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."

It's scary to see how one man can brainwash a gigantic nation, as Mao did.

Significantly more gruesome and noisy than its predecessor, and boasting more nasty-looking fluids than all the works of David Fincher combined, this version leaves few corpses unturned in its unstinting campaign to please gorehounds.

Delivers one of those classic movie moments in which two screen legends go toe to toe, both barrels metaphorically blazing.

Offensive and unwatchable.

Clarkson, the reigning queen of the indies, is simultaneously funny and heartbreaking, following up killer performances in "The Station Agent" and "All the Real Girls."

Soporific, shamelessly derivative and barely coherent by American standards.

This frigid and inaccessible period piece wears its glumness like a shroud.

An example of Hollywood schlock from the team of Joel Schumacher (director) and Jerry Bruckheimer (producer) that lacks the faintest trace of imagination or genuine feeling.

The movie is saved by its well-trained four-legged stars and the likable Liam Aiken ("Road to Perdition"), who plays 12-year-old loner Owen Baker.

Hilariously overblown, "Cruelty" fairly pops at the seams with the beloved eccentricity of Joel and Ethan Coen, from the fiendishly ludicrous scenarios and casually tossed off visual gags to the razor-sharp repartee.

An overstuffed menu from a master chef who's trying way too hard to please himself.

Based on a video game, far exceeds expectations -- in negative ways that inspire thoughts of less than zero stars.

It's a drawn-out look at politics that's largely devoid of the trademark humor that long ago got New Wave veteran Chabrol labeled the Gallic Hitchcock.

Can that achingly abstract thing called love be captured in a beaker or dissected like a frog splayed on a slab? That's the belabored premise of this dorky, clinically structured romance cooked up in the Sundance Institute's screenwriter and filmmaker labs.

The script is obvious and cliched and the action is more disgusting than frightening.

There's not much new in this Filipino film by longtime director Gil M. Portes. But it's so endearing that only a grouch wouldn't be charmed.

The best drag movie since "Vegas in Space." That's hardly a huge recommendation.

One of those rare recent films whose emotional power resonates long after you've left the theater.