This movie is a powerfully silly brain vacation. It's a by-the-numbers underdogs vs. bullies comedy.

When you have to ask yourself whether this parable is intended as comedic satire or stone-cold-serious moralizing, that's a big sign that you're watching a misfire.

It's Cronenberg's most mainstream work, and yet it has all the power of his creepiest nightmares.

And that ultimately may be the problem with the Polanski version: by bringing Oliver forward, you push the drama backward.

Tasteful, thoughtful fare that entertains without ever speaking down to the audience.

The leads are just too good to commit fully to something this baldly formulaic. It's sad.

Taken as a whole -- and it kills me to write this -- it just doesn't add up to much.

There's a daring to Everything Is Illuminated that commends it somewhat more than its achievement deserves.

Such a treat for the eyes, ears and funny bone that you feel cheated that it clocks in at less than an hour-and-a-quarter.

As it stands, the film is perhaps a tad low-key to catch the eye, but it's carefully enough made and, especially, acted, to keep a hold on the brain and heart long after it's over.

Three impeccably cast actors are fully engaged in something like a psychological thriller that has much of the crushing weight and lingering pain of grown-up life on this Earth.

Creaks and groans with pat emotionalism and rickety storytelling.

I'm all for hearty theological debate. But this is intellectual suicide. Even worse, it's boring intellectual suicide.

It's a handsome and spry movie, and it might even have managed to be a good one if there were even the least chance of believing that Wood, who can't weigh 145 pounds dripping wet, had the slightest chance of hurting anyone with one of his wee fists.

The juxtapositions can be beautiful: haunting music played over a water-streaked windshield, a deaf student awakening to the "feeling" of sound, Glennie staring ferociously at a gong as she extracts its vibrations.

Once in a great while -- usually late August -- a movie comes along that's so lame, it doesn't deserve a bad review. It deserves a war-crimes tribunal. Ladies and gentlemen, Underclassman is that special film.

Reigns as the most assured, provocative film so far this year.

The result is minor Gilliam: still more engaging than most moviemaking, but nonetheless a letdown after such a long wait.

The Baxter is so ineptly conceived, staged, written and played that you suspect it's part of a psychology experiment to see if people will laugh at anything.

With solid performances, competent direction and artfully drab cinematography, the film would be indistinguishable from a Hollywood thriller if not for the Flemish dialogue. It's no surprise to learn that an American remake is in the works.

It's not great moviemaking -- it isn't as accomplished or funny as the best of the Farrelly brothers' films, say -- but it's got real appeal.

Despite some fast-paced direction by Wes Craven, Red Eye finally gets so silly, it's practically popping its wing-rivets.

Competently done and harmless enough to entertain the tots. It's just that the movie's kind of . . . sparse.

De la Iglesia is a mercilessly agile talent.

An engaging if overlong documentary.

Stirring and haunting.

After getting off to a decent, somewhat muted start, Skeleton Key just gets sillier and sillier and sillier until it's yet another one of those stupid, noisy thrillers where everyone's running around in a house, yelling and falling down, and you're mostly wondering why nobody bothered to call the cops.

The film is much better as a ticking-clock action picture than as a story of human emotions, be they romantic, altruistic or base. So it's too bad that we have to wait so long for the actual raid to begin. When it does, it's a cracker.