Ultimately has a somewhat unfinished quality that complements the movie's themes -- and Hall's haunting performance.

Amateurish, irritatingly gabby indie.

One of the most original and stylish films to come along this year.

The result is an immensely enjoyable portrait of a strange-looking, non-comforming genius who loved women as much as designing masterpieces but was never able to commit to them. In other words: great architect, lousy family man.

Ferrell's manic, overgrown-kid energy sweeps all before it, announcing him - after his standout turn in "Old School" - as a major leading-man talent who can charm as well as amuse.

By far the best single performance in the film - and it is really, really terrific, utterly believable and moving - is by Emma Thompson. To the extent that there is genuine feeling in the movie that doesn't feel slickly manipulative, it's in the scenes involving her character.

Follows a narrative arc as choppy as a messy windswell, and the result is a dog's dinner of profiles, repetitive narration, safety tips and banal "insights" into the joys and dangers of cresting waves that sometimes reach 70 feet.

The fine cast, the elegant settings and the swoony title song somehow draw you in.

Needless to say, In My Skin isn't for everybody. It's recommended to viewers who, like Esther, want to feel something, no matter how distasteful.

A mediocre music documentary about veteran country rocker and activist Steve Earle, who created a furor with a song sympathetic to American Taliban John Walker Lindh.

The result is anti-Army propaganda rather than a balanced piece of reporting.

Might have worked as a 10-minute sketch.

This (hopefully) final chapter's interminable first hour...showcases some of the clunkiest dialogue and wooden acting since the most recent "Star Wars" movies.

A fascinating front-row seat for what could be history's shortest-lived coup.

Though Human Stain is sometimes too chaotic and sometimes too neat, it boasts some of the best acting of the year.

The opening and closing scenes are scary and should please fans of the genre, especially at Halloween time.

Occasionally stagy and flat, "Die" is worth seeing for Busch's grand performance, which won him a Special Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

The sheer loathesomeness of protagonist Stephen Glass as portrayed by Hayden Christensen makes Shattered Glass hard to watch.

Gripping and even-handed film.

Makes an earnest stab at illustrating the hardships and sacrifices humanitarian workers contend with - but in the end, all the suffering merely forms an amorphous backdrop for a Harlequin romance.

It's hard to say what's more offensive about the out-of- tune Radio - Cuba Gooding Jr. trying to ingratiate himself by mugging up a storm as a mentally challenged man, or the mawkish narrative surrounding him like so much syrup.

Although Scary Movie 3 boasts the same relaxed attitude to racial and sexual humor, some of the same eye for movieland ridiculousness, along with the usual cameos (Pamela Anderson and Simon Cowell), it lacks a single explosive, roll-on-the-floor gag, and too often repeats and belabors jokes that are merely OK.

An uninspired recycling of themes that were far more gripping in "The Lion King" and countless other earlier Mouse House classics.

Van Sant's audacious, poetic and emotionally distanced film doesn't even have a plot. It's just a random series of incidents one day at a suburban high school.

Too unfocused to make any point worth taking with us into the 2004 presidential campaign.

It is worth catching The Singing Detective to see the brilliant Robert Downey Jr. in another extraordinary performance... Unfortunately, the film itself doesn't really work despite its lineage.

Sister Helen don't take no bull.

A disappointing erotic thriller from director Jane Campion that amounts to an implausible update on "Looking for Mr. Goodbar."