The movie about literature's luckiest orphan may teem with children, but it is not for them.

While Thorpe ostensibly explores the sibilant consonants and careful enunciation that characterize what we have come to think of as "sounding gay," his film is really about his identity.

It's a fun ride for the most part, with a bumping soundtrack and genuine moments of warmth and heartbreak. But one can't help but wish Gondry had simply let the camera roll, and let the kids speak for themselves.

Amid all the horror and the black ooze, there emerges a deeply touching story about the power of love.

Hanna is a goofy and exhilarating mash-up of all sorts of things. Luc Besson's "The Professional" comes to mind, as do the propulsive synth-syncopations of "Run Lola Run" and the dark allegorical menace of Grimms fairy tales.

Pacific Rim shares much with the Mexican filmmaker's "Hellboy" franchise - jokey and comic book-y, full of muscular tableaus with huge squads of people coming and going (and running for their lives).

Making a remarkable feature debut, Hamilton distinguishes herself more as a filmmaker than as a screenwriter. While she elicits smoldering performances from Mackie and Washington, the movie around them is rather diffuse.

One admires Wallace's intentions while despairing at his execution. Yet as clumsily directed as his film is, it inspires compassion for Moore, his men and their foes. And in that, there is merit.

A love song to the new Europe (Klapisch's original title: Euro Pudding) and a snapshot of a polyglot gang on the cusp of kind-of-reckless youth and responsibility-burdened adulthood.

What begins as Lafcadia's journey into the heart of darkness ends as his pilgrimage into the light. Stunning.

Among the leads, Radcliffe alternates between playing the wet blanket and the dry wit, and Grint strikes a few sparks as his ambivalent protector. It is Watson who catches fire as the strategist and soldier of this penultimate Potter quest. Watson's so good that one wishes Rowling had built her septology around Hermione Potter.

Pretty magical.

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

Has a certain captivating quality about it.

Footage from VanDyke's travels provides the first-person narrative thrust to Point and Shoot, but Curry's interviews with VanDyke, back in his Baltimore home, are what give the film its larger, more challenging context.

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

Despite its title, Outrage is calm, riveting, and provocative.

A heartfelt project, scrappy and engaging, The Way has its way with audiences despite, not because of, its sentimental excess.

The movie that pretends to celebrate women devolves into the complaint of a wronged man.

Delightfully reflect the abandonment of the old image and way of life.

So deadpan a film is Napoleon Dynamite, the story and the name of a gangly high school misfit in Preston, Idaho, that I can't say whether it was intended as a character study or a comedy.

The film's save-the-world scenario may be the stuff of crusty cliff-hangers, its imagery may be borrowed, and its jaunty dialogue anything but deep, but there's something exhilarating going on here. It's darn sublime.

A gorgeous confection, packed with gargantuan gowns and pornographic displays of pastrystuffs, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette is also a sharp, smart look at the isolation, ennui and supercilious affairs of the rich, famous and famously pampered.

If we now take a woman's right to vote and to hold public office for granted, Suffragette reminds us that it wasn't that long ago when things were different.

The film is enjoyable as a performance piece, an eminently watchable contest between two actors at the top of their games.

Sunshine can be seen as a story about science and religion, about the rational mind and the mad. But at a certain point, like a dying star about to pop into eternal nothingness, the movie can't be seen as anything - it just implodes.

While on its face, Mother and Child is about the impact of adoption, in its heart Garcia's movie reckons how consequential motherhood is in the calculus of womanhood. The fine actors show how we bond to those not related to us by blood - and also how we love. Bring Kleenex.

Loses itself in melodrama, caricature and narrative missteps.