Boy A will rivet you while raising issues about forgiveness and just who deserves it.

An action blockbuster extravaganza that's sadder than sad and never pretends otherwise.

Mamma Mia! is fun, the music's terrific and the cast is appealing.

In the riveting Transsiberian, a train of that name adds international intrigue to the mix.

A film one can admire, but it is not "likable," per se, nor does its director wish it to be.

The talented fantasy filmmaker and heir to the "Lord of the Rings" throne gets the tone right throughout Hellboy 2, and the hip retro charm alone is enough to merit recommendation.

A legit action movie.

Isn't likely to win Murphy another Oscar nomination, but it allows him to do what he does best - loads of physical comedy.

A pleasant but mild-mannered experience.

With a subject like Roman Polanski, you don't really need to do much to capture audience interest. But maybe that's the reason Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired doesn't live up to its promise.

The film is thorough and entertaining. It's enthusiastic about his contributions, but it's no hagiography, and it serves as both a celebration and a cautionary tale.

Eventually comes into its own as a wacky commentary on the state of America in the fifth year of the Iraq war.

When it's good, it's good, and when it fails, it's still clear what Levine was trying to do.

It just does everything really well: perfect pacing, lovely camera work, spot-on acting and an ingenious plot.

More intelligent than most summer blockbusters and features at its center a thought-out and committed performance by Will Smith. But in the end it's merely ALMOST good.

Finding Amanda is a minor movie for Broderick, but considering where it takes him, it's understandable why he took the role.

In the moment, it's intermittently transcendent, heartrending and beautiful ... and busy, repetitious and boring.

Either a go-for-broke action movie or a sick, sick movie for a sick, sick public.

Trumbo is welcome just to bear witness to the severe consequences meted out to one man who dared to do the right thing.

Worth seeing just to admire how Argentine writer-director Marcos Carnevale avoids so much as a whiff of condescension.

Breillat is inviting us to really look at sex as it occurs in life, and to engage with it mentally, as a driving mystery of human existence.

A poignant, quirky and effective alternative to the usual soulless, computer-generated summer fare.

Remaking Get Smart for the big screen might have sounded like a bad idea, but the movie shows it to have been something else: a REALLY bad idea.

A disappointment, but it's not a disaster, and that's at least something.

Has beautiful scenery and some enjoyable moments but leaves the viewer feeling the need to find the book to get the rest of the story.

Much as she did in "Little Miss Sunshine," Breslin imbues Kit with joy.

Under the subdued, dignified surface, this movie - about the 24 hours after a one-night stand - churns with a filmmaker's fascination and wonder, sadness and longing.

It's an entertaining movie, which is half the game, but it's not scary, which it should be. Neither is it something to be taken seriously, though it's intended to be.

Embraces its identity as a sci-fi-summer-action-blockbuster extravaganza. Along the way, it actually comes close to finding the balance that Lee was looking for.

This is the portrait of a marriage as full and enviable as the greatest unions in literature.

The best way to take this film is with a box of popcorn and a grain of salt.

Quid Pro Quo, billed as a "neo-noir" about a paraplegic journalist drawn into a shadowy world of disability fetishists, is choked by allegory and pretension. It's an O. Henry tale gone wrong.

We're compelled to admire these athletes because, despite their obvious skill, they are in constant danger.

An enjoyable example of this extraordinary director's documentary work.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this is probably the best movie so far this year about a kung-fu fighting panda.

Serious intent may be lurking somewhere in there, but it's buried under layers of stupidity - not just stupid jokes, which is what you want from Sandler, but also stupid, shallow thinking.

In general the film is so impressive that we can't leave the theater without wanting more.

Aside from being vile and repellent, it's mainly dull - old-fashioned in its shock tactics and culminating in a ho-hum climax.

Isn't quite as boring as it sounds, thanks to writer/director Steve Conrad's strong script and decent performances by John C. Reilly and Seann William Scott.

A smart, funny and edifying documentary.

The result is a comedy that's low budget in all the right ways - so hilarious, testosterone-charged and yet cringe-inducing to watch that the result is almost exhausting.

An unbroken flow of sad or nasty incidents.

The best American movie about women so far this year, and probably the best that will be made this year.

Here's the tricky thing about The Strangers. Sure, it uses cinema to ends that are objectionable and vile ... but it does it well, with more than usual skill.

The movie's one flaw is this: The whole movie hangs on the gradual unraveling of the central mystery and is made with the expectation that the audience is fascinated and hanging on every tidbit.

At its best, Gordon's work is bracing and pointed, though it's not for the queasy.

You can be 100 percent in favor of rescuing adorable orphans from war-torn zones and still find The Children of Huang Shi a tough haul.

Misfires so severely that even the clever details get obliterated in the resulting mess.

Not only less than horrible, but actually occasionally enjoyable.

The movie moves. It has action sequences that are so enormous that they won't just wow audiences, but rock them back in their seats and make them laugh at the audacity of it all.

The experience of seeing this film is cumulative, sober and profound.

Often fascinating and provocative, although, as a film, it feels a bit long and somewhat repetitive.

Exactly one minute longer than its predecessor, but it's a dragged-out exercise, with no epic scale and no spirit worth talking about.

Reprise has a smart and knowing script and will compel audiences to reflect on themselves at that age.

Unfortunately the movie is also a bit too long, and for long stretches it's about as entertaining as, well, a long stretch. Still, if this were one of those movie-review TV shows, I'd have to give Lion's Den a (tiny) thumb's up, for its aura of authenticity and for the ferocity of Gusman's commitment.

If this action extravaganza represents the future of movies, it's going to be a sad, dead and awful future.

It's an achingly beautiful movie and a triumph of location scouting, with more cosmopolitan spectacle than the past three Indiana Jones and James Bond movies combined.

A giddy French comedy.

Presents an almost fawning portrait of the doctor-turned-surfer.

Who wants to spend a minute on the Strip with the chance that there might be people as annoying as the characters played by Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher walking around?

An action sci-fi blockbuster extravaganza that provides cartoon thrills for thinking people. It's the best movie of its kind since the second "Spider-Man" movie four years ago.

A subtly rich performance by Dillane and a fine supporting cast make this Holocaust drama worth seeing, even if you don't think you can bear another one.

This is a story that should have been, at the absolute most, 20 minutes long.

As a work of entertainment, as a cohesive narrative and as an artistic whole, there's no way to call it anything but an on-balance average effort. Yet there's nothing remotely average about the movie's warm spirit, its imaginative and arresting cinematography or its handful of unique, brilliant scenes and shrewd, bizarre performances.

Entertaining in a pulpy kind of way, like the fight films of the 1930s and '40s, and more accessible than most of Mamet's movies.

If it happens to hit you right - that is, if you happen to catch its wavelength of tear-and-a-smile whimsicality - the movie will speak to you.

As finely crafted as a great work of literature.

The movie is too lethargic for its own good, and many of the events and minor characters don't quite ring true.

You could blast for it, and you still won't find 30 uninterrupted seconds of truth in Baby Mama. The characters are lies. Their emotional workings are lies. The jokes are based on lies about human behavior.

An overwrought and ultimately silly thriller.

A brilliant piece of construction, and talking too much about its specifics would only spoil the overall experience.

Reveals one mystery, only to reveal another that it can't quite penetrate.

The new movie shrieks of motherhood - raising hot-button issues like biological clocks running down, the rights of birth mothers and whether to adopt or give artificial insemination a shot.

Remarkable.

If you're like me and think that any Pacino movie is sort of worth seeing, so long as he never says, "Hoo-ha," then 88 Minutes won't be a total disappointment.

Feels a bit too much like six hours of movie packed into 113 minutes - imagine if New Line had made Peter Jackson cram the entirety of "Lord of the Rings" into one film.

Deserves to ride the wave of the latest, hottest micro-trend in pictures: the romantic comedy for guys.

Emotionally sophisticated, humane and worth talking about for hours.

A film so self-centered that even the director's most dedicated stalkers might find it a bit too narcissistic.

With his self-deprecating demeanor and easy laugh, Glass is a congenial presence, and now and then he lets an insight drop.

A look at lives and hopes that are part of our American culture.

If only it weren't based on a true story. It might have been a good movie.

There's a lot to appreciate in Street Kings, a tight, propulsive action thriller, but there's one thing to marvel at, and that's James Ellroy's command of story.

The Visitor, is, if anything, more imaginative and touching than his first.

By creating likable characters and putting them in situations that seem plausible, if a bit of a stretch, the film succeeds where others of its genre fail.

The movie gets bogged down in the formula conventions of romantic comedy, and in the process, it loses all honesty.

Joins the growing mass of excellent, disturbing and achingly sad documentaries about the Iraq conflict.

A liberating experience.

The scale is small, but Jellyfish has deep currents.

It exudes goodwill and high spirits, occasionally makes you feel really good, and yet here and there and in some definite ways, it kinda sorta stinks.

Wildly romantic.

Exhilarating and enchanting family picture. It's the best I've seen this year and highly recommended for girls and for boys, too.

An exhilarating documentary.

Everything in Water Lilies is more guarded, more complex and far more interesting than it seems.

Though a heartbreaking film, there are certainly moments of quirky humor.

Flawless is a fictional tale, but something in director Michael Radford's conscientious, methodical presentation gives it the feeling of true history.

Filled with moments that will make you smile.

A movie with an irresistible premise that ultimately collapses around the whole issue of motivation. Until it does, this is a thoroughly entertaining picture.