With Pfeiffer, 50, radiating uncommon beauty, grace and feeling, Frears uncovers a fragile story's grieving heart.

Transformers 2 has a shot at the title Worst Movie of the Decade.

A romantic comedy so numbing it feels like Novocaine.

If you tamp down your expectations -- those gaping plot holes are dangerous! -- there is a storm of scary fun to be had in this Scandinavian splatterfest.

Whatever Works feels like something out of time and, worse, out of step. Hell, Allen wrote the script back in the 1970s for Zero Mostel.

It's a first-class ride. All aboard.

Eating can be one dangerous business. Don't take another bite till you see Robert Kenner's Food, Inc., an essential, indelible documentary that is scarier than anything in the last five Saw horror shows.

Moon is a potent provocation that relies on ideas instead of computer tricks to stir up excitement.

The Hangover ain't art, but Phillips has shaped the hardcore hilarity into the summer party movie of all our twisted dreams.

Rudolph, a comic force on "SNL," can speak volumes with the tilt of an eyebrow. She and Krasinski, of "The Office," are absolutely extraordinary. Ditto the film, which sneaks up and floors you.

Will Ferrell and Danny McBride can find the dumb fun in anything. Too bad that Land of the Lost is so much less than anything.

Up is a breathtaking ride into the realm of pure imagination.

Horror-movie heaven.

The money shots of the living tableau are padded with jokes that feel embalmed before the actors get them out of their mouths.

Stylishly shot on the high-def cheap, runs 77 potently sexless minutes. Its subject isn't erotica, it's commodities trading.

Director Stephan Elliott uncorks a rare vintage of laughs tinged with heartache.

Bale even cedes the juiciest part to Aussie newcomer Sam Worthington, who is star material as a machine with a conscience. T4 is a mixed bag, but it's not f***ing amateur.

The movie can be enjoyed for the hell-raising hooey it is.

Playwright Stephen Belber (Match), in his directing debut, comes close to the sweet spot. He's not there yet. But he'll be worth watching next time.

Writer-director Olivier Assayas crafts a near perfect blend of humor and heartbreak, a lyrical masterwork that measures loss in terms practical and evanescent.

This film is a muckraking provocation whose time has come.

Luna and García Bernal display the kind of chemistry that makes you overlook the clichés in the script by first-time director Carlos Cuarón. Sometimes good-natured fun is enough.

A burst of pure filmmaking exhilaration that manages to pay homage to the classic 1960s TV series and still boldly go where no man, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy included, has gone before.

Never comes as close as spitting distance to a laugh.

Even the great ones hit snags. With The Limits of Control, Jim Jarmsuch gets tangled up in his own deadpan.

It's all a jumble and, worse, a damned impersonal one.

Memo to Beyoncé Knowles: You were so good as Etta James in "Cadillac Records," so why'd you go spoil everything with a rank cheeseball thriller that buries you in clichés and won't even help you dig yourself out?

One of the worst movies of this or any year.

In the end, The Soloist isn't about BIG MOMENTS, it's about the grace notes, the kind that stay with you.

You won't know what hit you after watching Tyson. This power punch to the gut is one of the best movies of any kind this year.

Affleck may strike you as off-putting at first, hitting wrong emotional notes, but hang on. State of Play keeps the twists coming.

Director Burr Steers, of the terrific "Igby Goes Down," is stuck polishing clichès.

A thrilling combination of documentary and musical dazzler.

Blending humor and heartbreak in a performance that makes a small movie a richly satisfying one, Caine truly is magic.

Want to find the heart of rock & roll? You can hear it thundering in Anvil.

The most shocking thing here is the fact that Peter Chelsom directed it. His 1995 movie, "Funny Bones," is a genuinely transgressive piece of dark comedy. I can't detect a trace of Chelsom in Hannah Montana, which means he won't have to wear a blonde wig to hide his shame.

Funny as hell.

Even when the drama gets overcooked, Lymelife sends off sparks.

I can see why Fast and Furious might be a smash as audiences look for escape from a broken economy. All those wheelies and power slides are designed to obliterate thought, not provoke it. Talk about a movie for its time.

Adventureland throws a lot at us, but not enough of it sticks.

The result is raw and riveting.

"WALL-E" had more charm, more soul, more everything. But there's enough merry mischief here to satisfy, even if you’re way past puberty.

The movie goes soft in its final stages, but Rudd and Segel keep it real. "Sweet, sweet hangin'," says Peter of knowing Sydney. The same goes for the movie.

Given the assault of devilishly clever plot twists that buzz-bomb your brain like a two-hour binge of quad-shot lattes, Duplicity goes down as too smart for its own good.

Audiences with a brain cell left have only one choice: Look for the first exit on the right.

This funny and touching movie depends on two can-do actresses to scrub past the biohazard of noxious clichés that threaten to intrude. Adams and Blunt get the job done.

Stumbles and sometimes falls on its top-heavy ambitions. But there are also flashes of visual brilliance and performances, especially from Haley and Crudup, that drill deep into the novel's haunted soul.

Let Clarkson and Fanning take you to the rabbit hole of seductive enchantment that defines this movie. And don't ask what to do -- jump.

Kramer takes on a hot, unwieldy topic in Crossing Over -- the dream that immigrants have of U.S. citizenship and the nightmare of achieving it, especially with shortcuts. I'm sure Kramer will be picked to pieces for trying something while Hollywood crap climbs the box office ladder. There are all kinds of nightmares.

It's no mystery that the target audience for this G-rated bubblegum fantasy is tweens, parents of tweens and the occasional pervert. They'll be so pleased. Anything for the rest of humanity? Not so much.

It didn't grab me. Not at first. A documentary that tracks the winner of a reality show -- in this case Bravo's Project Runway -- after his victory. Huh? But Eleven Minutes busts a few fresh moves.

So fasten your seat belts for Gomorrah, just snubbed in the wussy Oscar race for Best Foreign Film (so you know it's dynamite).

The film's secrets unfold slowly, allowing Phoenix and Paltrow -- a luminous fusion of grace and grit -- to build a relationship in full. The script, by Gray and Richard Menello, is inspired by Dostoevsky's "White Nights."

OK, sensitive tykes may be scared shitless. But those who tough it out with this twisted, trippy adventure in impure imagination will only be the better for it.

Here's a true S&M date movie. Only sadistic men and masochistic women could love it.

Martin is a gifted physical comic. He deserves an original role tailored to his own talents. Watching something this borrowed just makes me blue.

Confessions is no more than a painless time-waster. But the beguiling Fisher is well worth the investment.

A decent thriller that should have been dazzling, is nothing if not topical.

This crap is supposed to be the chick flick antidote to Super Bowl fever. Ha!

It's the spirit that Biggie Smalls, born Christopher Wallace, put into inventing himself and his music that ignites Notorious, a biopic that sees the flaws in the man but can't help accentuating the positive.

The first big-studio movie released in 2009 has a damn fine chance of being the worst. Bride Wars isn't just chick-flick hell for guys, it should numb the skulls of moviegoers of all sexes and ages.

For all the film's flaws, this is a war story told with passion about a band of brothers that still has the power to inspire.

DiCaprio is in peak form, bringing layers of buried emotion to a defeated man. And the glorious Winslet defines what makes an actress great, blazing commitment to a character and the range to make every nuance felt.

What Button shows is that Ben is ultimately not the hero of his own life or his own movie. He gets inside our head, that's for sure, but, frustratingly, we never get inside his.

The shortage of wit and the excess of goo can be summed up in Sandler's line to these children of divorce: "I'm like the stink on your feet — I'll always be there."

Watching the stars try to out-cutesy the mutt is one for the puke bucket.

Tom Cruise starring in the fact-based story of a plot to kill Hitler by Nazi Col. Claus von Stauffenberg sounds like Oscar bait. It isn't. And the sooner you accept it, the more fun you'll have at this satisfying B movie.

Get ready to be knocked for a loop.

If you're thinking "yuck," you're right. I added the extra star for Zooey Deschanel, who is so delicious as his honey that you want not to say no to Yes Man.

Fierce, funny and moving, The Class graduates with honors. It's unmissable.

Lurie has crafted a different kind of thriller, one with a mind and a heart.

You watch The Wrestler (with a superb title song from Bruce Springsteen) in a state of pure exhilaration. A great actor in a great movie will do that to you.

You may have doubts about which side to choose, but there's no doubt about this mind-bender. It'll pin you to your seat.

A lifetime in movies runs through this prime vintage Eastwood performance. You can't take your eyes off him. The no-frills, no-bull Gran Torino made my day.

Che looks dazzling, whether the camera is weaving through a battle or trying to bore into Che's haunted soul. Del Toro stands up to Soderbergh's relentless scrutiny. As for the movie, it's a reward to audiences eager to break from the play-it-safe pack. Game on.

Winslet's fierce, unerring portrayal goes beyond acting, becoming a provocation that will keep you up nights.

Simple story, beautifully told.

Director Ron Howard has turned Peter Morgan's stage success into a grabber of a movie laced with tension, stinging wit and potent human drama.

It's all a blur, except for the music. That's workin'.

An artistic triumph.

It's a total triumph, brimming with humor, heart, sexual heat, political provocation and a crying need to stir things up, just like Harvey did. If there's a better movie around this year, with more bristling purpose, I sure as hell haven't seen it.

Bummer. The vampires have no fangs. The humans are humdrum. The special effects and makeup define cheeseball. And the movie crowds in so many characters from Stephenie Meyer’s book that Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) is less a director than a traffic cop. But there’s a reason that Twilight has already become the movie equivalent of a bestseller: The love story has teeth.

If looks were everything, director Baz Luhrmann's epic salute to his native land would be the movie of the year. But, crikey, a padded script bloated with subplots and shameless sentimentality can wear you down.

It delivers the popcorn goods, but it ignores the poison eating at Bond's insides. Killer mistake.

Dark secrets are unlocked, words draw more blood than punches, and Desplechin turns one family into a universe that resembles life as a startling work of art.

From the Emeralds doing "Acapella" to Davi himself taking the lead on "So Much in Love," The Dukes is damn near impossible to resist.

Brimming with humor and heartbreak, Slumdog Millionaire meets at the border of art and commerce and lets one flow into the other as if that were the natural order of things.

Sometimes a shamelessly stoopid, proudly profane R-rated comedy is all you want out of life. Role Models more than fills the bill. It's killer funny.

The power of this Holocaust tale sneaks up and floors you.

Misery is enduring this Rocky Horror Paris Show.

Soul Men is a chance to salute these masters of mirth and music. Take it.

Naughty and nice is a killer-hard combo to pull off. Stick with Rogen and Banks. They rock it.

There are funny scenes, nicely directed by Barry Levinson. Other stuff, involving De Niro's ex-wife (Robin Wright Penn) and their daughter (Kristen Stewart), are not much of anything. It's a tossup. Your call.

Its value is unquestionable as drama and moral provocation.

If you're gay and/or eight years old, HSM3 is the movie event of the year.

Jolie is inspired casting. She plays the role like a gathering storm, moving from terror to a fierce resolve. And Eastwood, at the peak of his artful powers, tightens the screws of suspense without ever forgetting where the heart of his film lies.

Stick your neck out for this Swedish horror show. It's a winner, full of mirth and malice, plus a young romance you'll never see on the Disney Channel.

Philip Seymour Hoffman creates a mesmerizing portrait of the artist as a young, old and middle-aged man.