Iliadis is more visually sophisticated than Craven was in 1972 and works hard to sustain the mood and tension while still hitting the audience with blunt scenes of wincing violence. (It gets grisly and grotesque enough for gore hounds.)

After an excellent setup, the movie becomes bogged down in chase scene after chase scene on its way to its inevitable ending.

The casting clicks; the visuals have leaped right out of Dave Gibbons' original panels; the action is brutal, stylish and well-staged, and -- with most of the major characters, themes and symbolism are retained in an abbreviated form -- the 2 1/2-hour film makes an enjoyably esoteric Cliff's Notes version of the book.

There's an unconvincing warm, fuzzy happy ending, in which recognition is treated as cure and understanding heals all. But, until then, Phoebe in Wonderland is an involving and empathetic drama of mothers and daughters.

Everlasting Moments both is a tribute to Larsson -- a relative of the director's wife, Jan (author of the original story) -- and a love letter to the art of photography.

For all the bludgeoning insistence of Kramer's contrived plots and blunt direction, there's not much conviction to the outrage.

The new new new Jason Vorhees, played by Derek Mears in this Michael Bay-produced homage/update of the '80s slasher franchise, is a bit of a fox.

It's all about waste and destruction, and not just the toxic waste -- illegally dumped in landfills -- that is poisoning the farmland and the aquifers in the region.

Joaquin Phoenix is as good as he has ever been in James Gray's Two Lovers, a discomfortingly honest drama about the frustrations of love and desire.

As dazzling as they come, a visual pageant of strange undersea creatures hunting and scavenging and floating across the screen.

A classic fairy tale with a contemporary sensibility and a spooky horror under the candy-house fantasy.

Easily the least passionate romantic comedy I've seen in years.

A forgettable waste of time.

Mostly it's a series of dream-image clues scribbled out by juvenile seer Fanning, followed by super-powered smackdowns between agents and mercenaries with slangy titles like watchers, stitchers and sniffers.

A hilariously spry effort from an equally unpromising premise.

If cheesy, feel-good riches-to-reason romantic comedies are yours, this is your fix. It's a harmless indulgence that, like shopping, may make you feel good for the short term, but later you'll need more.

For all its impressive set pieces and breathless momentum, it's neither passionate nor urgent.

Accomplished if misguided thriller.

It resorts to a story line so predictable that its willingness to go so earnestly into unoriginal territory is doubly disappointing since its first half had so much more going for it.

If only Outlander was as fun as the premise makes it sound on paper.

Inkheart feels a little confused in its tone and direction, but only a little, and I appreciate the way it both celebrates the power of literature and reminds us that stories have a life beyond the page, even if they are only in our hearts and minds.

Its combination of maudlin sincerity, cruel slapstick, exotic romanticism and boogie-down dance sequences may befuddle more than it entertains.

The movie's political and moral points -- and theme about creating family however you can find it -- elevate it above the average kids movie.

For anyone looking for something as real or engaging as Biggie's music -- or a good introduction to it -- will be disappointed by this mediocre celluloid life-after-death.

The only real difference between this and the handful of other Happy Madison flicks is that James (executive producer, co-writer, star) has made this Sandleresque movie family-friendly, with very little swearing, no nudity and all the edginess of a "King of Queens" rerun.

A girlie romantic comedy with tired slapstick pranks but not an ounce of self-respect or intelligence.

Director Bill Duke may believe the message but he never invests himself in the characters or their story, which becomes an illustrated lesson with reflective interludes and comic relief.

It's an exciting action spectacle and a thoughtful, cumulatively moving family drama.

The results are being billed as a reunion of the "Titanic" star team, but anyone expecting a similarly gushy romantic idyll is in for a shock: it is an uncompromisingly dreary view of two self-deluded people incapable and unwilling to understand one another.

The result is a great-looking movie with an awkward balance of pulp noir and campy self-awareness.

With his usual intelligence, technical virtuosity (the reverse-aging effects are astounding) and storytelling panache, director Fincher gives the film a power and unity that make nearly three hours go by in a flash and pulls its diverse elements together to be something unique for a Hollywood movie -- a true spiritual experience.

It's a pleasure to see mature portraits of adult characters who put their vulnerabilities on the line. I enjoyed my time in the company of these strangers.

Looks to be this season's family animal comedy.

The movie works like a clock. A few minor quibbles aside (the casting of Hitler, for instance), Valkyrie is a highly intelligent and deeply engrossing historical drama and, frame for frame, the year's most suspenseful nail-biter.

What begins as an introspective odyssey examining the effects of war on the young Israeli soldiers turns into a provocative exposé on the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

Unfortunately, the life has been sucked out of DiCamillo's story about a brave, unusual little mouse.

Though it's a star vehicle, Carrey seems only marginally interested in rehashing the role of sweet spaz, and so he almost feels miscast.

The young cast, all nonactors who developed their characters with Cantet and Bégaudeau, brings the weight of full lives to each of the students.

A movie that plays better if you know nothing about it going in.

It's bleak, credulity straining and often stomach-turning, but it definitely works as a heart-tugging character study, and Rourke's performance as the has-been title character is golden.

There's a dark and demented little psychodrama of self-inflicted madness beneath the narrative contrivances. Vigalondo's direction makes it work more like a waking nightmare than a genuine experience, and he gives it the quality of madness.

Surprise! The remake is not a heresy. It's a decent enough stab at being what the old movie was to its time, following the same basic plot, full of respectful references to its model, updated with a gallery of fairly imaginative special effects.

Pretentious mess of a movie.

The film's added enigma makes the play's title even more appropriate, but it results in a more ambiguous and perhaps less satisfying dramatic experience.

This movie seems even rougher around the edges than much of his past work. Still, it's hard to resist.

Director Alfredo De Villa doesn't play it for the kind of knockabout comedy so often seen in these films (like the shrill hit "Four Christmases").

It's all about Guevara's education as a revolutionary and his development as a leader in the jungles and in battle.

The Reader is significant because -- like another film opening today, "Valkyrie" -- it asks us to see not just the Jews but the whole German people as victims of the Holocaust, and to view Nazism as more a product of explicable ignorance than inexplicable evil.

It's a tender, tough, uncompromising film, photographed with a disarming directness and seeming simplicity that looks almost naked next to the dramatic constructions of most films. It just makes her precariousness all the more real.

Throughout, it's clouded -- for me at least -- by a nagging sense that it's straining too hard to build the media clash into more of an historic event than it was.

The movie's biopic aspect is multiplied by the sheer number of players who made Chess the first family of Chicago blues, R&B and rock 'n' roll...That all of them were later inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame attests to their enormous influence on popular music and culture.

What finally sinks the film is that the more it tries to dazzle us, the more uninterested we become.

There is no stylistic thrill to this blunt object of a callous action film. It's content to bludgeon the audience into numb resignation.

As action movies seem to get more complicated and convoluted with international conspiracies and technological concepts, the "Transporter" franchise is refreshingly simple.

Neither clever nor heartwarming, Four Christmases is the coal in the stocking of holiday movies.

Though it's unflinching in its depiction of homosexual affection, the marvel of the movie is the dexterity with which it transcends the specificity of its characters and gay theme to be a universal human statement and profound political epic.

As the voice of Bolt, John Travolta does a fine job and Disney star Miley Cyrus is fine as well, but neither one can overcome the lack of personality in their scripted characters.

Those who want something to really sink their teeth into should head home on a rainy day, put on some goth anthems and reread the books.

Garity, son of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, gives the kind of performance rarely seen in today's movies.

Jackman, who stepped in after a cranky Russell Crowe walked away in a salary dispute, strikes just the right chord as a scruffy romantic hero.

The movie is a relentlessly enjoyable star vehicle and a hard-charging action-o-rama full of the usual Bondian elements, for the most part well done. It's one of the year's better action films.

The most emotionally rich and cinematically thrilling film I've seen all year, a film that pulses with human life in all its terrible and beautiful irrationality.

This is Boyle's fullest, most satisfying work and an audience-pleaser that deserves to be a big hit.

In this brand of comedy, nothing succeeds like excess, and this film is seriously deficient.

An inspired melding of action thriller, satire and biographical drama through the looking glass of a funhouse mirror.

Herman's intentions are admirable, but his results are unsettling in the worst ways.

The film shoehorns in every memorable character from the original film.

The movie also qualifies as a kind of low-rent, male version of "Dreamgirls," but -- while many of the numbers are pleasant -- it doesn't have the moxie to work as a musical.

Think of it as a buffet of romantic comedy comfort food: the good old American standbys complemented by bland international dishes.

Zack and Miri is funny, and Rogen is a natural as Smith's alter-ego, spewing profane dialogue like he was born to it.

Campbell fans will get a kick out of it. The rest of the world will likely find this spoof a little too insular and indulgent.

The film strains to achieve the comedic gait of "Wag the Dog" or the improvised, overlapping style that so defined Robert Altman's Hollywood movie, "The Player."

You can feel the debt to Sidney Lumet's '70s studies in police corruption and cop brotherhood, but O'Connor never captures the edge of danger, anger and moral stands being ground up in compromise.

No spoilers here, but there are enough hints that the incoming class of happy-go-lucky theater folk will have plenty to do in the already-in-the-works fourth installment.

Changeling doesn't care if you love it or hate it, it makes no compromises to fashion and it's charged with that unmistakable assurance of a master filmmaker at his creative peak.

For all its moodiness, despair and disconnect, I've Loved You So Long is all about acknowledging human error and embracing ties -- to family and life -- that can't be undone.

It's a little long and dissipates some of its power in an unfocused subplot, but the skewed sensibility of the film is both innocent and feral and offers a smart and satisfying reworking to the familiar genre. An American remake is already in the works.

Although obviously a stretched and lightly drawn caricature -- the cerebral writer is obsessed with his work, has metaphorical skin problems, can't have sex without weeping, etc. -- Cotard is real. Or as real a representation of an artist as we're likely to get in this biopic age.

Despite the cultural and artistic differences among the contributors, the overall production design maintains a unified tone, helped in part by Laurent Perez's eerie soundtrack.

Seems a much more even-handed and thoughtful take on the man than anyone might have expected.

A dumb film with a great conceptual hook from a director who visualizes better than he dramatizes.

Vividly captures the joy of sailing.

It's the strength of the actresses and their nurturing community that makes this Eden so satisfying.

The first half-hour of this movie is super-worse, with only some sub-"American Pie" gags fleshing out the lame-brain plot, but once it gets on the road, there's pleasure to be had.

As good as it is in pieces, its protagonists are distancing, its story is tangled, its film-noir cynicism is oppressive and unglamorous, and it just doesn't leave us with the satisfying unity of the kind of great movie it wants to be.

It's a fine moral and an admirable statement, but it's the portrait of an icon rather than the story of the person thrust into that position.

It's a little visually precious and obscure but still a marvelously wistful film of regret and retreat, in which even the magic wine of forgetfulness erases only the memories, not the pain.

It scores few points for originality, but it's a fuzzier, less pretentious and more enjoyable movie.

While it's being sold as "an effervescent comedy," Happy-Go-Lucky is nothing of the sort. It's rather grim, the laughs are few.

It never generates much interest in its story or affection for its characters, and it's simply not half as funny as it needs to be.

Stylistically, Religulous is very much like a Michael Moore documentary, in that most of the scenes have a comic structure, end with a punch line and are designed to make Maher-the-interviewer look sane and rational while his subject comes off as a complete fool.

The result is an initially hilarious picture that grows perplexingly trite as screenwriter Peter Straughan transforms Young's sly observations into assembly-line pap.

Let's call this "High Fidelity Nano." It's a little bit less in every way, lighter and cuter than its archetypal elder, but it might just fit your present lifestyle all the better. Who needs to go back to the polysyllabic spree of John Cusack channeling Nick Hornby when you have Michael Cera making awkward emo look so lovable?

It's hardly a must-see laugh riot, but it is a good chuckle, and it does its job well.

It's very slick and small children will enjoy it, but it has little of its model's special magic.

Meirelles adds another perspective, that the epidemic might be a good thing if, by being thrown into the darkness together, we may once again recognize the human family to which we all belong.

An uncompromising and ultimately chilling look at individual creativity trampled by corporate greed, and its timing could not be more appropriate.

True to the characters and their conflicts, the resolution is neither neat nor expected. True to Demme, it's honest and generous and very human.