The Wrestler offers something to pretty much everyone in the audience. Much like "The Sopranos," it creates a world that might make you feel utterly at home or exhilarated by strange horrors. Maybe both.

According to rumors swirling on the Internet, an English-language remake is already in the works, possibly directed by David Cronenberg.

One of the big problems here is that, despite much exposition, the nature of Klaatu's mission on Earth isn't at all clear.

Goldblum's wobbly German accent and the staginess of the script doom this effort by Paul Schrader ("American Gigolo").

I love musicals, but I'd be hard-pressed to recommend this curiosity, sort of a shoestring version of Francis Ford Coppola's "The Cotton Club."

A few magic rocks and tepid battle scenes do little to inspire interest in the goings-on as Malcolm McDowell and Eric Idle spout villainy and punch lines, respectively.

A feast of great acting, although in the final analysis it's a filmed stage play rather than a brilliant movie.

It's also a terrific, career-capping role for Eastwood, who claims he's now retired as an actor. He shows off his comic chops more fully than in any film since "Bronco Billy" more than a quarter-century ago.

What's Spanglish for "oy"?

This is a rare case of a movie that improves dramatically as it goes along.

Directed by Susan Montford, While She Was Out is a straight-to-DVD movie making a brief stop in theaters.

You can't spell cliché without Che. And as I endured this mad dream directed - or perhaps committed - by Steven Soderbergh, I wondered where I'd seen it all before. The booted stomping through the greensward, the jungly target shooting? It's a remake of Woody Allen's "Bananas," right?

Although the script works in a couple of pages of collegiate-level ethical debate about "the question of German guilt," what the movie is really interested in is the question of German sex. So think of it as "Schindler's Lust."

Reichardt doesn't so much tell a story as paint a finely detailed portrait of human suffering in this miniature marvel.

Sheen, who is also reprising his stage role and appeared as Tony Blair in the Morgan-written "The Queen," is highly effective as Frost - though the stakes for Frost are nowhere near as interesting as those for Nixon.

Doesn't sugarcoat the difficulties faced by this family, but this small gem has a very satisfying ending.

The film's most memorable performance is by Eamonn Walker, who is scarily good as the singer known as Howlin' Wolf.

Hunger is almost silent, most of its sounds being unintelligible moans and screams.

Rickman has fun playing a lecherous old bastard of a professor in Nobel Son, a pulpy would-be comic thriller, but the movie doesn't deserve him.

With its dopey fight scenes, grimy look and goopy gore, this movie is so far from ept that inept is the wrong word. It's anti-ept.

The NYU film grad steals liberally from Woody (especially "Annie Hall") - from camera placement to body language to plot twists to the whole Ingmar Bergman thing. That's not necessarily bad, if the project works. This one doesn't - it just annoys.

Transporter 3 is made for airplane viewing, and not just any airplane: an Eastern European one, on the flight from Hrubbishnik to Slutnya.

The movie boasts five Oscar winners. That figure exceeds by five the number of times I laughed at this cheap collection of icky jokes.

Smiling more than in all of his movies since "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" combined, Penn goes way deep and soulful in a highly ingratiating performance that's the one to beat for the Best Actor Oscar.

Sporadically entertaining, occasionally quite funny.

Edward's a remarkable young gentleman when you consider the hell he's been through: It turns out he's always 17, his fate to keep repeating high school, forever and ever. If that's my only option, kindly burn me at the stake.

A powerful account of how the American dream became a nightmare for one Laotian family.

Rappaport does a yeoman's job in this tonally confused oddity. The wonder is that Hal Haberman and Jeremy Passmore's Special is making it off the festival circuit and into theaters at all, however briefly.

One of those Deep Dark Secret movies, the dull indie Lake City combines a wholly uninteresting family mystery with a wholly unconvincing crime drama.

Nor does the movie try to use the game to make some larger point. Here's one: Even at its best and luckiest hour, Harvard can aspire only to equal Yale.

Baz Luhrmann's Australia has it all - unfortunately. With four major story lines and more endings than "The Return of the King," this ambitious 165-minute epic is the movie equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Revenge is a dish best served with bullets, high explosives and giant rolling flameballs. In Quantum of Solace, James Bond orders the revenge buffet, deluxe.

Darkly hilarious, brilliantly acted.

The bickering and mishaps make for a semi-enjoyable if low-impact film that may appeal to the kind of nostalgics who buy Time-Life collections of '60s songmeisters.

An Irish indie that is well-observed and well-acted - but ultimately, not much more exciting than the love lives of its lead characters.

It would be easy to dismiss House of the Sleeping Beauties as a lewd male fantasy, but that would be ignoring the German film's deeper purpose as - in the words of the director, Vadim Glowna - a meditation on "transition, remembrance, mourning, guilt, loneliness, sex and death, eroticism and dying."

In the course of How About You, much champagne is consumed, pot is smoked, and a good time is had by all, the audience included. Redgrave even sings the title song.

Mostly We Are Wizards is a loving, if flawed, tribute to creativity and artistic freedom.

Four stars simply aren't enough for Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, which just may be the most entertaining movie I've ever labeled a masterpiece in these pages.

Role Models isn't a classic like "Superbad" or as hilarious as this summer's "Step Brothers," but it's excellent fun for males in the mental age bracket of 14 to 22, which is most males.

Combines a sketch-comedy premise with pacing like a philosophy seminar.

The bulk of the movie consists of scene after scene coyly setting up the same ironic juxtaposition, in the exact same way, about innocence vs. Nazism.

Tom Arnold plays the fatherly head of a child-prostitution ring and John Malkovich a sympathetic social worker - two clever casting twists that constitute the main interest in the grueling Gardens of the Night.

A by-the-numbers follow-up to the highly successful 2005 feature that was no great shakes to begin with.

LaBruce devotees will be tickled pink; others will be perplexed and/or disgusted.

Gini Reticker's embracing documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell shows how Taylor got his comeuppance from a coalition of tenacious Christian and Muslim women armed only with matching T-shirts.

There probably aren't enough futuristic Goth rock musicals, but Repo! The Genetic Opera is weak on a couple of things a musical needs: music and lyrics.

If you insist on seeing Soul Men, stick around during the closing credits for the best part of the movie, an interview with Mac.

A gut-wrenching experience.

Mostly The Matador romanticizes a brutal tradition that has no place in the 21st century.

There have been worse horror flicks, but although this one offers a few scares, it doesn't have a lot of imagination.

The funniest movie of Smith's I've seen. It's "When Harry Did Sally."

While sporadically funny, the sophomoric My Name Is Bruce is no "Bubba Ho-Tep," the movie where Campbell unforgettably played Elvis Presley as a nursing home patient battling a mummy with the help of John F. Kennedy. But Campbell's fans can feel free to add a star or two.

A valuable reminder that for nearly three decades, basketball was dominated by Jewish players - and coaches who found the sport an ideal vehicle for assimilation in the United States.

Edward Norton plays Ray, a (possibly) honest cop wearing an unexplained scar positioned just so on his cheek. It looks like it was bought in the markdown aisle of Halloween Mart on Nov. 1.

There is also something surgically sterile. The movie sounds as though it was recorded in a padded chamber instead of a bustling school, and it looks like it came from some alternate world, one that basks in the eternal sunshine of the spotless skin.

Watching the film, I did manage to retain my empathy for the narrator, though: I was as desperate as he was to escape the situation I was in.

Another remarkable addition to Eastwood's directorial canon.

Scott Thomas' reserve as an actor - which probably helped keep her from top stardom after an Oscar nomination for "The English Patient" (1996) - makes her perfect casting for this French film, the auspicious debut of director Philippe Claudel.

Despite having no previous film experience, Kare Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson give evocative performances as Oskar and Eli, respectively.

It's got more imagination than half a dozen movies combined; there's nothing else out there like this, and to me that's a very good thing.

The film is loving but shallow.

There isn't a dud in the 10 shorts, although some are more dud-ish than others.

So powerful is Stranded that when the lucky few finally make their way back to civilization, you feel as thrilled as if they were your own loved ones.

An often compelling, tragicomic psychological analysis of Dubya, viewed through the prism of his relationship with an allegedly disapproving father.

Director-writer Seth Grossman provides a lazy narrative, with stereotypical characters and plot.

Thoroughly inept in just about every aspect.

Mary is a mess. An interesting one, yet still a mess.

The attempts to out-Matrix "The Matrix," with bullet-time super-slo mo, are staged with such theatrics that they're unintentionally funny. This movie also has "Blade Runner" on its mind, and Raymond Chandler, but mostly it's a weak little sister to "Sin City."

The Secret Life of Bees showcases Fanning, who is growing into an impressive teenage actress - even if a scene where she licks honey off an older boy's finger is, well, creeptastic.

Sex Drive has shaky moments, and its smutty gags aren't edited so much as slammed together.

The only thing missing is the mud that the big boys love to sling. But the Stuyvesant candidates are kids - give them a few years.

Aside from a nifty new way to avoid surveillance in the middle of the desert, there's nothing here we haven't seen in many other movies - including "Spy Game," directed by Scott's brother Tony before 9/11.

A decent football movie, just about good enough to be the 40th best episode of "Friday Night Lights" . . . which has aired 39 episodes.

The film has all the visual flourishes we expect of Doyle and Wong, and they're reason enough to see Ashes of Time Redux. Just don't expect to make sense of the plot.

Bland and timid.

This overlong, obvious and indifferently acted melodrama was written and directed by Luke Eberl, a former child actor, before he turned 21.

For a kiddie adventure, the movie, based on the Jeanne DuPrau book, has a pleasingly moody, eerie quality.

This unlikely micro-budgeted project is written and directed by Marianna Palka, who also plays the female lead. The guy is portrayed by her real-life boyfriend, Jason Ritter (son of the late John). Their performances are quite remarkable and their chemistry is palpable, even if Good Dick is primarily intended for more adventurous moviegoers.

For all of its laughs and a star-making performance by Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky represents a serious philosophical inquiry by Leigh, who has illustrated a consistently pessimistic view of humankind in his semi-improvised movies.

This movie belongs to its stars, who also wrote and produced. You can't say their acting is good or bad because they are not really acting. They're just being themselves, pubic hair and all.

A sharp comedy as well as a punk-pulp spree. Don't go if you can't handle Brit slang. ("Grass" = informer.)

Maher's sense of humor deserts him in the end, though, when in an apocalyptic montage of fire and hate (bin Laden, Pat Robertson), he suggests all religions are equally bent on destruction of the Earth. It's fatuous to suggest that the Iraq war was launched because of religion or that belief in the Book of Revelation is the same as organizing terrorist attacks.

Someone describes his writing as "snarky, bitter, witless." The last part pretty well sums up this movie.

It has a dogged all-night charm and a sense of who its audience is.

Even if it weren't three years too late to parody Moore (ineptly played by Kevin Farley), Moore's ridiculous tribute to Cuban health care in "Sicko" is far funnier than anything in this desperately laughless farce from David Zucker ("Scary Movie 3").

Allah made me funny - not.

The film is Beverly Hills Chihuahua. The audience is the fire hydrant.

I kept hoping the meaning would click into place, but it never quite did.

The flaws of Flash of Genius are worth putting up with for Kinnear's committed performance.

As Kym, Hathaway runs an astonishing gamut of emotions, from anger to fragility and from hurt to regret - without ever seeming actress-y, like Nicole Kidman. Start clearing that mantelpiece, Anne.

Hammer, whose blunt name belies the movie's many subtle touches, has his own distinct style. He also has an enormous trust in the audience to sort out this wounded family's miseries without the assistance of narration or even a musical score.

With its array of chases and shootouts and a sinister political plot, the movie at least holds your attention and keeps things brisk-ish. But every scene still bears the tags of the place from which it was stolen.

Aims straight for the tear ducts as well, but this weepie is a dry well.

Lee's framing device - which ends with a head-scratching fantasy - doesn't work. At. All.

CHOKE tries to be dirty but manages merely to be dingy.

Cheap, ignorant, tone-deaf and condescending, but what's strangest about it is that it actually thinks it's pro-soldier even as it portrays vets home on leave as foolish (Rachel McAdams), desperate (Tim Robbins) and dishonorable (Michael Pena) while playing all three situations for laughs.

If the script serves any purpose at all, it is to allow jocks to show off their buff bodies. They're hot, but not worth 12 bucks at the box office.