Often so silly, it's surreal.

If ever a movie could be charged with imperiling the morals of a minor, it's probably Sleepover, a sleazy, PG-rated sex comedy that's apparently aimed at 8- to 10-year-old girls.

A miracle of indie filmmaking. Shot for practically nothing by first-time director David Barker, it delivers more bang for its minimal bucks than many a Hollywood blockbuster does for its multimillions.

The Inheritance has a promising start but soon becomes preachy and melodramatic.

Metallica brought back the rights and funded the project, and it's their honesty and willingness to front the cameras, warts and all, that makes this well-edited, often very funny, documentary so compelling.

Magnificent if overlong and oddly structured surfing documentary.

Twinkles and glows, but all the surface razzle-dazzle fails to mask the emptiness at its core.

Chance encounters and fated love are the stuff of fairy tales, which is what makes the deliriously romantic sequel Before Sunset a small miracle.

An extremely well- acted thriller that simply fails to thrill.

If Schwarzberg had chosen to concentrate on eccentrics, rural artists or people like his New York bike messenger, female aerobatic champion and California cliff dancer, "Heart and Soul" would have been a much more interesting film.

Credit the disarming cast, especially Oshri Cohen as the boy and Arie Ellias as his eccentric grandfather. They help turn what could be a standard comedy into a life-affirming, enjoyable one.

Sequels don't get much better - or smarter - than the action-, drama-, romance- and comedy-packed Spider-Man 2, which miraculously improves on the webslinger's hugely popular first screen adventure in every imaginable department.

The Notebook is well worth the risk of diabetic shock for the sake of superb acting that transcends its teary milieu.

Visually stunning.

Haneke's images are so bold and riveting and the characters' emotions are so raw that the lack of a few details doesn't matter.

They resort too often to infantile flatulence jokes and fairly obvious gags about errant G-strings, with the anorexic plot culminating in the brothers having - yawn - learned to respect women's feelings.

A bizarre and campily amusing "tribute" to the late dance legend starring drag queen Richard Move.

Basically a two-hour argument for regime change that isn't half as incendiary or persuasive as its maker would have you believe.

Ben Stiller's overbearing schtick officially reaches its expiration date with the desperate and puerile Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.

It's an original, and a gamble, and one of those movies that works better than it should, despite considerable flaws of conception and execution.

A superficial documentary based on a best-selling book by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons -- which is being released just before the ex-president's memoir hits the bookstores.

By the time the final shot arrives -- a rooftop panorama in the falling snow -- we don't know much about any of the people we've just encountered. But we have been treated to a feast for the eyes.

The film is too low-key to be the farcical rock-and-roll jape it sometimes seems to strive for, yet too lighthearted to be affecting.

An atmospheric but sluggish and needlessly confusing British contemporary film noir that may indeed leave some audience members struggling to stay awake.

Quietly persuasive and very timely documentary.

What's Vincent to do? Will he come out of the closet? Will he lead the swim team to victory at the big match? Will he find happiness with Noemie? Does anybody care?

The movie is no more than a TV sitcom stretched to feature length. All that's missing is the laugh track.

Wastes some veteran performers in a slight, silly musical fantasy with two left feet.