The movie is sporadically funny in an anarchistic way. But Cho and Penn don't have the needed personality or comic identity to sustain a franchise and their non-drug humor is so crude and scatological that -- to say the least -- it leaves a very bad taste in the mouth.

The film -- Lelouch's 49th in 41 years -- stars Fanny Ardant as a glamorous, beautiful and phenomenally popular Parisian novelist who we first see in a flash-forward as she's being hauled into the Sureté, interrogated and formally charged with murder.

Morris challenges us to understand what the pictures show and what they don't show, and to see them in context. And he confronts us with the most important question surrounding them: Do they reveal a crime, an aberration in the system or standard operating procedure?

While Hunt's directing debut is promising, if understated, it's her performance as schoolteacher April Epner that impresses the audience.

Preposterous, empty-headed and tedious.

The directors have told the press that one of their goals was "to make horseracing -- a great sport that has gotten progressively less attention over the past 30 years -- cool again." The movie actually does this. It sure inspired me to make plans for Emerald Downs.

The result is joyous and exhilarating.

For about an hour, the movie is essentially Budweiser ad humor writ long ("Dude!") but about halfway through -- after enough members of the "Knocked Up"/"SuperBad" dude squad have all made their requisite cameos -- the movie shows it has a little heart.

The Life Before Her Eyes is like one of those puzzles. There is something wrong in each scene, and the viewer zeroes in on the elements that don't fit, wondering if there is a purpose behind them.

Spurlock is good company: a more likable, less abrasive, less manipulative Michael Moore.

Just a crappy flick for the Beavises of the world.

After its rough opening, Smart People settles down to be a funny, wryly enjoyable, effortlessly poignant parable of family life and a splendid showcase for its cast -- especially Page, who handily steals the movie and proves that her "Juno" success was no fluke.

It's hard to recall another time when the cross-purposes of two collaborating filmmakers of a major film has been quite so evident, or when the theme of the movie itself has been so totally schizophrenic -- half populist outrage, half Nazi.

It works on several levels, and stands out as a wistful meditation on the psychological cost of 9/11.

With a title like Chaos Theory, one might expect a little runaway energy or a dash of wild spirit under the antics, but there's little punchy anarchy in this controlled experiment.

When the veterans of this war are finally allowed to tell their own stories, we will have something worth listening to. Body of War is just election year claptrap.

If the chorus was the sole focus of the documentary, it would have been brilliant. Unfortunately, director Stephen Walker makes the movie as much about himself as it is about the singers.

Hou's first film made outside of Asia is his most emotionally turbulent, yet he remains, like the balloon, outside looking in, a compassionate but distant observer capturing it all with a graceful restraint and floating beauty that ultimately carried me away with it.

For all its other virtues, the supporting casting is lackluster, the script never quite kicks into place as a sports movie and Clooney the director seems to lack the touch that might have set the proceedings on fire as a zany ensemble comedy.

For those whose idea of hilarity is an adult and a kid throwing fireworks at each other, then getting stoned and playing piggyback in the mall, this movie should be a refreshing tonic.

Captures the overwhelming and uncontrollable emotional assault of loving and living through captured moments and sensuous images.

Such an air of dumbness hovers over the movie, and it's all played so broadly that nothing about it is remotely believable.

It has absolutely nothing to say -- no redeeming commentary about nihilistic, narcissistic society and its appetite for instant gratification -- which would have made it sociologically interesting, or at least sort of Faustian in theme. Instead Sex and Death 101 is as empty-headed as its protagonist.

An exhilarating musical experience.

The pleasure of watching such well-crafted entertainment offsets the small disappointments.

It lacks the invention of Pegg's comedies with Edgar Wright, which buzz and crackle with ideas and energy. This one simply plods through, just like Dennis. Only Pegg's doggedness gets this effort across the finish line.

A thoroughly ordinary drama of temptation, dubious redemption and easy revenge.

Backseat satisfies itself with small observations and minor breakthroughs of self-awareness. In the scheme of their lives, this journey is just a speed bump, jolting them awake for a brief moment. The rest is up to them.

My Brother Is an Only Child isn't a critique of the left but a film about the consequences and responsibility of "political action." Luchetti measures social justice not in ideals but in positive change and the compassion with which it is accomplished.

Salvadori's homage is a bittersweet, funny, sporadically charming and consistently entertaining love story between two "kept" people.

While there are good things about it, Stop-Loss is nothing spectacular.

An allegory of our times, Shotgun Stories is a tragedy of biblical scale and an intimate family drama. Unlike the more lauded films of last year, which glorified a national preoccupation with bloody deeds, Shotgun Stories is a passionate cry to end the violence and a reminder that we, as free individuals, have the power to determine our own destinies.

This thing is a mess.

While not a grand-slam comedy, the offbeat humor and easy byplay gives The Grand a winning hand.

Plays like a pilot for a situation comedy about a 40-year-old carpenter who decides to return to the boxing ring.

The script sounds like literal diary transcripts, the camerawork tests the limits of eyestrain, and the soundtrack bleats with mediocre pop songs by unknowns.

Garbarski recovers from the melodrama with a final image that is so sweet, so simple and so understated that one is tempted to say it is perfect.

For all the clumsy scenes and cloying performances, director Patricia Riggen puts her adults through tough choices and hard consequences.

It's a loving and attentive take on a charming classic.

While too bland and stupid to be offensive, Never Back Down spouts a hollow message of nonviolence while celebrating the brutal satisfaction of beating the crap out of someone.

Bright, bouncy, kooky and comically tone deaf, CJ7 is the most bizarre kids movie I've ever seen.

Based more on rumor and supposition than fact. It's a highly entertaining set of hypotheses.

The film is a hopeful, rollicking, rocking, humorous, heartbreaking journey.

It's all quite deftly played with a maturity and introspection that may take you by surprise, though Sachs is perhaps too restrained in parts.

The film is lovely to look at -- so overflowing with lavish furniture, jewelry and interiors that it's almost like a visit to Paris' Musée des Arts Décoratifs. If you're a fan of such things, "Pettigrew" is worth seeing solely for its sets.

Paranoid Park is a movie about its teen hero's inability to express his feelings: to himself, to his parents, to his friends and, unfortunately, to the audience.

For all the misery and emotional mess of Snow Angels, Green finds resilience and hope in the kids and even in some of the grown-ups.

A moving and touching documentary.

Cunha and Silva, both featured in 2002's similarly themed "City of God," have been playing these roles since they were 13, and the rapport between them is electrifying. Much of the sweetness of the film comes from what they bring to their roles.

Offers compelling footage, but its revisionism can be distracting.

An absorbing, exciting costume drama that works as a historical romance, a family tragedy and a showcase for its young stars.

There are some flat moments, to be sure, and Palansky's direction can be a bit unsteady and awkward, but he doesn't wallow in the eccentricities or the modestly self-empowering moral. This fairy tale feels pleasantly down-to-earth.

Semi-Pro is the perfect name for this movie, because it feels like a half-baked comedy made by semi-professionals.

It is ironic that the core audience for Chop Shop is that very crowd that has recently taken steps to redevelop the Iron Triangle into something more Manhattan-friendly.

The dismal high school comedy Charlie Bartlett has the look, feel and sentiment of a made-for-video cheapie that might have been grudgingly whipped together by Robert Downey Jr. as some sort of court-ordered community service project for his many drug busts.

Just another low-budget effort from filmmakers who mistake cleverness for smarts.

It's as if Gondry lets his performers settle into their parts and feel their way through their stories. It gives the film an ambling pace and a unique chemistry that bubbles with strange and unexpected flavors.

A gripping, unusual and suitably harrowing -- if, in the final analysis, not particularly satisfying -- concentration camp drama.

Flat-out one of the more exciting and original gut-busters that Hollywood has produced in many a month. It's virtually all action, but the action is never mindless and it is full of marvelous surprises every step of the way.

The film's take on media and personal responsibility recalls Brian De Palma's faux Iraq documentary, "Redacted," here dropped into a homefront turned guerrilla war zone.

Most political films involving children are vicious or sentimental. The Year My Parents Went on Vacation, set in 1970 when Brazil was under the military dictatorship of General Emilio Medici, is neither.

Abigail Breslin, the preteen Oscar nominee for "Little Miss Sunshine" and the most effortless actress of her generation, plays the precocious little girl part without overdoing the precociousness.

The best thing -- maybe the only good thing -- about the expensive sci-fi movie, Jumper, is its high-concept premise, which gives its hero the power of teleporting himself anywhere on the globe in the blink of an eye: from the Coliseum of Rome to the North Pole.

Maybe it's fantasy fatigue, but for all the pretty effects and breathless chases and goblin war battles, the sense of wonder and magic is lost in the shuffle.

Isn't nearly as entertaining as it is predictable.

A slight but wise comedy about the loneliness that makes all men brothers.

The script is fatally stupid, most of the gags fall flat, the secondary characters add little, Hudson fails to make anything interesting out of the exasperated heroine, and the endless references to McConaughey's sexual prowess finally become revolting.

A perfectly titled and thoroughly engaging -- if at times gleefully violent -- black comedy.

Though you might expect a film of a bunch of performers on a bus to explode with camaraderie and high jinks, the Wild West Comedy Show offers only standard patter about how hard it is for four dudes to share a bathroom, a map graphic between scenes, and one -- just one! -- priceless moment.

Be warned that what looks to be a family comedy pushes its PG-13 rating to the edge with blatant sexual references and creatively crude sexual metaphors.

It would be easy to categorize the Lebanese women's picture Caramel as a Levantine combination of "Sex in the City" and "Beauty Shop," but it's actually a lot smarter, sharper and deeper than that.

A stiff of a supernatural comedy.

The film's one original moment comes when Bluto has a conversation with a cow. The rest of it, from the distorting lens used randomly to suggest unreality, to the twist ending lifted verbatim from the superior "High Tension," is about as imaginative as a portobello steak with onions.

How She Move is the latest urban music drama from MTV Films, and it manages to give a familiar story a vivid jolt of character.

A genuinely creepy film, though not in a "No Country for Old Men" kind of way. More in an overzealous-blog-comments kind of way, or a dude-on-the-bus-looking-at-me kind of way. Just ugh.

A grueling and deeply affecting human drama.

Its dazzling blend of rock magic and 3-D technology just may be ushering in a whole new kind of musical theater.

Director Mitchell Lichtenstein finds new ground in the over-tilled suburbia of David Lynch and John Waters.

This 38th Allen film (and third in a row to be set in London) is a drama about two brothers that's so heavy in tone it seems inspired by Greek tragedy and the grimmest '40s film noir.

When the monster shows up, pretty early in the film, everything becomes much more interesting, as it smashes buildings in midtown Manhattan like some sort of Rudy Giuliani, 9/11 nightmare.

The results are moderately entertaining, but the humor is broad and shallow; the film has none of the irony, bite or wit of its predecessor; and the script (by Glenn Gers) seems so calculated to appeal to every conceivable female demographic that it always feels contrived.

It delivers everything you expect on a timetable you can predict to the minute. It's filmmaking as a cross between a carefully choreographed dance and an elaborate pageant.

Journeys into a new heart of darkness, the destination of which lies outside the frontiers of humanity.

John Sayles ventures into August Wilson territory with Honeydripper.

In a genre that has been battered by the cheap grotesqueries of special effects, it is a pleasure to be unsettled by something as simple as an invasive beam of light in the shadows of a haunted house.

An unusual, visually hypnotic, American Gothic historical epic that traces the rise and tragic fall of a Western mining magnate of the Gilded Age.

The most insipidly innocuous film ever made about facing mortality and living it up before passing away, The Bucket List has as much poetry and poise as its clumsy, clunky title.

Not the most thrilling of competition films. There are only two short debate scenes, and each time the team gets to argue (in sound bites of rhetoric) the politically correct side of the issue.

Fascinating memoir of coming of age in Iran.

Predictable but entertaining kid movie.

A witty, literate, wryly sophisticated parable of American politics: just the kind of movie that Hollywood, in its search for the global audience, supposedly doesn't make anymore.

It's an expensive star vehicle that also happens to be a teary, unabashedly sappy, romantic comedy with every element as purely calculated to appeal to a heterosexual woman's romantic fantasies as an episode of "All My Children."

Sometimes jaunty, often dark, and very stylized. In other words, it's a perfect fit for director Tim Burton.

John C. Reilly, with his homely face and mop of curly hair, has been the movies' second banana of choice since his debut in 1989's "Casualties o War." In the comedy, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," he finally gets a starring role and he rises to the challenge.

Although this is director Mark Obenhaus' first ski movie, it is every bit as exciting as the popular Warren Miller pictures, and boasts an unobstrusive soundtrack in place of the heavy metal racket that fuels most sports documentaries.

The life of a prison guard is dull, no matter who is in the cell. Director Bille August makes what he can of this material, always holding our interest but never fulfilling the promise of a close encounter with one of the 20th century's most controversial leaders.

The movie year's most expensive and ambitious sci-fi spectacular, I Am Legend, is three movies in one: a futuristic effects-o-rama, a zombie thriller and a survivalist parable. Each is better than average, and the experience is fairly gripping.

Only a qualified success. It suffers in its transition from page to film, and my guess is that its devoted fan base will think the adaptation misses the mark by more than a few inches.