This is more than the story of soldiers grappling with stress and doubt as they reenter the "normal" flow of domestic life. It's about strangers bonding, about friendship and discovery, about the comedy and tragedy of the human experience.

Feels downright ancient.

Lakeview Terrace's pretense at exploring racial intolerance has been exposed for what it really is: a B-movie copout.

First and last, Appaloosa is the slow-but-sure story of the friendship between Virgil and Everett, one a man of action surprised by emotion, the other a man of emotion surprised by action.

While I much liked The Duchess, this portrait feels unfinished.

A goofy screwball romp that affords a gaggle of A-listers the chance to hambone around in antic style.

English wrangles her talent like a virtuoso. Best is Murphy Brown herself, Candice Bergen.

A twisty, turny and ultimately silly thriller from "Inside Man's" Russell Gewirtz.

The result is a movie about the many forms of social and sexual abuse that does not make the abusee a victim but victor.

Was it just three years ago that Perry made his feature debut with "Diary of a Mad Black Woman?" Then his filmmaking was strictly amateur; now his sweeping pans and portentous closeups approach those of Pedro Almódovar.

As a cinematic experience, it's like being locked in a coffin for an hour and a half.

Full of clunky humor, battle-of-the-sexes musings and spicy accordion music, Everybody Wants to Be Italian is relentless - but not necessarily relentless fun.

What's admirable about Save Me is that it grounds its religious and cultural debate not in vilifying one side but in sympathizing with both.

Delicious confection about the resilient Czech character, tastes like a bittersweet chocolate souffle, it's much more substantial than dessert.

Don Cheadle, wiry and wired, delivers an electrifying performance in Traitor.

Despite a winning performance by Anna Faris, the cutest thing in platform shoes since Goldie Hawn, the film falls on its keister so many times that before long the perky pinkness turns bruising black-and-blue.

Only in its aggressively imaginative profanity is the film consistent.

Insightful and involving.

There's no quick fix for a culture "addicted to debt," as one wag puts it in the film. But watching I.O.U.S.A. is a good place to start.

The Rocker can be amusingly dopey, with its "Spinal Tap"-ish lampooning of rock idioms - and idiots.

The best that can be said about the movie is that it's harmless and mostly charmless. The Clone Wars is to Star Wars what karaoke is to pop music.

Smoking, shouting, practically shooting off sparks, Cruz spreads a wildfire sexuality across Allen's sunny tableau of Catalan country picnics and scenic Barcelona ramblings.

A kind of deadpan soap opera - but one that, despite its high melodrama and wicked humor, delivers a real emotional wallop.

There's real joy in O'Day's eyes - and larynx - as she bobs and weaves through an amazing songbook.

Handsomely photographed by Eric Schmidt and nicely underplayed by the actors, the film relies too much on its jukebox soundtrack to convey mood.

The script appears to have been designed, created and produced entirely in 1-D: a mishmash of kidcentric antics, follow-your-dream cliches, and innocuously icky humor.

Raunchy, raucous and riotously funny.

If Coixet's film is substantially more restrained than its explicit source material (Nicholas Meyer, himself a fine novelist and director of the second and best Star Trek film, adapted), it is no less provocative as a poetic meditation on love, sex and death.