The stars look bored out of their minds when the fourth episode of the franchise stalls between racing sequences.

The details are true and funny, played brilliantly.

Sadly, laughs are sparse in this labor of love, a self-conscious spoof by longtime "X-Files" producer R.W. Goodwin.

Gut-bustingly funny.

It all leads nowhere. There are pull-the-rug-out endings, and then there are pull-the-floor-out endings. The Escapist leaves you standing on nothing, like Wile E. Coyote, wondering why you bothered to come this far.

The slacker comedy-drama-romance-whatever Gigantic will fulfill all your alterna-movie weirdness requirements.

A gleaming hunk of French period schmaltz expertly rendered by director Christophe Barratier.

Algenis Perez Soto was a baseball player in real life, which helps to explain his sensitive, understated performance as Sugar. But he's let down by a manipulative script recycled from dozens of sports and immigrant movies. At least it dispenses with a Hollywood ending.

As usual with Majidi, the cinematography is super (best scene shows Karim, disguised as an ostrich, in pursuit of an escaped bird) and the acting is realistic and low-key.

Lifelines is a tiny movie, made for $385,000, but it strikes enough strange chords to make it resonate.

The acting and story are solid, but the real star of Tulpan is the gorgeous, never-ending landscape -- flat and arid, and home to camels, goats and lambs, and hearty people who live in tentlike yurts.

Dreamworks Animation's clunky and wildly unimaginative Monsters vs. Aliens really doesn't have a clue what to do with the [3-D] technique.

Doesn't have a particularly well-defined point of view, but it is a succinct, entertaining and valuable record of a time that in some ways now seems as remote as the Roaring '20s.

The role of William is a perfect fit for Red West, a well-weathered member of Elvis Presley's Memphis Mafia who has served as a bodyguard as well as a stuntman and bit-part actor.

Not very haunty.

Features crisp dialogue and understated humor, played out by an attractive young cast. Audiences bred on Hollywood romances might find the film too chatty and contemplative. To them I say: Get over it, kids!

Watching this movie is like listening to Michael Jackson tell you what real men are like.

Whip-smart, sexy and delightfully twisty romantic thriller.

UH-UH. Non. Nein. Negative. Sept. 11 is not to be used as the setup for a cheesy disaster prophecy flick.

A small-scale charmer that provides a tailor-made role for Malkovich, who is always fun to watch.

Forget those weepie liberal clichés. This starless and vividly authentic romantic thriller set in Central America really rocks, and is one of the most exciting directorial debuts in years.

Filled with affecting moments.

A warning: One scene in the middle is almost outrageously cruel and graphic. If you're the type of person who has to be reminded, "It's only a movie," stay away. This is the most depraved and dreadful piece of screen horror since last year's "Funny Games."

Bears all the signs of having been composed by an inferior race of alien screenwriters from the Hackulon System.

This bittersweet comedy is a fine showcase for a pair of distinctive and appealing talents.

This documentary, which begins at a low key, gradually becomes intense and psychologically complicated.

With so much junk cluttering movie houses, it is a shame that it took two years for this sweet, intelligent drama to get a release before heading for DVD.

For a horny-road-trip flick that's actually funny, check out last year's "Sex Drive," which just came out on video.

One of the oddest movies I've seen in a while - and that's a good thing.

Although envisioned before the world economy went to hell, Tokyo Sonata is relevant to the mess we're in now.

Director Zack Snyder's cerebral, scintillating follow-up to "300" seems, to even a weary filmgoer's eye, as fresh and magnificent in sound and vision as "2001" must have seemed in 1968, yet in its eagerness to argue with itself, it resembles "A Clockwork Orange."

Phoebe in Wonderland happens to be at least partly a Lifetime movie, but this special little film is no disease-of-the-week tear-jerker.

Heiskanen is a revelation as the put-upon wife, and the cinematography (some by Troell) effortlessly transports us back 100 years.

There are no talking heads, but lots of singing heads and sexy dancing bodies, many of them belonging to stars in Spain. In total, there are more than a dozen performance pieces, all stylishly lensed.

A stultifying vanity piece.

Coming-of-age road trips have rarely been more tedious or predictable.

Carax, who hadn't made a movie since "Pola X" in 1999 comes off best.

The time passes quickly. This is the rare remake that does honor to the spirit of the original.

Direction of all three films is no more than workmanlike, which isn't surprising since they were originally made for British television. The acting, on the other hand, is sometimes superb.

Here comes Wayne Kramer's Crossing Over, a bid to create the "Crash" of illegal-immigration dramas.

The film gets one star from me for the admirable brevity of its running time and another for the definite article in its title, seemingly an implicit promise that there will be no sequel.

The toilet caper is the lowest point of a movie with many low points, including bad acting and a generic script.

Even Oliver Stone would giggle at the notion that the CIA couldn't reach JFK through any means except via one of his blond playmates.

Slovenian-born writer-teacher Slavoj Zizek, narrator of the movie "A Pervert's Guide to the Cinema," provides the most entertainment.

If this movie were a teenager, you'd put it on Ritalin right away.

The film is light on those kitschy musical numbers that make Bollywood movies fun to watch.

Though this is the rare documentary that admirably admits recording "reality" on film actually shapes how people behave under the camera's gaze, I think Eleven Minutes is going to appeal mostly to hard-core fashionistas.

As with "Capturing the Friedmans," the documentary is grueling to sit through. Yet the greasy, guilty thrill of being privy to your neighbors' most intimate dramas makes it impossible to stop watching.

Wajda, who lost his father in the purge, gives the film an awful silence and mystery at its core.

Is the Crystal Lake PD really doing such a good job? You'd have to go back to Phnom Penh in 1975 to find a place with a higher per-capita rate of unprosecuted homicides.

The Caller qualifies as something of a Holocaust movie, with flashbacks to World War II France. Guess who the two boys we see grow up to be?

The film's disclosure that Camorra money is involved with the reconstruction of New York City's Ground Zero will give viewers something to think about.

The only possible interest the movie will inspire in anyone comes when Paltrow flashes a breast toward the end, far too late to pump any excitement into an aggressively boring film that gurgles with self-indulgence.

Jim Carrey mostly plays it straight as the narrator. The 3-D effects are uncanny; much of the audience ducked when sea snakes lunged at it. You can't get that on your TV set. Yet.

This is perhaps the most effective 3-D movie I have ever seen, with a sophisticated, involving story that will appeal to many adults. The only reservation I have is with the PG rating, which seems too lenient for a story that may give very young children - particularly if they are sensitive - nightmares.

Like the recent "Sex and the City" movie, this spinoff not so subtly tries to have its cake and eat it by ALSO suggesting that a woman is nothing without a man.

The movie hopes to be regarded as childlike too, but there's a difference between kid-friendly and just regular old dumb.

A grubby cut-price sci-fi thriller.

A lame comic tribute to the dwindling band of "Star Wars" aficionados, is one of those be nighted projects whose back story turns out to be significantly more compelling than the movie itself.

Confessions of a Shopaholic -- a "Devil Wears Prada" for Chico's customers.

Remarkably dull thriller.

Dumb and unwatchable.

The horror flick The Uninvited is not unclever - but it is unoriginal.

A Liam Neeson thriller so lacking in ambition they should have called it "Paycheck."

Excruciatingly unfunny.

Bursting with the usual colorful pop music numbers and lighter-than-a-soap-bubble quandaries, the film is a typical Bollywood entry, not likely to win over many new converts

Visually striking but gets bogged down in supernatural clichés.

Tells us just about everything we might want to know about her - except why she did what she did. That important information will have to wait for another film.

A good cast can't save The Lodger, the utterly wrongheaded fourth movie version of a 1910 novel inspired by Jack the Ripper.

A female revenge movie. But you could just as easily characterize it as fairly well-executed exploitation.

A flea market of fairy tales and hocus-pocus, Inkheart makes as much sense as an inkblot.

Fun but somewhat exhausting.

At more than two hours, Cherry Blossoms could do with some pruning. And do husband and wife have to have rhyming names?

Kids will be as enthralled by this film as you were by the live-action Disney movies of the '70s. It doesn't get any sweeter than a roomful of mattresses with kids and dogs jumping on them.

Much closer to Scorsese than "Scarface," Notorious gives a heartfelt yet clear-eyed sendoff to the late Brooklyn rapper Christopher Wallace.

It's fine for kids, though, and it doesn't try too hard.

Exceedingly lame.

As bland as the Kenny G-style smooth jazz its hero listens to in moments of distress.

I enjoyed the visual effects used to create some hellish creatures and the amusing nods to "The Exorcist" - cranial rotation, even a spooky staircase. But the movie slips in the last act.

An extremely awkward cross between "Ocean's Eleven" and "Rain Man."

A creative mix of horror, noir and psychological thriller. At times the story defies logic, but viewers who can accept that will find themselves caught up in the film's intensity.

As is his custom, Reygadas uses a mostly nonprofessional cast; and, as expected, he draws remarkably realistic performances.

This promising premise is turned into basically an overgrown TV movie.

The banality of evil has met its match in the banality of Good, a Holocaust parable that barely registers a pulse.

Winslet (Mendes' wife) once again demonstrates why she's one of the best actresses working today.

With its starkly contrasted visuals (fierce blacks, Clorox whites, a dash of unholy crimson), The Spirit may resemble a comic book more than any live-action film yet made, but it makes "Max Payne" look like a gleaming jewel of storytelling by comparison.

It takes a world-class storyteller and a great yarn to rivet your attention for nearly three hours. This very classy, old-school movie - employing cutting-edge technology that will make your eyes pop - did it for me.

Sandler's bizarrely clunky kiddie flick, is a sort of upside-down "Princess Bride."

Slight but utterly charming.

We watched a story of a Labrador. Who eats the couch and disobeys. I said to Lady, "It's a labra-bore."

A taut suspense flick for grown-ups.

Haunting is the best word for Waltz With Bashir, a striking animated documentary - not an oxy moron, despite how it sounds - from Israel.

The cast is solid, with standout performances by first-timer Habib Boufares as Slimane.

More like Disney's "Sleeping Beauty," somber, slow and elegant instead of frantic and dazzling.

The first time I saw Yes Man, I thought the concept was getting kind of stale toward the end. As it turns out, that was only the trailer.

The Class offers no Hollywood ending, but is rewarding for those up to the challenge.

A pleasing alternative to the season's Oscar-baiting movies.

Preposterous romantic melodrama, which uses a fractured narrative to cloud an absurd plot that would probably be laughed off the screen if it were presented in a straightforward manner.