All Black, all the time, and could easily have been an exhausting mess. But the movie is coherent, hilarious and surprisingly sweet.

Mirthless and barely musical.

One of the year's sweetest surprises. It sneaks up on you, disarming you with its modesty and tenderness, its remarkable lack of self-infatuation.

The musical numbers are the only real drag on this otherwise odd and appealing picture.

Stays funny despite rickety gags because Ben Stiller and 81-year-old Eileen Essel are old pros at playing it straight.

The action sequences are novel, the performances are slightly askew, and the camera work is vigorous and mostly effective.

Chalk it all up to prettiness, if you like, but Lane's case has more to do with spirit -- with warmth and emotional readiness, plus a kind of open-book quality that makes her both lovely and comical, usually at the same time.

Surprisingly good as a quirky triumph of human spirit.

Disjointed.

Surprisingly lighthearted, thanks to Israeli director Eytan Fox's deft touch with comedy and old- fashioned romance.

Well-scripted, well-acted and occasionally sexy, but just isn't all that interesting.

Documentaries can be informative, entertaining and provocative, but rare is the documentary that makes you feel so engaged (and enraged) that it prompts you to action somehow. Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion is that kind of film.

As haunted-house thrillers go, Cold Creek Manor is more ludicrous than the average but at the same time more handsomely produced.

A coming-out comedy that mines every cliche of cloistered Italian culture. But like "Greek Wedding," Mambo has enough funny moments to save it.

By humanizing an immigrant/refugee crisis that is not abating, Winterbottom does a cinematic service that happens to be damn interesting, too.

This seemingly good idea results in disaster. Allen has no insight into the current generation of young people, and his film is just a jumbled rehash of themes and motifs that he's explored elsewhere.

A creeping equanimity is taking over the work of John Sayles, a quality that in personal terms might be wise and coolheaded but in terms of drama is absolute death.

Gets its punch from simple scenes and conversations.

Coming-of-age schmaltz fest.

A warm comic story that's fairly engaging even when no one is singing.

Could use script transfusion, or at least a few quarts of levity.

There isn't a film filled with richer, more colorfully imaginative images currently playing in theaters.

A silly Hong Kong action flick from actor-turned-director Corey Yuen, fits nicely in the "bimbo fu" genre.

A clever look at con artists and their games of deception.

As a thriller, Cabin Fever falls short, filled with characters so obnoxiously stupid that just watching their skin slowly melt off doesn't seem like enough punishment.

A delicate, beautifully observed study of impossible romance, Lost in Translation is one of the best films this year.

Excellent.

Intimate, quietly illuminating documentary.

The magic here is all in the telling: in the graceful, laconic direction of Jacques Becker.

A wonderful French offering whose jumping-off point is a bullfight.

Most moviegoers will have trouble looking past Culkin the actor, who does a decent job of sending up youthful fame in a movie that's barely worth the effort.

The rare David Spade movie that won't make you hate yourself in the morning.

The movie's promise -- to provide a balanced argument -- goes unrealized, and all we're left with is the spectacle of an idiot bullying a genius.

Charming family story.

Emilio Martinez-Lazaro fails to provide a consistent tone for his movie, which totters between earnest realism and camp.

Would be a completely routine horror movie, except that it has a superior director. Watch this film for five minutes, and it's clear that Victor Salva knows how to make movies.

It's the work of a very young filmmaker (Lerman is in his late 20s), promising if finally unsatisfying.

Tries screwball and gross-out comedy and fails on both counts.

The best of Jackie Chan's American movies, a pleasant little action comedy that makes one wonder how other filmmakers could ever get it wrong.

Gains depth from subtle dark humor and a few genuinely emotional moments

Even at 82 minutes, Stoked gets repetitious, with too much time spent on the rise and not enough on the fall.

A bittersweet film that tells the story of Palestinian life as eloquently as anything ever done.

Dispiriting mess. The movie is bad in a boring way: tepidly paced, disjointed and lacking any emotional hook.

It's a dishonest satire that manages to be (disingenuously) contemptuous of white people and (unintentionally) condescending toward black people, without ever being funny.

His (Seidl) camera is shocking in its intimacy, his film surprisingly casual in its depiction of extreme behavior and the randomness of violence.

Wood is superb at delineating Tracy's slide into desperate incoherence, but equally impressive is Reed, who has to conceal her writer's intelligence in playing a character who's entirely instinctive and unreflective.

It would help if the plot were more than just an outline with a few convenient turns.

A romantic drama, a rare kind of film these days, even though romantic dramas were once a dominant genre in America.

Considering what the filmmakers had to work with, and the fact that it has all been done before, Freddy Vs. Jason isn't bad. And sometimes not bad is almost good.

It's a humane and witty treatment of an average life that, incidentally, speaks to the worth and inherent drama of average lives.

Delightful blend of comedy, kung fu, soccer and special effects.

Open Range veers wildly. It's a movie of beauty and sensitivity, and tedium and absurdity.

The most humorous actor in the film, Joey Kern as Sweet Lou the cradle-robbing ladies' man, gets laughs only because he's performing a note-for-note rip-off of the Matthew McConaughey character in "Dazed and Confused."

Captures the effervescence and playfulness of Johnson's novel, even as it attempts to shoehorn a tangle of characters and situations.

Will have even the most landlocked goofy-footers wondering why they never learned to surf.

SWAT is better than "Gigli," but so is most outpatient surgery.

This is Curtis' film. Looking a little like a combination of Carol Burnett and Annie Lennox, Curtis has this character down.

Gains its power through what it withholds, namely, sound- bite answers as to why these horrific events happen.

Has a goofy enthusiasm for itself that's contagious.

A melancholy, well-observed film.

A powerful document of cruelty and sadism.

The strain and desperation are apparent from the first scene.

The most thoroughly joyless and inept film of the year, and one of the worst of the decade. We're talking about a disaster, and not of the fun "Showgirls" variety, either.

By the standards of most IMAX films, this is a bizarre entry, a documentary about bugs that was produced by Terminix, the pest control company.

A creditable genre entry, the rare action movie with a discernible story, an assured pace and a charismatic central character. It falls apart in the end.

Midway, Mondays in the Sun becomes as dull as a day with nothing to do.

Ultimately, it's a cold, caustic film that doesn't take a strong point of view but seems to offer up its numerous set pieces.

Ross surrendered himself to the tale, lavishing time on the characters, getting the period details right and making the races look authentic. The result is a faithful, loving piece of work, and the love shows.

Mexican filmmaker Antonio Serrano applies the fantasy device so haphazardly as to render it irritating instead of surprising.

Starts off with a burst of energy but becomes tedious midway through.

Another of those summer movies that want to pluck at our heartstrings. If it would just stop plucking for a second, it might be enjoyable.

A messy, ambitious comedy.

Full of drama, poignancy and some heartbreaking moments.

By playing the boob so brilliantly, Atkinson allows us the catharsis of recognizing our own incompetencies and lack of poise.

A dark, unsettling drama from Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone.

A thoughtful but uneven teen picture, also has too much going on.

An unusually cheerful depiction of prostitution. You've never seen such wholesome hookers.

All told, the best ensemble cast I've seen this year.

Just too much of a mediocre thing. It didn't have to be that way.

The results are mixed. Many of the films are too long, and even worse, the collection as a whole doesn't come to grips with the human scale of the tragedy.

Though the storytelling is a bit lopsided, the slapdash quality is charming overall, and the movie benefits from colorful characters and a couple of hilarious scenes.

It's refreshing to see a film about nothing but human emotion.

A superficial diversion.

Numbing and inert.

Gorgeous and optimistic.

A delightful coming-of-age movie that teeters on contrivance but never topples.

Serious and absurd (mostly, it's a drama) but never finds a good rhythm. The movie flounders in a way that calls too much attention to itself -- and is hurt by jarring and unbelievable plot twists.

It depicts the world of a century ago in a way that comments on the anxieties facing the world today, and it does so, at least for a while, with cleverness and a sense of fun.

In his thrilling feature debut, Madame Sata, Brazilian filmmaker Karim Ainouz doesn't glorify dos Santos but examines the hot, reckless fever of his life in all its thorny complexity.

Eventually the concept buckles under the heavy blockbuster treatment, becoming a monotonous, repetitive spectacle of endless shipboard sword fights and pirate ghosts in the moonlight.

Earnest, but a work in progress.

Clever and unhurried mystery.

Has its moments, and Schwarzenegger is as buff and tough as ever. But there's a flat feeling about this effort that's unmistakable and inescapable.

Predictable.

Takes the financially successful formula of "Legally Blonde," the Reese Witherspoon hit from two years ago, and does something unexpected. It fiddles with it, changes it and actually fixes it.

Listless, self-absorbed slackers stare into computer monitors, groan about their lives and moan during cyber sex in On_Line. It makes you wonder, is there is a market for soft-porn movies for lonely geeks? Isn't that what computers are for in the first place?

Clearly, this is something rare: a movie that insulates itself against its own rottenness by being lousy by design.

By the finish, the movie is getting by on little but adrenaline and audience goodwill. Still, that goodwill runs fairly deep, because, taken all in all, 28 Days Later is a superior motion picture.