It is painful, it is funny, and it marks the remarkable debut of Wysocki.

Part of Glee's charm has always been its innocent amateurishness, its just-folks aura. The live show clings to that conceit - with some pyrotechnics thrown in.

Is Final Fantasy decent sci-fi? Yes, more than decent.

Movie and book both are delightful, but very, very different.

Linklater, drawing from his own experiences as a baseball player at Sam Houston State University, looks back with affection, a knowing wink, and maybe the beginnings of an apologetic shrug at the jerk behavior, the locker-room pranks. These guys smell freedom in the air - and maybe some pot smoke, too.

Much as I was moved by the film, I have one reservation and one warning. The framing device of the older Pi recounting his story to the author (which worked so well in Martel's novel) is intrusive and significantly detracts from the story.

On the Road is an honorable homage to the bennies-and-booze-and-bebop-driven hegiras undertaken by the fiercely dedicated anti-establishment duo. But in Salles, screenwriter Jose Rivera and company's effort to get the details right, they only get so far. And it's not quite far enough.

As for the scary business - it is, indeed, scary, delivered with an intensity that will make you think twice the next time you find yourself driving alone, or opening a closet door when no one else happens to be around.

On stage variously with Boyz II Men, Jaden Smith, Miley Cyrus, and Ludacris, Bieber carries himself like a squeaky-clean homeboy with an angelic voice. On him, swagger looks sweet.

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.

Damon, starring in his first full-fledged action pic, brings a determined bearing and believability to the proceedings.

This movie will shake your windows and rattle your walls.

In the end, Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban offers what neither of its predecessors, for all their wand-waving and witch-brooms, had: real magic.

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

The heroine of this story is the eloquent Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett's mother, who recalls her fight to have an open-casket funeral for her son.

Stanford and Neuwirth are performers of such nuance that a mere glimpse of his body language and her bawdy language speak volumes about the difference between love and sex, the ideal and the real.

Safe House rockets along, taking a familiar formula and making it work - hard.

Casa de Mi Padre is at its best (a relative term, mind you) when it's at its silliest and most surreal.

Spiced with melancholy and magic, Micmacs is an imaginative live-action film with the playfulness of an animation like "Ratatouille." Similarly, it is a fable of subterraneans who change how life is lived above ground in a Paris that is both retro and modern.

Any resemblance between this film and "Casablanca" is purely deliberate.

For lovers of classical French cinema, and I am one, this earthy throwback is a whiff of lavender borne by the bracing winds of the mistral.

Somehow, Reacher gets under your skin with his mordant wit, razor-sharp intelligence, and existentialist intensity.

A haunting neo-noir about a man told by a palmist that his karma is about to run over his dogma.

The parade of senators parroting the rationale for invasion - what we now know was misinformation - does not undermine Young's story. Given the private's eloquence, the flashbacks to 2002 are superfluous.

Bakri, a newcomer to acting, has presence and power. His intensity and determination become Omar's.

Ultimately, Somewhere may be too static, too minimalist a tale. But there's grace here.

Michael Elliot, the Philadelphia native who wrote Just Wright as a vehicle for Latifah - and who was on set for most of the shoot - says that Common's earnestness, and eagerness, and his sense of responsibility in carrying the movie, were palpable.

Robert Evans has been variously described as the Hugh Hefner of Hollywood, a Tinseltown Gatsby, the Lancelot of the backlot.