This small movie carries great allegorical weight as it echoes the Manson Family, the long list of failed utopian communes that culminated in Bolshevism and the one-child policy that in China has prevented the births of untold numbers of girls.

Le Havre is warm-hearted and uplifting, without being schmaltzy or preachy. And, with its illegal-alien theme, it's dead-on timely.

Johnny English Reborn sounds like a reboot, but it's actually a tired recycling of something that wasn't exactly fresh to begin with.

This Muppet virtuoso is so visibly thrilled to work in Henson's weird and wonderful world, and so good at bringing joy to little kids, you'd have to be a true Grouch not to be moved.

Everything plays out exactly as you'd expect in a cheerful, well-meaning movie in the style of something made for the Disney channel.

Making a true story of social injustice into a gripping narrative requires more imagination than is contained in this well-intentioned but uninspired effort.

The shtick movie Paranormal Activity 3 is the horror equivalent of vaudeville comedy: a little patter, a little pie in the face, repeat.

Spacey does his best work since "American Beauty'' as a tired middle-aged corporate warrior whose greatest compassion, in the end, is reserved for an ailing dog he has to put to sleep.

Yearning for an exciting African adventure? Oka! isn't it.

Much lip service is given to the global village in Connected: An Autoblogography About Love, Death and Technology, yet it constantly drifts back into a Shlain family slideshow.

The Woman is disturbing, lurid and perverse, but that isn't necessarily bad: Horror buffs, especially fans of Ketchum, will be overcome with joy and excitement.

Cage and director Joel Schumacher, who has fallen so far from the A-list that he provokes a demand for new letters of the alphabet after Z, have each found their cinematic soulmates.

A dispiriting rehash of dysfunctional family clichés that seems to last longer than Thanksgiving Day dinner.

Make no mistake, Father of Invention is the hilarious Spacey's show all the way.

Basically "csi: East Texas,'' the debut feature of Ami Canaan Mann is long on style and short on coherent storytelling, not unlike numerous efforts by her director dad, Michael, who serves as a producer here.

Spanish master filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar offers up a grisly Halloween trick-and-treat in his first full-out horror movie, an eye-popping and genuinely shocking gender-bending twist on Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo.''

Yet despite the efforts of an excellent cast headed by three top comedy names -- Owen Wilson, Steve Martin and Jack Black -- and tons of beautiful scenery (mostly British Columbia and the Canadian Yukon), this movie stubbornly refuses to take flight, or generate more than a few chuckles.

Misshapen, malodorous and firing its grubby tentacles across the room in a feeding frenzy, The Thing reminded me of a roomful of journalists immediately after someone announces Open Bar. The movie's victims disappear like cocktail peanuts and without a whole lot more significance.

Footloose won me over early, with a sequence in which the hero gets all heavy metal while restoring his badass ... VW Bug.

Sorry, but if your sensibility is pure trashy camp, don't expect anyone not to laugh when you try to be earnest.

Sick, disgusting and vile. It's also demonically funny, stylish and ingenious.

The Sons of Tennessee Williams, which offers touching interviews with many older gay men, somewhat awkwardly connects this history with the efforts of a gay Mardi Gras crew to keep going in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Has a few things going for it -- a winning performance by Luchini and a small role by Pedro Almodóvar favorite Carmen Maura. But these talented folks can't compensate for a plot that strains credulity and lacks badly needed social bite. Wait for the DVD.

There's nothing startlingly original about Estevez's screenplay, yet it has a modesty you seldom see when Hollywood tackles spiritual subjects.

Sweeping, if exhausting, historical epic set at the turn of the 20th century.

With Paul Newman gone, you couldn't ask for a better senior-citizen representation of Butch Cassidy than Shepard. In his best performance since "The Right Stuff'' turned him into a reluctant movie star, Shepard makes Blackthorn worth seeing.

Real Steel is to action what the Anthony Weiner habit was to sex: It's so virtual, so distant from the thrill, that you wonder what the point is. Do you really want to pay to watch an actor playing a kid who in turn plays what amounts to a video game?

It's not up to the high standard of the Clooney-Heslov script for "Good Night, and Good Luck,'' or what you'd imagine that, say, Aaron Sorkin could have done with this premise (for starters, sharper dialogue). Or what Elaine May did with the similarly themed "Primary Colors" 13 years ago.