By no means is this a good movie, but it's warmed by the solar energy of its star, who surely deserves better than this formula empowerment flick.

It's not just Hollywood convention that gets in the way of the story, it's the lack of depth, heft and heart at its core.

Tender but never sappy, Monsieur Ibrahim brings two people of vastly different age and background together in ways that are touching, and telling. It's a small, glowing gem.

Wondrously emotional film, one that sneakily dismantles your defenses and purges grief you didn't realize you had.

With a bit of Tintin and Tati, Charlie Chaplin and Wallace and Gromit echoing in the pacing and comic sensibility, Triplets of Belleville conjures up a world that's totally surprising and sublime.

Aspires to the devilish crudity and unfettered social commentary of South Park. But Zwigoff's direction lacks the exaggerated cartoonishness necessary.

The result is like near-beer: The taste is familiar, but the spirit is missing.

Cheesy and loads of fun.

The Cooler is small-scale moviemaking about small-scale lives. But it's big in all the right ways.

This sad, staggering drama should be seen: out of the grimness, and the profound calamity, you can almost taste life in your mouth.

It pains me to tell you, But really, it's true: The Cat in the Hat Is a piece of dog doo.

For those who want nothing more than a thorough scare, Gothika is effective. But for those of us who want some psychological insight with our frightfests, the film is sadly lacking.

Where Denys Arcand's delightful 1986 comedy "The Decline of the American Empire" celebrated the good life, his profoundly funny sequel The Barbarian Invasions heartily toasts the good death.

Just misses being great. The dark shaman mysticism doesn't entirely mesh with the earthbound quest across the wild and glorious Southwest. And the ending, with its shoot-outs and sacrifices, has a choppy, unneccessarily complicated feel.

An appealing, low-budget musical.

An intimate epic of infinite grace.

Fraser and Elfman are goofily endearing even if they seem more sincere acting opposite the rabbit and the duck than they do each other.

It's a compelling piece of propaganda that argues for Shakur, whose 1996 murder in Las Vegas at age 25 remains unsolved, as a complicated individual, ambitious artist and magnetic personality by using the most persuasive weapons at its command: Tupac himself.

A beautiful eyeful of puckish whimsy and dark-humored mystery, Hukkle (it means hiccup in Hungarian) is a little gem in which nature and humankind commingle, where coincidence and causality collide in a chain of odd, even murderous, events.

Not only is it the best documentary in a vintage season for nonfiction films (see "American Splendor," "Capturing the Friedmans," and "Spellbound"), it's also one of the best films of the year. It's as lyrical about the particulars of Kahn as it is about the universals of fathers and sons.

Pays homage to a sack of Christmas movies, from the department store Claus of "Miracle on 34th Street" to a standing-on-the-bridge-contemplating-suicide moment, a la "It's a Wonderful Life."

At times soppy, sentimental and shamelessly romantic, at other moments bursting with clever barbs -- and now and then zooming in on something telling and poignant -- Love Actually is just about impossible to dislike.

There are, to be sure, some impressive special effects here, and whoever Warner Bros. hires to make the new Superman movie should take notes.

Remarkable documentary.

The sequences with the melancholy Faunia are monochromatic and those with Lester perfunctory. Benton too neatly -- and too hastily -- wraps up a story that would surely exert more power if it were messy and unrushed.

Fails on a couple of levels. It never really gives you a sense of the psychology, the root causes behind Glass' elaborate frauds... And since we don't know the why, the how becomes considerably less interesting.

My advice: Skip Beyond Borders and write a check to the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders.

The real Radio, and the real coach -- seen together in the movie's feel-good epilogue -- deserve better.