The Guardian doesn't offer too many surprises. Except for one: it's genuinely well-made and, at least when it comes to the character Ben Randall, kind of moving.

The romance is the movie's least interesting element. But Heder's low-key, surprising charm and Thorton's gleeful wickedness at least glide the film in for a landing. You'll enjoy yourself.

The story of Dito escaping and then facing his demons is meaningful. But that story is so buried in actorly noise that it feels false.

It's a lively, charming film, and if it gave us a little more of the band's history, it would be perfect. As it is, it's a perfect introduction to some great songs and fascinating characters.

For Whitaker's performance alone, Last King is a substantial piece of work. Otherwise, the film is estimable but not quite great.

The problem is that so little in this version of All the King's Men speaks to the here and now or even speaks clearly. It feels like a repertory exercise -- and not a very successful one at that.

Though it somehow manages to be a movie about inner peace with crazy, incredibly staged fight scenes every 10 minutes, it is, first and foremost, a movie about inner peace.

By gilding the lily so shamelessly, Ewing and Grady guarantee they'll preach only to the converted.

Hardcore might have been confused and crude, but it was never guilty of being tepid, like this film.

This fascinating and occasionally transporting film never quite transforms into something really great.

The Black Dahlia has sparks of brilliance, swaths of dark intensity, unpredictable crackles of wit, some solid acting. But it's chiefly flat and ambling and dull, insufficient in musculature and overripe with melodrama.

Feels less like a movie and more like a Tony Robbins motivational seminar.

For the most part, The Last Kiss engages and pleases with its shaggy earnestness.

Lennon's story is so remarkable and the footage assembled here so fresh and fascinating that the film engrosses despite its formal failings. Give it a chance.

Moderately amusing.

Fans of Franken's wittier print and broadcast work might smile. But I haven't seen this much smug, awkward laughter and bathos since, well, "Man of the Year."

While Coulter and company try gamely to forge two powerful stories, they manage, finally, about one-and-a-half -- which is a lot more than most films, and for which moviegoers should be grateful.

The Protector is the nuttiest movie I've seen all year, and I've seen the last 20 minutes of "The Wicker Man."

Really, though, the most surprising thing about this system is how it disregards some of the basic tenets of conservatism.

The halting dialogue, full of awkward pauses and restarts, seems improvised in the way that only carefully scripted material can.

It's a film that can leave you on the fence. There's great facility with non-pro actors, with unusual locations, with both intimate and epic-scale scenes. Yet at the same time, Takata's reserve overwhelms the picture and makes its efforts to elicit emotions seem clumsy.

A revealing, compelling, scabrous and funny look into a system characterized by through-the-looking-glass logic and Kremlin-style secrecy.

It's fun-dumb and definitely not everyone's cup of tea -- I don't want to oversell it -- but Broken Lizard keeps it interesting by refusing to color inside the lines, creating their own silly little universe.

Papale's story is more than any fan could dream of, which is why it's frustrating that Invincible feels the need to embellish it. While mentioning he never played football in college, the film ignores that he did play in a semipro league prior to his Eagles tryout.

You still marvel at the visuals -- cinematographer M. David Mullen has done miracles with what must have been a microscopic budget -- but you're less invested in the tale. Which is a pity, because it might have been a perfect little potboiler. As it stands, it's merely pretty darned good of its type.

It's one of the few genuinely funny comedies in a dismal movie summer.

The Illusionist might trick some moviegoers into thinking it's clever, deft, old-fashioned fun. But I urge those folks to stay home with a real classic romantic thriller on DVD or cable to remember the difference. This film doesn't even manage to breathe old life into the forms it apes.

Warts and all, Factotum feels very close to the real thing.

Has some good laughs courtesy of its cast -- but they're basically papering over a script that's masquerading as urbane and trenchant, when it's really self-involved and didactic and more than a little foolish.

Gosling, who was amazing in "The Believer" but hasn't yet connected substantially with a big audience, continues to impress.

Whether Waddington's film comes across as hypnotic or boring, mythic or pretentious, may depend on the viewer's mood or tolerance for quasi-allegorical storytelling. But, as the women in House of Sand learn, patience can sometimes be its own reward.

Where "United 93" was lean and merciless and got you thinking hard about how you might conduct yourself in a no-win situation, World Trade Center is reassuring.

A nasty little tube of frozen horror concentrate.

A movie adapted from a novel inspired by a person who probably never existed.

A sweet and wise little film.

Good intentions and strong thespians aside, Seidelman's writing and filmmaking are bland, obvious and uninvolving.

It's got some great action sequences and is peppered with genuinely dazzling images. It's also subtly infused with Mann's favored themes of men-at-work and the high price of loyalty to duty. But it hasn't got sufficient meat to warrant its draggy length.

The film is a pleasure that doesn't rank with Allen's best but satisfies far more than most American comedies.

Getting worked up about John Tucker Must Die is a bit like getting worked up about the taste of flan.

A stylish and unnerving thriller that sucks you into surreal scenes of horror with the chilly confidence of a nightmare.

Mostly it's about taxes -- namely, the argument that the Federal Income Tax, enacted in 1913, is unconstitutional and has been ruled as such by the Supreme Court, and that no law exists today requiring Americans to pay it.

There are real thrills here, especially as the Bang Bang starts touring and becomes a minor sensation. But it's a little too hermetic and goopy and humorless and cool to invite you to wrap your arms around it. The Howes shared a single liver, but what this film version of their lives needs is more heart.

A painful, funny and fresh comedy.

It mostly manages the impressive feat of mixing jaw-droppingly gross jokes with characters that are worth caring about.

The man has gifts -- but acting and, it's increasingly clear, storytelling aren't among them.

Monster House makes its intentions clear: It wants to wrap you in a thick, warm blanket of 1980s nostalgia.

Super Ex does have a certain low-key, adult-contemporary charm. It's almost entirely because of Luke Wilson.

A comedy that's only kind of funny some of the time.

Sufficiently resembles the first film that the heartiest fans should be content.

Turns out to be more ordinary than the recipe might suggest. Oh, it's dense and funny and assured, but it's also chatty and listless in a fashion that constrains a narrative film, which, however reluctantly, it is.

Heading South is strong in bursts, but the bursts are too diffuse for its best moments to last.

As it stands, this is little more than a sketchy portrait of two fascinating cultural moments with only geography and 70-ish minutes of celluloid connecting them.

Funky, scrappy, dishy, screwy story of that star-studded, gilded squad.

Effortless fun: It plays like a giddy horror movie with its laughs wrapped in couture gowns.

A dull, uninspiring film that combines pedestrian acting, lackluster special effects and deadly pace with a pseudo-religious theme.

A sometimes very funny movie made by very funny people.

They were fast, they were sexy, they were clean, they were the future -- and they're already gone.

In drama, tone, character and examination of the social issues tormenting these kids, Wassup Rockers is . . . taxing.

An unsteady mishmash of snot-nosed humor and treacly Hollywood sentimentality.

Overall, there's a patchwork quality to the movie, as if a batch of half-finished short stories were filmed before their time.

If there's a calmer, more self-collected star out there, then he or she has hidden the fact pretty well.

As idiot car-crash movies go, "Tokyo Drift" is pretty fun, and certainly a more-than-decent entry in this franchise.

It's hard to overestimate what a job of work was accomplished here to keep this from being a catastrophe. But The Lake House, despite its dubious foundation, proves surprisingly sturdy.

You either come into Nacho Libre ready to surrender yourself to Hess' quirks and smirks or you don't. Middle ground is virtually impossible to imagine.

Three potent performances readily compensate for the familiar plot.

Despite a strong start, Only Human loses its grip on all that merry energy and comes to feel more like a sitcom than like "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" or "Some Like It Hot," to name just some of its forebears.

In breezy fashion, it introduces us to a handful of crossword savants, the history of crossword puzzles, a number of celebrity crossword addicts...

There's so much to impress and delight you that the time flies by.

As it stands, it entertains quite a bit, frustrates too much, and leaves you feeling slightly undernourished, like a meal of tasty but not filling hors d'oeuvres.

Intimate, funny, moving and incredibly rousing -- even if you're allergic to sports movies.

The result is a sepia-toned muddle.

Transplanting so much of the original story to a 21st-century setting only amplifies how badly the story has aged.

It's an ambitious idea that monkeys with your expectations: make a whole movie about the ugly, hurt-feelings part of the relationship that's usually disposed of in a romantic-comedy musical montage. Unfortunately, like a bad boyfriend, The Break-Up has a problem with consistency.

As a brief introduction to Belle and his amazing gifts, District B 13 is a treat. But as a movie its feet are dully planted on the ground.

You might be better off reading the book and imagining Nolte as Socrates.

The edited footage has an intensity and immediacy you won't find on cable news networks.

In a film culture in which contrived tomfoolery and overinflated emotions stifle in their effort to provide comedy and romance, something as light and precise as The Puffy Chair feels like more than an exception; it feels like fresh air.

The movie, like the man, seems more interested in spreading the gospel of environmental responsibility, and in doing so it's probably the most important film of the year.

It adds up to a chatty film of genuine visual interest and occasionally sharp acting but no visceral appeal or satisfaction. It's a movie that plays like a book -- that is, watching it is more like reading than a thriller should ever be.

This isn't much of a plot, but as in the "Toy Story" films the combination of a varied cast of characters and a vision of the human world from an unlikely perspective make for consistent amusement.

The King feels like a morality play without any morals.

If you're content to let dream logic take over, a lot can be gleaned from this odd, darkly funny meditation on life, death, love and revenge.

I'd argue that a very good movie could have been great if it had kept to subtler psychological tones.

Poseidon '06 is spectacularly noisy, uninteresting and character-free.

There's enough realism to keep a soccer buff like me happy, but the film is aimed at the young at heart, and I think they'll love it.

Meadows loses control as he goes along, veering into assorted noodling and sacrificing the knife's-edge clarity of the early going for something arty and artificial.

Toothless, limp and clumsy.

As in so many films directed by actors, there's a generosity shown to performance that results in many lifelike moments.

A bright, sexy, globe-trotting and very French romantic comedy.

Absent the real sense of creepiness and highly honed film craft of De Palma, or the strong visual and emotional sensibility of Woo, M: I III feels like one of the more forgettable James Bond films -- saddled, moreover, with a star who's sliding into self-parody.

Succeeds only in fits and starts.

It's meant to be funny, but I couldn't help thinking they were figuring out where to plant the pipe bombs.

Odd, beautiful and ambitious film.

There is life to The Proposition, though, and brutal, pitiless life it is. If it breathed more (and if Huston had spoken less), it might have been remarkable. As it is, it's monotonous, grim and uneven.

Other than flubbing the dismount, Stick It is smarter and funnier than it has any right to be.

I am here to tell you that Greengrass has fashioned one of the most powerful films I have ever seen, and that watching it makes you value your loved ones and your privileges more, perhaps, than you ever have. He has made a film that makes you feel, makes you think and makes you want to connect. And that, finally, might be the greatest thing that art can do.

It's unfortunate that the lack of originality in plot and character keeps Akeelah and the Bee stuck firmly in "After-School Special" territory.

With the exception of one long improv riff on a campground basketball court, Williams nicely underplays his role. Unfortunately, Sonnenfeld also underplays his. We should expect more of him.