Quirky and sometimes hilarious Canadian comedy.

This is the time of the year movie studios traditionally dump their mistakes into theaters -- and boy, did Disney make a whopper with The Count of Monte Cristo.

As the plot loses steam, director Mark Pellington (whose paranoid thriller "Arlington Road" was one of the worst movies of 1999) tends to rely on cheap tricks to maintain suspense, although the final catastrophe is very nicely done.

The dialogue is dubbed into English by generic actors, whose phony, emotionless rendition undermines what's on the screen.

Isn't really a movie: It's a grab bag of mobster clichés lifted without finesse from "A Bronx Tale," "GoodFellas" and at least a score of lesser Mafia flicks.

About as edgy as a cup of Ovaltine, A Walk to Remember is an old-fashioned teen romance so sweet and free of irony that criticizing it feels like taking a baseball bat to a sack full of newborn kittens.

An inept, tedious spoof of '70s kung fu pictures, it contains almost enough chuckles for a three-minute sketch, and no more.

Beyond the Ocean, which at its best is reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger in Paradise," doesn't integrate its two story lines in a particularly satisfying manner and the ending is somewhat abrupt.

Marinated in clichés and mawkish dialogue.

As for Gooding, he's sadly gone to the dogs -- Snow Dogs has got to be his most humiliating role since "Lightning Jack."

Interestingly for an Israeli movie, the bombers are not Palestinians -- they're young, ultra-Orthodox fanatics.

Has a generosity of spirit and a wonderfully upbeat ending that makes it a nice little antidote to a bleak season.

A low-end scam by Lions Gate Films -- whose recent "The Wash" was a masterpiece by comparison.

The movie could have used more of the band's music and less talk.

Full of fine performances, led by Josef Bierbichler as Brecht and Monica Bleibtreu as Helene Weigel, his wife. Taken on its own terms, The Farewell makes for rewarding viewing.

Why make a documentary about these marginal historical figures? Wouldn't one about their famous dad, author of "Death in Venice," etc., be more valuable?

Entertaining as he is, there are many times when you wish you'd been given a few more facts and numbers so you could understand what the young CEO and his colleagues were celebrating or bemoaning.

In any case, the presence of O'Hara, Kline, Ramis, Black, Tomlin and John Lithgow (who plays Shaun's father) serve mainly to underline the feebleness of the screenplay and the slackness of the direction.

May be the most purely entertaining foreign-language crossover since "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

Very slowly builds to an emotional payoff in a devastating scene where the three main characters simultaneously seek relief in sex.

Unfortunately, Impostor doesn't do much with its template, despite a remarkably strong cast.

Thoughtful and entertaining documentary.

A beautifully filmed, scrupulously authentic but strangely evasive exercise in combat ultra-realism.

It isn't as ridiculous as this year's other version of a local best seller set during WWII ("Captain Corelli's Mandolin"), but it's arguably even less entertaining.

Penn makes us take the leap required by Kristine Johnson and Jessie Nelson's screenplay -- you end up deeply caring about Sam and Lucy.

Has some terrific aerial sequences and exciting dogfights. But the clichés in the script by Zdenek Sverak (the director's father) keep the film firmly grounded when the action's not aloft.

Packs a dramatic wallop that makes it one of the year's best movies.

It ranks among Robert Altman's best work ever, and that its many satisfactions derive in large part from a superbly written screenplay by Julian Fellowes that has no equal this year.