The most shocking thing about Harry and Max isn't the subject matter. The most shocking thing is just how tepid it is.

With The Nomi Song, Horn does more than simply pay homage to a late artist. He uses his subject to revisit the euphoria of artistic and musical culture at a crossroads, and in the process brings it, briefly and poignantly, back to life again.

Sweet and deeply moving.

Works more often than it doesn't.

To the extent that this difficult but ultimately rewarding film has a message, it's that you can't run away from who you are.

Muddled.

Visually accomplished and loads of fun.

So mind-blowingly horrible that it teeters on the edge of cinematic immortality.

A thriller without thrills. It's also a thriller that cheats. The story is stretched to feature length only by having the film's incidents arranged in such a way as to reveal as little as possible.

Thoroughly entertaining.

A gentle comedy.

Thought-provoking.

Four screenwriters are credited with this sloppy piece of work. Divide the embarrassment into quarters.

Unique.

Sexy and intoxicating.

More than just a nostalgia trip.

Matches a dingy urban setting with a compelling situation and throws in an ensemble of interesting characters who become even more interesting under stress. This emphasis on character -- in a sense, the movie's underlying humanity -- is what especially links it to the 1970s.

A sensitively wrought work.

Features bursts of humor and electrifying energy offset by speechifying and a dud of a subplot.

Another inert, soul-dead action drama that turns actors into zombies...It's garbage.

Muniz, however, is hampered by Stripes' constant moping, which brings out the "Malcolm in the Middle'' star's whinier tendencies.

The film is finally a letdown.

Held back by a story and script that is often silly and confusing.

A snapshot of the festival, one that radiates good cheer and offers moments of true, godly goodness.

A rather boring horror film.

Kim's masterly, poetic ending is the cherry on top in this anime, good for a rainy day or any day.

It's engaging and transparent at once.

A faithful portrait of a period in American social history.

An exceptional example of Shakespeare on film.

A richly satisfying and darkly funny movie.

Confusing, mixing messages of self-empowerment with those of conformity.

Unoriginal, frequently incomprehensible and cheaply made.

Tasteful but not compromised.

Absorbing and exquisite.

With Lloyd Webber onboard not just as composer but also co-screenwriter and producer, the film seemed destined to stay true to its roots rather than attempt to transcend them.

The picture doesn't come close to approaching the near-classic quality of the earlier film.

An extraordinary and effective film.

Reveals essential truthfulness about families.

Jaw-droppingly awful.

While still trumpeting human ingenuity, the new movie lacks the subtlety, character development and exceptional ensemble acting of the 1965 version.

It's moving, romantic, dreamlike, flawlessly acted and so engaging as to make you forget about euthanasia before it jolts you back into recognition.

Leoni is a very attractive woman, and she should be credited for giving a brave performance, but her character starts to produce involuntary shudders when she appears onscreen.

The Aviator has a hole in its center, and Scorsese fills it the only way he can, with spectacle. He makes The Aviator colorful and entertaining from beginning to end. There are worse things.

Much credit for this delightfully morose children's film must go to director Brad Silberling's careful orchestration. Please note, in the vocabulary-building spirit of the Snicket books, that the word "orchestration'' here means "coaxing good performances out of child actors and keeping Jim Carrey in check.''

Ages well in memory because it gradually seems to mean more. Its meaning can't be summed up in a sentence, but it has to do with a view of life as inexpressibly sad and yet always right.

A potent and troubling meditation on the state of Western society.

Colorful and sweeping.

The fact that the movie has to entertain with digressions is an indication of more than looseness, but rather a shoddiness...Nothing connected with the job is of any interest at all.

Bloody good.

It's almost a great movie. For half of its running time, Anderson maintains a distinct and arresting tone of vague absurdity, and then he loses control and the film begins to dip into silliness. Individual scenes become labored. Yet even at its worst, The Life Aquatic is always interesting -- there's really nothing else like it.

Compelling.

But there's just enough comforting familiarity mixed with refreshing new characters to hold the casserole of a plot together.

Beautiful but hollow.

Tricks with the camera sully an otherwise informative documentary.

Feels like a personal vendetta.

For filmgoers who like dramas that are spare yet evocative, that focus on the subtleties of relationships, and that feature foreign settings completely off the beaten path, Deserted Station will be a masterpiece.

A 98-minute elucidation of a point that's accepted within three minutes.

Neither funny nor outrageous nor horrifying nor conventionally affecting.

Whenever Roberts is onscreen, Closer freezes and starts to atrophy. And when she's off, tender shoots of life begin to sprout.

A gorgeously shot, ambitious epic.

Hauntingly tells a story older than the Odyssey and as timely as today's body count from Iraq.

It has verve, color and energy, but there's something fundamentally bogus about it.

A larger-than-life resonance.

Lumpy.

Filled with overly processed situations it tries to sell with manic energy, "Kranks" is canned, hammy and rolling as fast as it can.

Stone tries to make us like Alexander because he's good, when he should have made us want to watch Alexander because he's amazing.

Hilarious.

Superb.

It has no ambition, little sense and false sentiment, but it does have velocity, high spirits and scale.

Intoxicating and flawed.

Delightful.

Intermittently funny.

Seizes on a primal fear and flogs it for two hours.

Were there an award for most bizarre and dispiriting comedy-horror hybrid featuring killer dolls, the latest installment in the "Child's Play" series would have it locked up.

It's strung together, with cliches instead of puka shells.

A great role becomes an unenviable chore, in which a superb comic actress finds herself trying to sell a series of unfunny comic situations by mugging and pushing with all her might. It's an unflattering spectacle for all concerned.

It's sober, never flashy or exciting but always engrossing.

Dramatic, funny, fun, silly, musical, stylish, romantic and redemptive -- a film worth telling your friends and neighbors about.

Precious and uninsightful but ends beautifully.

Highly entertaining, in a schadenfreude sense, but incomplete.

An enchanting, beautiful and brilliantly imagined film.

The movie is rich with music and more than a few moments of painful exaltation.

No new moment in here for rap fans or anyone else.

Fascinating context but awkwardly told.

The film's ambitions are laudable, and it manages to be touching, funny and true to life. It seems ungrateful to ask for anything more.

Where Caine was like an arsonist in his relationships, Law's Alfie is more like a kid playing with matches -- innocent and genuinely surprised when things start blowing up around him. Law makes Alfie's befuddlement a surprisingly poignant thing to witness.

The visual and emotional hues are darker [than previous Pixar films], and the focus rests more on middle age than coming of age. The adventures of a family of superheroes are likely to thrill and amuse children, but the film's more grown-up themes might go over their heads.

A must-see for anyone still coming to terms with the chaos in Iraq.

Haunting case study of a romantic obsession.

Begins like a penetrating exploration of love, grief and suffering and ends looking like a highbrow version of "Bride of Chucky."

The slasher scenes, though relatively few, are amazingly evocative for such a low-budget movie.

Foxx's complex performance and the filmmaker's willingness to look at the dark side place Ray safely out of the realm of typical Hollywood hagiography.

Payne's little marvel.

By the time audience members start to get the joke, the film is already over.

Loses momentum midway into the boys' journey.

The unnerving brilliance of the film owes to the director's skill at assembling information and allowing it to speak for itself.

Hard, ugly and nasty yet a stylistically vigorous and often insightful piece of work.

The end result is something like the best blues festival anyone could have thrown last year, although Lightning in a Bottle falls a fair piece short of its own lofty goal.