It has a quiet thoughtfulness that never comes close to being draggy, and a wisdom that is anything but obtuse. It's a film of many themes.

It's the stuff of soap opera, infused with a nonchalant, David Lynch-like surrealism and a nutball Canadian humor. Beer - because of the baroness, and because this is Canada - flows freely.

While 13 Going on 30 is too formulaic to sustain the delicacy of emotion that gave "Big" its appeal, it has tour-de-farce moments that made screenwriters Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa's "What Women Want" such a monster hit.

It is a good hour too long, although it does boast Christopher Walken.

It is the more satisfying of the two installments - less over-the-top, arterial-gushing violence and more investigation into character, motives, back-story.

The chief appeal of this affectionate story is its embrace of those who are not thinner, richer and more glamorous than the moviegoers.

For such a formulaic vigilante film, The Punisher has a far better cast than it deserves.

Also quite fine is the film's musical score from David Byrne, as unsettling and edgy as the story.

Except for a handful of scenes, Hancock's film isn't good enough to be memorable. Neither is it bad enough to be entirely forgettable. It's just one of those compromised movies that makes one look forward to the director's cut.

Too bad the filmmakers didn't trust the material. For Ella doesn't need music and references to other, better, movies to cast its unique spell.

Where the first pic breezed along with gags and gunplay, this forced follow-up is artificial to the hilt - fueled on a kind of trying-too-hard hilarity that makes even good actors look bad.

A tale of childhood innocence and adult corruption - and the point where the two intersect - I'm Not Scared is a lyrical thriller inspired by the run of kidnappings that befell Italy in the 1970s.

Apart from Williams' presence, director Christopher Erskin's feature debut isn't worth the price of submission. It's not a road trip; it's a road trap.

The film - despite being a half-hour too long - is a rocking, rolling supernatural spectacle.

Despite lovely songs from k.d. lang and Bonnie Raitt (written by Beauty and the Beast composer Alan Menken), this range is about as serene as a hen party.

Stiles is lovely, forthright and believable, so much so that when the scene shifts back to storybook Denmark (actually shot in Prague), she grounds this fluff in recognizable reality.

A dull, drab and pointless rehash, Walking Tall ironically manages to diminish the Rock's stature as both a leading man and an action star.

Proves that the most local story is sometimes the most universal, the simplest tale sometimes the most complex.

A tale of disaffection, devastation and epiphanies of the catastrophic kind.

In Jersey Girl, Kevin Smith wears his heart on his sleeve - and on his pants, socks, boxers and backward-facing baseball cap.

So what if the movie isn't finger-lickin' good like the original? The performances by Hanks as a crook and Irma P. Hall as his honorable landlady are mighty tasty.

Either an airless allegory about opportunistic Americans or another one of the director's parables of female persecution. OK, maybe it's both. But life is too short for three hours of misanthropy and misogyny.

What Never Die Alone is is a hackneyed tale of vengeance set in the 'hood, teeming with stock characters, slo-mo gunplay, and rampant misogyny.

It's a trippy but tender examination of human emotions, relationships, all-consuming love.

If Taking Lives starts off with a modicum of wit and creepy-crawly scares, it winds up somewhere else altogether: in the cliche-strewn land of preposterous red herrings.

This film plays out like one of those trigger-happy video games -- it's all cranial splatter. Word to the squeamish: Dawn of the Dead merits a very hard R rating. The depictions of violence are exceedingly graphic.

Here, love and violence are random, everyone's a fool for love, and tomfoolery often has a shocking twist. And every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Kari's film, witty and sad, is a spare, small thing, but Noi has a poetry about it, and a poignancy.

Muniz is quite winning as a plucky teen who is constantly being thrown into situations over his head. But the usually reliable Anthony Anderson e-mails in his performance as Cody's handler.

Bloody, bone-chilling fun.

An entertaining foray into a world of spy guys, stakeouts and secret government machinations, Spartan teems with the kind of terse crypto-speak that is the playwright and filmmaker's stock-in-trade.

The performances are uniformly strong - nuanced, realistic, lacking any wild, flailing emoting.

If the words "Gentlemen, start your engines" set your heart pounding, this is the Imax experience for you.

It's the dynamic between the three leads, Rawlins, Sives and Henderson - and the young McKinlay, who's like a miniature Shirley Henderson - that is this oddball and bittersweet story's pulsing heart.

The second-best film parody (after The Brady Bunch Movie) of a '70s TV phenom that unaccountably looks better the further you get from it.

Hidalgo is the first Middle East western.

The film turns into a story of corruption on many levels, and it moves fast, without a scrap of fat in the telling.

A slasher spoof of sorts, except that unlike the "Scream" pics, scant effort seems to have gone into the spoofing aspect of the story.

By Twisted's final twist, though, it's all Judd can do to keep a straight face.

Bittersweet and funny.

Too much Good Friday and not enough Easter Sunday. Emphasizing Jesus' agony over His ecstasy, Gibson has delivered a blood-drenched epic more stunning for its brutal violence than for its depiction of the calvary.

It's hilarious - in a Scandinavian Sartre-esque sort of way.

A riotously awful biopic rife with stereotypes and boxing movie cliches, Against the Ropes represents -- among other things -- a woeful turn in its star's career.

A toothless political satire set in a Maine coastal village. It plays like six subplots in search of a sitcom.

The plain, reportorial style of Lost Boys -- which simply records its subjects in various settings and situations -- results in a film that doesn't preach, doesn't politicize.

I don't think 50 First Dates is a great movie, or a particularly funny one, but I admired its romanticism and its gentle plea for the acceptance of difference. Of how many romantic comedies can you say they are sweet and disturbing?

Terribly slight and a little off.

It's a feminist nightmare, the world brought to life -- in hard-hitting documentary style.

He may be a barber, but by saving the community one strand at a time, Calvin is the heir apparent to populist banker George Bailey of "It's a Wonderful Life."

Miracle really isn't about the game. It's about the game as metaphor for united we stand.

My guess is that The Dreamers will have a certain resonance for those of us who discovered movies and sex at the same time during the '60s. For the rest of you, the film is a curiosity about cinegenic youths baring their bodies while thinking they are baring their souls.

The coda to this fine, loving tribute offers restitution, though no tidy resolution.

Rarely do you encounter a movie without a shred of originality. You Got Served is such a cinematic vacuum.

A modest and obviously heartfelt endeavor.

Doesn't take itself seriously, and that's a good thing.

Easy to like, and easy to forget.

Touching the Void is, indeed, about living, but not the exhilarating kind. It's about survival -- raw, real, by force of will.

Profoundly knuckleheaded.

The best reason to see Along Came Polly is the supporting cast.

You don't have to be a fan of the TV show to enjoy watching this dog chase his shtick.

Boasts exceedingly high levels of improbability and an embarrassment of continuity and character shortfalls, but still has a certain bubbleheaded charm.

It's a masterpiece.

Plays with cultural stereotypes, and upends them as well. The picture starts as one thing and turns, dramatically, movingly, into something else.

Much as I adore Martin and Hunt, whose matching tongue-in-cheek delivery and finite patience make them seem more like siblings than spouses, their movie is indistinguishable from an Afterschool Special.

Cold Mountain is the equivalent of comfort food: old-fashioned, earthy (lots of root vegetables), satisfying.

There are chases that feel way too long, and dialogue that feels flat. Affleck and Thurman make a handsome duo, but there's no spark between the actors.

Though the story dawdles at times, the visuals are splendid.

The good thing about The Company is that nothing much happens. The bad thing about The Company is that nothing much happens.

Monster brings the horror stories of everyday life down to a recognizable level -- even as the actress inhabiting that story remains startlingly unrecognizable.

As artistic achievements go, Mona Lisa Smile is strictly a paint-by-numbers affair. No shading. Little in the way of perspective. To call it one-dimensional would be an act of charity.

McNamara, a robust conversationalist, is so lively that he bursts out of what is essentially a talking-head documentary.

Remember the name Shohreh Aghdashloo. The heartbreakingly fine Iranian actress is only a subsidiary character in House of Sand and Fog...But she is the soul of this pungent film.

The story hooks us because stars Helen Mirren and Julie Walters look as fetching in woolens and Wellingtons as they do in the altogether. But it reels us in because it is about people who for so long have paid lip service to making a difference that they are profoundly altered when they actually do.

A wickedly funny, Naked Gun-style parody that conflates old-style private-eye pics with Shaft and, yes, Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

The Return of the King is too long...The various story lines...come together in stilted, episodic ways. The narrative is less-than-seamless.

Girl With a Pearl Earring is really about watching paint dry. S l o w l y.

Partly because of Caine and partly because of meticulous work by veteran director Norman Jewison, The Statement is a fiction done so effectively, it rings true -- even slick lines that may otherwise be rancid.

With the likes of Nicholson, Keaton, Reeves and Peet -- and a fleeting, funny few minutes with McDormand -- Something's Gotta Give is never less than entertaining. And once in a while it's sweetly, and extremely, funny.

Despite its penchant for the crude and lewd, is gooey in ways that have nothing to do with bodily fluids.

Burton's film is an American version of the Odyssey.

By no means is this a good movie, but it's warmed by the solar energy of its star, who surely deserves better than this formula empowerment flick.

It's not just Hollywood convention that gets in the way of the story, it's the lack of depth, heft and heart at its core.

Tender but never sappy, Monsieur Ibrahim brings two people of vastly different age and background together in ways that are touching, and telling. It's a small, glowing gem.

Wondrously emotional film, one that sneakily dismantles your defenses and purges grief you didn't realize you had.

With a bit of Tintin and Tati, Charlie Chaplin and Wallace and Gromit echoing in the pacing and comic sensibility, Triplets of Belleville conjures up a world that's totally surprising and sublime.

Aspires to the devilish crudity and unfettered social commentary of South Park. But Zwigoff's direction lacks the exaggerated cartoonishness necessary.

The result is like near-beer: The taste is familiar, but the spirit is missing.

Cheesy and loads of fun.

The Cooler is small-scale moviemaking about small-scale lives. But it's big in all the right ways.

This sad, staggering drama should be seen: out of the grimness, and the profound calamity, you can almost taste life in your mouth.

It pains me to tell you, But really, it's true: The Cat in the Hat Is a piece of dog doo.

For those who want nothing more than a thorough scare, Gothika is effective. But for those of us who want some psychological insight with our frightfests, the film is sadly lacking.

Where Denys Arcand's delightful 1986 comedy "The Decline of the American Empire" celebrated the good life, his profoundly funny sequel The Barbarian Invasions heartily toasts the good death.

Just misses being great. The dark shaman mysticism doesn't entirely mesh with the earthbound quest across the wild and glorious Southwest. And the ending, with its shoot-outs and sacrifices, has a choppy, unneccessarily complicated feel.

An appealing, low-budget musical.

An intimate epic of infinite grace.

Fraser and Elfman are goofily endearing even if they seem more sincere acting opposite the rabbit and the duck than they do each other.

It's a compelling piece of propaganda that argues for Shakur, whose 1996 murder in Las Vegas at age 25 remains unsolved, as a complicated individual, ambitious artist and magnetic personality by using the most persuasive weapons at its command: Tupac himself.