A dispiriting return to the tired, star-driven, pop-culture-ridden formula that DreamWorks Animation ran into the ground before its best feature in years, this spring's "How to Train Your Dragon."

not so much a movie as an "act," one that belongs at a club called Shenanigans or maybe Chuckleheads.

Cool It -- complete with its own slide show and witty graphics -- amounts to a devastating rebuttal to Gore-ism.

I wouldn't want to see five movies like this one each week but it's a cheeky, madcap joyride.

The result is as impressive as one would expect.

Porno plus Parkinson's don't quite add up to sexy fun.

Despite much effort, neither Johnson nor director George Tillman Jr. ("Notorious") can make this preposterous tale, live up to its title.

The only thing remotely scary about Monsters is that Magnolia is releasing this boring scare-, suspense- and gore-free horror movie (which reportedly cost less than $100,000) on Halloween weekend.

Walker's breezy film turns Muniz into a folk hero. And who am I to argue?

Dutch-born Lotte Verbeek is solid as You, a role that won her the best-actress prize at the Locarno Film Festival.

A supernatural take on "Death Wish" meets "Faust," Heartless is an uneasy mixture of B-movie shocks, social commentary and sentimentality that shows a potent imagination at work.

Whether Tiny Furniture is a mumblecore movie is an open question. It has many of the tell-tale signs of that ill-defined genre; although improvised dialogue, a mumblecore staple, is minimal.

Stewart's intense, courageous performance as a 16-year-old New Orleans prostitute is really something special.

No matter your take on Merritt's persona, there's no denying that he's a unique musician whose songs -- such as "Papa Was a Rodeo" and "Living in an Abandoned Firehouse With You" -- are worth discovering. As is this film.

Old-school filmmaking at its best.

Director Michelle Esrick, who followed Wavy around for 10 years, journeys from Manhattan to Woodstock to Nepal to the hills of California to tell Wavy's story. The journey is entertaining, whether you witnessed the 1960s firsthand or heard about it from your grandparents.

He turns to the furry creatures as a metaphor for life in post-Communist countries. Just as the rabbits were discombobulated by their newfound freedom, so, too, were people, who found it difficult to adapt to life without Big Brother.

The laziness of this filmmaking (which assumes you know that Gray killed himself in 2004) is of a piece with the emphatically uninteresting tales told by a classic dinner-party bore who once referred to his ramblings as "creative narcissism." He was half-right.

Everybody flirts with everyone else as director John Irvin pours on a level of shopping-mall-gift-shop-kitsch that would shame Wayne Newton.

Never amounts to anything more than a rambling, studenty exercise in undergraduate cinema vérité. Some expressive, arty photography and a mildly satiric attitude toward stage poseurs do little to make the picture bearable.

Few directors make action movies with the pizazz of Hong Kong's Johnnie To, although his films rarely get runs in New York. That's all the more reason to see his Vengeance.

A surprisingly unengaging and charmless fantasy from a director whose previous films ("Across the Universe," "Titus," "Frida") were, despite their other issues, never boring.

The extremely well-acted The Company Men ends on a hopeful note, but Wells examines the repercussions of a layoff-based economy with devastating precision.

The eye-popping and entertaining The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader offers a merry seafaring jaunt together with plenty of adventures led by magically empowered kids.

Pity the boxing movie that thinks it can be both "Raging Bull" and "Rocky."

In the dud thriller The Tourist, Jolie basically plays an overdressed, humorless live-action version of Jessica Rabbit, running around Venice dodging hired killers.

Visually, this toon is all over the place. Rapunzel's glowing hair can look alarmingly like fiber-optic cable, but some backgrounds are the computer-generated equivalents of Disney's golden-age work.

Those looking for another "Showgirls" will be disappointed - writer-director Steve Antin avoids the seamy side of the business, and the same-sex flirtation is mostly between guys.