While the latest installment avoids the nonstop parade of potty jokes, it never rises much past the level of mediocrity.

There's too little dog and too much fire house in Firehouse Dog, a mild kid comedy that turns into a flaming arson mystery with some scenes that could be too scary for little ones.

On the one hand, Black Book has the artiness of subtitles, the dramatic weight of history, and the desperate heroics of Jews hiding from Nazis. On the other hand, it has Paul Verhoeven.

You know those one-joke "Saturday Night Live" sketches that start to age after six minutes? Blades of Glory is one joke that lasts 93 minutes, costs $11 and could involve sitting next to a guy who retells the movie into his cellphone.

Combines the sweet strangeness of "Fargo" with the existential panic of "Memento" and some Elmore Leonard tough talk. It all creates a cinematic tummy ache.

It's hard not to like a PG-rated 'toon that works in references to "Pulp Fiction" and "Fargo," even if Meet the Robinsons, a delightful, quirk-filled riff on "Back to the Future," proceeds in fits and starts.

After the Wedding is full of enough plot twists to supply a whole season of "Desperate Housewives."

Not an easy movie to watch, and it's far from perfect - but it does have an artsy integrity and a fascinatingly intense performance by Paul Giamatti.

These people are so selfish and self-absorbed you may not want to spent even 72 minutes with them.

The effect is informative and moving, even if the film has an attack of the gooeys at the end.

The result is entertaining but hardly memorable.

A vivacious film that is a treat for eyes and ears.

The paranoia is as thick and luscious as that Reddi-wip, and it's served from both left and right.

The mutants are brain-damaged; the filmmakers don't have that excuse to justify this movie, which is the kind of thing the sergeant would call "a stunning display of individual and group stupidity."

An unexpectedly disarming, extremely well-cast little variation on "E.T."

It follows exactly the same path as both "Glory Road" (except that was basketball) and "Gridiron Gang" (football).

It's not exactly a surprise the makers of Reign Over Me feel compelled to manufacture a happy ending for a story that really has none. Pity.

The movie pretty much exists to sell tie-in products, and it's about as entertaining as watching little kids playing with their toys in the sandbox.

Great fun for the first 20 minutes - which include Kubrickian tracking shots and music from "2001" and "A Clockwork Orange" - but seems long at 86.

It's déjà vu all over again for Aussie actor Guy Pearce, returning to motel rooms in the American Southwest to sort out metaphysical issues in the thriller First Snow, to somewhat less original effect than he did in "Memento."

The story is good-natured, but Panahi's message is serious: That ludicrous rules turn Iranian women into third-class citizens. And what better way is there to get that point across than through sports and laughter?

The battlefield sequences unfold with surreal horror, while the human bonding in the foxholes emerges tenderly. On the downside, Bauer - who makes no pretense about where his heart lies - tacks on a melodramatic coda that lessens the momentum of an otherwise praiseworthy film.

Stieve and Glosserman may yet strike a vein: This thing screams out for a Hollywood remake with, say, writers from "The Simpsons."

While the film has impressive 18th-century trappings and vivid battle scenes, the plotting and acting are rudimentary.

The dialogue isn't ridiculous, and sometimes it's witty: A cynical cop (Donnie Wahlberg) doesn't buy Jamie's theory that the doll had something to do with the murder: "The mystery toy department is down the hall. This is the homicide department."

Rock appears to have edited I Think I Love My Wife with a roulette wheel.

When you awake, it may all seem like a bad dream - but why is your wallet missing $11? Scary.

We may not need another IRA movie, but even so, Ken Loach's Brit-bashing historical drama The Wind That Shakes the Barley, winner of the top prize at Cannes last year, raises hard questions about Ireland's uncanny ability to kneecap itself.