The Omen remake is creepily efficient. Unlike one of the newfangled horrorfests, it doesn't drown you in brackish atmosphere and surround-sound you with techno music.

This one has some originality, even though it unfolds like Ingmar Bergman's divorce melodrama "Scenes From a Marriage" - without the marriage.

By the end of the film's two-hour stream of Be-Here-Now-isms, anyone left in the audience will be wanting to yell, "Put a sock in it!" to old Soc.

Must-see stuff.

An international caper with James Bond and Tom Clancy overtones - and Austin Powers undertones, too.

Nunez's dialogue, and the paces he puts this threesome through, just don't ring true. Coastlines is the stuff of pulp, seriously at odds with what the writer-director has always done best. That is, show the inner workings of people, their needs, their fears, their small dreams.

While I didn't love it, I enjoyed The Last Stand because it made me imagine the mutant powers I want to develop. I'm thinking along the lines of merging Rogue's suction abilities with Storm's controlled-rain skills.

A disarming, funny and animated Al Gore, once a robot among presidential candidates, proves himself a rock star among environmental activists.

An intriguing study of identity, marriage and, perhaps, madness.

McKellen, Hanks and Tautou - and Alfred Molina, as a bishop with an agenda - are no slouches when it comes to emoting, but screenwriter Goldsman's rigorously faithful interpretation of Brown's flatfooted prose stylings is the filmic equivalent of putting big chewy baguettes in the actors' maws.

Over the Hedge isn't by any stretch bad. It's just banal.

May strain credulity, but it still leaves a memorable mark.

Illuminating and unsettling.

There's nothing hip or ironic about Poseidon, which makes Russell and Lucas the perfect leading men.

Lohan is superfluous to the qualities that elevate the film above other Clearasil comedies.

Despite problems of tone and tempo, Steins is appealingly cast.

The fascinating aspect of the rambling and involving film is how Ralph and this no-nonsense dame who married Dad become confederates.

Best of all is the ride through the architect's own domestic space in Santa Monica, dubbed by locals "the house that built Gehry."

Russian Dolls isn't quite the gem that its precursor was. It rambles. It's less of an ensemble effort. There's more of Xavier's moping self-centeredness. But Duris is terrific as the confused cusp-of-30 protagonist, and the rest of the cast is bright and beaming.

Unlike the previous two films in this series, Abrams is more concerned with his hero's heart than with his hardware. The result is a pulse-racing thriller that restores the human factor to the franchise, and to its producer-star.

As the film devolved from satire to slapstick horror, I didn't believe in it at all. But in his beetle-browed intensity and tremulousness, I completely believed in Minghella's Jerome.

Based on the charming young-adult novel by Florida bard Carl Hiaasen, Hoot is a pleasant diversion on the order of a gloriously photographed after-school special.

As it progresses, the film takes us to another borderland, that between reality and delusion. This is where Harlan's mind freely gallops.

The Proposition, a beautiful, bloody meditation on justice, family, and the trap of retribution, is in every respect an artful addition to the canon of six-shooter morality tales.

Subversively funny, Stick It sees gymnastics as a microcosm of teen life.

It's Greengrass' way of asking a question that looms large in these post-9/11 days: Are we all praying to the same God, or is one man's God better than another, and one man's God vastly more terrifying?

In its final act, Akeelah is as exciting as any Final Four matchup. What it may lack in cinematic art it compensates for in abecedarian adrenaline guaranteed to pump the pulse and the spirits of viewers from 10 to 90.

I would have told you that its title refers to recreational vehicle. Having seen it, I now know the initials stand for reeking vulgarity.

Profound, passionate and overflowing with incomparable beauty, Water, like the prior two films in director Deepa Mehta's "Elements" trilogy, celebrates the lives of women who resist marginalization by Indian society.

Lady Vengeance is not for everyone. The violence, while less over-the-top and orgiastic than Park's two previous installments, is still hard and crackling. The sex is grim and graphic. And deadpan nihilism permeates the air.

By recording this all too commonplace and dehumanizing process, Puiu's film shows the sick old man and the strangers who deal with him to be all too human - extraordinarily so.

The only likable characters are ebullient Omer (Sam Golzari), a show-tune-loving reluctant Iraqi suicide bomber who comes to the O.C., and earnest William (Chris Klein), an American GI wounded in Iraq, who are mirror images.

Eva Longoria brings a crisp swagger and fluent Spanish to her role.

Shaquille O'Neal and Dr. Phil open Scary Movie 4 with an achingly unfunny couple of minutes of severed limbs and errant hoop shots.

Kids under 6 will dig it - though the alligators and wildebeests might scare them. Certainly they scared this groan-up.

This pleasant but predictable affair does one thing very well: showcasing the versatility of Chiwetel Ejiofor. The London actor can be seen as Denzel Washington's detective sidekick in "Inside Man." Watch him chomp down on a New York accent with Washington, and then watch him as Lola (a.k.a. Simon), a cabaret performer in makeup, wig and wild gowns. That's acting.

Icky, incoherent thriller.

In the odd, and oddly compelling, biopic The Notorious Bettie Page, Gretchen Mol is a delight as the saucy brunette.

There's something optimistic in the filmmaker's clear-eyed, straightforward storytelling style.

Mountain Patrol is breathtakingly beautiful, breathtakingly brutal and simply breathtaking.

Overwritten, over-designed, and too clever by 200 percent, the film does offer the pleasure of actors enjoying themselves.

At one point, Dulaine takes the students to his studio and they look up at the mirrored disco ball glittering above the dance floor. "Corny, but cool," says one of the sweathogs. My feelings about the film precisely.

Holofcener writes with an ear for the rhythms and ridiculousness of real life, and her cast - to a man, and woman - embraces her words with subtlety and certitude. Friends With Money is gimmickless, and great.

A riveting documentary.

Although there's nothing funny about addiction, Zahedi - a thin, bug-eyed fellow with the air of an R. Crumb sad sack - brings wit and self-deprecation to his tale of obsession and woe.

Basic Instinct 2 is supposed to help Stone show it's possible for a woman to be sexy in her late 40s. But it's Rampling - who is 60 - who comes off as the more provocative and alluring. Stone's purring, snarling, bedroom kink is embarrassing.

Working from a story by Antwone Fisher, screenwriter Tina Gordon Chism is tender toward characters balancing where they come from with where they'd like to go. Fisher was the subject of an inspirational biography by Denzel Washington.

While it lacks the heart and hipness of the similar-themed Pixar odysseys, The Meltdown has the physical humor of slapstick comedy.

Like "Tremors," only ickier, Slither is a tongue-in-cheek horror flick that skewers the genre while delivering seat-squirming scares.

Alas, Brick, from writer-director Rian Johnson, isn't as clever as its conceit.

There are frightening moments, as when he attacks an elderly woman he thinks is possessed by devils. And revelatory, heartbreaking ones, which can make you think that maybe he is a genius, after all.

Lee transforms a generic cops-crooks-and-hostages scenario into a smart, sharp heist movie by the sheer force of his love for, and knowledge of, the city where he lives.

Without editorializing, Mermin raises fascinating questions about the cultural impact of globalization, the allure of the West, and the troubled history of an ancient land.

L'Enfant begins with the birth of a child, but its real concern is the moral rebirth of a man.

An old-style mob movie based on a real court case and a real character - a colorful character - Find Me Guilty is about loyalty, family, and a bunch of good fellas.

In this it succeeds. Like the Bard said, better witty foolishness than foolish wit.

A lot of dark, Orwellian fun.

Funny stuff.

T Bone Burnett's soundtrack has the appropriate twang to give Wenders' Hopperesque tableaux a nice, filmic poetry. But as arresting as the images are, Shepard's clunky, soap-opera banter brings most everything, and everyone, crashing down to earth.

Harvey's a gifted physical mimic who demonstrates the comic waddle of the church usher with fallen arches, as well as the poor parishioner etiquette of grabbing too many communion wafers.

Apocalyptically awful romantic comedy.

Aja's stomach-churning remake (produced by Craven) follows the original with frightening fidelity, amping up the barbarity from a nine (on the 1-10 scale) to a 12.

Its portrait of an artist hungry for experience is as timely today as when it was written.

A quiet, loopy gem, Duck Season is a goofball celebration of old friends, new beginnings, adolescent freedom, and baked goods laced with a little something extra.

Richard Wenk's script, taut and enjoyable, pays homage to those police procedurals, with a nod to the Brazilian hostages-on-mass-transit documentary, "Bus 174."

It would seem that Allen and screenwriters John Quaintance and Jessica Bendinger couldn't decide between making a movie about the summer that 'tweens become teens or "Scenes From a Mal"l for the MTV set.

Ain't nothin' but a party, y'all.

Carion's cri de coeur is at once a historical chronicle, an ode to the European Community, and a not-so-veiled critique of a 21st-century war.

Evocatively shot by cinematographer Lance Gewer in warm browns and reds that make Tsotsi seem all the more chilling, the film records his gradual metamorphosis from id-driven brute into empathic, if crude, care-giver.

If Running Scared had come out in 1994, before "Pulp Fiction," it - and Kramer - would be hailed as blazingly original. But questions of originality notwithstanding, there's plenty of blazing going on here.

Whether or not Street Fight wins the Academy Award Sunday night, Curry's picture is must-see fare for any and every observer of the curious world of American politics.

"March of the Penguins" - phooey! Those smelly little birds are built to survive in the frozen tundra, and nobody's asking them to pull a sled.

This tale of a white mother's kid gone missing in a black New Jersey neighborhood - and the tensions and news media attention that ensue - is pretty much pure jive.

Although a voice-over prologue rumbles ominously in English, most of Night Watch is in the mother tongue, but even the subtitles do weird things - flying around in different sizes and fonts, punctuating the action.

A mopey meditation on family and its dysfunctions, Winter Passing is in fact of more than passing interest.

What I most appreciated about the film directed by Matthew O'Callaghan is that it doesn't go for amped-up effects. No bells, whistles, or nudge-nudge, wink-winks to the adults in the audience.

Fortunately for us, they number these Final Destination scarefests. Otherwise, it would be impossible to tell them apart.

For a while, Firewall whips up the accordant dollops of suspense and dread, but it's not long before the timely issue of identity theft takes a backseat to old-fashioned Hollywood villainy, unnecessary (and nonsensical) red herrings, and STUFF THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.

Alas, this joyless affair doesn't have a clou.

At the film's intimate best, it gives a guitar's perspective of the troubadour. He plucks his instrument as he plays our heartstrings. It's movie and music bliss.

Hunt, whose flutelike voice makes music of Wilde's dialogue, has the most difficult role. While she acquits herself honorably, she nudges her lines a little too broadly, as if she's worried that the audience will miss the double meanings and wordplay.

Kenya and Bryan are both victims of racism and also guilty of it. But the colorful mosaic of their courtship is no downer like "Crash," but rather an upbeat account of expanding social and romantic possibilities in a world where women wear the suits and men speak the language of flowers.

The result is two competing films, one about a failure's struggle to succeed in the Brigade Championships, the academy's boxing tournament, and the other about a quitter redeemed by military discipline. In the hands of director Justin Lin, the two story lines don't altogether merge.

BMH2 is a harmless, genial outing, a comedy that is amusing without ever rising to the level of funny. You sit through the film with a smile on your face, waiting for the laughs that never come.

This bracing adaptation of the Nurse Matilda books by Christianna Brand is the acidic antidote to Mary Poppins sweetness.

If that sounds highbrow and pretentious, it's not. The neat trick of Tristram Shandy is that the whole thing comes off as a lark.

Fans of Brooks and his wry, dry neuroticism will not be disappointed as he whines and whimpers around New Delhi.

It's impossible to imagine anyone, right-leaning or left, coming away from this hugely important documentary unshaken by its representation of the United States and its military establishment.

Shot in Panama, with a cast of local Indians and B-tier Latino and Anglo actors, End of the Spear has neither the marquee heft nor the artistic gravitas of "The New World."

A monster chiller sequel that is visually spectacular but rather overburdened with story.

A formulaic and fuzzy feel-good movie.

Franco, the hollow-cheeked, pouty-lipped actor best known as Spider-Man's nemesis Harry Osborn, plays Tristan like a biker boy with a broadsword.

Whether or not the story makes any sense, The Promise promises to transport - and does.

Whether it's simply the change of locale, or a change in Allen's psyche, something is up in Match Point. With a dark view of humankind, and of the vagaries of chance - bad luck, good luck, dumb luck - the filmmaker has crafted a wicked, winning gem.

Jeremy Irons slithers on board with a haughty sneer and papal vestments, playing Bishop Pucci.

Not since Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Malick's own "Days of Heaven" has a movie been both so breathtakingly beautiful and so narratively abstract.

Brazenly enjoyable, The Matador is a picaresque cocktail with a Tarantino twist. It is The Odd Couple with a buzz on.

If Munich raises disturbing issues about Jewish-Arab relations, past and present - and how can it not? - it is also an absolutely riveting tale of the hunt and the hunted.