Rolls out stiff clichés to tell a familiar story of racial injustice in the South.

Although the movie is reasonably suspenseful for a while and has a few witty moments (of a first draft, the ghost says, "All the words are there. They're just in the wrong order"), it rings false.

Not just a shabby "Wall Street" knockoff clogged with dull, jargon-spewing trading-desk scenes that fail to advance the plot in any way. It's also a nondescript "Sex and the City" retread.

Rip Torn's recent real-life misadven tures are slightly echoed in Happy Tears, a moderately diverting black comedy in which he plays (what else?) a crazy old coot, to perfection.

On the plus side, Derek McKane's moody camerawork makes Gotham look grand. Too bad it's wasted on The Last New Yorker.

My only question: Why does Kleine -- who's married to Andre Gregory of "My Dinner With Andre" fame -- think that anybody outside her family gives a damn?

It'll be a real miracle if anyone manages to stay awake throughout this extravagantly dull film.

As a spooky midnight movie, The Wolfman is worth curling up with.

Played by Logan Lerman -- the Zac Efron look-alike who was young George Hamilton in "My One and Only" -- Percy is a Manhattan high-schooler who learns he is a demigod.

Less funny or romantic than your average colonoscopy, this cringe-inducing bore provides dubious employment for four Oscar winners, two nominees and a raft of TV performers.

A very average, ordinary film that goes haywire.

October Country doesn't really have a point, or a story, but it's an almost unbearably vivid portrait of four generations in a single working-class family.

The Italian film industry must be in sad shape when its latest import to the US is a tired bit of trash from 1997, To Die for Tano.

Dear John is the sort of movie that gives tearjerkers a bad name.

The best Parisian action movie of the week is District 13: Ultimatum, a serviceable thriller with a lefty message.

John Travolta's From Paris With Love assassin/ superagent Charlie Wax is the master of whatever the opposite of wisecracking is. Fooljoshing? Lametalking? Flatlining?

Relies far too much on an overdose of gore and a pack of hungry wolves to deliver its chills.

The actors are charmingly low-key, and the lensing, by Jorgen Johansson, adds to the offbeat aura. Whatever you do, don't miss the booze-guzzling showdown.

Quiet, sober and tense, the movie makes some interesting points -- contrasting the frenzied hookups of the two men with the butcher's rote, dismal lovemaking with his wife as their bodies are carefully hidden under sheets -- but it lacks the emotional firepower of "Brokeback Mountain."

The complexity might require a second viewing, but there is compensation in the realistic acting by a cast of non-pros and the eye-grabbing, hand-held lensing by Boaz Yehonatan Yacov.

Perhaps the best compliment I can pay to his work in Edge of Darkness is that I wouldn't particularly want to see this movie with grumpy Harrison Ford starring instead. Welcome back, Mel.

Even by the extremely low standards of the genre, When in Rome gets failing marks for chemistry, credibility and even coherence.

At some two hours, the film is 30 minutes too long. Cutting out the melodrama and sticking with the daring-do is the answer.

The director-producer, Nicole Opper, has known Avery's Brooklyn family for years, which no doubt accounts for the film's intimacy.

Buscemi is appealing as always, but the movie, is only sporadically funny.

Cisneros is an appealing actor, but he and Falling Awake get buried under a welter of clichés.

The Israeli feature For My Father is a rarity indeed: A sweet, sentimental movie about a suicide bomber.

What the Charles Darwin biopic Creation mainly creates is a do-over for Paul Bettany: This time he gets to have a beautiful mind.