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

Stronger on character than on story, the film version of Janet Fitch's best-seller is shaped and propelled by the astonishing performance of Alison Lohman.

Guaranteed to keep you on tenterhooks from beginning to end - and without much gore. Dowdle and company trade in the usual trappings of the genre for a tantalizing blend of tension, suspense, and mystery.

A scabrously funny look at the cutthroat game of statecraft.

Swiss Army Man is a quest movie of sorts, and also a sort of modern-day piece of absurdist theater. Samuel Beckett by way of Monty Python, it is a story that is at once rooted in the fixations of adolescence (sex, the idea of sex, bodily functions, more sex) and in the loftier firmaments of the mind.

Develops microclimates of mood without fully developing the same shadings of character.

Unlike Gondry's previous features, Human Nature and Eternal Sunshine, Science lacks the sturdy armature of a Charlie Kaufman screenplay to support its eccentricities. The flood of delight in the film's first 90 minutes slowed to a trickle and, finally, a drip.

Informative, funny, sad and intriguing.

Haggis' earnest and eloquent film about the impact of the war in Iraq on U.S. soldiers, and by extension, their nation, is human-scaled. And as deep and harrowed as Jones' crevassed face.

Parental Guidance is an engaging comedy that bridges multiple generation gaps, making it that rare movie that grandparents, their kids, and their kids can enjoy.

Comes across as gratifying, not grating: the same way the familiarity of a well-crafted whodunit is part of the book's pleasures.

Quiet, finely etched and beautifully acted by Dina Korzun and the wise-beyond-his-years Artiom Strelnikov.

The Ice Harvest doesn't have much heft or resonance. But as an antidote to the sugary confections of the season, its hung-over cynicism works wonders.

Between the earnest boy, his playful mammal, the film from actor-turned-director Charles Martin Smith is a winning family entertainment.

On a Paris rooftop about an hour into this 2-hour film, the tone shifts and the atmosphere lightens into giddy farce.

For a film about suicides, Wristcutters: A Love Story is strangely life-affirming. This film about slackers stuck in limbo between life and death is upbeat in an offbeat way.

Cluttered as it is colorful, Robots is a visual delight.

Nat King Cole croons a Christmas chestnut, an opera wafts into the ether, Latin jazz sways. It's all terribly atmospheric, and if you're in the mood for atmosphere, 2046 delivers.

Favreau and Vaughn have chemistry to kill: comic, combative and engagingly goofball.

The gadgetry and fight scenes are nicely rendered. The aeronautical battles, though, fall well short of state-of-the-art. Maybe they're collateral damage to the film's goofy style.

A whimsical tale of serial murder in the English countryside, Keeping Mum benefits immensely from the charm and pitch-perfect gravitas of Kristin Scott Thomas.

While at times the improvisational dialogue sounds like audio filler, the three leads are poignant and perceptive.

Pays homage to a sack of Christmas movies, from the department store Claus of "Miracle on 34th Street" to a standing-on-the-bridge-contemplating-suicide moment, a la "It's a Wonderful Life."

Rings true for the most part, and explores human nature - leashed and unleashed - in ways that resonate.

A story with a beginning and end but without a middle. Two slices of bread without the sandwich meat, I wrote in my notes.

A little like a British Eric Rohmer film -- a lot of talk, and a lot of talk about love and relationships -- Lawless Heart has wit and a winning charm.

Overall, Matchstick Men, which is based on the novel by Eric Garcia, is more memorable for Lohman's naturalistic acting and Scott's mannerist direction than it is for its O. Henry surprise.

Steamy and sexy with a smack of sadism, the movie is a throwback to old-school Hollywood action/romance.