A family-friendly comedy with some gut-shaking chuckles and a heartwarming message. Sadly, it's also a fine example of what happens when talented people settle for utter mediocrity.

For all the color and lively music, it's an overlong, messy labor of love built on a sense of personal betrayal that rings hollow.

A film with the epic scale and fearless common-sense vision of Water is a revelation.

The film is a hugely compelling tribute to the French Resistance movement in World War II, staged with a genuine epic flair but in the icy, downbeat, film-noir style of the director's celebrated policiers.

Pape Sidy Niang is terrific as the cop, Z, who is viewing America through a new immigrant's eyes.

Devastating, uncompromising and riveting.

The style is pure Hou: richly textured atmosphere, tiptoeing camerawork and long, languorous takes of scenes full of privileged moments of human activity.

"Network" it's not. Weitz doesn't have the killer instinct for merciless satire but he knows how to stage a gag and deliver a punchline.

No, it's not the big screen version of "24." For one thing, Sutherland is in the wrong role.

The annoying shaky-cam style so common to such indie dramas is toned down to a dreamy sway and the image drifts in and out of focus in scenes of heightened emotions. It's like waking from a daze and getting your bearings; the effect is both unsettling and calming.

Deyfus' haphazard filmmaking dissipates a potentially fascinating mystery into one long diversion.

Takes a humorously gentle approach to the culture clash between the primitive and the modern. With wonderfully natural performances by the children, this is a family movie that crosses cultural boundaries in a celebration of the magical possibilities inherent in everyday objects.

Redfield's fans will rejoice, if only to see the beloved novel illustrated on the screen, no matter how tediously. The rest of us probably should stay away.

This a rapid-fire romp through "War of the Worlds," "Saw," "The Grudge" and "The Village," cut up into skits and pieced back together in some mutant jigsaw puzzle with a few pieces missing, delivers a barrage of low-minded gags with high-spirited energy.

It's a bright, swiftly paced story with some spirited humor.

Don't let the title trick you. The British comedy Kinky Boots is probably the most kinkless film featuring fetish wear ever to strut its stilettoed heels across the silver screen.

Hard Candy is not perfect, but it is a provocative piece of filmmaking with a dark and daring heart that makes it worth seeing.

Who was Bettie Page? You won't find out in Mary Harron's chirpily cheery chronicle.

It's a tricky tonal dance that Watt, minor missteps aside, glides through with feeling.

Ever wondered what the bastard stepchild of "Rear Window" and "Harry and the Hendersons" would look like? Probably not. Nevertheless, here it is in the form of a Bigfoot horror flick gone horribly awry.

It's the soulless quality of so many films that value devious plots, smug deception and quirky personality traits over actual story and character.

It's a very slight and forgettable affair, and a formula job all the way. But it's easy to watch, the dance sequences are sporadically enjoyable (if hardly innovative) and Antonio Banderas is wonderfully magnetic and charming in the lead.

While most of the film is well-written and acted, there are some difficulties. Aniston's Olivia is hard to figure.

Mullan is a great choice as Frank, playing the silent guy with all kinds of baggage perfectly.

In a better movie, this grand-dame performance might have been fun, but it's surrounded here by an impossibly dull and unsatisfying whodunit plot, unintentionally funny dialogue and such absurdities as having Catherine stay up late one night and whip out an entire novel.

Robinson makes these characters breathe, and they bring the film to life.

Not as cool as the first.

A funny, freaky, fiendishly good flick that might just find a following beyond the standard cadre of horror fanatics.

The concept is clever and Johnson's brisk editing, dynamic camerawork and snazzy transitions has fun with it all. It makes for an inspired time-warped teenage film noir.

For the most part, the film is a chaotic blur of disconnected movement that re-creates the feeling of an unforgettably bad concert experience.

It wobbles between a conventionally quirky lighthearted goof and an oddball farce in which character is sacrificed for sight gags.

With more sympathy for Johnston's suffering and less reveling in the fruits of his madness, The Devil and Daniel Johnston could have been a great film instead of a disturbing one.

Three movies gasp for life inside the clumsily titled Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School.

Director Mohammad Rasoulof has fashioned the ultimate metaphor for a society adrift from its culture.

Captures both the spirituality and humanity of monastic life.

While the significance of the imagery, including the slow disintegration of an immense piece of sculpted petroleum, is elusive, the strangeness of Barney's visual sense never fails to stimulate the senses.

A fairly routine heist drama and a never especially believable puzzle film.

An often touching and always intriguing look at the fall and rebirth of a nation and the resilient spirit of its women.

It doesn't leave you much to hold on to in a comedy about apathy that can't even muster the energy to care.

What it lacks is an intensity, a passion at the center...It is, nonetheless, a lovely and often powerful film.

The soundtrack is a mess, with period music out of sync with the period, as when the 1967 song, "White Rabbit," underscores a 1965 acid trip.

The lack of irony, let alone ambiguity, in an upside world in which mobsters are the underdogs, should sink the film, but Lumet's laid-back professionalism and Diesel's big-hearted performance give it an affable buoyancy.

Most of the laughs are due to Bynes, a vibrant young actress with excellent comedic chops.

It's the strangest comic-book superhero movie you're likely to see this year. For anyone looking for something totally different in this most overworked of Hollywood genres, this is it.

A sly, smart and very funny caricature of corporate politics and image culture.

Actors Laia Marull and Luis Tosar explore the intricate details of a relationship based on the laws of attraction and repulsion, in which the intellect is repeatedly devastated by primal passion.

For all of its minor pleasures, this encore lacks the depth of its conviction.

It's a simple film with a direct message, but the glimpses of the surrounding social culture that has adapted to the horrors give this Third World "How Green Was My Valley" its identity.

Somehow the screwball concoction does not jell. The stars are pleasant but unexciting, the goofy ensemble has a few moments of hilarity but never catches fire, the laughs are very scattered and the film's title is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Almost 30 years later, it's just as primal.

The movie is just this side of terrible. It misses all the charm and fun of the original. Allen's mugging is incorrigibly unfunny.

Farrell is badly miscast as an ethnic Italian with an inferiority complex, the star-crossed love story has very little emotional pull, and even the (heavily CGI-enhanced) period atmosphere ultimately seems rather forced and self-conscious.

The spirits of Jim Jarmusch and Kevin Smith hover over this breezy slacker comedy set on a comatose Sunday afternoon.

The results are shapeless, excessively lurid and often unpleasant, with Argento shamelessly vamping the white-trash junkie mother and truck-stop hooker. She apparently forgot whose story she was telling.

This unusual journey behind prison bars is not only a plea for the rehabilitation of incarcerated criminals, but a testament to the redemptive powers of art.

Though it's rarely dull, first-time feature director Yasuo Inoue has a better eye for intriguing and unusual imagery than dramatic staging, and he illustrates his points long before he runs out of un-endings.

Never quite transcends its origins as a high-concept action thriller, but the clean professionalism of Donner's direction, the low-key turn by Willis and the street-level heroics make it a satisfying piece of genre filmmaking.

If "Splash" was a movie for grownups and "The Little Mermaid" was a film for kids, it's safe to say that the latest flick to feature a mermaid is aimed directly at those who are neither adults nor children, but rather lost somewhere in that awkward middle zone in between.

The film doesn't shy away from the political side of hip-hop.

The overall saga is moving, the performances are first-rate, the production values (which do not rely on the usual cartoonish CGI effects) are strong, and Carion captures the special insanity of stalemated trench warfare with an unusual horrific flair.

Behind the dry humor is a sense of hollowness in the two men who obliviously fall back into old patterns of reckless, loveless sex without missing a beat.

Never more than a dull and confused film about Bolivia's 2003 presidential election.

A confused and improbable redemption song.

Writer/director Wayne Kramer's approach to storytelling is to withhold any information that might give away the plot.

While a fascinating subject, Bruce is a bit of a poseur, keenly aware of how he comes across on camera.

An Americanized remake of the 1983 Japanese movie, "Antarctica," which told the true story of a pack of huskies that somehow managed to survive a brutal winter by themselves at Japan's East Antarctica station in 1957.

Like most Price movies, it's challenging, engaging and free of the usual thriller cliches.

Some audiences will find it an endurance test and Reygadas doesn't make it easy with his confrontational imagery, but he provokes emotions not often explored on screen.

Bekmambetov's tone is so gravely serious that the drama tends to become arch and theatrical, despite sardonic punches of dark humor. But his imagery is striking (his imagination overcomes his limited budget), his style is assured and he's given the subtitle adaptation a dramatically dynamic dimension by giving the words the presence of an incantation taking physical form.

Competently directed by Christian music producer Steve Taylor, it's a sincerely (if not exactly subtly) performed spiritual drama with a faith-based lesson in humility and the practical charity of offering a helping hand.

The orderly and clean drama is more like theater than history come to life.

There isn't a spark in the familiar emotional situation or a reason to care how these amiably bland characters end up.

The star-crossed love story that takes up most of the movie-within-the-movie is strangely compelling, and Douglas gives a believable, often powerful performance as a man in the process of discovering the karmic ripple effect of a closed-off life.

Not since Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" has such an irreverent carnival of African American stereotypes been so irreverently sent up.

What a rare pleasure to see a classic book adapted for the screen and walk out feeling neither bored, offended nor outraged.

There's every reason to believe the creators stopped taking it seriously a long time ago. What's bothersome is that they don't take the audience seriously enough to deliver an actual movie.

It disrespects Seattle. Not only is this yet another filmed-in-Vancouver movie that's supposed to be set here, it takes place in a blinding rainstorm of the kind only a Hollywood rain machine can make. As we all know, it never rains like that in Seattle.

Martin, who hasn't really clicked in a movie in years, hits the target this time with an Inspector Clouseau who is even more relentlessly annoying (and strangely endearing) than Sellers managed to be in his last several outings.

It works as a wistful coda to suggest that the song will go on long after the show is over.

Cinema does not get much better than this.

Hunt and Johansson, two usually good actresses, are vapidly awful, teetering out of their elements in this shakily drawn period piece.

The warmth of Baker as the cuddly nature boy (another idealized image, certainly, but a romantic one) and the intelligence and fire of Lathan give the lesson, and movie, just enough heart to make it enjoyable.

To its credit or detriment (depending on your point of view), the film doesn't have an agenda, or make any kind of systematic argument as to how quantum physics likely will impact the 21st century. It just looks at the wondrous evidence and asks us to imagine the possibilities.

The film manages to be an intriguing, grimly entertaining, strangely haunting little slice of heartland noir very much in the experimental tradition of such previous Soderbergh oddities as "Schizopolis" and "Full Frontal."

The underdog story doesn't miss a cliche, even though it never figures out whether it's a boxing picture or a military drama.

It's a colorful and exuberant but by-the-numbers and fairly charm-free concoction.

The snappy wit of the script make Ol Parker's British romantic comedy the equivalent of comfort food a pleasant cinematic snack.

The sensuality is never salacious, merely curious, and the message is empowering ... at least within the confines of the insular community.

It's so ruthlessly witty and meticulously plotted -- unexpectedly so, given its messy dramatic sprawl -- that it delivers a satisfying kick.

Winterbottom carves his own intimate tale out of the sprawling material, a modest miniature with witty flair and moments of humility.

It's only half of a good comedy. After a delicious opening and setup, the movie really doesn't go anywhere very interesting, and doesn't come close to any epiphanies about the subject at hand, even in subtext.

There's plenty of ammunition here for liberal conspiracy theorists, which surely will limit the audience to those already in Jarecki's political camp. Which is too bad, for it is a sobering history lesson as well as a political polemic on foreign policy and the growth of war into America's biggest business.

The air of deja vu is thick as molasses in Glory Road, a lively but overly slick and grindingly predictable sports drama.

Director Wayne Wang stumbles through the awkward script without finding its shape or its tone, steering it toward maturity while the script falls back into slapstick sports gags and adolescent social politics.

How strange it is to see a film that's supposed to be all about the burning passion and unquenchable exhilaration of true love, and yet is rather passionless and unexhilarating.

If Arlyck's own life feels unworthy of the attention, Sean's illuminating, unconventional and contemporary story makes up for it.

A hauntingly poetic triumph.

Like many of Chen's movies, which are so precise and composed and lush, it's not really emotionally engaging. It is, however, a dazzling and dynamic spectacle that risks being ridiculous to create an unreal world of the romantic imagination.