Fun to watch although falling short of a real hoot, this latest in a barrage of family movies largely succeeds at keeping the kiddies entertained and their parents from nodding off.

In the end, it's really just a thriller, slower than most, with pockets of dead time but with a few extra flourishes, too, thanks to Norton.

A spellbinding Australian Western.

The across-the-board strong performances indicate a sure directorial hand. Everyone is made vivid, down to the smallest roles.

There's just nothing artful about it, and it's Greengrass who deserves the credit. These nonactors don't act the way most people do when playing themselves. They act the way people do when they're being themselves.

Much of the honest dialogue has the same feel as John Hughes' and Cameron Crowe's movies during their best years, while there's a half-serious hipness that recalls the first eight episodes of "The O.C."

Akeelah and the Bee connects where it counts most, on an emotional level. Only a curmudgeon could watch this feisty but vulnerable youngster rack up victories against all odds without tearing up.

RV is a horrible movie about horrible people, and just because they call it a comedy doesn't mean we have to play along.

It's surefire entertainment: loopy and predictable, but tremendously likable.

The story may be scattered and sagging and the picture may have little emotional impact -- certainly nothing to justify the epic running time -- but Garcia at least succeeds in making Havana in the 1950s seem like a vibrant, special place. He doesn't exactly make the audience care, but he does make the audience understand why he cares, and that's something.

Mehta has created the perfect guide to this strange female world.

Unlike the previous two installments, Lady Vengeance generates on odd feeling: hope.

Everything Melville shows us, he shows us for a reason, and these reasons are never obscure but are rather pertinent to the action and to the moral movement of the world and the characters.

A bizarre original from the bizarrely original director.

The movie is a stunner, so hypnotic that the length hardly matters.

One of the best films of the year.

The rare case of a movie that gets better as it goes along.

A well-constructed and genuinely tense thriller.

Silent Hill has plenty of bad acting, bad dialogue and a confusing plot -- all of which become exponentially more painful when the movie goes on forever.

This is the kind of small filmmaking that leaves a big impression.

Hao doesn't seem to have a point of view. Mongolian Ping-Pong is episodic and meandering, with several tedious stretches.

The cruelty of his methods aside -- and Polanski wasn't the first director to terrorize an actor for the sake of a performance -- Repulsion is a frightening, fiercely entertaining experience that holds up to time. (Review of May 1998 revival)

A big disappointment.

Stolen owes its persuasiveness less to its substance than to the visual craft of Dreyfus and her celebrated cinematographer, Albert Maysles. In telling the story of an unsolved crime, they use every trick available to awaken and prolong suspense before a payoff that never comes.

About five times as funny as "Scary Movie 3."

A decent-looking and harmless computer animated film that is notable mostly because it doesn't appear to contain a single original idea.

Really, the only thing kinky about this movie is its title.

With Hard Candy, the innocent are tortured along with the guilty -- the innocent, in this case, being the audience.

Floats on the charm and the labors of its lead actress, Gretchen Mol, who single-handedly makes the picture worth seeing.

An endearingly quirky independent film from Australia, with very likable characters and an intriguing premise.

Other than raising awareness for endangered wildlife, Mountain Patrol: Kekexili doesn't have anything profound to say, but it has a lot to show.

Repressed desire! A sultry soap-opera star! Incest! Gay politics! "La Mujer de Mi Hermano" has it all. Now if it only had a decent plot.

Intelligent, observant entertainment designed for an adult audience.

This is a serious film, but it is also entertaining. Ngassa and Ntuba should be galvanizing figures for a nation stuck on "Judge Judy" and "Jerry Springer."

For the most part, though, it works as a clever thriller that entertains through purposeful misdirection.

It's a movie packed with so many idiot characters that Rob Schneider is cast as the cool guy -- and sort of pulls it off.

Clumsily directed yet entertainingly written by Oakland native Nnegest Likké, Phat Girlz is like "Rocky" with cellulite. Or maybe "Pretty Woman" without all the bony butts. It has a lot of heart and soul, but it's almost never mean-spirited.

An energetic young cast, consisting of a mix of professional dancers and actors who do convincing imitations of Arthur Murray graduates, is positively inspired in numbers combining traditional ballroom steps with hip-hop.

Qualifies as a mild success. It's an easy picture to like, even if it's not exactly satisfying.

It's a first feature film for both screenwriter Alex Rose and director Gaby Dellal, and their inexperience shows in Frank's underdeveloped relationships with family and friends and in the movie's sluggish pacing.

Sir! No Sir! is far from a dry rehashing of what may seem for some like ancient history. Driving guitar rock and lively editing add to the film's urgency. The voices of the veterans alone, however, make this an important and poignant film that can speak to any generation.

An ideal introduction to Toback's output as well as a welcome elucidation for longtime fans. Apart from those worthy functions, The Outsider is also shrewdly made, illuminating its subject in a variety of settings and, at times, subtly assuming the style of Toback's films.

This is a small -- if rough -- gem of a film.

There's no other film like it. It's embarrassingly frank and self-revealing, sometimes funny, sometimes creepy, sometimes both.

The sequel is one big tease.

An emotionally charged coming-of-age saga that will make you laugh and cry, maybe at the same time.

Less a story than a series of complicated slapstick bits.

In a variety of forms, Slither excels in imaginative gore and shows that first-time director James Gunn has learned much about the joys of linking humor and horror.

A weird and near-perfect polyglot of indie art film and noir mystery.

The result, although a great idea, doesn't translate into a great movie.

A genuinely affecting love story with something to say about such contemporary obstacles to affection as weird families, hot exes, addictions, anonymous hookups, homophobia, irony, gay two-stepping -- and the difficulty of connecting no matter what gender you go for.

A one-of-a-kind cinematic experience. This musician may not be a genius along the lines of Brain Wilson, as Feuerzeig claims, but Johnston has a knack for revealing innermost thoughts in an offhand way that is eerie and uncanny.

An attempt at a beautiful film about renewal -- about past love, love lost, longing and rediscovery -- but it has no emotional truth.

A potent social allegory told with humor and mystery.

You might if you have a strong interest in and at least a general familiarity with Buddhism. If not, the film is a crashing bore, and does little to help the novice understand what the religion is all about.

A proper labor of love profiling many of the principles involved in the making of the films, peppered with a generous helping of wonderful clips.

Anyone who puts production gloss above performance, plot, dialogue and editing may thrill to Drawing Restraint 9.

The thrills in Spike Lee's singularly savvy thriller are in small unexpected moments.

Works better as unintentional comedy than horror.

At its best, Mermin -- who used an all-female crew -- conveys the sense of an entirely feminine world being created under the beauty school roof, and it's refreshing.

Well-intentioned but lifeless.

For all the squalor and extremely upsetting subject matter, you can't take your eyes off the screen.

Some say all the great movie stars are gone, but I say we've still got Charles Busch. A one-man archive of vanished showbiz glamour and period acting styles, Busch has reincarnated the great ladies of stage and screen in such camp treasures as "Vampire Lesbians of Sodom" and "Psycho Beach Party."

Almost so bad it's good. Almost.

This so-called comedy is so not funny, it makes "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" look like Chaplin.

Three story lines make up this tense movie, and while each has its strengths, they don't quite add up to a satisfying whole.

Richly satisfying entertainment the way movies are at their best, when they prod you to think.

Perhaps no director has so thoroughly explored the American concept of police work, prosecution and legal justice, and Find Me Guilty is a film that brings the 81-year-old filmmaker thematically full circle, back to his starting point, 1957's "12 Angry Men."

Has a certain charm and is sure to appeal to tweens, at least the female variety.

A glib satire with a slick surface, lots of snappy patter and nothing to sell but its own cleverness.

Although the movie doesn't turn the Zodiac saga into a slasher film, it has the look of a straight-to-video movie, or at best a Project Greenlight production.

While hardly glorifying abusive husbands, Take My Eyes, a mesmerizing and deeply disturbing film from Spain, makes an attempt to understand their thought processes.

Don't Tell often has the eerie feel of a Hitchcock film -- "Vertigo" in particular -- where you're not always sure if what you're seeing is really happening.

Pretentious drama.

"The Family Stone" did nothing for Parker, but Failure to Launch makes a strong case for life after "Sex and the City."

If studios insist on remaking classic horror films, this is definitely the way to do it.

As good as family entertainment gets.

The film is a particular disappointment considering its pedigree.

The beauty of Duck Season is its insistence that profound human experiences can arrive slowly, in incremental packages, scattered over the course of an average Sunday.

Unwatchable.

A gripping story of one teen's rebellion against his peers' sadistic abuse.

A quirky little comedy about one day in the life of a New York playwright on the brink of either greatness or failure.

This affecting documentary focuses on their 2004 production, a play whose themes of forgiveness and redemption certainly ought to have some resonance for the inmates.

Another urban action thriller that's better than some, worse than most and so forgettable that it's possible to forget it while watching it?

The movie has a sweetness and innocence that makes it near perfect entertainment for its target audience.

A return to rowdy form for Chappelle.

A film to be enjoyed only by science-fiction movie completists and middle school boys with extreme cases of attention deficit disorder.

It takes an extraordinary film on the order of Joyeux Noel to make it all suddenly vital, immediate and human.

It's a well-meaning but ultimately feeble and misguided attempt to say something profound about the aftereffects of the 2001 attacks on New York.

It grabs you from a symbolic opening scene of gang members rolling the dice -- the odds, it soon becomes clear, are stacked against them getting lucky -- and never lets go.

It's a movie that scrounges so desperately for laughs, it features both a flatulent moose and a flatulent train.

A disappointing sequel to the far funnier "Diary of a Mad Black Woman."

It's a pumped-up, intricate and fast-moving yarn that never flags and continues to play out in unexpected ways as it unravels.

While the film raises simple but deeply puzzling questions about memory and identity, the hit-or-miss search for answers by the subject and assorted experts, family and friends is finally unsatisfying.

It's an intriguing portrait, but it makes no pretense at objectivity, erring on the side of hero worship.

This documentary about men and women performing brutal work tasks for next to no money is full of arresting and eloquent images. It has little dialogue, and little is needed.

A lame pastiche of Hollywood romances.

The movie is overly long and much too intense for small children, yet it's filled with dialogue and plot turns that are too juvenile to thrill adult audiences.