Nothing in it -- plot, dialogue or character development -- reaches today's standards of filmmaking.

A masterpiece of pop filmmaking -- a fantastic, exuberant entertainment that manages to be both sleek and substantial without being patronizing.

You won't necessarily applaud The Notebook's excesses, but its final moments of grace will leave you in a sodden heap on the theater floor.

The movie's ''bless the beasts and the children'' moralizing is simplistic and skews a wee bit too young, but it's hard to fault a film whose greatest vice is sentimentalizing an animal humans have pushed almost to the brink of extinction.

Like its eponymous subject, it succeeds only in being shallow and crass and not very much fun to be around.

Unapologetically slanted -- and often hilarious.

In Dodgeball, Vaughn is stuck playing the straight man to a collection of stooges, and he looks utterly bored doing it.

So beautifully directed, so pleasurable to watch and so thoughtfully put together, it's a disappointment when you realize, halfway through, that the movie is going to fall way short of a masterpiece.

In I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, the night grows long while your eyelids grow heavy.

May not offer anything new, but in its well-tested premise, you can't fail to be seduced.

Emits a fishy odor, like a recruitment film for an obscure cult you'd rather stay away from.

There's nothing here you haven't seen before, especially if you own a PlayStation.

Isn't so much bad as it is puny: a sporadically amusing, occasionally funny, but ultimately bland and pointless time killer.

Now here's the reason America won't love Garfield: The Movie: Garfield's gone from the listless feline we all know and love to a fast-stepping, break-dancing cat about town. What's worse, the other characters are even farther from their roots.

As slight as the picture is, though, its hero is an indelible creation.

Here, finally, is a Harry Potter picture that lives up to its potential -- that, plainly, LIVES.

Serves as a beautiful and delicate reminder of the myriad ways in which life is lived on this huge planet of ours.

Takes one side, but it tries to offer hope that change can happen.

What most hurts The Day After Tomorrow is its unfortunate, lecturing tone.

An idea whose time is long overdue, a tricked-out jumbo jet custom fit to meet the needs of today's savvy black traveler.

Baadasssss! is best taken as an examination of filmmaking itself.

You feel terribly sad and angry at May's foolishness. Yet with so many emotions at hand, The Mother never fails to engage.

The problem with Saved!, which is often bright and likable, is that its central point -- extremism, religious or otherwise, is bad -- is too obvious for a satire.

There's an old-school innocence to Marshall's style, and it's satisfying to be whisked away from reality to this parallel universe where we find it possible to laugh amid such a fundamentally tragic scenario.

Unlike “Amélie,” Love Me If You Dare will not become a sleeper. But neither will it make you go to sleep.

Control Room may not seem all that compelling 10 years down the road. But right now, at this very moment, it is essential, imperative viewing.

Wins you over with this bright sense of humor and its gentle, welcome message of tolerance and acceptance.

Move over donkey, it's Banderas' time to shine.