Although well intentioned, has the superficial gloss of a TV movie of the week.

Dreamland has vitality and emotional truth underlying all its interactions. And the young women, Agnes Bruckner and Kelli Garner, are superb.

There's more than a touch of whimsy in A Touch of Spice, a sentimental Greek offering that's been immensely popular in its home country but doesn't translate well.

A rollicking comedy for the gay niche that rarely rises above the level of a high school skit, Phillip J. Bartell's sequel to 2004's "Eating Out" is loaded with silliness and eye candy.

Some long patches in this show are surprisingly boring and unfunny. Maybe part of the problem is that the rest of the world has caught up with Waters -- nowadays everyone's a provocateur. In-your-face gay-themed material is no longer such a novelty; there are simply fewer boundaries left to transgress.

The Fountain' never comes together. Like the time traveler at its center, it's all over the map.

Belongs in the holiday hall of shame.

A needlessly complicated and confusing thriller.

Comic gold for anyone who is currently stoned, has been stoned in the past or spends a lot of time around stoned people.

It's tear-jerker material but ends up being quite touching, and it's a good choice for family viewing.

Somewhere in the translation from stage to screen, The History Boys has become an intelligent misfire. What's left is a literate but listless film.

Casino Royale is fresh, actually fresh.

Don't little ones have enough to worry about without ecological concerns popping up in family entertainment? Happy Feet should have stayed light on its feet.

For all its depiction of a descent into drug addiction, Candy is filled with surprisingly sweet moments and goes down more easily than seems possible given the subject matter.

For all the filmmaker's good intentions, Fast Food Nation isn't a particularly good movie. It doesn't hold together or grip you the way a documentary might have.

Some people may be put off that For Your Consideration lands in a serious place. But I see it as evidence of an expanding vision, of continued artistic growth.

Why such a structurally scattered movie should hang together at all is a mystery. That it does more than that, that it works brilliantly, is a miracle, or at the very least the product of unquantifiable causes.

The careful camera work, beautifully dank cinematography and the quietly nuanced performance by Darín keep our attention, but in the end, the film's bigger challenge isn't its length, or its deliberate pace: It's that it's overly freighted with symbolism and meaning.

Curiously, the film seems to have no discernible point, and yet -- this is practically unique -- the absence of a point becomes, in itself, a form of narrative interest.

It's difficult to ignore the fact that they've created a romantic comedy that has almost no romance and even less comedy.

All along, you know something terrible is going to happen, and when it does, you leave the theater shaken and deeply moved.

At the heart of The Return is a murder that even the most bumbling homicide investigator could have solved in about 12 seconds.

In a film that easily could have been cold or ironical, Ferrell provides the emotional thrust.

In this last passage Longley shows a poetic, almost elegiacal artistry. After two years, he might not understand the Iraqi people fully, but they have won his heart and mind.

It's as if a trumped-up biopic of Andy Warhol were to appear titled "Soup.''

This is a timeless, and nearly plotless, look at the day-to-day life of a nomadic Mongolian shepherding family. Yes, it moves deliberately, and impatient viewers will find it intolerably slow. But those who can get in track with its serene rhythm will be rewarded.

Harris' impressive channeling of Ludwig is diluted by the decision of screenwriters Stephen Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson to put the copyist front and center, possibly to distinguish their feature from "Immortal Beloved."

Often the movie seems like a lot of empty-headed blather, with one side hating the First Amendment and the other side unable to find a better use for it but to say the f-word.