A persuasive if not groundbreaking drama.

Despite a fine cast, the film feels as lost as Howard, unsure of its direction or tone.

15 minutes into it, you are spellbound, heartbroken and unaccountably cheered -- your faith and admiration in humanity restored.

As the movie turns into a shrill revenge tragedy, complexity is discarded. The characters might as well be stapled to Popsicle sticks.

Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker look and act, quite attractively, like grown-ups, and their easy rapport makes them convincing and appealing as an on-screen couple. So all throughout Failure to Launch, I found myself wishing they were in a different movie, maybe one as sophisticated as "The Philadelphia Story," which the movie references, but doesn't remotely live up to.

Strictly for the very young who will find giggles in the anthropomorphic mash-ups and won't be too distracted by the predictably mawkish sitcom plot.

Thirty years of gestation have produced a film of great beauty with unfulfilled promise - a disappointment, but with much to recommend and be glad about.

Sometimes a film about nothing can be a film about everything; a film without overwhelmingly dramatic events can delight you more than an outsized epic. The sly and disarming Duck Season is such a film.

The performances by all three children are scarily convincing. Still, it's a taxing bit of exploitation, which, although you're glad to know it's a work of fiction, doesn't exactly make a case for itself as art.

Director Mikael Hafström's dramatic sense is so pedestrian and snail's-pace obvious -- since this 2003 feature, he's made the leap to Hollywood with the plodding thriller "Derailed" -- one starts biding time for the inevitable retributive smackdown that will save our hero from the gantlet of draggy high-mindedness about counteracting fascism with stony resolve.

Small and intimate, Game 6 is a meditation on American theater and the Great American Pastime that hovers above the surface of reality but never quite takes off, either.

The main strength of "Shakespeare" is its ability to show the vulnerability of its subjects, neither judging nor smothering them with undeserved praise.

A ticking clock scenario and a terrific performance by Willis as an alcoholic NYPD detective make up for the film's occasional missteps and some strange pop culture references.

Most fun of all, however, is basking in Chappelle's ability to be effortlessly funny. Whether he's making believe he's a pimp in a Dayton clothing store or charming little kids in the Bed-Stuy day-care center that was concert headquarters, his personality infuses the film with infectious good feelings.

To her credit, Jovovich carries out her action-hero duties with swagger and conviction that never get out of control. Clearly, she's expecting a franchise out of this.

It would be a mistake to think that if you've seen one fish up close and personal you've seen them all. Deep Sea 3D is a total-immersion undersea adventure, in which the oceans' glories are on vivid display in three dimensions.

The uncomplicated humanism of Joyeux Noël, with its Christmas message of peace, feels at once irrefutable and refreshing.

The most memorable section of the film is the chilling quarter-hour devoted to the apprehension and eventual murder of the Clutter family. Captured in unblinking, neo-documentary detail, it freezes the blood just as they did all those decades ago.

Most of all we see what a coldblooded sport campaigning is, and how desperately the people who are good at it want to win.

Whatever its weaknesses, Tsotsi is redeemed by its excellent performances.

Reunion is an awkward compound of paradoxical tones and ideas... But one shouldn't underestimate Perry's ability to make such contradictions work and get away with the most wretched excess.

Running Scared is so desperate and surreally stupid that all you would have to do to see it as a brilliant sendup of everything that is corrupt, vulgar, sad, deluded and bad-for-you about Hollywood is squint.

As good as the leads and the supporting cast are, and as much action as gets packed into the film's relatively brief running time, none of it draws us in dramatically.

An unexpectedly emotional, continually disconcerting film.

The very title suggests that this compelling and provocative film is going to be different from other Holocaust documentaries.

Unfortunately, absent a more objective context, Trudell's gnomic utterances do little to support those sentiments. By preaching so relentlessly to the choir, this film misses an opportunity to show what got them to sing in the first place.

The story that first-time feature filmmaker Curry tells is extremely compelling, but where he really scores is in addressing politics and race in a way that allows events to speak for themselves.

The only thing remotely resembling parody in this depressing waste of time and money is Jennifer Coolidge's sendup of Barbra Streisand as an over-the-top string of Jewish mother clichés.