Frankly, the wow factor isn't that great.

Hesher has its genuinely affecting scenes, but too much of the time it feels false and shallow.

13 Assassins is, at turns, thrilling and funny, visually exquisite and emotionally charged.

This is an indie film with big stars - but also an indie films with big ideas about bringing real people to life.

While Scott's movie has a consistent aura, it lacks a consistent tone. What are we to make of the movie, gauzy as a mist-shrouded lake and brutal as "Lord of the Flies?"

That this ambitious, if deeply odd, film is so compulsively watchable is a credit to Gibson's compelling performances, both as spiritless Walter and the Cockney-accented voice of the tireless title character.

Like many Apatow films, Bridesmaids has a rambling, disjointed quality, crammed with sequences that elicit laughs without advancing plot.

This buoyant, multigenerational comedy that takes its title from the African American wedding ritual has other distinctions as well. It's relatively raunch-free, it has a sparkling cast that reunites "Waiting to Exhale" stars Angela Bassett and Loretta Devine as combative matriarchs, and it likes its characters well enough to forgive them their faults.

I wanted to like Meek's Cutoff more than I did. Reichardt and her writer, Jonathan Raymond, bring a quiet, watchful sensibility to their work, allowing the actors room to reflect and riff. But the stilted language and rectitude of the times don't always mesh with the acting.

And how can you not reflect about time, and change, and physical and spiritual being, when confronted with such a stunning visual record of human existence?

To paraphrase one of its few laughs, it's a zombie movie directed by Vera Wang.

Hemsworth looks a good deal more like NFL receiver Jeremy Shockey than he does the immortal Avenger.

A beautiful, head-spinning mystery that requires keen attention - and rewards it with a tricky and poetic payoff - The Double Hour is a topflight Euro thriller right up there with "Tell No One."

Hickernell's film aesthetic is straightforward, narrative-driven.

I mean no disrespect to Rosenthal when I say I laughed louder during the movie than during any episode of his hit TV show.

Did I enjoy Shadyac's film? Very much. Do I think he made many of his points more accessibly and entertainingly in Bruce Almighty? You bet.

Hopped up like a kid on a sugar rush, Hoodwinked Too! tries to emulate the "Shrek" formula - mashing Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm with pop-culture references and wisecracking anthropomorphic sidekicks.

Blissfully, brainlessly satisfying.

Tavernier pulls all this off with elegance and style; his battle scenes are tough and bloody, his châteaus grand.

The offbeat comedy is not entirely devoid of charm, but its derivativeness is almost embarrassing.

Is Spurlock selling out by pulling off this stunt? Is he biting the hand that feeds him? Is he working both sides against the middle? And does he think JetBlue is the best airline in the world? You bet.

Though African Cats is G-rated, scenes of animals chowing down on other animals are not for the faint of heart or delicate of stomach. I don't think it's suitable for those under 6, and they should be prepared for real animal behavior. But it's deeply involving and primally moving.

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

Speechy and preachy and just a teeny-weeny bit naughty.

Give Saldanha's film an A-plus for visuals and a B-minus for story.

This provocative account of a war-weary administration that denied Surratt her right to a fair trial starts slow but builds momentum in the scenes with Wright and Evan Rachel Wood as Surratt's flinty daughter, Anna.

Shot on the cheap, with cheesy animated credits and comic-panel "Bams!" and "Pows!" splashed across the screen, Super has a jokey, low-rent quality (or lack of quality) that could be endearing, if Wilson's performance weren't so nihilistically dull, and if there were somebody in the picture who had a soul.

For genre geeks, this can be fun - although nothing in Scream 4 is quite as clever as the filmmakers seem to think it is.