This mildly amusing tale of infidelity, blackmail, class differences and corporate greed not only strains credulity - it strains for laughs.

It is intended for the target audience of arrested-development stoners who stay up late being thrilled rather than confused by the show's non-sequiturial humor.

Perfect Stranger is the Egg MacGuffin of whodunits, a cheesy affair that casts so many baited lures that they tangle each other and don't hook you.

Shannon is flawless.

At a certain point, movies like Disturbia require suspension of belief. To its credit, that moment comes much later in the game than usual. Up until then, like "Rear Window" before it, Disturbia is sly and suspenseful and full of mounting dread.

Their exhaustive tribute to hungry zombies, fast girls and faster cars is . . . exhausting, if intermittently entertaining.

The Hoax makes the fakery of disgraced writers Jayson Blair, James Frey and Stephen Glass seem puny by comparison. Irving was the grand master, and Gere's portrait and Hallström's movie suggest why: He almost bought his own story, believed his own outrageous pack of lies.

In a way, The TV Set suffers from the same syndrome as the industry it's parodying: bland and compromised, it feels as if it's been fine-tuned and focus-grouped within an inch of its life.

An effectively unsettling mix of Southern gothic and Old Testament hugger-mugger, with shades of "The Exorcist" and even "Rosemary's Baby" thrown in.

A touching, family-friendly entertainment

Black Book doesn't let the grim facts of the Holocaust get in the way of some ripping pulp.

Dumb with a capital D, Blades of Glory takes its (almost) fleshed-out sketch-comedy idea as far as an ice-skating buddy movie with we're-not-gay jokes and a psycho stalker can go.

Coolly crafted crime thriller.

Simply put, it's terrific.

Bier primes us for a catfight, but she gives something tastier: a feast of reconciliation and love.

It is the most influential movie you've never seen, deeply affecting many artists and experimental directors who saw it on the museum circuit in 1977 and 1978.

Unravels a bit heading toward its finale, as buildings explode and characters are forced to explain themselves and their nefarious motives. But the payoff at the end - at once kind of radical and gratuitous - delivers a wallop.

An involving fantasy for beamish boys and girls - and their parents.

If only the screenplay had more going for it than hackneyed homilies and living-in-the-ghetto stereotypes. If only first-time director Sunu Gonera had a surer hand, a knack for something bolder, wilder, goofier.

A triumph for Cheadle and Sandler, whose performances strew the seeds of regeneration.

TMNT has a cool, noirish sheen. There's an attention to detail in the visuals and sound design that pushes it up several notches above most kiddie fare. It's not art, dude, but it will do.

A haunting neo-noir about a man told by a palmist that his karma is about to run over his dogma.

Exhilarating, exuberant and drolly funny.

A movie that provokes as many rueful sighs as it does bruising laughs.

Premonition is an odd little thing, with a protagonist in a protracted fugue state and a plot that doesn't know whether its coming or going. Or maybe it does.

Gripping, powerful, heart-breaking.

300 is "Gladiator" for the gamer set.

A wonderful, witty mix of horror and social satire, The Host takes its simple, time-tested premise - menacing creature terrorizes the populace - and runs with it.

It's a tearjerker, sometimes, and sweetly funny at other moments. It's near perfect.

Isn't as jaw-droppingly awful as its trailers suggest.

Zodiac is a reproach both to those dedicated to unscrambling "The Da Vinci Code" and to those hooked on forensic crime shows where all the evidence leads to a tidy conclusion. That Zodiac's manhunt is inconclusive makes it all the more haunting.

Cats is many things: a film diary of an odd-couple relationship, a profile of a forgotten man who slowly reconstructs his past, and the transcendently moving account of a man on the margins who gets reintegrated into society.

A roiling, boiling mix of blaxploitation, sexploitation, Tennessee Williams and the Tennessee outback.

This beautiful, unfolding film is an antidote to the high-velocity, maximum-volume world most of us find ourselves immersed in, offering a glimpse into a rigorously spiritual alternative. Its calmness, its reflection, is full of allure.

As stories go, The Astronaut Farmer is engaging, even if it serves up a kind of Plains State brand of Rocky-esque hooey.

Apted opts not to show the horrendous cruelty inflicted on thousands upon thousands of captive Africans, shackled and chained, making their way to the Americas in ships. Instead, he has Wilberforce and his fellow abolitionists describe the inhumane conditions - in the precise, passionate language of legislators who believe that human decency is more important than money and power.

Mildly diverting but slight, the screwball comedy Gray Matters changes it up, more or less creating its own genre, the curveball farce.

McAvoy is charismatic, funny, and on the mark. Hall and Eve are both just right in their roles - bringing depth and detail to what could have been caricature parts. And if Starter for 10 takes a turn into foolhardy tragedy, it doesn't linger too long there.

This is a quiet, meticulously plotted chamber piece, not the booming, lightning-paced orchestral affair we know as the contemporary action film in the Age of Ludlum.

Bridge to Terabithia the movie, like the book, is buckets-of-tears sad. Director Csupo and company manage to get that - the simple power of a story about kindred souls, about loss, about the limitless possibilities of a lively mind - just right.

Has a breezy, Altmanesque air, as it tracks the mini-dramas of its crisscrossing characters.

Like its music, the film's emotions proceed from lament to screaming screed to chorus of hope.

Happily, Perry's strength as a filmmaker is that he genuinely loves his actors, and they love him back. What his movies lack in exposition they make up for in performances.

The two generate more heart than they do heat, but that's the point. You want to see them together not just because they're adorable, but because you believe that their characters can take each other to a place neither could get to on their own.

Never mind Hollywood's big-star, big-budget hand-wringing about Africa - Bamako is the real thing.

What Hannibal Rising is, mostly, is a hoot.

The question is not whether Murphy can do anything. He can. The question is why he would want to make a movie as squirmingly unfunny as Norbit.

Because I Said So might have been sharper if it had focused on the mother/daughter relationship and didn't blunt its story with romantic comedy.

A predictable, by-the-numbers TV-movie-sized affair which will break your heart - especially since it also contains brief flashes of horror greatness.

The Situation deserves credit for not trying to reduce the events in Iraq to facile equations. There is corruption and cynicism on all sides: the U.S. diplomats and military, the Sunni leaders, the thugs in cop uniforms, the local powerbrokers.

Puccini for Beginners, which takes its title from its heroine's passion for opera, isn't just another trendy toe-dip in sexual experimentation. It may not be the real world of New York, or even of most relationships, but it's worth a visit.

Grant's film plays like a two-hour episode of "Friends" intercut with "Seventh Heaven." Those sounds you hear are wisecrack, heartbreak, heartbreak, wisecrack, wisecrack.

Someone should check Joe Carnahan for performance enhancement drugs. Smokin' Aces, the wild ride of a movie he scripted and directed, is so pumped up, manic and mayhem-packed that it practically shoots sweat off the screen.

Peter Glenville's staging of the material is the opposite of cinematic, but the pleasure of these two extravagantly gifted actors at the top of their game - their diction! their conviction! their beauty! - is enormous.

A powerful indictment of Russia's illegal adoption industry - and a story of pipsqueak resolve and resilience - The Italian is clear-eyed and tough in its depiction of a corrupt, atrophied social order.

The matchless Alberto Sordi - a contemporary of Peters Sellers and a progenitor of Steve Martin - stars as the buffoon Everyman, Antonio Badalamenti, a perfectly poised figure destined for the pratfall.

There's more voyeurism going on here, and less insight into a certain culture (the young and the wasted), than the filmmakers would probably admit to, but the performances are scarily real, and the outcome, well, is just scary.

It's not as good, nor as complex, as "The Lost Boys," but that doesn't make the story of mass annihilation, sprawling refugee camps, the generosity of Americans, and the resilience of a handful of Sudanese survivors any less worthy of telling - again.

Happily N'Ever After carjacks "Cinderella" and puts her wicked stepmother behind the wheel.

At 92 minutes, the film has the economy of a Potter story, but not the shapeliness or the zip.

This is the breakthrough work of one of world cinema's most visionary artists.

There are sniff movies and there are snuff movies, but Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is both. It has the bouquet of balm and blood. Imagine "Fragrance of the Lambs."

A challenging film populated with characters who are depressed, on antidepressants, or strung out on mood-altering drugs, The Dead Girl is a downer with resonance.

What a mess.

For Hickenlooper and Mauzner, Sedgwick is more interesting for whom she slept with than who she was. Their movie may indict Warhol for exploiting Sedgwick, but they're just as guilty.

Boasts exciting competitive track cycling footage.

What it lacks, though, is any sense that these people - are real.

A chase movie, a spy movie, a futuristic thriller full of colorfully bizarre characters and deftly choreographed stunt work, Children of Men works on multiple levels - as action and allegory.

A cool-headed thriller, and a richly detailed character study that traces the birth and evolution of America's foreign espionage bureaucracy, The Good Shepherd also marks a significantly more mature, assured directing turn from Robert De Niro.

If the filmmakers had a script half as good as their special effects, Night at the Museum would be a must-see.

McConaughey tucks into the role like a hungry man gobbling a ham sandwich.

The great thing about Venus - apart from its sharp eye for the daily routines and drab details of senior citizenry in a buzzing metropolis - is that it isn't soppy, or sentimental.

A dazzling costume epic, a spectacle for the eyes and for the soul.

One of the great war movies - or antiwar movies - of all time.

The Painted Veil is rich with history and heartbreak. It's stirring stuff.

What's touching about Rocky Balboa, the sixth chapter in the saga of Philadelphia's lord of the ring, is the small-scale stuff. Not the spectacle of the has-been, now 60, connecting with a punch. But the sight of an actor connecting with a character.

Bill Condon's screen adaptation of the 1981 Broadway sensation is, if possible, as dazzling and energizing as its source.

Tobey Maguire, terribly miscast and squeaky (that voice - it belongs to a kid!).

Breaking and Entering is smart and smartly done, as it describes these inter-circling worlds - the well-to-do Brits and the newly deposited foreigners, trying to shake off their homeland tragedies and start anew.

A perfectly lovely, if uninspired, movie that suffers from following on the trotters of "Babe," the one about the piglet advocate of barnyard brotherhood.

I wish Eragon's cinematography were crisper, the music less Wagnerian, and the acting more consistent. But this movie isn't for me. It's for my 10-year-old, for whom the subtleties of narrative, photography and acting mean nothing.

The relationship between Chris and his diminutive namesake is at the core of the film - the determination to be there for his son, no matter what; the mentoring, the pair's goofy, lovely banter. And Smith and his bright-eyed boy pull it off brilliantly.

Law shines like a sunbeam, warming the film with rakish charm and unexpected emotionalism.

It's earnest, but it feels beside the point. Blood Diamond's real point: box office.

The heart of the matter - and the viscera - is the action, and one man's determination to survive. Apocalypto is primal.

A noisy, not particularly charming collection of skits and skirmishes.

Isaac's emotional performance as the man who learns to share the woman he loves with the God he worships is profoundly moving and gives the movie its heart.

Lives is a best-foreign-film nominee competing in a year that at least three movies in this category are stronger than Oscar's best-picture contenders.

Nasty stuff. It's xenophobic (message: Americans, steer clear of the Third World); it's photogenic (the Sports Illustrated-likeswimsuit issue beach scenes, the colorful villages, the lush landscapes); it's gruesome (operating table POV shots); and it's violent.

Has to be one of the nuttiest, sappiest (literally), most unintentionally hilarious spectacles to come down the time-travel turnpike in eons.

Can be described as whatever is the opposite of a Christmas classic.

Like "Man on Fire," the previous collaboration between Washington and Scott, Déjà Vu is stunning but poorly paced, a film that manages to be both captivating and frustrating.

Baked and half-baked, Tenacious D does manage to give the term potty humor a new meaning. That's some kind of genius, right?

Vibrates with exuberance and erudition.

Like Connery - but in different proportions - Craig is earthy and erotic, holding himself like a smoking gun.

Offers dazzling cinematic family fun, and a mad medley of tunes.

Fast Food Nation picks up, and drops off, various members of its cast, sometimes without a satisfying resolution. But its final scenes, inside a real working meatpacking plant, on the killing floor, are brutally to the point.

There are no belly laughs here, only rueful chortles about the confederacy of chuckleheads that calls itself the entertainment industry.