A handsome documentary on a brutal subject.

A sleazy, uninspired, pathetically unfunny sex farce.

The characters are not hugely compelling, the performances never completely grab us, and much of the story, while visually arresting, is dramatically tedious.

The film is dominated by computer-generated effects and they're most of its problem -- they don't give us anything to emotionally attach to or invest in.

The most noteworthy thing about the Iraq war home-front drama, Grace Is Gone, is that Clint Eastwood composed its musical score and title song, which have both been garnering all sorts of accolades, including dual Golden Globe nominations.

A mystery that isn't mysterious, a thriller that's barely thrilling.

Definitely deserves points for trying to be something thought-provoking and different, but it doesn't really stand up to analysis and it comes off as a pretentious mess.

A witty little comic gem with a heart and a soul.

The movie never falls into gushy moments of inspiration and Schnabel never tries to manipulate any particular response from the audience. We're left to make of it what we will.

With his Jack Nicholson mannerisms extinguished and his boyish features made up to look worn and aged, Slater also makes us believe and care about this guy. A movie this marginal isn't likely to get much notice, but it's one of the very best things he has done.

A darkly funny journey about life ticking by and the change to make wrongs right.

If the film has a weakness, it's an ending that's so vague and open to interpretation that it's not at all clear how director Andrew Wagner ultimately wants us to feel about these self-absorbed characters and their precious literary concerns. But the performances carry the day.

In the end, this could be the year's most sharply defined love-it-or-hate-it movie.

Given the possibilities it's not particularly inventive, but it is nice to see a comedy so affectionate with the conventions it spoofs.

The movie's one saving grace is Olyphant ("Live Free and Die Hard," HBO's "Deadwood"), whose sociopathic elegance is gradually winning, and whose dry, monotonic, Eastwood-like delivery of one-liners is frequently, if perhaps unintentionally, very funny.

Faced with an artist defined more by his lyrics than his life story, Haynes delivers a song-cycle of a movie: vivid, exaggerated, contradictory impressions of a man who confounds a culture still looking to define him.

The scenes that really work are the ones that take place outside the supermarket, in the beginning and at the end of the film. In fact, the "Twilight Zone"-inspired ending nearly makes up for all that comes before.

Not a bad movie, per se. It's just harmless and bland and dull and predictable, and sometimes that's worse than a bad movie.

Entertaining and eye-opening.

While Margot's casual cruelty and the scenes of squirmy discomfort are sometimes painful to watch, the rendering of this disastrous family reunion is seriously, savagely droll.

It's not "The Wizard of Oz," and its cotton-candy fantasy of a story line is definitely aimed at very young children. But it's well made, and adults likely will find themselves yielding to its gentle, whimsical charm.

Under De Palma's cool disconnection is an anger, and it's this anger that drives his act of political theater.

More mediocre than magical.

It's an ambitious film, but that doesn't mean it's good.

Overall the movie is a mess, with a mixed-up mythology at its core. It may not be a new holiday classic, but at least it's funny.

The filmmaker's vision is harrowingly ugly and profoundly upsetting every step of the way.

The actor holds the stage with his warm humor and emotionally charged anecdotes.

All the good intentions in the world and solid performances from three of the biggest and most respected movie stars of our time cannot disguise the fact that Lions for Lambs is resting on a talky, disjointed and not-very-well-thought-out script.

Strong, evocative storytelling pared to the bone and braced with a sensibility perfectly matched to the material.

The minor pleasures of P2 lie in the simple effectiveness of the sleekly unshowy direction and the clean, unadorned script, which pares away extraneous distractions like motivation and complicated back stories to get on with the mechanics of tension and the obligatory jumps and startles (which stand in for genuine scares).

Exploitive while it pretends to be empathetic.

A riveting piece of movie storytelling, mounted with a genuinely epic flair, shot and edited in a no-nonsense, classic style.

The riskiest move Seinfeld made was to create an unlikable protagonist who is wrong every step of the way, but treat him like a hero.

The kind of movie you're glad somebody had the guts to make, but you don't really want to endure.

Amanda Peet exudes her patented mix of charm, beauty, humor and smarts as the best friend who may become more than a friend.

It may seem strange to contemplate the possibility that sharks are more victim than vicious. Yet after Stewart makes his case you may find them and their cause, as he does, all-consuming.

This is an adrenaline-pumping, devilishly well-made thriller set against the downfall of an American family.

The cozy, lived-in atmosphere created by the ensemble and the unlikely chemistry of Carell and Binoche are so genuine that you wish the rest of the film was just as effortless and authentic.

Jimmy Carter documentary is a smug, self-righteous monologue.

The combined efforts of three novice screenwriters fail to give shape to a life that was, although devoted to a noble cause, unexceptional.

With such a good concept for a vampire movie, it's hard to believe it turned out to be this boring.

The story is patently implausible and unnecessarily confusing, and it works to a moral dilemma for its hero -- and a trick ending for the audience -- that resolves the action with so little satisfaction that you wish they hadn't bothered.

The movie is not exciting, original or instructive enough to justify the unpleasant experience.

The only downside is that Bier's vision of upper-middle-class America does not always seem authentic.

This delightful piece of whimsy uses its simple premise effectively to gain and keep our attention and to remind us simply that, while this world appears ordinary, it is still unbounded by reality.

Bad animation and casting make Moses movie a zero, not a Ten.

Favors pageantry over substance.

There are too many unearned runs to fully embrace this underdog triumph.

A sweet little comedy, as easygoing and warmly innocuous as the benign irony of the title.

At 86 minutes, Sleuth '07 plays like a Cliffs Notes version of the original (which was skillfully adapted by Anthony Shaffer from his own hit play) with far too much of its pacing and delicious texture ruthlessly cut.

Less a portrait of this controversial man than a touchstone "to trace the history of contemporary terrorism."

At its core, it's an exploration of the demands and obligations of brotherly love, staged with honesty, originality and a surprising spark of intelligence.

Control is director Anton Corbijin's first feature, and he too frequently makes the mistake of falling back on his rock video skills.

It also has been retooled to be a Farrelly brothers comedy, which means most of Simon's wit has been replaced with gags involving S&M cruelty, explicit bestiality, flatulence, nose mucous, people urinating on each other, and foul-mouthed old men (Stiller's father, Jerry).

A spellbinding action-drama, skillfully built upon a scary corporate conspiracy, chock-full of enjoyable downbeat performances.

It's a dissection of how the media found and fed and nurtured the story in their insatiable need for content to fill their news hours and talk shows, how it just as quickly turned on them and transformed the story from celebration to vilification, and how the public turned right along with them.

The books' magic was rooted in its ties to Arthurian legend and British folklore, grandiose elements which Cunningham and Hodge have stripped.

Even without the oral history, this trippy exploration of Cobain's earthy habitations would be worth seeing as a "Koyaanisqatsi" for the Puget Sound area.

Though it's ostensibly a thriller, Trade constantly works against the conventions of its genre in a rather audacious way -- finding, for instance, surprising moments of humanity in even the most monstrous of its villains.

Amounts to little more than high-class soap opera.

It's a complete by-the-numbers daddy-day-care movie that doesn't have a genuinely enchanting moment or shred of inspiration in its overlong running time.

Foxx is magnetic in the lead, and the subplot in which he bonds with his Saudi police liaison (Ashraf Barhom, giving the movie's best performance) is touching.

The perfectly dressed surfaces couldn't be more lovely, but the long fashion show to the finale smothers the emotions under the length and the look, and Lee's insights into the messy feelings that simmer and stew in the hothouse of sex are, frankly, fairly mundane.

It is not giving away much to say that everything ends as expected, just not soon enough.

It tries to be a sappy love story, an incredibly vile gross-out comedy and an envelope-pushing soft-core porno movie all at once. It ends up being an unappealing abomination.

Penn's direction is amazingly sharp and intuitive, full of masterful touches that give an epic dimension and scope to the parable.

Although Bynes exudes a devil-may-care attitude that is fun to watch, the formulaic movie ultimately falls apart around her.

Pitt won the Best Actor award at Venice for his Jesse...Yet it's Affleck who impresses most as the wary, skittish Bob.

Swicord has enough savvy to conjure up a terrific cast that compensates for her rote direction.

The film is a strange, nostalgic, suitably outrageous ode to a very real revolution in consciousness.

Bland and completely uninspiring.

The restraint of both director and actor makes this steely gangster drama reverberate long after it ends. This kind of mystery is rare in a film culture that demands answers before the credits roll.

Once the story moves up north to Indianapolis, things become pat and predictable. But for its first 80 minutes, Great World of Sound hits all the right notes.

Haggis drops exclamation points after his symbolic gestures, but in the rush to drive home his message on the confused mission in Iraq he offers a queasy revisionism that all but denies the legacy of Vietnam. Considering Deerfield is a Vietnam vet, it feels doubly false.

Westfeldt's screenplay and Cary's direction combine to make it the best Manhattan love story since "When Harry Met Sally."

Part treasure hunt, part disturbia.

Certainly, it's mediocre, but no more so than half the comedies that are wildly promoted by their studios these days.

Failing to make a lick of rational sense, Silk grasps at poetic straws.

With The Brave One, Jodie Foster and director Neil Jordan shift the genre to the murky left, where right and wrong are not so black and white. In doing so, they have taken away the very thing that makes a vigilante movie work.

Director Brown has made a career of chronicling the history of American folk music, and Pete Seeger: The Power of Song is a worthy companion piece to his 1982 debut, "The Weavers: Wasn't That a Time?"

The result bears so little resemblance to the original that you have to wonder what happened. It seems more a remake of "How the West Was Won" than 3:10 to Yuma.

Fierce People is no ordinary dud. This seedy soap opera is the most outlandish, campy romp through the mud since "Showgirls."

By 2020, when NASA's Orion lunar spacecraft is scheduled to launch, it's unlikely that any Apollo veterans will still be alive. Sington has done us a service in helping preserve their memories.

Besides being inept, it's also pretentious and boring: an ambitious art film gone horribly wrong.

The whole thing feels like watching somebody else play a video game. Director Michael Davis obviously was more interested in crafting a series of gunfights than a coherent story arc.

As energetic and irreverent as it is -- the movie never finds the inspired blend of edgy black comedy and gleeful journalistic adventure that it's after.

It's a fantasy of a crime epic, to be sure, but it's a glorious fantasy in which the unspoken bonds of brotherhood bathe every shootout and sacrifice in the light of myth.

Before the movie reaches its climax, it has created a mess that requires divine intervention.

The reason Balls of Fury works as well as it does, aside from its low aspirations, is because of the charm of Fogler in the lead. Like Jack Black, but not as sarcastic, he brings a winning enthusiasm to the role.

To director Justin Theroux's credit, he differentiates his film with a dusky visual style that reflects Henry's murky interior. He uses the grit of his Manhattan locations to give outward expression to Henry's volatile, selfish and terrified state of mind.

The stories of the other competitors are just as fascinating, particularly that of Bernard Moitessier who, after nearly a year at sea, could not bear to return to England, and turned sail for Tahiti.

It's nothing new, but Hawke captures some evocative textures and honest moments.

If you're not a die-hard "Bean" fan, this is probably no place for you. But it's mercifully short (87 minutes), the French scenery is pleasant, a handful of the routines are hilarious and -- with its G rating -- you can definitely bring the kids.

Although Johansson has a knack for nailing most roles, the angry yet fun-loving nanny doesn't quite work for her.

It's more intelligent than most Hollywood movies you'll find in the heat of summer, and its saving grace is the quality of its acting, including Jackson's uncompromising turn as the old fighter, and delicious bits by David Paymer and Alan Alda as veteran editors.

The cruel simplicity of the atrocity is made needlessly chaotic by artless camerawork that swishes rapidly back and forth across the action, to the accompaniment of a syrupy soundtrack.

Though the dialogue feels improvised and honest, the movie is less honest in creating its world.

A gruelingly dull slog through basic horror-movie conventions, should be dumped in the Seine.