There are movies that are made for the big screen, and movies that are made for the small screen; Passionada is the latter type.

When the picture's good, it's really something; when it's bad, you grit your teeth and pray it will end.

If you've recently watched that great skateboarding documentary "Dogtown and Z-Boys," Grind will play like a soft-pedaled Afterschool Special.

Watching the teachers whip these kids into Wilder recitations is especially intriguing, particularly when their personalities come out during the sometimes-arduous process.

Scattered and silly. If it evokes any strong feelings from you, it will probably be hunger -- the food all looks so good.

Lohan has a fresh presence; in a world of pale blond princesses it's a relief to see a freckled redhead who looks like she eats occasionally. A pleasure, too, to watch a young actress accomplished enough to play not only a punky high schooler, but a punky high schooler with a middle-aged woman trapped insider her.

A picture so powerfully harrowing, its slight shortcomings are forgettable compared to the entire film's cumulative effect. It's that searing.

The film isn't so much a demanding character study as it is a lot of pretty parts pushed together.

Campbell Scott and Hope Davis, both of whom work with such subtlety and depth, rescue the film from Rudolph's seemingly native inability to keep it steadily on course.

Junk this is and ever was, but this is well-acted junk.

Has a curious train-wreck quality to it that keeps you watching and thinking. (Even if you are thinking things like, Why were these lines ever written? When you hear the "turkey" line, your jaw will drop.)

The pleasures of Buffalo Soldiers mainly come early on, before the film becomes a sloppy mixture of tones and story lines. Afterward, you're left mainly puzzled and looking for a way to wash a bitter aftertaste out of your mouth.

The lack of sentimentality and rhetoric is refreshing. It's a grown-up movie about some harsh facts of life.

Quite simply, the "Tomb Raider" series has been flat-out boring, even with the talented and fun Jolie -- who needs to take off those harnesses and get back to real movies. She deserves better.

This is grand, inspiring entertainment of a sort that Hollywood aspires to and rarely achieves.

Though filled with charm and led by three likable characters, the picture spreads its plot points and whimsy so thinly that we can never just relax.

So strained in its "charm" and "pluck" that you grow weary by minute 15, hoping that the teens whose lives it depicts will stop being so darn peppy or sweetly confused or irritatingly dramatic.

This one's painful.

It's a handsome film, and made with verve, but too often the tone wobbles and far, far too many of its jokes hit with a splat.

Though the picture has a generic quality, it also has an ingenious amount of anything-goes that's amusing and frequently exciting. You'll laugh out loud, you'll hide your eyes -- but you'll roll them. too. Nevertheless, it's a fun, if blood- and sun-soaked, ride.

The film manages the rare trick of improving as it unrolls from the utterly putrid to the barely tolerable. And, friends, I wish to say that sometimes that is as good as you can hope for in this racket.

Tommy Wiseau's film oozes sincerity, which is then slathered in a thick coating of oblivious narcissism, and sadly serves as an example that not everyone should follow their bliss...It's the emotional earnestness that places The Room squarely within Susan Sontag's famous definition of pure camp.

The stories don't resonate, the film has a drab look and feel, and it lacks the passionate zing with which the least of Almodovar's works teems.

The performances are solid, and Juuso has a particular charisma. The actors do a commendable job of revealing unimagined layers to their initially one-note roles.

This film might've worked better as a comedy.

There's something refreshingly and truly girlish about the picture's musings and epiphanies that makes its R rating baffling.

The film wears out its welcome by the halfway mark, becoming a silly spectacle.

With the grounded performances, a pleasant look and feel and the brains to refrain from anything more than a quiet portrait of life, The Housekeeper makes for the sort of well-seasoned meal that's so refreshing in the summertime.

There's real craft here and a vision that's nothing if not unique.

Flawed though it may be, it's frequently an unaffected pleasure, in no small part because of Depp but also because of a raffish air that's a welcome respite from the heavy going of "The Matrix Reloaded," "The Hulk" and other behemoths.

As two-dimensional animation, Sinbad is passably attractive, reaching a visual height when it arrives in the surreal, shifting Tartarus.

In its own slightly disturbing way, this psychological thriller serves as an absorbing diversion without sapping brain cells -- almost the perfect summer movie for smart people.

Though there are some funny moments, little in "Red, White and Blonde" is enjoyable.

As an action film it roars forward with agreeable, transporting energy.

Combines spareness in plot and dialogue with luxurious, sensual technique in such a way that the craft sometimes overwhelms the slender story.

Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, a veteran of low-tech Dogme films, work wonders with a digital camera, pausing to take in the beauty of the countryside or an eerily empty London…It's virtuosic without ever quite being showy.

You may strain to recall just what happened an hour after you see it, but there are so many worse things to have to remember in life. It's a relief to focus on something so attractively amusing.

You can't help but think how much better this film would be had Woody Allen directed it...How much more acerbic fun would it be to see Judy Davis playing stenographer to a neurotic, writer's-blocked Woody?

Though stilted and emotionally vacant at times, it's still an entertaining and absorbing experience.

Director Ang Lee displays enormous verve and flair. He creates ingenious transitions between scenes, deploying split-screens in a clever variation on comic book panels and, as ever, drawing coolly impassioned performances from the cast.

Has all the gross-out humor but none of the goofy sweetness. It also has neither of the Farrellys, which is agonizingly evident throughout.

Though The Hard Word feels flimsy at times, its breeziness and humor, along with Pearce's performance, make it infinitely more amusing than it's got any right to be. You get the feeling that these actors had fun making this film, and that fun is contagious.

A film of curiosities and asides, it deliberately eschews plot in favor of character quirk, which is fine in theory and even commendable. But the quirks are lame, the ultimate conflation of story lines is clumsy.

By a certain point The Heart of Me becomes pointlessly depressing and unlikable without offering insight.

The Coens have often been accused of coldness toward their characters, but the verve and wit of their films reveal genuine compassion and heart. Based on the evidence of this film, the Pangs aren't quite there yet.

The best thing about 2 Fast 2 Furious is Tyrese (terrific in Singleton's "Baby Boy"), whose charisma, looks and charm supply the picture with much-needed spark. It's too bad he's stuck in this spotty video game.

More than just a good crime story about the guilt or innocence of Arnold and Jesse Friedman. It's also a fascinating portrait of a seemingly normal middle-class family crumbling before our eyes.

Though moving, Together needed more opera to send us where great music frequently goes -- nearly over the edge.

Manages to be a solid, though not exceptional, heist movie with a good-looking cast and -- maybe -- even better-looking cars.

Like his (Carrey) early work, it's not a particularly good film -- insipidly staged, inanely plotted, too weak to withstand the weight of any inquiries into logic or continuity -- but Carrey's energetic mugging, particularly early on, makes it relatively painless.

The authenticity of its setting and its actors make this effort worth a look.

There's a handful of good scenes (some of the vengeance that's wreaked is priceless) and it's generally well-played. But the soul of the thing isn't distinct enough from the bitterness it portrays.

While breezy and fun, the film is also flimsy and sloppy in style and content.

All you could hope for from a summer movie: dazzling action, jaw-dropping effects, cool clothes, steamy romance and more of the nifty "Matrix" mythology introduced in the 1999 original.

The movie isn't uniformly taut, but it's funny, acid and clever, the work of a fine craftsman working in a comfortable metier.

The performances are uniformly fine, with Perez showing a heavy amount of presence and complexity. It's no wonder the film works best when fixed on his face.

Agreeable and warm, is content for the most part merely to allude to complexity and darkness in the lives of its subjects.

it's so much fun because, like Haynes' film, it's made by people with a genuine love for the entertainment they're bringing back to life. You'd have to be a real prude not to go for it.

In an unassuming way, the film sizzles -- a perfect embodiment, as it happens, of the marriage of the bad man and the man of letters.

An erotic mystery of sorts, the film works because it's laconic rather than talky and its actors are all up for the material.

A murky, turgid work that is no doubt exactly the film Malkovich wished to make but is so indirect and affected as to border on incoherent.

Owning Mahowny may at times feel futile in its colorless, disheartening subject matter, but that's the point -- to see how barren Mahowny's life becomes. Hoffman gives the film relevance.

An engaging spectacle of energy and special effects built around a doomy mood and an ensemble cast vigorously pursuing a story line that isn't nearly as snazzy as the dressing.

Moncrieff's story remains fresh despite the familiarity of its general outline. This is mostly due to the skilled performances she elicits; even when the unfolding events have been seen many times before, watching human beings react realistically never gets old.

The end result is the best documentary you'll see this year, as thrilling a competition as any Super Bowl and as suspenseful a story as any Hitchcock film.

It's gory, it's bleak, it's shamelessly tricky -- and it's also a good deal more fun than it had any right to be.

The combination of emotional anemia, predictable plotting and tepid language makes what might have been a crackerjack treat play like a soggy piece of popcorn.

An unsteady mixture of treacle and dark comedy that never feels as "dark" as it pretends. Though well-intentioned, it's not terribly compelling.

Really, we'd rather just watch a good documentary about the subject. And as the camera flings around, we occasionally forget about what could help the teens and think more about what could help the director: How about a tripod?

A bit of exotic neo-noir, clunky in parts and long, but often engaging and artfully atmospheric as well.

Somewhat marred by Bruno Coulais' treacly New Age score -- as well as by Perrin's somewhat daft and repetitive narration. But the key word is "somewhat." In the main, Winged Migration is an unforgettable piece of moviemaking.

Quick and charming and irresistible.

The Young Unknowns flails about, sometimes realistically, but the cumulative effect is "so what?" These characters may be young and unknown, but they feel old and in the way.

Needing the gristle of its title, the film should have been angrier.

A film that merges cocaine, Ivy League, college applications, the Asian American experience, dark comedy and high school drama while maintaining a personal tone and likable lead characters is just too impressive to knock.

Gallo makes some fatal mistakes in his direction. As Griffin talks, he adds sound effects that are distracting and annoying. It's actually an insult to the comic -- as if his jokes aren't clever enough on their own.

Ponderous, pretentious and boring, Levity becomes ironic on top of itself. You won't pity these people. You'll start laughing at them. Like a clown.

It's a stylish work, seeping with brilliant animation and potentially interesting characters that didn't need so much time to establish themselves. It's worthwhile, but it's a good thing there's a television show to refer to.

Something in the simplicity of its vision gives The Man Without a Past a dimension of heroic grandeur -- and that effect, too, seems to tickle Kaurismaki's funny bone.

Schumacher's depictions of street life are cartoonishly ludicrous and riddled with cliches -- a pair of garish hookers, for instance, can't be excused simply because one is played with engaging vigor by Paula Jai Parker.

If The Good Thief isn't up to the work that inspired it, it's nevertheless fresh and distinct, a shot of citrus in a movie season far too often tasting of pablum.

With a less popcorn-friendly cast and some cheesy special effects, this is a surprisingly engaging, sometimes foolish but often roughly intelligent film.

One of the purest instances of indie cinema this year. "Pure" meaning that in every aspect of filmmaking and intent this picture is peerless, so truly real, funny, poignant and sexy that it almost feels like a watershed cinematic moment.

Disconnected and even disoriented, Assassination Tango is an atmosphere in search of a reason.

Basic essentially is a fun movie, surprise ending and all. To take it too seriously is to miss the point. Travolta is charming, his performance recapturing the old charisma.

Opens with a statement that Hillary Clinton, Bob Dole and Al Sharpton are not in the movie. Also not in the movie: laughs.

The film drags and lingers and goes more or less nowhere, imitating its protagonists' lives so exactly that you want to give them both a good smack.

If the new I-wanna-be-a-stewardess picture View From the Top were an airplane, it would blow up on takeoff. If it were an airline meal, it would infect you with E. coli. If it were a parachute, it would be riddled with holes.

So often out of control that it becomes absurd and exasperating.

It's a lame, gender-mixed, mistaken-identity, cross-dressing comedy: "Some Like It Tepid," if you will.

Enough. There's no fun in bashing a Piglet movie, even a nickel-cadging spinoff.

The "Citizen Kane" of rat movies makes for a terrific overhaul in this wonderfully entertaining and, yes, touching take on that terribly confused man/child named Willard.

With understated skill and absolute authenticity, the film builds with enough layers that by its powerful ending, you'll feel as if you have been kicked in the stomach.

Some will hate this film, but there's something delectably junky about it -- like a bright colored candy glistening from a gutter, you just have to look at it.

While the plot of The Hunted is tiresome and the character development is phlegmatic, the picture holds fascination in its determination to trim away chat and guff and focus on tempo and filmic textures.

The film paints a by now familiar picture of suburbia as a pit of dysfunction, though some nice dark-humored moments and generally fine performances make up for a lot.

Fuqua has made three films before his newest, Tears of the Sun, and they've all begun well enough but then collapsed under the weight of his heavy-handed visual technique and his indifference to plot, character and logic.

Sometimes funny but mostly stupid film directed by Adam Shankman might have worked had it been made on TV by Norman Lear in the 1970s.