Despite good reviews at this year's Sundance Film Festival, this is the kind of squishy lost cause that gives liberal guilt a bad name.

At heart, ridiculous -- ludicrous in its conception and silly in its spectacle.

It's a straight-ahead adventure with the usual number of thrills, but with the added virtue of being smarter and more sober than one might expect.

Pleasing and occasionally very funny movie that maintains a mild but consistent hold on its audience.

A gritty but sweet look at young love and family dynamics.

Just not worth revisiting, unless one wants to tie one's brain into a knot for no discernible reward.

The story goes nowhere...We don't understand the motivation of the characters.

This is harmless fun for the kindergarten crowd, but even they will notice that the "Blustery Day" video they've been playing at home is a lot better.

A lot of the acting is amateurish, and most of the plot feels like a rehash of a rehash. The music, written and performed in the spirit of L7, is small consolation.

An unfunny fish-out-of-water comedy.

An awkward comedy made surprisingly bearable, most of the way, by one actress' ability to turn on the charm and sparkle.

The saving grace of this French film is that it's anything but a sentimental story.

Could hardly be called a success -- it's rather a likable disaster.

A silly, snarling romp -- a fun (if you're in the mood for it), sometimes scary look at the life of a socially awkward man whose best friend is a white rodent he names Socrates.

Friedkin is steeped in gore, like some cinematic Macbeth, and it's obscuring his artistic vision.

An entertaining film for kids and young teens. It's also a product of the era in which we're living, and weird times make for weird movies.

Has no insights, no point, no urgency and no importance.

Routine, genial sports movie.

Ultimately lacks the narrative muscle that could have made it great. But it does have McDormand, who is great in this, her best showcase since "Fargo."

Sinks into melodrama.

This is strictly formula stuff, made worse by an utterly careless depiction of the characters.

A noble attempt that doesn't hang together.

Noe isn't a graceful filmmaker. He wants to traumatize his audience, barnstorm us, make us pay in anxiety and sweat and scorched nerves for the ugly truths he wants us to swallow.

What pushes it above mediocrity is that it ends better than it begins.

A minimalist film, Ten looks and feels like a documentary. At the end, there is no big denouement, but a profound realization that the people we see on camera are all aching for answers -- and struggling to come to terms with their lives.

Between the off-center comic riffs of Tom Arnold and the wildly improbable hair's-breadth escapes, the whole business dissolves into amiable action farce.

And you thought Hamlet was a melancholy Dane. Compared with this gloomy group, he's Pee Wee Herman.

Stays emotionally mired because of a static screenplay that fails to express its issues dramatically.