A great story - and a true one, more or less - Bottle Shock nonetheless fails to deliver much in the way of entertainment.

The resulting drama is more deeply felt than it is deep. But I can't think of another film so frankly dealing with what we expect from friendship, so tenderly showing how friends can fail in one area, yet be there in another.

The movie bogs down in tiresome good guys vs. bad guys action cliches.

Swing Vote is messy and its targets are relatively safe. But its aim is true. And Costner's performance hits the bull's-eye.

With a moody overlay of songs supplied by Okkervil River and Shearwater, In Search of a Midnight Kiss also serves as a millennial's answer to Woody Allen's "Manhattan."

There is nothing sentimental or picturesque about the performances or imagery. The word that best describes both is elemental.

Anderson, who's turned Brit in a number of TV series and films, including "Bleak House" and "The Last King of Scotland," is compelling in her white lab coat and surgical scrubs, and she brings some real tenderness to her tete-a-tetes with Mulder.

While Ferrell and Reilly are great together, hatching harebrained schemes that have no basis in reality, part of the unexpected treat of Step Brothers is watching Jenkins and Steenburgen sink to such blithely immature levels of rude and crude comedy.

So authentic are the subjects, so raw their emotions.

The film is plush and passionate and graced with elegant performances. Best is that of Emma Thompson as Brideshead's matriarch, Lady Marchmain, who resembles a cross between Helen Mirren's Queen Elizabeth II and Pope Benedict.

He had the fearlessness of a 104-story man and something more than a daredevil's brass.

Shakespearean but overlong, The Dark Knight is two hours of heady, involving action that devolves into a mind-numbing 32-minute epilogue.

By turns entertaining and excruciating.

Manages to pull off a couple of startling surprises.

Goes somewhere the first "Hellboy" never ventured: into the Realms of Tedium.

Cheesy, cheesy, cheesy but fun, fun, fun.

Meet Dave isn't great, but it's good enough. And it proves once again that Murphy can do anything - even a PG comedy in which he isn't a donkey.

Johnny Depp, who portrayed Thompson's alter-ego in Gilliam's film, provides the narration. If there's hagiography here, it's counterbalanced by biographical truth.

A smart comedy that serves as both bittersweet coming-of-age tale and '90s nostalgia piece, The Wackness has the feel of authenticity about it, even if some of its details (the ice cream cart, and the therapist's bong, for two) seem a bit much.

A rollicking tale of rehabilitation and redemption, rife with cool special effects, Hancock is smart and surprisingly raunchy.

A terrific mystery, equal parts haunting love story and nimble thriller.

Finding Amanda isn't bad, and there is some smart, jagged humor.

With rich, detailed, cinematic animation and terrific sound effects, WALLE pulls this unlikely love story off.

Wanted is head-spinning stuff, and it's easy to get caught up in its masterfully manipulated mayhem. Visually, and viscerally, it's pretty awesome.

Lush. Debauched. Ravishing. And did I mention sexy?

Trumbo, a rousing documentary as ornery, orotund and captivating as its subject (1905-1976), is an anatomy of irony.

All that's missing is the spirit and the anarchic humor of the sitcom created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. The result is an overdressed, carefully stitched scarecrow of a comedy.

Piles dumb gag upon dumb gag - it's like benign pummeling. Occasionally, you just have to laugh.