Despite the jumpy, ride-along camera work and the ever-present threat of engagement, a certain tedium sets in during the film.

A very curious and very entertaining mix, the Labradoodle of inspirational romantic-comedy-melodramas.

Montenegro's character has a spark in her eye, and a determination, that makes this quiet, intelligent film anything but boring.

A bruising, dark comedy.

Flipping his cigarette lighter and snapping deadpan retorts, Reeves plays the demon-hunting detective with Keanu-esque panache.

Little kidniks with an appetite for zap-pow silliness might find this to their liking. Everyone else, beware.

Has the arc of a Shakespearean tragedy, and all the essential components therein: loyalty and betrayal, conspiracy and delusion, self-destruction.

Offers a sometimes lyrical, sometimes gut-turning portrait of war seen through the eyes of children.

The film is uniquely spirited, radiating the exuberance and sexual heat of an Elvis musical, a characteristic shared by its songs and dances.

Like most great comedies, Hitch confects a sweetly appealing fantasy.

Offers a diverting tale of erstwhile indie filmmaking and the power of porn to generate change - both at the box office and in the bedroom.

In the end, Bellocchio suggests in this spiritual thriller that perhaps faith is the dream from which we do not awaken.

A creaky, cliched, feel-good family drama about learning to stop and smell the roses - and planting a vegetable garden while you're at it - Uncle Nino is shameless, sappy fare.

A loving, dopey documentary about the bird man of a place with a view of Alcatraz.

While stylishly filmed and edited, Boogeyman is filled with every imaginable fright cliche... It's like a meal consisting entirely of airy hors d'oeuvres.

A vaguely creepy and mildly diverting rom-com.

It's a quietly powerful work, pulsing with gentle humor and a gripping sense of imminent calamity and dread.

It addresses the essential human need for dignity, for freedom, for mastery over one's life.

Fulfills the promise of its title: It's transporting, it's magical.

Even Boll seems to lose interest as the story unravels. By that time, the supernatural cliches, plot inconsistencies, dead ends and red herrings have piled up so high you can barely see the screen.

The movie's main purpose seems to be to make audiences squirm uncomfortably. Yelp and shriek in armchair-clawing glee? Not likely.

This is not the plot of your typical Ice Cube movie. It does, however, combine the plots of at least three John Hughes movies.

Despite all its roiling melodrama, Head-On has its moments of sharply observed humor.

Has a certain captivating quality about it.

The big shift between Carpenter's B-movie and filmmaker Jean-François Richet's comic book-style remake is that instead of a troop of bloodthirsty gang members encircling the precinct, the bad guys here all look like good guys.

Sweet, poignant, and winningly evocative of the period, though occasionally dogged by predictable scenarios and caricatures.

It's fair to say that Coach Carter is more an education film than it is a sports movie.

"Kill Bill" without irony, and without Quentin Tarantino's flair for cool dialogue and chop-socky action (and without Uma Thurman, for that matter), Elektra is a pretty-looking, pretty dull adaptation of the Marvel Comic about a dishy, deadly assassin.

Like "Mr. Holland's Opus," only in French, with an all-boy cast in white shirts and short pants, The Chorus is the kind of sugary, crowd-pleasing fare that only the most curmudgeonly moviegoer can frown upon.

The characters are (hand-painted) so flat that the film looks like a paper-doll convention at Epcot.

Has a low-key tone that works in its favor for a time.

While Weitz's story is diverting, the performances cut deeper than the film.

Collins and Pacino plumb the depths of acting, of Shakespeare, of the difference between law and justice.

An accomplished feature debut with stunning cinematography (by Elliot Davis), a jambalaya story line and yet another heart-stopping performance by Scarlett Johansson.

A downer of a drama.

Alas, this eternally sunny character's mantra, "I don't have a problem, I solve problems," makes for paltry dramatic tension.

Bacon's portrait chills to the bone.

Combines fingernails-on-blackboard audio agony with bamboo-under-fingernails physical torture.

A gut-punch of a drama.

Has an odd magic about it - the magic of Darger's singularly peculiar dreamworld.

Scorsese's most accomplished, most disciplined movie since GoodFellas. His most gorgeous, too, with the peaches'n'strawberries'n'cream palette of early Technicolor films.

A pessimistic chronicle that even optimistic 8-year-olds can love.

A pepperpot bubbling with pungent insights and sharp wit, Spanglish is about how people, like cultures, are more alike than not.

The film never gives you a real sense of what drove Darin on, fighting a heart ailment (from childhood rheumatic fever) and fighting an industry and press that wanted to pigeonhole him.

For the most part, the film stays steady-on, celebrating one man's crusade - and one family's heartbreak.

The gift of Imaginary Heroes is getting to know these anything-but-ordinary people.

This heartbreaking film, with its rich performances and simple eloquence, lays claim to greatness.

As soon as it's over, and you find yourself back in the harsh light of the workaday world, you'll be hard-pressed to remember what happened. Except that you'll remember enjoying yourself - immensely.

Like the old and creaky Belafonte, the film itself seems forever on the brink of drifting away. But it's the kind of drifting that's nothing but enjoyable. In fact, it's beyond enjoyable - heading into waters full of whimsy, mystery and odd, psychedelic fish.

What redeems the film...is that for every nonstop explosion, there's a hilarious burst of Reynolds' nonstop patter.

It shows how the energy, and innocence, of children can be found - and fostered - in even the bleakest spots on earth.

Closer, in the end, lacks a certain heft. The language and the actions of the characters are brutal and devastating. The movie itself, a little too nice.

It's action opera, sword-and-sorcery song-and-dance, and it's a heart-pumping, jaw-dropping thrill. OK, so I kind of like the thing.

A handsome Holocaust melodrama hobbled by a transparent and cartoonish script.

A Very Long Engagement is "Cold Mountain" with French people.

Both the sex and the battle sequences here look like football plays drawn by an NFL coach and shot by the wide receiver's mother. Usually, even when I don't like a Stone film I admire its frenzied energy, but the editing here is as lethargic as the compositions are perfunctory.

A lethargic, lurching holiday-themed comedy.

Like a piece of music, Godard structures his film in three movements.

Touching and inspiring.

An undeniable pleasure of National Treasure was watching a movie shot locally that wasn't haunted by a virus or by dead people.

The trippy creation of onetime marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg, SpongeBob is a cockeyed optimist toiling at the bottom of the fast-food chain.

A masterful epic charting love's labyrinths.

Amelie is utterly charming. And so, too, is the film.

The kind of glossy, Hollywood-forged waste of time that would depress even the most happily lackadaisical retiree.

A sappy excursion to Edwardian days.

Cute, cloying and catastrophically predictable.

Compared to "Ray," which takes Ray Charles' unique life story and manages to make it feel like a cliche, Kinsey is total sophistication and nuance.

Visually, taking its cues (mostly) from Van Allsburg's Hopperesque art, The Polar Express is eye-popping. Storywise, however, it can be eyelid-drooping.

The trouble with Alfie - apart from the film's existence, and the wrongheaded idea of remaking a minor classic - is that not a soul is likable.

It mostly is a triumph of stagecraft and speaker-blowing freestyling.

A movie with the sweet soul of "Toy Story" and the boisterous spirit of "Spy Kids."

It's a shame about Ray, because Foxx is trapped in a movie that takes the music icon's unique story and turns it into cheesy, sentimental American Dream cliches.

The film is a squeamish exercise, like watching a cruel child pull the wings off flies - especially the climactic scene, which is so gory it would turn a coyote's stomach.

Birth makes its oddball supernaturalism seem completely, compellingly real.

Filmmaker Roger Michell doesn't so much adapt Ian McEwan's fine novel Enduring Love, a surgically precise anatomy of romance and obsession, as eviscerate it and wave its entrails before the audience.

It's hard to understand what Malevolence is doing in theaters. If ever a movie deserved to go directly to DVD, it's this dreary horror treatment.

Exhilarating, edgy and wryly comic.

It isn't frightening. Sometimes, in fact, it's laughable.

So bad you're nostalgic for "Gigli." So painful you need an epidural. So mindless you'll lose yours wondering, "What were they thinking?"

In the hands of a less talented filmmaker, The Machinist would have felt like a stunt. But Anderson, with a terrific assist from Bale, makes his character's plight achingly physical.

Undertow has the plain, stark, disturbing quality that marked the original "Cape Fear" and "In Cold Blood."

The puppets are anatomically correct and politically incorrect. They provide 45 of the funniest minutes I've spent at the movies this year.

The new film compensates with Gere's wry performance as a man who lacks for nothing material but hungers for something spiritual. Even better is Stanley Tucci's delirious turn as Gere's balding, button-down colleague.

Whether it's the clothing, cars or furniture, everything is sleek and chrome-plated. That is, with the exception of Bening's alchemical performance, which turns brass to gold.

It does a masterful job of capturing a specific time and place while reminding us how timeless the abortion dialogue is.

A smart, sharp, stirring adaptation of the H.G. Bissinger best-seller.

As for Duff, she's bright-eyed and bubbly, though her singing talents are nowhere near as awesome as Raise Your Voice's who's-going-to-win-the-big-scholarship plotline requires.

Around the Bend doesn't inspire one to care.

An ingenious blend of sci-fi and mystery.

Over-orchestrated and underdeveloped interpretation of Jeffrey Hatcher's play.

Director Tim Story's film has two speeds: pedal-to-metal and screeching halt. The former is guaranteed to make the audience carsick, the latter to give it whiplash.

Caouette's fractured history is imbued with heart-crushing sincerity.

Fails as drama but succeeds as a "When bad things happen to good firemen" procedural. It's sensitivity training for civilians.

Where Finding Nemo suggested that under-the-waves adventure was limitless, Shark Tale suggests that this sea is over-fished. The krill is gone.

Overstocked farce.

The film leaves the viewer with a more vivid sense of Kerry the man, portraying him as admirable, if not lovable.

This gory horror romp is a goofball medley of "Dawn of the Dead," "28 Days Later" . . . , and Monty Python-style severed-limbs/blood-spurting sicko comedy.

Is there a limit to this incessant princessitude?