Sweet, sexy, and unexpectedly enchanting, Yana's Friends is the little feel-good comedy that could.

It's bad enough that the lazy script substitutes goofy situations for actual gags, much of which falls flat under Rob Pritts' plodding direction, but Corky Romano finally sours in cynicism and hypocrisy.

The movie is never engaging on anything but a superficial level, and it gradually gets decidedly tiresome.

As riveting as it may be, his film is a total shaggy-dog story.

By the film's interminable, unforgivably embarrassing third act it sinks in a sticky swamp of sentimentality.

Assails with its in-your-face, repulsively compelling (like a train wreck) brutality.

We leave hungry for more of the film's substantial, if less physically perfect, subjects.

Skillfully crafted, flawlessly paced, intellectually challenging tension of classics like "Bad Day at Black Rock."

The masochistic brutality it's selling still seems glaringly out of step with the current mood of the country.

It all feels false and calculated, an overearnest attempt to find old-fashioned romantic innocence in the modern world by someone too jaded to believe.

Vital and alive. Frustration and malaise rumble through every richly textured frame, but behind it all is a restlessness and a desire for something better.

Forster carries the movie with an effortless grace and professionalism, creating a character of surprising nobility who is the very opposite of the Willy Loman caricature that's been the de rigueur salesman stereotype in movies of the past 50 years.

The movie is just grindingly by-the-numbers: an uninspired brew of all the clichés of the kidnap-thriller genre, liberally seasoned with brutality, stirred at adrenaline-rush speed by a director with a heavy hand and very little imagination.

The gags hit more than they miss, and Stiller has moments of inspired absurdity, but he's capable of something more cutting and clever. It's junk food moviemaking: fun to snack on, but hardly a substantial meal.

Inspiring without sinking into sentimentality or cliche, Hearts of Atlantis is intelligent, heartfelt and genuine, a rare story of childhood for adults.

Danny Aiello is right at home as owner Louis, a paternal Italian father to all but his own son, reigning over the throng from his corner table like a benevolent lord and maybe underworld gangster.

Even knowing the happy outcome, Butler masterfully keeps us on the edge of our seats, and communicates the full horror and seeming hopelessness of the crew's situation every step of the way.

What's left at the end is an emotionally restrained vision of harsh, impoverished lives, more thoughtful than affecting, and never less than gorgeous, but so unfocused it leaves only scattered impressions.

Has a good cast, a nicely sustained mood of paranoia and several genuinely creepy moments, but ultimately ends up being one more highly formulaic teen screamer.

It's a parade of insanity, murder, suicide, arson and crimes of passion; delivered in a style as sardonic and tongue-in-cheek as a Vincent Price monologue; complemented by deadpan narration that keeps injecting inappropriate bits of civic boosterism.

They try too hard to be funny. It's hardly a damning fault, but it has a tendency to drown out their satiric observations.

Wants to be an offbeat, hard-edged, inspirational sports movie, but it misses its target by a country mile.

Has the distinction of being the very worst of all the many film versions of Alexandre Dumas' classic novel, "The Three Musketeers." Nothing else in Musketeer movie history comes even remotely close to its staggering wretchedness.

An utterly nihilistic, harrowingly upsetting vision of hell on earth.

It's still too shrill and silly to take seriously, but the high spirits and naïve message of tolerance and pride is oddly, innocently winning.

Deliciously dark tale of insidious seduction.

Rock Star roars to life with a promise of something inspired and inventive whenever Wahlberg leaps onstage. Offstage, however, even he can't breathe life into this same old song.

An original, well-crafted plea that uses restraint instead of titillation to make a cautionary tale that aches with pathos and power.