A genially silly gay date movie.

Moves along briskly, with several laugh-out-loud moments.

As someone who has never completed a crossword puzzle, I was surprised how engaged I was by Wordplay.

Going Under is the feature directorial debut of 65-year-old Eric Werthman, who has been a practicing psychotherapist for a quarter of a century. If you're not already seeing a shrink, Mr. Werthman, may we suggest that you start immediately.

How the feds inadvertently resurrected the performing career of stoner comic Tommy Chong by busting him is the ironic subtext of Josh Gilbert's one-sided documentary a/k/a Tommy Chong.

Cars leaves the animated competition in the dust, even if it is a tad slower and more predictable than Pixar at full throttle.

At best, mildly entertaining.

Dysfunctional families don't come much more messed up than the one in Agnes and His Brothers, a comic drama from Germany.

Autumn wants to do for Jean-Pierre Melville what "Reservoir Dogs" did for Hong Kong cinema, but this new film is a joyless exercise in film appreciation.

More than just a musical primer. It's also a valentine to the city on the Bosporus, the strait that separates Istanbul's Asian and European sides.

Sweetly appealing fable.

This distaff "Hoop Dreams" is less of an epic than the earlier movie, and less deep, but it's got more sunshine, too.

Sex can be fun and exciting and wonderful. It also can be deadly boring, as in Psychopathia Sexu alis.

Mildly diverting, but lacks humor and pathos.

Director John Moore has added some creepy visuals and assembled an unusually strong cast for a horror flick.

There are precious few laughs in this poorly written and directed "unromantic comedy" - the sort of dire date movie you'd take somebody to if you wanted it to be a LAST date.

A fascinating history of how blowing yourself up became a popular hobby in the Muslim world.

District B13 looks great, but don't let those subtitles fool you. At heart, it's every bit as proudly dumb as its American counterparts.

Tries to be "The Karate Kid" of gymnastics. It looks more like "The Karate Kid" as imagined by Details magazine.

We get to know three of these courageous, funny, smart and perhaps permanently damaged men in a film that largely avoids telling us what to think and makes an effort to get near the truth of the soldiers' experience.

Combines a wise script with funky performances, especially by Aselton, who could give Jennifer Aniston a run for her money.

Mainstream moviegoers will be put off by the subtitles, and art-house fans will be insulted by the story's shallowness.

Shot in black-and-white, La Tropical serves as an atmospheric portrait of Cuba in the twilight of Castro's rule.

Nunez gets nice performances from his cast, but his narrative is cluttered.

Mostly about extending a Hollywood franchise with ever-diminishing returns.

As a narrative, Shem, directed by Caroline Roboh, is a pointless hodgepodge, with a finale that will leave viewers scratching their heads.

There is more style here than story, but the style - slashing cuts delivered in queasy orange sunstroke tones, accompanied by the urgent bleat of the cellphone - is considerable.

The hero is the Texas prosecutor who won a questionable indictment of DeLay, Ronnie Earle. But he sounds more extreme the more he talks.

Avoiding the usual vein-popping diatribes, he comes across as learned, calm and folksy. But much of what Gore says in this slide show he gives to people whose minds are not yet fully formed (undergraduates, actors) is absurd, and his assertions often contradict each other.

Vincent Lindon, one of France's leading actors, is super as Marc, a man on a downward spiral into insanity. And Emmanuelle Devos is comforting as Marc's loving wife.

A sloppy and only mildly engaging documentary.

Ron Howard's splendid The Da Vinci Code is the Holy Grail of summer blockbusters: a crackling, fast-moving thriller that's every bit as brainy and irresistible as Dan Brown's controversial bestseller.

If they were still making Looney Tunes, they'd look a lot like Over the Hedge.

It's hard to believe that the distributors of See No Evil were so afraid of what critics would say about their movie that they refused to provide advance screenings. The movie's target viewers aren't the type who read reviews, if they read at all.

There is no tragedy without character, yet the way The King drapes heavy situations around its feebly imagined personalities suggests a tire thrown around the neck of a poodle.

Rampling has a relatively small role in Lemming, but the 60-year-old star proves the high point of the suspenseful black comedy from France.

Filmmaker Alison Murray drew on her own experiences, but Mouth to Mouth would have benefited from more focus and fewer dance sequences.

The film 12 and Holding brings you back to when you routinely said things like, "I'm going to kill you" or "We're soul mates" and meant it.

It's "Das Bomb." It's "The Perfunctory Storm."

An appallingly unfunny and unromantic romantic comedy.

Has an awful title, a bland hero and a predictable story - but it also has a nice blast of English atmosphere.

Very slowly builds to a powerful climax for this arty cross between "Straw Dogs" and "First Blood."

The documentary Giuliani Time, which seeks to knock our former mayor off his pedestal, hits him with all the force of a wadded-up Kleenex. Those who hope Rudy Giuliani never returns to public life must be getting panicky.

A sitcom with enough big laughs and emotional truth to get audiences past awkward pacing and some slow spots.

An OK kids movie passing through on the way to video.

The story lacks focus. The senses blur as wives and ex-wives come and go, and Harry regularly falls off the wagon, only to reform the next day.

The Sketches of Frank Gehry will appear this fall on PBS' "American Masters," which seems a more appropriate venue than theaters.

Of historical interest, although a more experienced filmmaker would have made more of the sudden rush of events - and avoided the temptation to put himself or herself into nearly every frame, as Grappell does.

Russian Dolls is itself a delightful mini-trip to Europe. Its overly cute bits are like cinematic tourist traps, but it's the beauty that stays with you.

Winning performances by Roger Rees and Mary McDonnell, as well as colorful Virginia locations, lift Crazy Like a Fox slightly above the TV-caliber script by its director.

Though dated and unsophisticated compared to the much cooler Bourne spy thrillers, M:i:III will probably hit the sweet spot at the box-office - and give Cruise a whole new reason to start jumping on couches.

It doesn't help that the central character, Jerome - earnestly played by Max Minghella of "Bee Season" - is essentially a passive observer.

Its images came from a dusty box in the horror-movie attic, and the attic is where the entire picture will be in a month.

Hoot peaks during its wordless opening credits sequence, which swoops delightfully around Florida scenery. That, the cute owls and the easygoing songs by Jimmy Buffett, who also plays one of Roy's teachers, are the only things worth your trouble.

Sucker-punches you. It appears to be an engagingly sweet romance, but it's really just about other movies.

The quality of the acting, Cave's hellfire score and the heavy atmospherics of the directing merely dress up a cliché: Violence leads to more violence.

A movie so bad it's not even worth watching on DVD.

Looks great for a no-budget indie, but not a single moment rings true in this sluggish vanity project, which is sorely in need of Viagra.

Boasts dynamic performances by the two leads, as well as tight directing (a lot happens in just 82 minutes) and eye-pleasing cinematography (by Alain Marcoen, who also lenses for Belgium's acclaimed Dardenne brothers).

Rarely is a sports movie so inept that it can't even make its central figure likable.

It's a long, brutal and honest look at a shattering event some Americans would apparently prefer not to see depicted - but also a respectful, inspiring one that's in no way exploitative or emotionally manipulative.

So warm and well-meaning that you may find yourself wanting to like it more than you really do.

RV stands for "Retread of 'Vacation,'" or possibly "Robin's Vehicle," but to me it's funnier than "National Lampoon's Vacation." I always found Chevy Chase's road trip more unpleasant than outrageous, but RV has laughs spilling out of its overhead bins.

Sometimes there's a fine line between a labor of love and a vanity project, and The Lost City, Andy Garcia's heartfelt - but hackneyed and interminable - love letter to his native Cuba, repeatedly crosses it.

Gandhi did save India from the British, but he didn't save India from the Indians, and the horrific subjugation of widows continues there even today. It was only 10 years ago that Mehta encountered the Hindu widow who inspired her film.

Modestly entertaining.

The people who are inflicting this movie on us intend it as some sort of inspirational epic. But the only thing it will motivate viewers to do is get out of the theater.

If you've seen either of the first two flicks in this outrageous series - "Oldboy" and "Sympathy for Mister Vengeance" - you know what's coming. Novices should prepare for mind-bending bloodshed and violence.

Lino Ventura is grand as a solemn resistance leader. He's backed by a knockout cast that includes Simone Signoret.

Looks great, and the performances are solid, but the disparate elements in this oddity - which created a minor stir at the Sundance Film Festival last year - never entirely coalesce.

It's supposed to be about a Kafkaesque experience. Instead, it IS a Kafkaesque experience. Why are we here? Is everything absurd? Is anyone in charge?

Anchored by the performance of Shu Qi, who has come a long way from her days as a nudie pin-up. She's a first-rate actress.

A cartoonish, unfocused and mostly unfunny satire.

The Sentinel is so bland that it wants only to be as good as TV. Not as good as good TV, like "24." It merely aspires to be the Regis Philbin of D.C. thrillers. It isn't trying to dazzle you with style, complexity or intelligence.

A great-looking but stupefyingly incoherent supernatural thriller adapted from a popular video game that ransacks the entire catalog of horror film tropes for more than two mind-numbing hours.

Showcases a brilliantly realistic performance by Abbie Cornish as Heidi. She's a provocative mix of naivete and ripe, unbridled sexuality.

There are bachelor and bachelorette parties, as well as much misbehavior, in this glossy and unconvincing little flick, receiving a vanity booking on the way to video.

It's easy to understand why so many people have been obsessed with this story for so long. When the paintings are finally found, the story will make a great Hollywood movie.

Movies don't come any more charming than Mongolian Ping Pong.

Arguably as effective as Ambien at inducing sleep, but possible side effects include uncontrollable laughter.

Scary Movie 4 concludes by satirizing Cruise's couch-jumping orgy on "Oprah." Funny, but nowhere near as hilarious as the real thing.

These films take years to produce, so The Wild isn't exactly a ripoff - but it isn't exactly fun, either.

An above-average entry in this niche genre, wherein groups of working-class people band together against adversity.

The prize for most sick-making movie I've ever seen goes to . . . that Driver's Ed film I saw when I was 16. The psychological thriller Hard Candy is right up there, though. I didn't know whether to applaud or barf.

Disappointingly skin-deep and almost shockingly wholesome, Mary Harron's The Notorious Bettie Page lives up to neither its title nor its advertising slogan, "the pin-up sensation that shocked the nation."

Works its way to an improbably cheerful ending, but getting there is a slow trip.

The film plays like one long commercial. The music's cool, but you're better off buying the CD.

The stunning adventure Mountain Patrol: Kekexili is like a John Ford western set, not in the master's beloved Monument Valley, but in remotest China.

Most of the movie's plot becomes obvious before you even meet the brother, 10 minutes into it. Even the sex scenes turn out to be tasteful and tame. You've seen hotter stuff on Oxygen.

It'll make you want to dig out your Whitesnake T-shirt. It might even convince Tipper Gore that heavy metal thunder is all in good fun.

Similar to the recent Emmanuelle Devos drama "Gilles' Wife," but it's as cool as that one was melodramatic.

Pretentious, stagy and over-the-top update of Chekov's "The Three Sisters."

Corddry leads a game cast, but the film is rough around the edges...It would play better as a TV sketch.

If the film is meant to make us feel good about African justice, it does anything but.

A smug, deliberately convoluted mix tape of Tarantino, the Coen brothers, Guy Ritchie and Hitchcock with (mostly) a cast to die for, Lucky Number Slevin is great fun for, say, 20 minutes.

Sandler's latest ode to projectile vomiting, passing gas, gay jokes and physical insults to the groin is basically a feeble cross between "The Revenge of the Nerds" and "The Bad News Bears."

The film is amateurishly directed and sluggishly paced with an anorexic plot. Even the photography, sound and costumes are substandard.

Johnny can't read, but he sure can rumba - and that's just fine with Take the Lead.