Sparks' strengths include not just a powerful voice but also a radiant niceness, and that becomes part of the story.

As for Butler's screenplay, it's less beguiling than preachy.

The kid is a charmer, the message is heartfelt - love your kids while you can - and, OK, the ending might jerk a few tears, even from a crank like me. OK, it did.

The resultant spoofery is nonpartisan, or at least vague - we never learn which of these flesh-pressing idiots is the Republican and which is the Democrat - and raucous in its send-ups of the moral, financial and sexual peccadilloes of the common political animal.

Way too serious for its own good. The best vampire movies are some combination of sexy, scary or campy. This one is 100 percent earnest, and the hazy mysteries taken from Rachel Klein's book aren't strong enough to keep the audience engaged.

Here's the thing: This movie would be easy to mock as maudlin and self-important, but there's something about it that can't be dismissed. The monologues may be theatrical and presentational - director Anne Emond made this film when she was 29 and too young to be subtle.

Easy Money takes its time telling us how all the fortunes of all three men intersect, and the movie's failing - or at least its significant imperfection - is that when the stories and lifelines do converge, the results just aren't satisfying.

Much like its own characters, it dithers too much - and it dares too little.

This film has a voice of its own. And at a time when the romantic comedy seems to be a lost art form, that's saying something.

The Bourne series ended with the last installment, and now comes a 135-minute death rattle called The Bourne Legacy. It's a peculiar movie, both over-plotted and under-plotted, encumbered by layers of detail and yet with no details invested in or developed.

It's not much of a comedy - even Steve Carell, as the therapist, plays it straight here. But it's very effective as a cautionary tale.

The big disappointment of The Babymakers is that it doesn't come close to being worthy of its two stars, Paul Schneider and Olivia Munn.

Bill W., an admirable, illuminating film about the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, is pretty much like the man himself: solid, sometimes flawed and seriously unflashy.

The hardest thing to describe is tone, but it's the thing that most sets Killer Joe apart and makes it one of the most interesting and satisfying movies of the year so far.

When its biggest trick is finally revealed, it is not entirely satisfying.

"Searching" has emotional valleys and zeniths, and gasp-inducing turns, as old friends, fans and Rodriguez's grown daughters are interviewed.

For all of its dazzlingly rendered cityscapes and nonstop action, this revamped Total Recall is a bland thing - bloodless, airless, humorless, featureless. With or without the triple-bosomed prostitute.

The Well Digger's Daughter is old-fashioned in the best sense, almost cozy in its conventions.

Ultimately, the film works because the doctor's relationship with the general - and both of their relationships with the doctor's young boy - is just as complicated as the action-packed coup.

Klayman has already shown us Ai challenging the authorities on various fronts, most grippingly in a confrontation with the Chengdu police officer who had given him a potentially fatal head injury.

As far as formulaic, empty and disappointing comedies go, The Watch is far from the worst. About every seven or eight minutes, perhaps a dozen times over the course of the picture, the movie generates a medium-size laugh. Not a big laugh.

A movie about the power of the imagination really becomes a movie about a certain element of surrender - about the release of power - that is practically a requirement for loving somebody.

The combative, off-putting Dark Horse features many of writer-director Todd Solondz's usual preoccupations: misery, complexity, stunted emotions, misplaced dreams.

The word "delightful" is thrown around so much that it often means nothing. Movies that truly have the capacity to delight - that amuse and lift the spirits and create a warm feeling - are rare. Romantics Anonymous is one of those rare delights.

The subtitle of Hardy's novel was "A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented," and that's the approach taken here.

Moments are stretched. Every recollection must be illustrated by a flashback. Character motivations shift on a dime, and if you understand even half of what's going on - not generally, but specifically - you'll be doing better than most.

The filmmakers investigate, but can't answer every tough question. There are so many people who could be potentially taking advantage of these players, it's hard to sort out the wrongdoers.

The resulting film has the integrity and the ugliness of the truth. It's not true because it's ugly; no, it's ugly because it's true.