Chris Rock's I Think I Love My Wife is less interesting, and less successful, as a remake of a much-bruited '70s art film than it is as a compendium of Rockian observations on the current state of the African-American bourgeoisie.

The pumped up sound effects play like an overplayed laugh track on a sitcom that just isn't funny and only draws more attention how ineffective the filmmaking is.

It's a film that approaches greatness and then fumbles.

That it's so flat as an action movie probably has a lot to do with why people might prefer to jawbone over its putatively controversial aspects--there's really not much of a “wow” factor to revel in.

When the movie isn't being scary, it's crazily funny, so much so that critical watchers will wonder if Bong might tilt the balance of the picture too far in a comic direction and water down the scares. He doesn't.

A thoroughly engaging, terrifically moving family story that's rich in beautifully observed and lovingly conveyed human detail.

While each actor is talented in his own right, the on-screen friends' relationship is barely developed.

It makes for a daringly different kind of thriller -- cerebral, meticulous, haunting.

Perpetually wide-eyed and mega-snarly bedraggled, Christina Ricci prowls through Black Snake Moan looking like something the cat dragged in. If you're anything like me, you'll be very grateful to the cat.

Still, the film actually earns the description of being inspirational, not only to those of us with a dream, but to those who thought the quality family film had died long ago.

Earnest, respectful and thoroughly dull.

The procedural aspects of the story are briskly done, and Chris Cooper's portrayal of the traitor Hanssen is a typically Cooperesque marvel.

All of the actors are on point (Dupontel and Morante are particularly good), the individual story arcs are involving, if not exactly complex, and Thompson keeps the proceedings moving along at a comfortable clip.

The music is catchy. The actors are likeable. It's all pleasant enough to watch but ultimately it's about as substantial as a pop song. Though it's unlikely to stay with you quite so long.

The story's beginning is in a rush to get to the the killings, which get more and more disgusting.

The film drags by, charmlessly, endlessly. Shrieking.

It may most aptly sum up the who the hell Ralph Nader is and why he insists on creating such a ruckus.

Time doesn't just slow down while you're watching Catch and Release -- it actually comes to a dead stop.

To be fair, Smokin' Aces isn't a complete train wreck. Carnahan stages a handful of strong action set-pieces, most notably a close-quarters elevator shoot-out involving Liotta and Flanagan, that are a blast to watch.

Neeson and Brosnan, along with the beautiful location photography from DP John Toll, keeps you involved even when Von Ancken's heavy-handed direction threatens to bog the proceedings down.

The Hitcher's main problem is that many of the title character's dirty deeds are done off-camera. Instead of seeing Ryder trap his victims before he kills them, the audience is treated to plenty of butchered corpses that seem to magically appear after Ryder leaves a room.

The depiction of everyday life at the orphanage is far more compelling than Vanya's personal quest. It's unfortunate that once the Italian hits the road, The Italian loses its way.

Mafioso isn't a straight black satire of Sicilian culture so much as a suspenseful near-tragedy leavened by the zesty, irreverent wit that helped define the golden age of Italian comedies.

Through a haze of opium smoke and Molotov cocktails igniting, Regular Lovers plays out like the heavier politicized and unsentimentalized counterpoint to Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Dreamers."

At its best though, the film offers a pointed critique of a youth culture that views someone like Jesse James Hollywood as a person to emulate.

Director Sylvain White, whose last film was the equally unnecessary "I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer," manages to take the joy out of a dance movie by jerking the camera around and speeding up the dance moves so much.

If nothing else, this doc, which one the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at last year's Sundance Film Festival, will leave you feeling that the American dream is still alive and well.

This intense film, a mix of horror, fantasy, and history that convinces on all those levels and mixes them up with dizzying brio, is a searing cinematic experience, a beautiful, terrifying vision from writer-director Guillermo del Toro.

Perfume is sure to annoy as many moviegoers as it entertains, but at least even the naysayers would find it difficult to argue that film is nothing if not a departure from the ordinary.

Dark little indie thriller.

Ultimately, Besson has made an interesting, if shaky in places, homage to childhood.

If the resultant wreckage is a little underwhelming, and the film's coda useless and trite, the getting there is pretty absorbing.

It's the rare sci-fi film that transcends its genre with its ideas, able to sweep one up in its not-too-distant future and yet remain remarkably prescient about the present day.

After a slow start, this feel-good family film is a nice postcard from the Big Apple that may benefit New York and the Museum of Natural History as much as it does 20th Century Fox.

We can only speculate why McConaughey chose to play the role this way, but in all honesty, it's a good thing he did. His loony performance is the only surprising thing about this otherwise paint-by-numbers inspirational drama.

Action fans might find the film's first half somewhat of a slog to sit through because of its carefully honed exposition, while those used to Zhang's dialogue-heavy dramas are sure to be surprised by the film's brutal second half where blood spurts more than the words.

Letters from Iwo Jima isn't just the film that Eastwood wanted to make, but one that the film's producer Steven Spielberg had tried to make twice with "Empire of the Sun" and "Saving Private Ryan."

If The Painted Veil ultimately lacks some of the novelty and ambition of the year's best pictures, it still ranks as one of 2006's quiet gems.

After the widely reviled "Rocky V," it was just as unlikely for there to be a satisfying conclusion to the Rocky saga, but Rocky Balboa fits the bill.

Marker's even-handedness and playful spirit tries to show that innocent art and activist politics are two sides of the same culture, even if deviant government duplicity threatens the balance between them.

The reason to see Dreamgirls is what hasn't been advertised - a film that in spite of its shiny veneer actually hits all the high notes through its underlying rawness.

I hold Soderbergh in high esteem, but as handsome a technical achievement as it is, The Good German plays to me as a failed experiment.

You're most likely find that Eragon is less a gem and more cubic zirconia -- nice to look at but not as preeeecioussss as its recent fantasy bretheren.

It's not often that Hollywood is willing, or even able, to accurately dramatize what it's really like to be poor in America -- to evoke not only the circumstances, but also the sense humiliation and failure. That a European director like Gabriele Muccino, helming his first English-language film, is able to capture the essence of that experience is a testament to his skill as a filmmaker.

By straining to make a respectful war film for everyone, Winkler and Friedman have wound up with a toothless picture that won't satisfy anyone.

The Holiday is the type of welcome diversion that only Meyers still seems to specialize -- a romantic comedy where Barbara Stanwyck and Rosalind Russell would have been just as natural as Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet and where the one liners fly like confetti.

Not that Diamond skimps on the social commentary; far from it. But it makes its points without too much breast-beating, caching its polemic within a tough-minded entertainment.

Inland Empire is interchangably terrifying, maddening, shockingly hilarious and perversely exciting, and that's just to those who end up disliking it.

A riveting urban drama that tackles a myriad of sociopolitical issues -- conflicts of race, sex, class, marriage and politics -- without spreading itself thin.

von Donnersmarck delivers something extraordinary and rare: a thriller that's entirely adult in both its concerns and perspective which manages to be as thoroughly gripping as any finely tuned albeit adolescent Hollywood nail-biter.

Before it descends into dull sadism and general incoherence in its third act, Turistas is a mostly effective exploitation picture, the kind of movie that would have been proudly displayed on the marquee of a '70s-era grindhouse.

This critic found much to digest (pun barely intended), with thoughts of FDA politics and standard practices, the ritualism and sacrifice of our own species, why baby animals are considered protectable innocents (and inversely, grown steaks-to-be just a fact of life), plus, on a meta level, how people's dietary philosophies will inform their reactions to the work.

As it happens, each one of these tales is also a love story, and The Fountain is Aronofsky’s profession of faith concerning love’s place in the idea of eternity. It’s a movie that’s as deeply felt as it is imagined.

Although the science fiction element had the potential to drag the story down, it's kept to a minimum and left somewhat buried in techno jargon.

Under the clichéd spell of rock-and-roll promiscuity and pills popped, Seigner shows astonishing range as the detached superstar who still fixates on her ex-boyfriend and has mood swings like a manic-depressive on fast-forward.

There's no one today writing English dialogue as sharp as Bennett's, and hearing it delivered expertly is a pleasure worth sitting through some dodgy montages for.

Surprisingly light on fab gadgets, there are, of course, double crosses, fast cars, and lots of gunplay.

It's a movie that keeps flirting with greatness, but settles for being above average.

Ledger turns in another stellar performance and Cornish is heartbreakingly good also in this well-crafted film. But once that first plunger is pushed, the surprises are few.

What sets Fast Food Nation apart from other recent multi-character studies like "Crash," "Bobby," and "Babel" is that Linklater doesn't set up a single incident that ties all the story strands together.

From the beginning, something doesn't feel quite right about their latest romp. The characters are sketchier, the situations more contrived and the laughs are fewer and far between.

Alll in all, however, Estevez has pulled together the best political drama, fiction or otherwise, in recent memory.

Finney, only seen in these flashbacks, is pitch perfect.

The film is ultimately so repetitive, un-enlightening and lacking in substance, even Drew Carey seems bored by the end when he asks, "When are you guys going to make the 'c*nt' documentary?"

Borat is, in many ways, an heir to the same kind of subversion of American norms that the transvestite Divine perfected in John Waters’ early films.

Though Flushed Away certainly aims to please viewers of all ages, it’s the anglophiles of all ages who are going to get the most out of the film.

Each scene is lovingly crafted, with bright colors and the beautiful scenery of La Mancha, the mellifluous cadences of Castilian Spanish, and of course the faces, young and old, of each actress.

Right off the bat, Catch a Fire distinguishes itself from other recent international productions about Africa (including The Constant Gardener and The Last King of Scotland) in that it is actually told from an African perspective.

While you can never completely put the fact that you are watching Pitt and Blanchett out of your mind, they both give charged, emotional performances.

Technically, it rewards with nothing less than painterly cinematography and a seamless surge of organic soundscapes, but the story is entirely predicated on a weather metaphor so obvious that even an unplugged Doppler radar could detect it.

There's no question that Death of a President fulfills its objective as a conversation starter, but as a movie, it's sketchy at best.

Cocaine Cowboys might work better as a miniseries for television; as it is, the two-hour running time is fatiguing and some of the later material gets lost in the onslaught.

This is one movie that's guaranteed to linger in your mind after you leave the theater, whether you want it to or not.

Marie Antoinette churns a symphony out of a single note, too light and hermetically sealed in the minds of Coppola and her queen to transcend its artfully cared-for fluffiness.

For the most part, Murphy is pitching somewhere between "American Beauty" and "The Royal Tenenbaums"; indeed, the characters Bening and Gwyneth Paltrow play in Scissors are, in a sense, inversions of their roles in Beauty and Tenenbaums, respectively.

Flags of our Fathers really loses its way in the final half-hour, when the point-of-view abruptly shifts to James Bradley (played here by Tom McCarthy), who takes on the role of narrator, informing us of what happened to each of these men after the war ended and their names became yesterday's news. It's a jarring switch.

One casting wild card is the country singer Tim McGraw, and he's very solid in the role of Katie's horse-rancher dad, the kind of guy whose hard-headedness can't mask the size of his heart.

If The Prestige is something of a let down as a magic trick, it's more successful as a tale of obsession. The rivalry between the magicians is brutal and bloody and Bale and Jackman do their best work when they're plotting each other's downfall.

In the end, it's not Amy's secret that's the most shocking thing about Sleeping Dogs, it's Hamilton's fearless commitment to making what could have been just a cheap punch line into something warmer, richer, and far better.

A conventional but genuinely heartrending exposé of the Indiana boy who grew to be a powerful religious cult leader, director Stanley Nelson's thoroughly researched doc is not a posthumous character assassination, which would be all too easy and unnecessary.

The film is laughable when it tries to be dramatic and stone-faced when it strains to be funny. Beyond that, Man of the Year is often so wildly off the mark in its depiction of how elections are run, it's hard to believe that it was directed by the same guy who helmed "Wag the Dog," one of the savviest political films ever made.

Understanding what McGrath is trying to pull off is not the same thing as McGrath pulling it off; as ambitious as it is, Infamous falters in execution too often to create a lasting impression.

A triumphant revisiting of territory in which Scorsese is an unchallenged master -- the crime drama.

How 49 Up differs from its precursors for the better is that it's the first to have its participants interact with Apted the filmmaker, no longer a one-sided interviewer.

Mitchell's energy and occasional ingenuity make Shortbus an engaging viewing experience, provided you can stomach it.

The Queen is a surprisingly compassionate portrait (excepting Blair's reactionary wife with the "shallow curtsy") of a rigid pragmatist in denial over the monarchy's out-of-touch dysfunction.

Ultimately a valentine to the unsung heroes of the US Coast Guard and it's probably long overdue.

For my money, if I'm in the mood for the kind of aesthetic and emotional experience Saints is selling, I'll just blast Jim Carroll's more concise (and rocking!) "People Who Died" out of my iPod.

Whitaker's Amin is the kind of raging lunatic that only an actor who has made a specialty of quiet caginess could pull off so convincingly. It's great, and scary, to see Whitaker turn it up to 11 for once.

Part of what makes these kind of war movies such cinematic comfort food (aside from the moral certainty they strive to convey) is their familiarity. But I wonder if said familiarity is what compels contemporary filmmakers to overstuff the material -- Flyboys is a good two hours and 20 minutes.

Despite some amusing jabs at America's influence on traditional China, this film leaves even this American viewer feeling oddly patriotic (or maybe just wishing she lived in China.)

Winds up being rather fun. It's not great, but it's certainly not the worst monster movie that I've sat through -- that might be 2003's "Darkness Falls."

Doesn't function particularly well as a documentary; it lacks a strong editorial point of view and doesn't really comment on the evangelical movement so much as it just portrays a selection of people and their views.

It's not likely you'll see a film more visually exhilarating until, well, Gondry's next.

You've got to give the guy (De Palma) some credit. He's made a bizarre, baffling and at times flat-out bad movie. But at least it's rarely boring.

Can he (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson ) act? Surprisingly, for the most part, the answer is yes, and the film is a success for it.

This film, a raw howl of outrage and pain, is proudly one-sided, allowing a generation of wounded men and women to scream their betrayal.

It's great that the comedian felt the call of a higher office, but it's a call that apparently only he can hear.