It's a justifiably G-rated film, but parents may have some 'splainin' to do.

Bekmambetov revs it up furiously and unleashes one bit of hyperactive, dazzling invention after another. The result is a throwaway wrapped up in the coolest packaging imaginable, which is acres better than the opposite.

A basketball documentary where the climactic game looks like a Hong Kong wire-fu epic.

What's different here is the setting: Instead of modern-day misogyny, the heroine of The Last Mistress is up against its 19th-century version.

For the most part it's dull, bland and unsatisfying: a food-court version of home cooking.

I still kind of find myself admiring the actor, and the film. Love Guru is insane and self-indulgent but also fully committed, and there's a surprising undercurrent of earnestness to its philosophy portions.

Like many things about Brick Lane, this story is dealt with in too cursory and pat a fashion. The film's heart can't be faulted, but its head is working in a regrettably low gear.

Think of the worst Spielberg thriller or one of Hitchcock's dull late career works, then make it ugly and fill it with bad performances; voila: The Happening.

Loses something when it depends on its computer-generated creatures to carry the story. The effects are a mile above the previous Hulk film, but there's still a certain awkwardness to some movements, and an odd lack of definition to the massive muscles that makes them seem like gelatinous sacks of meat.

Director Jan Hrebejk and screenwriter Petr Jarchovsky ("Divided We Fall," "Up and Down") have crafted another well-observed tale, one with no heroes or villains, just people trying to make something of the situations in which they find themselves. And, with a nicely ambiguous ending, it's drama enough.

It's sometimes uneven, but it's glorious, too, with constantly churning invention and the guarantee that you have never seen anything like it before -- unless it came from Winnipeg and Guy Maddin.

It's Herzog-light, in a way -- more travelogue than dissection. But it's filled with small riches, not least of which is the director's amazing narration. Can't you just imagine him reading "Green Eggs and Ham"?

The result is a genuinely pleasing kung fu movie that kids and grown-ups can enjoy.

Might actually be the stupidest movie with good intentions that I've ever seen.

This is a violent, romantic, beautifully shot and performed film -- with brutal battle scenes and charisma-bomb performances by Asano as the future Khan and Honglei Sun as a rival chieftain and brother-in-arms.

Conrad seems to have used whatever clout he got from "The Pursuit of Happyness" to fund something personal and sincere -- a story that's ultimately about victories of character and suppressing your worst impulses.

Entertaining and informative.

The always thin tightrope between "laughing at" and "laughing with" is negotiated with success in the low-budget comedy The Foot Fist Way.

If you might wish the film got deeper under the skin of the characters, you also feel grateful for the fact that you'll never get closer to them than watching it.

It more or less plays like a five-episode arc of the series, which is a strength and a weakness.

As pointless suspense exercises go, The Strangers at least gets off to a good start.

Unfortunately, the film loses its merciless rage toward the end, devolving into a stock and broadly comic thriller about unpleasant people you never quite get to know.

An old-fashioned story of courage and self-sacrifice in the face of war and deprivation. It's also sappy, boring and obvious.

Comes up with some decent jokes, including a talking car-based GPS system which doubles as a therapist, and a suggestive Yonica number titled "I Want to Blow You Up," but fails to surround them with a compelling story or characters who rise above the level of cliche.

The movie's pretty good, occasionally very good. But I also kind of hope they don't make another one.

Akin is German-born but of Turkish heritage, and his films have often been concerned with the particular clashes and conflicts between those cultures. This film, though, does so in a much more oblique way than 2004's "Head-On."

Youth may be wasted on some of the young, but the two aspiring Norwegian novelists at the center of Reprise, director Joachim Trier's debut feature, try desperately to avoid that particular cliche.

Filled with energy and visual pizzazz and at least strives for something more than dumb entertainment.

There's no doubt that Tarsem's a visionary director. Now he needs to envision a worthwhile script for himself.

Nest of Spies may be a small, subtitled release, but it's also a gauntlet thrown at the feet of the upcoming big-screen adaptation of "Get Smart." See it and you'll have a substantial idea of what a spy comedy should be.

It's a fascinating patchwork.

After the initial charm wears off, the whole thing gets check-your-text-messages dull.

There are more compelling stories to be found in the comic book world, and there are more expressive directors than Jon Favreau. But on the bases of wit, verve, spirit and whiz-bangery, it's pretty tough to find fault with.

Mike Terry's uncompromising fight for his principles makes for a fascinating, beautifully acted study in philosophical tension.

Watching skinny-armed little Will pretend to be the spawn of Sly Stallone in a series of botched feats of derring-do is a treat, as is much of this film.

The word "hermaphrodite" is never actually uttered, for instance, and the whole topic is revealed obliquely, mostly through the puzzled eyes of Alvaro. Most impressively, a tale that could have been handled with condescending simplicity becomes a testament to the flawed but noble humanity of both parents and children.

Sporadically funny, bland, talent-wasting junk.

There's a lot of pleasure in seeing a mature filmmaker put together something so intricate with what seems like so little strain.

Just because others bear blame for what went on doesn't mean they bore none, and while the deal they got was raw, they never lacked the ability to say no.

The plot, as hinted, goes strictly by the "How April Got Her Groove Back" book, but it must be said that the performances push it a notch above pedestrian.

Minkoff lets the fight scenes go on for a while, which is nice, and all the best bits are in the middle, when Jackie and Jet spend a lot of time playing off each other.

Make no mistake: This isn't a relentless button-pushing joke machine like the best Apatow schlumpy-man comedies. I guess I'd describe it as "agreeably ribald."

Confused, morally queasy, self-important mess.

No doubt this is a sincere film. But its wobbly technique prevents it from ever reaching a point.

The ensemble can't bring enough, though, to overcome the unoriginal setup and predictable story arc.

For what's essentially a bad movie, Street Kings is fairly tight and energetic.

The combined effect is, as I say, small but sincere. McCarthy may prove to have something bigger in him, or he may be a miniaturist content to build little stories and fill them with all the humanity they can bear. If that's the case, there are far less worthy ways to spend a career.

As a chronicle of an extreme surfing subculture, Bra Boys is semi-fascinating. As a chronicle of rough-and-tumble street life, it's appallingly biased and self-glorifying.

If Young at Heart were merely a cheeky presentation of codgers belting out inappropriate tunes, it would be a curiosity and nothing more. But by getting inside the lives of a few of its members, the movie ultimately paints a moving portrait of senior citizens who believe it's better to burn out than fade away.

Ultimately, though, it's hard not to feel like Hou is saying more explicitly and expansively in nearly two hours what Lamorisse managed to convey in only one-fourth as much film.

Football, they say, is a game of inches, and so can be moviemaking, and Leatherheads is a completely charming film that comes a few inches from being a great one.

It's a stylish and sweet film with moments of affecting brilliance that counterbalance its flaws.

Three stories in one. This might be two stories too many.

An altogether astounding testimony to the band's longevity, vitality and verve.

A modest little caper film that satisfies chiefly because of its relative familiarity and lack of ambition.

The humor tends toward the mildly crass -- bare buttocks and inappropriate scratching are Schwimmer's go-to comedy staples -- and the story is ridiculous. But Pegg, who co-wrote the script, plays to his strengths. You can't help but root for the loser.

21 isn't insultingly stupid. But there's a gap between what we're told about its characters and what we can see for ourselves, a gap that gets larger and more frustrating as the film goes on.

If Schaefer's intent was to provide some sort of insight into Chapman's character, some hint of explanation for this senseless tragedy, he fails, probably because there's none to be found beyond one lonely guy's addled brain chemistry.

Though it's well-cast and convincingly captures the look and feel of its era, the film loses steam as Accio's story meanders to a predictable conclusion.

It's a fun and attractive ride.

Pierce never pulls these pieces together satisfyingly, and the result is a botched effort to put a human face on a genuinely alarming situation.

Do yourself a favor. Rent "My Bodyguard" instead.

The oddball cast, by the way, includes Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, who is infinitely more convincing speaking Cantonese than she is in her (presumably native) English.

There are small pleasures, but not many. It especially underwhelms when you consider how Penn seemed to have found a new paradigm for this now-hoary comic form.

There's real chemistry between the two actors.

Mixed messages are the order of the day in the conflicted British drama Irina Palm. At first blush, it seems like another entry in the saucy-but-safe Brit genre, a la "Calendar Girls," "Saving Grace" or "The Full Monty," but it turns out to be both more ambitious and less successful than those diversions.

First-time director Patricia Riggen uses parallel story lines to tell the mother's and son's tales...It's a storytelling technique that's meant to emphasize how mother and son are utterly unaware of the other's struggles, but instead it robs the plot of tension, making the inevitable reunion seem schmaltzy.

After the terrifying grotesques that were the live-action "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and "The Cat in the Hat," it was easy to dread a feature-length Horton Hears a Who!. But -- surprise -- the computer-animated "Horton" is largely funny and faithful to the spirit of the Dr. Seuss book.

One might reasonably despise Funny Games and consider Haneke an exploitative hypocrite. Still, whether it's the original or the replica, this is a film that is impossible to enjoy and difficult to forget.

It's awful. Awful. That's all. Keep walking. For the love of all that's holy. Keep. Walking.

One doesn't want to oversell the film; you could catch it on DVD and regret nothing. But, frankly, in a marketplace that tends toward cranked-up action thrills, it's just nice to watch a level-headed crime movie aimed at actual grown-ups.

There is something, well, awesome about watching these vivid young women realize that music isn't always made on computers as they give their bands cool names like the Ready and get onstage after five days and ferociously sing earnest lyrics they wrote themselves.

Ultimately, the movie takes its characters, and the absurd ethical dilemma it subjects them to, far too seriously.

Van Sant has been quoted in recent media reports as being done with the type of filmmaking that these four movies represent. If that's true, then Paranoid Park is a fine summation of what he learned from making them.

The result feels less like selling out than growing up.

It's energetic and occasionally inspired. Its gritty, sweaty, shiny feel deepens the case that there's a vital new essence to Brazilian cinema.

Sometimes the best way to relate history is to tinker with it and make it feel like a living thing.

The all-description storytelling leads to other problems, too, the worst being that "Boleyn" suffers from the same affliction as "The Golden Compass," where you're told about interesting stuff happening elsewhere in another movie you'd much rather be watching.

Reese Witherspoon, whose production company made Penelope, contributes an inflated cameo that feels forced.

Instead of a unique directorial style and a memorable soundtrack, we get a movie that, visually and aurally, pretty much goes by the book.

The film suffers slightly from diminishing returns -- its first third is by far its scariest -- but it's still a bold, artful take on a popular horror idea.

While terrific entertainment, The Counterfeiters fails to stir the soul.

The performances are solid and subtle, with Depardieu growing nicely into the brooding, smarter-than-he-looks roles his father tackled for years.

A slick and exciting film

A sweet, intelligent little movie.

The flashback itself is a romantic dramedy that's far smarter than junk like "27 Dresses." Unfortunately, to enjoy that flashback, you have to ignore two gargantuan idiocies: No sane father would twist his daughter into knots by telling this story. It's full of booze, cigarettes, infidelity and sex with women who aren't Mom.

It may be mindless and sexless and humorless, but Jumper jumps.

A charming little film built of bits of music, romance, cultural conflict and the simple human need to connect.

It's almost like you're watching a 100-minute trailer for a much better six-hour miniseries.

To be fair, Rudd and Bell are cute and funny in their scenes together, and Rudd salvages a few laughs with his deadpan line readings.

Yet another mediocre-to-lame thriller shot in Portland.

A grueling film in both technique and subject matter.

A fascinating and frustrating film in turns, created out of scorching passions and built around a fascinating performance but rambling and choppy in the telling. It can overwhelm you and puzzle and repel you, sometimes within moments.

A clever and affecting thriller/comedy about a subject that absolutely cannot be written about in a daily newspaper or website that's for a general audience. The film is a giddy pastiche of styles -- slasher picture, faith film, social satire, teen romp, '50s atom bomb monster movie -- and it makes you laugh and squirm and grin in appreciation.

It's not Allen's weakest work, not by far. But its impact is shockingly superficial.

It's a sharp and vivid film, filled with moments of tremendous ingenuity and characterized by a persistent avoidance of the expected tropes. It's far scarier than the big-budget remakes of "Godzilla" and "King Kong," more engaging than "I Am Legend," more human than a sackful of slasher films.

The movie is not so much horrible as it is drab -- from its lazy plotting to its uninspired yuks to its cop-out ending to its relentlessly yellow-brown sets. "Mad Money" does little more than take up space, and you will be two hours closer to the grave when you leave the theater.

The only bright spot is Marsden, a great actor who's always stuck playing the less-desirable romantic rival (see: "The Notebook," "X-Men," "Superman Returns"). He finally gets the fun-guy role for a change and does everything he can to rip it up. He can only do so much.