Unfortunately, the goofiness never quite finds its groove. The romantic chemistry is tepid, the comedy misses as often as it hits, the picaresque plot keeps dogging down and even actors as skilled as Platt, Irons and Lena Olin fail to register strongly in their roles.

T. M. Griffin's script is imaginative and clever.

It's a richly textured, leisurely paced, visually impressionistic epic of the American past that fairly hypnotizes the viewer with its tapestry of sights, sounds and colors.

Brosnan pulls out all the stops in his quest to be the last word in crude boorishness, only slightly relieved by the midlife soul-searching. Whether the public will buy him in this extreme role is another question. But it's a fearless, and fairly skilled, comic performance.

Some will find the surprise pleasant, others unpleasant. Whatever it is, it's the least commercial, most somberly heartfelt movie ever made by the cinema's most commercially successful filmmaker.

An extraordinarily taunt and suspenseful psychological thriller.

Not extreme enough to skate the edge of tasteless farce and not straight enough to play the material for edgy satire, The Ringer is a cheat right down to the final stretch. Breaking the rules should be more fun than this.

The texture and intensity of the odyssey makes it spellbinding.

All processed sugar and artificial flavor, right down to the sticky but tasteless happy ending.

It's a consistently funny script, tastefully packaged by super-producer Brian Grazer and directed with just the right touch by Dean Parisot.

The movie works best as spectacle: as a piece of old-style, non-CGI, on-location epic filmmaking.

In place of the dysfunctional family Christmas story we've come to expect for the holidays, The Family Stone gives us a cheerfully uncensored, generic counterculture clan and tosses a tightly wound control freak into the center of their holiday celebration.

Tommy Lee Jones steps behind the camera to direct himself in the most impressive directorial debut the American cinema has seen in some time, a contemporary western both rough and poetic, laconic and passionate.

Can't find its rhythm and stride. It plays it far too safe and slick.

A tired tale that never comes to life.

Not only does it recapture -- and enhance -- the subtle emotional core that has made the film so beloved for the past three-quarters of a century, it delivers the most eye-boggling, hair-raising movie thrill ride since 1993's "Jurassic Park."

The story is so compelling and the movie is such a pleasure to the eyes and ears.

It's by far the most uncompromising and unapologetic gay-themed drama ever made for a wide release by a major Hollywood studio with name stars.

It's funny, touching and crammed to the rafters with clever dialogue, splashy production numbers and stiff-upper-lip charm.

Working for the first time in live action, under the constraints of a classic novel, he (Andrew Adamson) proves himself to be a capable visual storyteller but no Peter Jackson.

It's not really scary, but it reaches a level of insanity so unhinged and dispassionately wretched that it defies description. Inspired, but not for all tastes.

It's a low-key, subtly inspirational drama that builds its charm slowly but surely.

The futuristic thriller is overly familiar and never especially gripping -- and too somber and cerebral for the young action crowd -- but it looks terrific and is in no way an embarrassment.

It may not exactly be a traditional love letter to his wife but actor-turned-executive producer William H. Macy has given her a plum part as Bree in screenwriter-director Duncan Tucker's offbeat road movie.

Margaret Brown's honest and non-judgmental film captures the artist's high and low points, from early appearances on regional television shows such as "Nashville Now" to the drunken and disorderly performances that defined his later years.

The most interesting moments in the film are the videotapes sent back and forth between the parents and students, as they communicate the sadness of children separated from their distant families.

A true gem: perhaps the most thoroughly charming, and completely satisfying, independent film I've seen in the past two or three years.

It never achieves the bleak poetry and tawdry tragedy of the best examples of the genre, but the understated humor is nicely played by Cusack and Thornton.