Although it's supposed to be supremely romantic, there's no daring in it, no go-for-broke passion. It's a nice little movie about romantic compulsion, just big enough to fit in a teacup.

Mackenzie delivers that story as a blend of sex comedy, dark satire, and morality tale that recalls various aspects of "Shampoo" and "Less Than Zero" and "The Graduate," but has a couple of nifty surprises and a poisonous sting in its tail that's all its own.

Streep isn't playing Julia Child here, but something both more elusive and more truthful -- she's playing our IDEA of Julia Child.

At times, the relentless preciousness, the ironic distance, the posture of "We're just adorably like this" gets to be a little too much.

This warm, graceful and fundamentally optimistic movie snuck up on me, in the best possible way.

Works precisely because its ambitions are somewhat mellow; this isn't a relentlessly high-strung picture. Barthes and Giamatti do more with less, turning the idea of excessive navel-gazing into a kind of game.

Funny People is an ambitious, misshapen picture that feels like two, maybe even three, separate movies uncomfortably jammed into one.

What's so remarkable about Louie Psihoyos' documentary The Cove isn't just that it's a powerful work of agitprop that's going to have you sending furious e-mails to the Japanese Embassy on your way out of the theater. That's definitely true, but the effectiveness of The Cove also comes from its explosive cinematic craft, its surprising good humor and its pure excitement.

A brilliant and gruesome work of cinematic invention as well as a passionate and painful human love story.

Beyond that educational element and the delicate performances of Dancy and Byrne, I found Adam dramatically limp, predictable and in a curious way even retrograde.

Until that final, inevitable kiss, we have to listen to them, and the clatter of their crude, brainless exchanges is unbearable.

This film's dithering, handsome, morally ambivalent Hamlet, is a profoundly unsatisfactory character.

In the Loop is clever and lively, but it isn't sharp or nasty enough to cut very deep; at best it's just a peppery trifle.

Shrink offers a roster of wonderfully eccentric characterizations, shoehorned into a dramatic structure that's just a little too formulaic.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel charm the pants off us -- and each other! -- in this irresistible comedy.

A distinctive achievement, a World War II movie unlike any other and one of the few films ever to address a topic that makes almost everyone want to look away: What happens to women in wartime.

The most beautiful magic in it is left unseen. And still, it emerges with absolute clarity.

Moves along, taking two steps backward into crassness for every clever or just plain sweet moment it offers. Although many of the movie's problems seem to be rooted in the script, Columbus has such a heavy touch that he sabotages nearly every scene.

Parts of it are brilliant; some of it feels tired and overplayed. Cohen has come up with some marvelous satirical motifs; elsewhere, he's just showing how far he'll go to get a laugh.

A surprisingly refreshing experience, especially in a season of infernal cinematic busyness.

I Hate Valentine's Day is a horror show masquerading as a romantic comedy. Maybe Vardalos is just in the wrong line of work.

The picture throws off an aura of wistfulness, which may be Mann's acknowledgment that of course he can't re-create the past. The best he can do is to honor the idea of it, storybook-style, and to remind us that before there was gangsta, there were gangsters.

The drawback is that even though The Hurt Locker is extremely effective in places, it ultimately feels unformed and somewhat unfinished.

Chéri is a perfect example of a movie that gets many of the details right and the vibe all wrong.

Revenge of the Fallen just comes off as a bratty kid showing how many swear words he knows.

Year One sets prehistoric comedy back at least 20 years.

A romantic comedy doesn't need to be original to be enjoyable, and yet The Proposal still falls way too short of the mark.

A belabored trifle that's occasionally amusing but often just bewildering.