Dramatically speaking, the movie version of The Notebook has a first act and a last act but lacks a transition. If it were a sandwich, it would be two slices of bread without filling.

The first family of black comedy goes at this bawdy burlesque with a broad brush. They get their laughs, but not without a lot of unsightly spillage.

As a character assassin, Moore fails, because you can't kill anyone with contempt and sarcasm. And as an independent counsel prosecuting Bush for bamboozling America, Moore likewise misses his mark because many of the exhibits he offers as evidence are emotional rather than factual.

Anyone with a sizable role in Dodgeball gets mired in the script's dissipated tone. Two of the climactic jokes involve "Happy Days" references. How tenuous is that?

It's a hokey piece of melodrama in a movie that cheats its characters - and its audience - out of some emotional truth.

As a piece of filmmaking, What the Bleep isn't exactly transcendent stuff. But as an entryway into new ways of thinking about the self, the universe, and the vast infinite whatnot of whatever (you know what we mean, oh wise one), this little movie is big.

Facing Windows is rich stuff. Maybe too rich. But thanks to fine performances and a grounded script, the pieces of this intriguing little puzzle all manage to fit.

Not even Chan's imaginative fight choreography redeems this folly.

An overblown hodgepodge of volcano-baked desertscapes, Egyptoid-gone-baroque architecture, and gladiator-geared storm troopers with goofy headpieces, The Chronicles of Riddick bears no resemblance to the movie that spawned its namesake.

Only Close, in a majestically, maniacally brittle demonstration of Stepford overdrive, has the courage to show how nutty the pursuit of domestic perfection is. In this mess of a film, she is perfection.

However terrific Murray is, if Antonio Banderas, mellifluous voice of Puss-in-Boots in "Shrek 2," went paw to claw with Garfield, Puss would definitely triumph.

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.

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.

While it's too slight a movie for overpraise, there are such a serenity of vision and clarity of purpose to these characters that we easily are caught up in the boys' struggle to reunite mother and child.

One of the film's cleverest devices is a "Personality Diagnostic Checklist" that equates corporate "serial behaviors" - exploitation, deception, greed, lack of empathy and guilt - with the antisocial makeup of a certifiable psychopath.

Never mind the cool, convincing effects (and they are cool), The Day After Tomorrow teems with illogical action, improbable coincidences. It's pure escapist fare, a popcorn gobbler.

A raunchy spoof of the disaster-movie lampoon Airplane! - does everything to get the laugh. And in the way that a broken watch is right twice a day, a shotgun comedy like this one occasionally hits its target.

Sobering and wildly entertaining.

Despite a strong cast and a willingness to lampoon the fundamentals of fundamentalism, Saved! isn't as funny, or as wicked, as it should be.

What Raising Helen doesn't offer is a competent (never mind compelling) performance from Hudson, who is as cute as lace pants and has approximately as much acting skill.

It's strong stuff.

There's nothing original, nor compelling, about Twist.

Shrek 2 is a dream, a sequel as exhilarating and riotously funny as 2001's top-grossing original.

The cast, headed by the divine Jamie Foxx, is better than the material. Director Daniel Taplitz is better than the material.

When the film focuses on the Trojans, it's splendid. But when Troy attempts to sort out the competing agendas of the Greeks, it drags.

Searing and hypnotic docudrama.

Very slight and, in the early going, slightly annoying, Coffee and Cigarettes is a long-borning Jarmusch project.

While the movie is content to be merely atmospheric, the performances convince you that here are two misfits who might be a perfect fit.