While often diverting and physically impressive in an old-fashioned way, Hidalgo suffers from weird shifts in tone, offensively outdated stereotypes, a cumbersome subplot - and a supposedly fact-based story that bears only a nodding acquaintance with reality.

A parable about greed. But don't let that serious-sounding description keep you away. It also is funny, knowing and immensely enjoyable.

You have to hand it to Huppert. She doesn't let the hokey plot and syrupy cinematography (what's with those repeated shots of flowers blowing in the wind?) keep her from giving a profound performance.

So serious-minded it occasionally teeters on the brink of absurdity.

These candidly shaken macho guys recall scenes still haunting their nightmares two years after 9/11.

A verité collage of indelible images Sauret collected in and around Ground Zero, beginning moments after the planes hit the World Trade Center.

This genre-busting hybrid is a scattershot affair - bad jokes land with a thud that seems to echo, but the winning ones prompt hearty laughs.

About three-quarters of the way through, Havana Nights suddenly becomes laugh-out-loud awful, with dreadful, lame lines delivered painfully badly - as if a different screenwriter and director had taken over for the movie's final act.

So utterly devoid of suspense, energy or credibility it should have been shipped straight to the remainder bin at Blockbuster.

Gitai's characters are meant to represent the Israeli people as a whole. Just as they question their lives, the filmmaker questions 21st-century Israel.

Falls far short of capturing the hedonistic spirit of this ephemeral art community. It's more like a routine home video with arty pretensions.

There are many funny lines and situations, accompanied by strong performances all around. Sadly, Good Bye Lenin! falters at the end, when it loses its edge and lapses into sentimentality.

A quietly compelling documentary that is refreshing in both form and content.

Purposely amateurish.

A highly personal, provocative and in some ways riveting vision with an inspired performance by Jim Caviezel as Jesus.

Mostly a well-acted, expertly directed comedy with characters and situations of truly universal appeal.

Ryan spends much of the grubby-looking boxing drama Against the Ropes with her face screwed up in distaste, as if a dirty sock is being waved under her nose. Perhaps it's because the movie she's in stinks.

Shlocky, sloppy and crass adolescent comedy.

A lazy and uninspired knock-off of the hilarious 2002 movie "Road Trip."

Screenwriter Tom Schulman, who won an Oscar for "Dead Poets Society," gives us a narrative reminiscent of a pup chasing its tail, as characters struggle to catch up with inexplicably chopping and changing motives.

This modest little film out of Africa suffers from largely rudderless direction, relying for any sense of profundity on the breathtaking beauty of Abraham Haile Biru's cinematography.

Working from an unfinished script by the late, great Krzysztof Kieslowski, Stuhr directs in a laid-back, deadpan style that, at times, recalls Fellini.

There aren't many surprises as the story unfolds in soap-opera fashion, with a happy ending for all concerned.

It's muddled and shallow and obvious. Worse, it fails as entertainment, being so ineptly directed and written it often has the feel of a high school production by kids with more money and ambition than talent.

Little more than a supersized version of the popular PBS animated series that's stopping briefly in theaters en route to its natural habitat -- video.

Mylan and Shenk provide an engrossing look at these bright, clean-cut young men and the obstacles they faced in "the land of plenty." In doing so, the filmmakers also reveal a lot about the American character.

The very effectiveness of After the Life's depiction of its main characters makes its immediate predecessor seem that much more of a waste.

The film repeatedly disappoints because Sandler and his director...have so little faith in focusing on the two characters' plight that they interrupts the romance repeatedly for vulgar, Farrelly brothers-style sexual and ethnic jokes that are so relentlessly unfunny they may not even rouse Sandler's core constituency of 12-year-old males.