It's professional, smart, quick-footed and snappy -- enviable traits in both a prizefighter and a nice little B-movie.

A lazy, trite comedy that's made by people who don't care either.

It's a strange, uneven film, hilarious in moments and tin-eared in others, alternately subtle and hammer-handed, acid and dull, as schizophrenic as "Signs" and probably, like that film, best enjoyed in discrete chunks rather than as a whole that needs to be digested equally all at once.

Ultimately well-made but only intermittently gripping.

Blue Crush, which might appear exciting in an "Endless Summer"/"Where the Boys Are" kind of way, actually is really boring.

The highlights are the writing and the performances. There are real laughs to be had -- several scenes end on sharp, witty shards of dialogue. And whenever Eckhart, Northam or Ehle is the focus, the thing soars.

A feel-good movie that doesn't think it needs to rub people's noses in the happy stuff to get its points across or eliminate all the disturbing shades to make a uniformly glowing whole.

One of the great marvels of the medium, a film that you cannot miss if you hope to be literate in cinema -- or, indeed, if you seek acquaintance with the great works of modern times.

The story told by I'm Going Home is small and perhaps not terribly universal. But there's something poignant about an artist of 90-plus years taking the effort to share his impressions of life and loss and time and art with us.

Wilson's account is enormously self-serving and self-aggrandizing, but the film makes his ego a virtue and a running joke.

It's too ridiculous, too flatly acted, too action-packed, too, well, fun.

There are mysteries and twists in Blood Work, but its real work isn't ratiocination but healing and connection. Outwardly it's a detective story; really it's a tale of the heart.

A funny, puzzling movie ambiguous enough to be engaging and oddly moving.

A slow burn. A portrait of the mundane humor and horror of everyday life, it scalds nerves you may have never thought existed. And yet the film is funny, almost hilariously at times.

The plot is tired, the energy sputtering, the jokes less manic. "Spy Kids" was a shot out of nowhere; Spy Kids 2 feels like a shot from someplace tiresomely familiar.

Feels like a tonic for its makers, a means of clearing the palate after a series of rich meals. For viewers who appreciate risks, it should be just as refreshing.

There are bits of this film that titillate, undeniably, but mainly you wait for the comic to bring out the big guns, and then he leaves you feeling more teased than tickled.

You get to know each person just well enough to compare them, allowing you to judge as you like; the film, nicely, refrains from moralizing.

A deeply weird film, accomplished, gripping, disorienting, icily adept and barking mad at once. It makes for invigorating viewing.

You go into an Austin Powers movie with a big grin on -- or at least you should. The charm of this one is that you leave smiling even more broadly.

This is a beautiful, moving picture about a love affair between two very different Chinese men.

The script doesn't give Bigelow enough human stuff to balance the mechanical. For good or ill, like so many other submarine thrillers before it, K-19 is more about the machine than the men.

The people behind Eight Legged Freaks were absolutely correct not to make it too loopy or too dark. But they ought to have made it too something. Real fun is never this tame.

The film is tangled but not chaotic, thoughtful but not terribly deep. Still, it's intimate, entertaining, and most impressive, genuine.

Like a dog walking on its hind legs across a freshly waxed floor -- awkward, slow, deliberate, seeking approval -- the action thriller Reign of Fire gets from start to finish, somehow, without tumbling into complete disaster.

It's a dark, brooding, moody film that follows a grim narrative to a logical inevitability and is nonetheless fully infused with a spirit of humanity.

Isn't profound or dazzling or groundbreaking. But it's a pleasant, clever and sincere little romp, proof that you don't need to harbor heroic ambitions to create something satisfying.

Passingly engaging. But you emerge from the film knowing as much -- or, indeed, as little -- as when you went in, and that's not exactly what documentary filmmaking is all about.