, often laugh-out-loud, absurdly funny and, as with all of Maddin's movies, conveyed through images that are as lush and beautifully over the top as the story's emotions.

He (director Mark Waters) keeps the story light and bright, and he brings out real comic performances from his cast, including newcomer Seyfried, who plays her ditz with Judy Holliday charm.

Lacks the scope and distance that could have been provided by an outsider. But it speaks in such a frank way that avoids self-indulgence that its limits are forgiven.

Director Demme has done other potent and meaningful films, but The Agronomist defers to none of them in its effectiveness and its power.

Sometimes a movie's charm materializes where you least expect it and in this particular case it emerges in the unlikely form of Henderson's character, Scotland Yard detective Janet Losey.

Neale's cameras and broadcast footage of various races place the audience in a position to experience the participants' need to go faster.

Despite its high craft level and Washington's participation in it, this movie's showy violence is finally as deadening as the over-emphatic violence in these kinds of films generally is.

The film's septuagenarian director deserves his share of the credit for bringing this human story to the screen with engaging B-movie modesty and no small measure of chops.

The plot hinges on Jenna's horrified realization that her adult self is a witch, but 13 Going On 30 -- works foremost as a vehicle for its rising star.

Penning's feature directing debut, which he co-wrote, has visual flair but lacks the tightly plotted storytelling this type of film requires. Relying on mood isn't nearly enough to make the outcome compelling.

It's an ideal film to open on Earth Day, for in the least preachy way possible it celebrates the natural world to make viewers pause and consider the profound importance of preserving the planet.

Surprisingly compelling viewing.

Michael S. Ojeda's film is so relentlessly shallow and excessive that it hardly matters whether Lana is eventually able to turn the tables on Darko. When it rains in Lana's Rain, it pours -- and what comes out is trash.

Few filmmakers love movies as intensely; fewer still have the ability to remind us why we fell for movies in the first place.

That rare comic book movie that actually feels like a comic book. Which turns out to be mostly, but not entirely, a good thing.

They are tremendously appealing, and under Stephens' direction, Anson Scoville as an Amish runaway and Paulo Costanzo as a closeted gay college fraternity man are also memorable.

The result is pure, unabashed and unpretentious entertainment of a sort once a staple of the movies but now rare.

Mackenzie has greatly tempered the story's brutality the old-fashioned way: He puts an appealing, sympathetic star at the center and surrounds him with beautiful visuals, with a darkly contrasting color palette of bruising black and blue.

A lot of uneven acting is also no small detriment to this frequently awkward film's credibility.

Graced with a shimmering visual style and sense of lyrical self-consciousness that owes a debt to French visionary Jean Cocteau, the modest film provides further evidence of Mexico's recent cinematic renaissance.

A clever and adroit B picture with A virtues, starting with its ensemble cast.

The result is a deliberate conflation of fact and fiction that yields unexpected emotional impact.

Embedded between all the sex and sunlight are some woefully underdeveloped ideas about American militarism and masculinity. Dumont doesn't bother to develop these ideas, principally because he seems to think it's enough to arrange his characters like puppets and tear off their heads.

What is disturbing and frankly distasteful about The Girl Next Door is how slick and shameless it is in its eagerness to blur boundaries, to squeeze as much transgressive material as it can into a nominally bland and innocent form, to serve up a benign, sanitized and exquisitely titillating portrait of the world of pornography in the cozy sheep's clothing of a teenage movie.

Disastrously unfunny sequel.

With a graceful confidence Salvatores has made a movie in which good and evil flow into each other as easily as day and night.

Driven by different agendas, history and movies often tell two irreconcilable stories, which is why, despite some glints of talent, Hancock has given us yet another film and another Alamo to forget.

Likely to cast its spell primarily on adolescent girls, while their elders might well find it more than a little tedious in its familiarity and artificiality.

An easygoing, earthy comedy that's a good showcase for the robust comic gifts of Cedric the Entertainer.

This Walking Tall does have the Rock, and that, both physically and metaphorically, is no small thing.

As meditative and beautiful as its title would indicate. What is a surprise is the extent to which it manages to be involving if you can put yourself on its wavelength.

A blandly diverting, chastely conceived and grammatically challenged fairy tale for our bland, chaste and grammatically challenged age.

This skillfully made Italian heart-tugger was a success on home ground. Its star, Marco Filiberti, in an audacious writing and directing debut, has lots on his mind and much in his heart, and as a filmmaker displays a Douglas Sirkian flair for finding substance in melodrama.

An enjoyable if somewhat neutered defender of the free world. Make no mistake: Hellboy still has a hide as hard-boiled as Lee Marvin in "The Dirty Dozen," but now he's also wearing a smile.

What it really is is an unapologetic cartoon, a harum-scarum endeavor that's so comically frantic it wears you out as much as it entertains.

An ambitious and intelligent film probing that chronic contemporary phenomenon, the seemingly senseless crime, but it is ultimately unsatisfying for all its efforts and various pluses.

A dark allegory and a dazzling example of Japanese anime.

The middle sections go a bit slack at times, and things wrap up a little too neat and quickly, but overall Two Men Went to War entertains and recalls the type of British period comedy that more regularly appeared here before everything seemingly began to strive for "Full Monty"-sized box-office returns.

Made by Hickenlooper over a six-year period, "Mayor" is rich in interviews, with comments from rock stars.

Played by DMX in a gravel-pit monotone and a near-total lack of affect, King David cuts an unremittingly tedious swath through Never Die Alone.