Once it calms down and stops trying to be funny, it turns into a thoughtful and intriguing drama.

When they came in to pitch A Thousand Words, no doubt by calling it "Jerry Maguire" meets "Groundhog Day," a studio exec should have raised the palm of rejection and said, "When you stop being sadly derivative and write an original idea that's as good as those two, come back."

These are characters with whom it's a pleasure to spend a couple of hours.

Demonstrating the limits of being too clever in a genre movie, the art-house chiller Silent House lets the tenseness of its first act trickle away.

Credit Westfeldt, who is also the writer and director, with a classic setup for farce, brightly executed.

Interminably long, dull and incomprehensible, John Carter evokes pretty much every sci-fi classic from the past 50 years without having any real personality of its own.

So there is courage and cheekiness here. What there is not is a story, or much insight or even anger; anyone expecting an indictment of Iran will be sorely disappointed.

Overlong and grim to the point where some scenes are virtually unwatchable.

The script is cliché-ridden and ends on an overly sentimental note.

Riddled with sores, his lips locked on a crack pipe, the "sub-basement"-dwelling subject of this cult-rock doc initially seems plucked from an episode of "Intervention," or maybe "Hoarders."

This charming kid's-eye movie, full of comical and vivid detail about the lives of these cheerful children, has the loose, lanky feel of a memoir and of French New Wave films.

The real coup de grace for this would-be serious-minded drama is the sledgehammer-subtle direction of Paul Weitz (who is also the screenwriter), who enabled his star's paycheck mugging in the execrable "Little Fockers."

Tim & Eric seem driven by a hatred of the audience and a wish to punish the same. Every episode of every sitcom I've ever seen is funnier than this movie, and I used to watch "Just Shoot Me."

At 132 minutes, the film is at least half an hour too long. Nobody asked me, but the best solution would be to keep the action sequences (such as the robbery of a horse-drawn steam train, an homage to Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West''), and scrap the allegedly "witty'' dialogue and difficult-to-follow plot twists.

The Lorax is awful, like chronic disease.

There is no way you could make this movie stupider or more pointlessly noisy than it already is.

This is the third feature by the three gifted stars, who deftly pull off hilarious, nearly wordless slapstick routines reminiscent of Jacques Tati, Buster Keaton and Jerry Lewis.

A suspenseful work using nonprofessional actors and co-written with an Albanian filmmaker, shows Marston is no one-hit wonder.

When it comes time for a Hollywood remake, Depp would make a great Mels.

A raunchy, often hilarious satire from the Judd Apatow stable that lacks any real bite.

Refreshing as it is to see the military portrayed as something other than a band of neurotics and creeps, there's a reason this brand of rah-rah and bang-bang didn't outlast the age of Whitesnake and Marty McFly.

The only part of this movie anyone's ever going to remember is the pair of scenes in which Ghost Rider pees flame.

Barrow's frozen vistas are a perfect match for the noir tone of On the Ice. Unfortunately, the emotional landscape of MacLean's stoic main character, Qalli, is often as blank as the tundra.

More than just the portrait of a naive young woman. It's a frightening look at Putin's warped version of democracy.

A family getting evicted from its home is no laughing matter, except if you're watching Cirkus Columbia, a satiric comedy from, of all places, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This indie documentary is egregiously Hollywood in spirit. That a take-charge white football coach can buck up a place like Manassas HS with some gridiron grit is a lie we want to believe.

A feast for the eyes that will engage the entire family.

The cheesehead noir Thin Ice presents Greg Kinnear in a role that's almost too easy for him: He's a morally flexible Wisconsin insurance salesman for whom honesty is the least-likely policy.