The streetball scenes, much like the plot, have a few high points but never hit their stride.

Raises some probing questions about the secrecy of ratings decisions in a way that entertains and educates audiences with or without agendas to protect film integrity.

A thin sprinkling of exuberance and a couple of choice cameos, that's about all this underwritten and overly choreographed spectacle has to tease us with.

Why is this movie so watchable? Four simple reasons. It's truly funny. It's truly scary. It's truly gruesome. And Samuel L. Jackson is the cool head who prevails (“You stick with me, you live”).

One could argue that you shouldn't expect a teen comedy to offer a nuanced depiction of the role of education in public life, but in response I'd refer you to "Election" and "Clueless."

A visual delight as well as an satisfying period drama.

Trust the Man mainly feels like the work of a New Yorker who hasn't left his trendy neighborhood in ten years.

While I have no problem enthusiastically recommending writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher trilogy, I'd also heartily discourage all but the most rabid crime-movie nuts from consuming the whole thing in one afternoon or evening.

It really never amounts to more than a barely warmed over rehash of teen dance flick moves.

Nelson works largely because Gosling and Epps work flawlessly together.

Underscored by the fragility of a plinking piano and well-timed flourishes to uplift, this heroic heartstring-tugger is still frequently and unexpectedly affecting, so much that it's able to hide its true face as a glorified movie-of-the-week.

The Descent is bloody, disturbing, and genuinely frightening--you'll be very happy to leave that dark theater.

One of the film's few virtues is Danny Glover as the voice of Miles the mule.

Somehow the movie ends up feeling like a museum piece or, worse still, a work of fiction.

So if you like Ferrell or Cohen, go ahead buy some popcorn, check your brain at the door, and you will laugh.

On the surface, each of these characters fits a familiar Latino stereotype--teen harlot, "el bandido" and male buffoon--yet the movie insists on giving each person dimension.

Just when the plot should start coming together, the pacing goes slack and the narrative gets bogged down in routine cop-movie clichés.

What once was a gifted comic's fluid improvisation is now a doddering old man so embarrassing he's uncomfortable to watch, and the surrogate father-daughter needling he has with Johansson is creepy when you realize Woody the director is shooting her seductively in that skintight bathing suit.

Although mixing teen humor with sentiment will never be done as well as in "American Pie," John Tucker Must Die has just enough heart to entertain the "MySpace" set.

13 Tzameti is certainly nightmarish, but it's the kind of nightmare that fades instead of lingering on in the memory.

Diverting and often funny enough, largely thanks (as is not unusual in cases like this) to its cast.

Part of the Clerks charm was that Kevin Smith made it for $27,000, and a bigger budget doesn't really help this kind of tale's authenticity.

Smaller kids might find the movie too intense at times, especially when DJ, Chowder, and Jenny find themselves literally in the belly of the beast. But everyone else should enjoy a good, goosebumpy scare.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend was written by longtime "Simpsons" scribe Don Payne, but you wouldn't know that based on the finished film, which lacks the intelligence and sly wit that has kept Homer and the gang on the air for all these years.

Little Man only proves that some should just stick to the sketch comedy, and leave the big screen to "Big Daddys" like Adam Sandler who the critics tend to snub, but who know how to make an audience laugh.

Like Dupree himself, the film wears out its welcome a little, but is still entertaining.

Dead Man's Chest is best summed up by the scene where Sparrow and Will battle each other atop a runaway water wheel. Like the characters, this movie is just running in circles.

The most impressive thing about the film's technical wizardry is, finally, how unimpressive it is. One doesn't leave the movie with a mind blown by visual bedazzlement but with a soul shattered by the profound sense of tragedy Linklater and company so beautifully put across.

So stupendously funny at times that she (Streep) nearly salvages the whole thing.

This Superman is like nothing you've ever seen before, but it tickles something primitive and comforting at the back of the mind. Gorgeously detailed and meticulously realized, it's a homecoming of a movie. Just wait for the theme; you'll understand.

This is one unmarked van you just might want to take a ride with.

By the end of the film, you actually come to mourn the passing of the EV1, a well-intentioned soul that was in the right place at the right time, but was surrounded by the wrong people.

Click is yet another uninspired Adam Sandler goof-fest with a long suffering leading lady, mildly bawdy gags--see Joe Schomo oogle female jogger--and a predictable ending.

To be fair Deep does have one thing going for it. While the movie never seems to end, and when it does… oh man. Think "Aquaman" meets "Training Day." It proves that sometimes a crappy drama is sometimes just a comedy in disguise.

The problems with Tokyo Drift start with its ostensible hero; during the course of this movie, Sean makes so many dumb decisions it's a wonder that anyone wants to be associated with him.

Where the film falters is in Alejandro Agresti's overly deliberate direction, which threatens to drown the drama in amber sunsets and self-conscious camera framings. The film looks great, but it lacks spontaneity, an important element of the most memorable screen romances.

When he runs out of material to tickle with, Black dips into his musically tenacious "deedle-diddle-dee" for some sure-fire ridiculousness.

Ultimately, Wordplay is best enjoyed as an engaging look at a little-known subculture.

Gilbert films Chong as if he's a political prisoner like Nelson Mandela, when he's really just an older comic going to jail over a bad business decision.

What the film lacks in freshness, it makes up for in great characters, fun vocal performances, and a script with some genuine emotional heft.

As for this film's esteemed director, I don't remember getting such sheer pleasure out of an Altman movie since . . . hmm, lemme look at the filmo . . . hmm—"The Player"? Not so much . . . "O.C. and Stiggs"? I wish . . . Um, "Popeye"? More likely, but . . . Ah-"A Wedding." Yeah, that’s it, "A Wedding." Whoa. That was, like, almost 30 years ago.

But after surveying pop and rock hybrids, Akin and Hacke go deeper. You will be very happy indeed to make the acquaintance of such Turkish music luminaries as Orhan Gencebay and Sezen Aksu, whose stories and personalities are as fascinating as their music.

Peyton Reed's The Break-Up proves there is nothing particularly funny or charming about two people splitting up, even if the couple is played by Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston.

If you've been disappointed by the recent rash of mediocre blockbusters, District B13 may provide some of the mindless fun you're looking for.

Comic-book enthusiasts can breathe a sigh of relief: Brett Ratner hasn't completely ruined the X-Men series a.k.a. "The Franchise that Bryan Singer Built."

As long as Guggenheim keeps his cameras trained on Gore's presentation, An Inconvenient Truth is an engaging film. Less successful are the scenes where Gore is seen off-stage, traveling around the world and visiting his childhood home.

At root, novelist Dan Brown’s story is an entertaining one--whether you believe any of these ideas are real or not. And in the end, it’s that standard movie trope (good guys must solve dire puzzle while bad guys give chase) that makes The Da Vinci Code an okay film.

Compelling and exasperating in pretty much equal doses.

Isn't quite self-aware enough to be really funny, and certainly isn't serious or genuinely exciting enough to be thrilling because of it's action.

One of Cruise's most deeply cherished ambitions is to be a great actor, and this movie goes to great lengths to let him do that--sort of. You'll understand what I mean during the sequence in which there is more than one Philip Seymour Hoffman on the screen.

The movie belongs to Wood, who creates a unique portrait of a girl hesitating at the threshold of womanhood; she's smarter, more attuned, and more spiritually ambitious than those around her, but also too decent and loyal to break from the world she knows-and too unformed to have a grasp of what she wants outside of that world. It's fantastic work.

The Proposition can be appreciated as a strong technical exercise, but it fails to resonate on any deeper level.

The climactic spelling bee sequence is as tautly written and edited as any gridiron drama, and Palmer's performance here is truly gripping.

Those last thirty minutes are worth the price of admission.

Composed of relatively few events and scenes, it's often excruciatingly tense and never less than heartbreakingly human. And as much as I admire "Munich," Shadows leaves Spielberg's film in the dust in the moral-ambiguity department. Never before seen in the States, it's already on my year's ten-best list. (April 2006 Premiere)

Never anything less than wholly engrossing. There's a lot of humor to be found here (primarily of the dark comedy variety) and the cumulative impact of Lazarescu's journey through the Bucharest medical system is quite powerful.

The movie tires itself out setting up the complex plot.

Ultimately all of the ado about men in shades and dark suits running around shooting and shouting at each other comes to a satisfying, if predictable, conclusion.

Director Shortland frames the story against the apt grey, off-season ski town, but her attempt to match it with deliberate pacing just makes the film feel chilly and too long, just like Heidi's depressing routine.

Even if its premise weren't so achingly familiar, the film's bland humor and oddly conservative depiction of its central character, a flamboyant drag queen named Lola, would still make it seem like a museum piece.

The result is a film that's almost unremittingly bleak, but also consistently compelling.

Weinstein Co. honchos Bob and Harvey are chasing some of the old "Pulp Fiction" magic--and failing not only miserably, but kind of disgustingly.

With the almost half-decade spaces between Holofcener's three features, one might (rather unreasonably, I admit) expect her to have sought to break wholly new ground in the interim. So she hasn't; nevertheless, Friends is well-crafted, intelligent, genuinely adult fare.

For all its intelligence, Free Zone has disappointingly little to say.

Jarecki seems all too eager to buy into Toback's depiction of himself as the ultimate Hollywood outsider. Try telling that to the independent filmmakers who aren't on a first-name basis with Warren Beatty.

The sweet, furry animals are witty and often funny, and while the physical comedy is simple, the main characters ultimately aren't.

It takes a good fifteen minutes to fully adjust to the screenplay's rhythms, but once you do, the dialogue is a lot of fun to listen to.

Obviously, if you don't like the Beasties or live music, arena-style, it's unlikely that you'll like their movie. But if you've ever even privately caught yourself nodding your head to "Brass Monkey," or you have a soft spot for the big-venue concert experience, Awesome rocks.

One thing not open to question is that the real heroes of this movie are Johnston's family, particularly his aging parents, who for all their heartbreak are palpably full of love and forbearance for their disturbed and, yes, talented boy.

Looks, feels, and tastes like a more accessible evolution of "Cremaster," so try to gauge your own tolerance for indulgent eccentricity (at 135 minutes, it could stand to lose 20).

The script's flaws are most keenly felt in the Jodie Foster storyline, to the point where her character seems more like a bumbling screw-up than a supposedly sought-after facilitator. Whenever Lee turns the camera back to Denzel and Clive though, the movie works.

With a cast of well-chosen actors, a good script, and an eye for making ordinary suburban scenes visually heartbreaking, director Steve Buscemi's small story of failure, depression-and ultimately, love-in one Indiana town rings painfully true-to-life.

For all its seeming simplicity, this is an emotionally and intellectually complex film that holds the viewer in a grip as tight as any classic thriller you can name.

A clichéd rock-star film.

A compelling, rousing and at times strangely moving entertainment.

This is the kind of comedy that gives you two meaty underhanded jokes for every big obvious guffaw. It doesn't add up to much more than that, but there's no earthly reason why it ought to.

Though McConaughey has proven himself game for romantic comedy contrivance in the past, his charisma is all wrong for the immature Tripp.

Though this new Hills is both scarier and smarter than 95 percent of the other horror product out there, it's also indicative of everything that's wrong with horror movies today.

Feels like little more than a stale rehash with a promising cast whose talents haven't been tapped.

Farrell and Hayek are two beautiful people with absolutely no chemistry. Even when they're lying in bed together, they're so far apart that they might as well be in different movies.

Some viewers will wonder what exactly it is they are supposed to be laughing at, but those that do find themselves on the movie's wavelength will enjoy its observational approach to comedy.

All this stuff is enacted by a better-than-reliable cast (Griffin Dunne, Robert Downey Jr., Catherine O'Hara, Roger Rees, and more), so Game 6 is never a bore. But it's not much more besides never a bore.

Amid every action cliche in the book, outmoded stereotypes, and a plot derivative of every futuristic drama made in the last fifteen years, Ultraviolet comes off as nothing more than a pale copy of better, more inventive films.

Joyeux Noel is no gritty war film; this is more of a Christmas miracle movie, full of melodrama. Carion juggles a large, multicultural cast, and few of the characters stand out; most are there to represent the types who pop up in your standard war-movie battalions.

This unlikely pairing of relentless U.S. pollsters and a Bolivian election is a fascinating glimpse of the Americanized marketing of international politics (and vice versa).

Hood's film, with its bold, beautiful cinematography and hard-thumping kwaito music, brings us into a different world, and then helps us to understand it.

Ultimately, it is a serviceable, well-made thriller that earns its R rating.

The dogs are such charismatic performers it's almost a shame that there have to be humans in this story at all. Still, the Antarctica sequences alone make Eight Below one of the better family films out there right now.

Surrounding Council and Moore in this cacophonous, bleak New Jersey are a set of cops, neighbors, and relatives played by actors that the unimaginative Roth yanked directly from various TV gritty crime shows; it's like he thought HBO was his personal casting agent.

Clichés are often a big part of what makes suspense films enjoyable. But Firewall goes out of its way to promise something more than business as usual, and then makes no attempt whatsoever to deliver.

This one will make you laugh early and often, and send you out of the theater in a cheerful mood.

With its varied close-ups and wide shots of the performers and a series of interviews with several of the musicians as they prepare to perform, Heart of Gold is a traditional concert film. But a traditional concert film starring Neil Young brings a layer of emotion to the medium that's rarely seen.

Ironically, for all of Stranger's faults, director Simon West has probably made a perfect date movie: just suspenseful enough to keep you arm-in-arm with your beau or belle; but silly enough that you'll both laugh about it afterwards.

All told, however, this bland little movie fits right into it's late January slot. It's a little bawdy - the fat-lady thong bit was funnier in "Shallow Hall" - and it passes the time.

Anybody can make a movie that's anti-slavery. But to make a movie that's explicitly anti-democracy-that's something.

The movie biz inside jokes eventually yield to fairly merciless plumbings about the construction of the self, resulting in a kind of philosophical discomfort that's much different from the run-of-the-mill humiliations this sort of thing usually trucks in.

At heart, a light, watchable film.

While basketball fans might have trouble recognizing the sport as it's played here, the games certainly aren't dull. Unfortunately, most of the off-court sequences are.