In the lead, Anderson ("The X-Files") is competent but never quite makes the character come soaring to life.

The characters are uniformly repulsive, the cliche-ridden script builds no real tension or psychological interest, and the bottom line is that Lee's innovative but ultimately tedious and even ludicrous MTV-style visuals add absolutely nothing to the story dynamics.

A clumsy, heavy-handed and unnecessarily sordid occult thriller that somehow has managed to generate a big pre-release buzz.

Harris genuinely seems to be at one with the character, and his movie is eerily alive.

Harmless and thoroughly unmemorable: colorful, cute, fast paced, and about as involving as an amusement park ride.

A potentially interesting idea deflated by the absurd proclamations of an arch screenplay and smothered under the ponderous gravity of M. Night Shyamalan's dreary direction.

He's (Carrey) a marvelous Grinch in this spirited, bustling and mostly faithful spin on Seuss.

Flies coach instead of first class, despite a charismatic cast.

A disturbing, and disturbingly funny, twist on adolescent love, and Shiota captures the emotional avalanche with understanding.

An uninvolving film.

Spottiswoode and Schwarzenegger deliver a clever and colorful conspiratorial thriller with high-energy action scenes, car crashes a go-go, spectacular technology and big explosions, packaged with ferocious glee and spoofing humor. Who could ask for more from Ah-nold?

More chic and movie-savvy than its predecessor.

Little Nicky will please Sandler's fans and likely won't win any converts.

A reminder of the offbeat comic sensibility and visceral charge that marked him (Sabu) as a director to watch.

A drama that embraces the ambiguities and contradictions of family ties and human nature in all its irrational glory.

It's a surprisingly happy film, almost completely devoid of bitterness or cynicism.

Fails to generate the elementary visceral thrills we've come to expect from science-fiction thrillers, let alone a compelling human drama.

Loses focus of whom the film is honoring.

Casts a dreamy romantic spell that lingers pleasantly in the mind for a long time after experiencing it.

An inspirational documentary that treats thinkers (so often the villains of our entertainments) as heroes.

Despite some engaging performances and good scenes, it's by far the least original, and least accomplished, of the six Redford-directed films.

At more than two hours, Kippur is something of an ordeal.

At its best, it is self-effacing fun.But the cartoonish approach takes its toll: The random twists and contrived showdowns devolve into just so much abstract business, too silly to take seriously and too unmotivated to make sense.

A first-rate student film, but not much more.

At its best when it remains with the women, and Marshall draws marvelous performances from all.

A quirky little film with an offbeat trajectory that rattles through the bones of story with eyes open to the texture of experience and the dimensions of character.

If Laurence Fishburne could only have harnessed his fierce performance to drive his directoral debut, Once in the Life might have made something memorable of the done-to-death tale of small-time crooks on the run after a heist gone wrong.

If Chadha never quite overcomes her cliches, her good-natured humor and familial faith gives it a warm, winsome dimension.

Resnick's script never engages, the stars can't find the keys to their broadly played characters, and Ephron's direction is harrowingly out of sync.

In its austere visual understatement rests a ton of emotional power.

In Arcand's skilled hands, this sassy assembly comes together to be a comedy, a satire and a character study that's somehow not a bit condescending.

It doesn't have the imagination or daring to make a full turn to self-parody.

Both intellectually absorbing and emotionally gripping.

Inferior remake.

It lacks history, background and cultural roots, but it's undeniably infectious.

It almost completely falls apart in a tortuous third act and ultimately leaves us feeling strangely empty and dissatisfied.

Another gutsy, big-budget movie that dares to say something new and optimistic about our messed-up times. And it almost, but not quite, brings it off.

Altman always manages to pop up with another masterpiece -- and darned if he hasn't done it again.

Tepid and only sporadically amusing.

A screaming, silly cliche -- and somehow not a bit scary.

The film manages to make the ordinary extraordinary. It takes visual risks, tells its story subjectively through images and moves confidently to a stunning, imaginative climax.

This restrained drama of lifelong friends drifting in separate directions is a quietly rich and resonant portrait of disconnection.

Annoyingly shallow, filled with one-note characters, and not half as daring as it seems to think it is.

The movie around Stallone is fairly dreadful, so overly stylized and poorly written that it's always a struggle to stay oriented.

In the face of intolerance, Two Family House lovingly celebrates the triumph of love and acceptance over prejudice.

It's a magical film -- an exquisitely made and exceedingly wise family drama that communicates a touching sense of the universality of the human condition, and leaves us with the rich emotional satisfaction we just don't seem to get often at the movies anymore.

It's hard to figure exactly what the point of this movie is -- except maybe to expose the myth of samurai machismo.

It's an unpleasant experience, and a long one, that gets more morose and melodramatic as it goes along.

Stiller is enjoyably long-suffering, and De Niro convinces us that Attila the Hun would make a preferable father-in-law.

To be fair, Aronofsky has a knack for stylistic overkill, and his hammering onslaught is undeniably riveting, at first anyway.

A genre-twisting surprise.

There's a real joy to this film, a love of the music and an appreciation of the band's eccentric humor.

It really does communicate an optimistic sense that race is irrelevant and we can all live happily ever after together.

In the end, dark comedy drives the film, but it's overwhelmed by a desire to be liked, really liked.

No one does this genre better than actor-writer-director Christopher Guest.

No style, no irony and no smarts, just a vicious streak that lasts 90 minutes.

As a goofy little fantasy, however, this film has loads of charm.

Fairly incompetent as a musical and rather silly as a drama.

An extraordinarily absorbing neo-realistic tragedy.

It assumes considerable knowledge of his life and times. But, with even a little of the familiarity it demands, the movie is something special.

Not faithful enough to be an adaptation, too misguided to be considered an interpretation, and not funny enough to be a parody, this film would do well not to advertise its inspiration.

A perfectly competent, if undistinguished, action film that smoothes over all the most interesting bumps in the drama.

At its best when exploring grieving and loss and anger, but Shear turns it into spiritual shock treatment.

The big downside of the film is that it always feels slightly contrived.

It's not only the most gentle and effortlessly funny movie so far this year, it's a film with a style and sensibility that wonderfully harkens back to Hollywood's golden age of sophisticated comedy, and in particular to the masterpieces of Crowe's filmmaking idol, Billy Wilder.

Edgy, hard-boiled crime drama that is very much in this Tarantino-esque tradition.

It's compelling, poetic, rebellious, funny and one of the few movies that feels like it's been culled from another time and place yet broodingly bends modern societal taboos.

He (LaBute) pulls the farce and the violence and the fantasies together with a deft touch and a sweetness rare in American films -- especially his.

Zambrano shows an impressive sensitivity toward his actors and their characters and never allows hopelessness to quash hope in this lovely film.

It's lively but fails to disguise the fact that his (Charbanic) script is a dud and his career in videos has taught him little about the art of narrative storytelling.

Glib, sense-numbing action fantasy.

Perhaps there is a more excruciatingly painful and self-abusive way to spend 82 minutes. But I honestly can't think of what it would be.

Michell captures the awkwardness of real-world behavior with gentle, unforced humor.

It's hard to imagine an upbeat movie about homelessness, but Dark Days is just that.

Predictable and surprisingly confusing in its ultimate message.

Well-meaning portrait of intolerance concludes as grand tragic melodrama, executed with a stately beauty in somber colors.

While the film is technically polished and visually breathtaking, it lacks depth and becomes little more than a lawless fairy tale packed with pretty people.

Breiman brings nothing new or insightful or even all that clever, for that matter, to the familiar questions of love and sex.

A good-natured movie.

Garcia's dialogue is wonderfully crafted, short, sharp and resonant, and her elegant direction is delicate and handsome.

Elevated out of the music-documentary genre to become something of an intriguing mystery -- and one with no neat solution.

Unashamedly positive look at the rise of the '60s counterculture.

Visually impressive but exceedingly unpleasant little nail-biter.

Its one saving grace is Godzilla himself, the James Bond of giant monsters.

The movie works -- at least marginally.

It's Waters' way of saying: It's only a movie.

Deutch never raises the film beyond its paint-by-numbers blueprint.

Ultimately emotionally flat and eminently forgettable.

Works best of all as a vehicle for Richard Gere, who has simply never looked better or held the screen more securely.

First-time feature film director Max Farberbock has given a terrific visual style, resonance, sense of hope and power to the material.

Like most films in this overworked genre, it's as formulaic in its own way as a John Wayne western, and the characters and situations all have a gnawing predictability about them.

Never quite rises above its one-joke situation.

For all its energy and inspired moments of giddy goofiness, Psycho Beach Party gets stuck in the sand.

I guess there's something grizzled old codgers like Clint can teach those young hotshots after all.

A rather likable and very sweet-spirited story.

It is relatively suspenseless and often distastefully crude.

Splashy and sweetly romantic, if hopelessly unimaginative.

Murphy is remarkably convincing -- even endearing -- as each of the characters.