What's missing, really, is a point. Like "Snow Falling on Cedars," Hicks composes every shot in Hearts in Atlantis as if it were his last.

Wields some power, but it's hard to shake the feeling you've seen it all before.

Glitter, the kind of movie only 11-year-old girls who dot their i's with hearts would find bearable.

A workmanlike thriller that works. The film is a victory for both first-time feature director Daniel Sackheim and budding star Leelee Sobieski.

Cynics may roll their eyes at Hardball's earnestness, but the movie proves even the most conventional stories can move and engage you, provided they're told well.

The movie still manages to unearth laughs, some of them pretty big, especially once Shanté's program is under way.

Its failure to be extraordinary is thus all the more cutting, and its redundancy all the more unforgivable.

In a film overstuffed with tragedy, the most painful one might be the gradual transformation of Fernando's moral and intellectual indignation into a weary, cynical detachment.

A formulaic and didactic but good-hearted and sometimes amusing underdog sports yarn and plea for social acceptance.

Like the type of music it celebrates, Rock Star is just a lot of posing, adding up to very little.

A mature, insightful and extremely well-acted study of a boy at a crossroads in his life, and a doomed, tortured man who, consciously or not, longs for some kind of redemption, before it's too late.

What O lacks is a sense of spontaneity: Despite its contemporary dialogue and manner, the movie can't overcome a nagging aura of artifice.

Yet even when the bickering diminishes the impact of the story, Wiener himself makes Fighter another interesting story to come out of World War II atrocities.

Much of the charm in Tortilla Soup comes from Elizondo as Martín. He plays the devoted patriarch so alluringly.

This is a rare breed of crowd-pleaser: a big-hearted, generous movie that never patronizes the audience.

A horror/sci-fi/action mishmash that aims to be the kind of brainless timekiller once used to round out the bottom of a double bill at the drive-in.

Put in such an uncomfortable position, the audience needs something to fall back on, like chemistry between its stars. Here that's half-hearted at best.

The movie is sloppy and scattershot, and proud of it. It wears its slipshod, anything-for-a-laugh structure like a badge of honor: Smith is nothing if not self-deprecating.

Belongs to that genre of movie that works hard to achieve a certain twisted and demented wit.

Hardly the first of Woody Allen's love letters to the good old days, but it's a high-spirited, entertaining one, falling along the same lines as "Radio Days."

Innocence is a gentle love story, one that touches on an issue of great sensitivity -- sexuality in old age.

A film of rare beauty, lifted by some of the best acting you may see in any film this year.

Never reaches this level of devastating loss despite its tragedies, but it's not the dismal bomb that much of the British press claims.

The dumbest, most risible retelling ever made of the exploits of legendary bank robber Jesse James.

The movie is so cheerfully, furiously relentless, its contagious silliness wears you down.

The star is the coming together of East and West, and how art provides the medium.

Doesn't make much sense on a story level, and it has a cheap, slapdash look that indicates no one behind the camera was interested in anything other than another fat payday.

Classy voice work (intriguingly, the hero, heroine and villain are all voiced by black actors -- Chris Rock, Brandy and Laurence Fishburne)

Rhapsody fails to completely hook you, perhaps because the events happen so quickly you barely have time to sort out the characters.

A fiendishly subtle horror movie, a goosebump-inducing exercise in suspense that uses your own imagination to scare you silly.

Swinton single-handedly carries The Deep End past its nagging ambiguities.

Under the Sun doesn't intend to be dramatic, much less melodramatic. This beautiful film just wants to capture life's simplicity.

Action and comedy are more impressive here than in the first film.

If Andrews oozes regal poise and Hathaway radiates movie star allure -- and they do -- credit the actresses, not this flimsy fairy tale.

Planet of the Apes is never quite boring -- the movie is constantly giving you something new to look at -- but it's still a disappointingly dull and underplotted ride.

McGillis, though, is the film's worst enemy. Her wooden attempts to recreate Kathleen Turner circa 1981 undermine too many scenes.

It's all very sweet, but the film goes in too many directions.

Jackpot ends up a lot like Sunny's singing: pointless and more than a little flat.

It's pleasant, mildly uplifting entertainment, one of the few recent movies to use plants as its muse.

Kitano's most enjoyable, flat-out fun movie, provided you can stomach the violence.

For the farce it so desperately wants to be, the film often feels slack and too reliant on so-so punch lines for laughs.

There's a lot more at work in this raucously entertaining movie than cross-dressing clichés.

A unique bond still develops between the two outcasts, leading to an unexpected resolution that ends this subtle, deeply humane movie on an ambiguous, but unmistakably hopeful, note.

The whole enterprise sags and wheezes like the tired, we're-in-this-strictly-for-the-money sequel it really is.

If The Score isn't quite in the same league as the classic "Rififi" or even "Thief," its single-mindedness still makes for a refreshing change from the preposterous bloat of most contemporary action movies.

Vaughn and Favreau are a dynamite pair, and there's enough give-and-take between them to satisfy any diehard "Swingers" fan.

Unashamedly sticks with its light comedy roots.

There's a terrible beauty to the work of Larry Clark, the controversial photographer turned filmmaker, that transcends chic nihilism.

The Hollywood action genre, sliding into a lazy dependence on computer-generated fakery, needs this authentic kick to the head delivered by Jet Li.

Lost and Delirious doesn't need metaphors for the power of strength and healing. All the passion and pain it needs glows ferociously in the eyes of its young women.

A quirky romantic comedy with a distinct and pleasing retro feel.

Undeniably charming, and kids will certainly enjoy it.

It's a formula and hard to describe as good in any artistic sense, but the viewers who pay to see it -- and many, many people are going to -- will get exactly what they want.

Fast, wacky and bubbling with passion or dark, troubled and doomed. In the unusually titled crazy/beautiful, it's all those things at once.

This is speculative, heady stuff, far removed from traditional Hollywood summer entertainment, which alone will earn A.I. a devoted following.

The story is worth telling, one that begs the question: Has anything changed?

Raunchy, provocative and often very funny.

Drowns in its own noxious fumes. Who knew being bad could be so dull?

Cleaner, cuter animal antics.

Often makes for a compelling comedy-drama about family ties. It's only when the cancer takes center stage that the movie feels like a wash.

A breezy pleasure.

Although the movie never so much as flirts with melodrama, there is still a bittersweet undercurrent.

It may not get top billing, but glorious music is the star of Songcatcher, an intriguing and often lovely film.

The relevant question is: does it rock? And the answer, unfortunately, is no.

It is a riveting and memorable performance and Kingsley finds subtlety in Logan where there doesn't seem to be any.

The liveliest and most engaging time killer to come out of Hollywood in a long while. It's junk, to be sure, but it is superbly made junk.

If nothing else, the movie proves even the rich and famous make boring home videos.

A crackling good adventure, a visually sumptuous effort.

The music is of course majestic, blending well with a loving cinematography.

The movie's only value is in unwittingly defining more clearly how played out the whole transgressing-boundaries-as-art thing has become.

Will leave you taking sides, whether or not that was the film's intent.

Himalaya doesn't need a traditional story line to transport the viewer into another, fascinating world.

With all the obvious work that went into this beautifully detailed, giant-scale movie, and considering the historical importance of the subject matter, was it too much to ask for a trace of intelligence, or maturity, or even insight?

Anyone who understands the subtle shadings of friendship will appreciate Our Song's realistic slice of teen life.

One of the most anticlimactic finales I've ever seen in a movie

The first of this summer's would-be blockbusters that deserves to be a hit.

It's impossible to watch this beautifully chaotic, excessive movie impassively. You'll either embrace what Luhrmann has done here or run out of the theater, holding your head.

If nothing else, Startup.com is a pointed reminder that mixing business and friendship never, ever works.

Intrigues mainly for its spare style and brittle, sweat-soaked performances.

A Middle Ages "Rocky" that spares no cliche in its unduly long, 2 1/4 hours.

The Mummy was certainly no "Raiders," but as far as summer movies go, it was just good enough.

At the very least, Corman would have remembered to make the movie fun.

It might have all seemed hip and edgy 10 years ago, but today, it just feels tired.

There are several stretches when the movie is actually hilarious.

Certainly diverting and, in Thurman, it also has a knockout of a performance.

Gas -- the hot air variety -- is exactly what Driven is made of.

Isn't a total crock.

Formidably stupid.

It's Zellweger's movie to win or lose, of course, and she succeeds without the slightest touch of Hollywood glamour.

A fair weekend distraction for 10-year-old girls.

Strolls from high sentiment to low humor without a stumble, but without reaching any great depth or height.

An impressionistic portrait of the seductive nature of evil.

A facile treatment of a complicated subject.

A mediocre widget stamped straight out of the mold of the popular police procedural.

What you'll remember most are a pretty face and the hot and steamy sex scenes. That is not enough.

Farmanara bears his soul, and his honesty permeates this work as strongly as the smell of camphor.

Director Jean-Marie Gaubert, who also directed this film's French predecessor, keeps the silly story barreling along.

Rising above simple sentiment to explore class differences and the enduring clash between East and West with wit and wisdom.