Dinner for Schmucks is lumbering, inconsistent and about 20 minutes too long, but it's funny. It's funny from the beginning, and it stays funny, even as it beats scenes to death and overstays its welcome.

Unlike many documentaries about movies, it's neither underfunded nor perfunctory, but thoughtful and bracing.

Sci-fi has rarely been so playful.

Until this film, these Shin Bet directors had never consented to an interview. Now that they've spoken - and have said the unexpected - we can only wonder if their words will have an influence.

The acting is good, particularly by Faour, who plays the naive, zaftig heroine as warm and appealing despite her troubles. It's also nice to see veteran Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass ("Lemon Tree"), who plays Muna's sister.

Despite some cumbersome moments, the film delivers a to-the-point message about how the sins of the parents can be visited on the children.

Though it is funny - at times, laugh-out-loud funny - this comedy is by and for adults.

The Fencer, directed by Klaus Haro, is basically a “Hoosiers” remake — a true story set in a 1950s small town, in which a coach with a mysterious past arrives to shape a rag-tag bunch of kids into tournament contenders (there’s even a halfhearted romance that seems thrown in at the last minute in both films) — but that’s OK. It’s a winner here, too.

Gentle, wacky, down-to-earth and romantic.

Masterminds delivers for the most part. Kate McKinnon, as David’s wife, does her usual frozen-face, crazy-eyed weird thing, but this time she’s funny.

There's a manic quality to the film that may wear you down. But at least you won't be bored.

With the aid of a charmingly offbeat story and a jolly good dialect coach, the stars leave you thinking, well done. Their spirited performances help cover up glaring holes in the plot.

Other documentaries have made this point in grander, more artistic ways, but there is value in seeing this raw footage that accompanies an adolescence spent in front of the camera.

McCormack at first seems too light of spirit for the role, but she grows into it, and it turns out she's exactly what the movie calls for: Someone too wholesome-looking to be anything but a fine young lady.

If Public Enemies lacks anything, it's something audiences can't legitimately expect to find: a certain EXTRA something.

It's all very foul, and completely entertaining.

Ricky Gervais, instead of resting on formula and on a familiar persona, uses his first opportunity as a big-screen actor-director to make an original comedy that expresses some real thinking and feeling.

I laughed hysterically, but in the interest of balanced reporting, I should add that the guy parked next to me at the screening - a boyfriend who was there under duress - emitted a series of low guttural noises suggesting profound psychological anguish.

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

By turns frightening, exciting and ridiculous, San Andreas is, in the end, more impressive than anything else.

It’s less about music and more about how hard it is — and how bad it feels — to be absolutely and completely on the outside. And though the movie is uncompromising on that score — and shows its heroine going through a series of humiliations that are almost as painful to watch as they would be to experience — it’s not self-pitying. It’s dead-eyed accurate, and that’s its ultimate redemption.

Features some disturbing clips.

The strength of the Coens is that they are so witty, skilled and smart, so in command of their medium, so fluid and agile, so capable of surprising and delighting from every angle, that they can make the grimmest story bearable, even palatable.

Art makes the difference for the few kids who make it, and it also makes the difference for the films that stand out from the pack. The Hip Hop Project, a documentary by Matt Ruskin, is one of them.

The surprise is that Kindergarten Cop is delightful and entertaining, a cop movie with suspense, no blood and a lot of genuine warmth. The script is intelligent and plays to the unique strengths of Schwarzenegger as a star. [21 Dec 1990, p.E1]

In this case, it's considerably better, adapting the 007 template in a story of a crazed bald cat named Kitty Galore (voiced by a hissing, chichi Bette Midler) and her malevolent plot to conquer the world. It's brilliant in its simplicity

Twilight has a few gory plot turns - mostly offscreen - and one near-sex scene that may offend a few Amish people, but the rest is maybe 33 percent less wholesome than "High School Musical." It's almost certainly less risque than what you were watching when you were 14. (Cue the soundtrack to "Risky Business.")

The opening is hilarious, but it also sets the bar extremely high for whatever may follow.... The film doesn’t always hit that bar, but it comes close enough times to make “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday” a holiday for viewers.