A thoroughgoing mediocrity that musters up just enough low-down chuckles to remind you that you're not watching another Freddie Prinze Jr. yawner.

The movie is more or less competent for being what it is. Of course, I could say the same of most brick walls -- but I'd hardly recommend that you pay eight bucks to sit in front of one for two hours.

Gay jungle sex (gasp!), gone-native intellectuals, tribal rituals (gulp!), cannibalism (none of which the film shows, by the way) -- it sounds like a "Weekly World News" front page, not the thematic fodder of a highbrow non-fiction film.

Marred by an unconvincing love triangle and an insincere dénouement, it's a story that nonetheless resonates as much as "Saving Private Ryan does."

Nolan's engrossing, backwards-ticking noir will run you so thoroughly in circles that you'll need to see it at least twice for maximum enjoyment.

A disarming helping of Capra-esque corn served up by writer-director Rob Sitch.

McDonald makes for an appealingly befuddled bloke, and the sprightly Montgomery would turn any blighter's head. In a better movie, we'd care about what happened to them.

An elegant, haunting folktale.

Deserves to be applauded for not casting Freddie Prinze Jr., but this sloppy, somnolent, strung-together flick pales when compared to such other teenage riffs on classic literature as "Clueless" and "10 Things I Hate About You."

Boasts a fine cast and makes enough cogent points that it rises above standard cop fare.

A delicacy for mature filmgoers who are able to derive as much pleasure from a perfectly, sympathetically crafted essay as from a well-spun yarn.

Shows its roots early on: Mixing the high camp of "Strictly Ballroom" with Monty's gritty milieu, the film comes off as little more than a contrived composite, despite the best efforts of pros Rickman, Richardson, and Griffiths.

Smith and Fitzgerald are funny, feisty, poignant, and altogether realistic. Will they end up lovers, friends, side-by-side corpses? Their sharp performances make Series 7 as frighteningly addictive as crack, or even "Survivor."

Provocative but lame-brained polygamy comedy.

Oak-stiff and witless, but a few scenes muster up embarrassed chuckles.

Duller-than-a-Vitalife-convention compilation of talking heads.

Hits the wall and runs off the rails. They should've stuck to shtick.

The plot that propels them (Pitt, Roberts) along separate story lines is both unusually character-driven and a hoot.

Vapid, humorless, screeching, and utterly suckworthy.

A movie interesting enough in its conception to appeal to adults winds up being best suited to preadolescent sensibilities.

Maddin's movie is, frame for frame, the densest and most spectacular (albeit cardboard-cheap) film playing anywhere.

Accomplished, middlebrow costume-drama entertainment. It's not so simple that it could be mistaken for the work of, say, Lasse Hallström, and yet it's not so sophisticated that audiences of "Chocolat" would be mystified.

The selling out of Chris Rock -- or Down to Earth, as he's chosen to call it -- is a sad, sad thing.

If Company Man were a wreck on the interstate, it would involve multiple cars and at least one jackknifed tanker truck, and traffic would be backed up for miles as passing motorists slow to gawk.

The movie is so slovenly in its animation and graceless in its writing that few viewers over the age of 9 are likely to notice.

This is one of those movies in which there are only two types of people: officious yuppie pricks, and the beautiful folks who stop and smell the daisies. What keeps it (barely) from being completely intolerable is Keanu Reeves' hilariously awful lead performance.

This is what Woody Allen movies might be like if they were not ruled by narcissism, pretentious point-scoring, cheap observations, and Woody's peculiar speech patterns.

Offers up keys and cakes and plunges its characters down a deep rabbit hole.