A kind of "Seabiscuit"-lite.

Without the saving grace of comedy, Martin's natural abrasiveness is off-putting, and he just doesn't have the stuff of a romantic lead.

Yet for a film so affectingly steeped in loss, resignation and the ghosts of memory, the revelation that pulls it all together, while satisfying and even touching, lacks emotional resonance.

It's rowdy, often tasteless and very much in the buddy-action vein of the scripts that made him famous, but in a much more comic spirit.

The embittered men make fascinating subjects.

Confronts the line between the celebration and the exploitation of innocence with an uneasy tension that is discomforting at best.

Makes no effort to learn about the culture. It idolizes the idea of spiritual purity without offering any insight into what it really means.

As the film loses its focus on the "Protocols" phenomenon -- it becomes too scattered to have the impact Levin is after.

Staggeringly awful.

That rare animal, a dialogue-driven comedy -- and a good one at that. While one or two of its scenes may seem a tad too talky for today's low-attention spans, the script is mostly razor-sharp acerbic and sophisticated.

A fascinating ride through morally ambiguous territory to a place you've never been before.

Overcooked and simplistic in spots.

For such a harrowing portrait, Mandoki remains oddly distant but for a few scenes. He makes his points boldly when he should be making his points sting.

Full of compassion and good intentions, but Kirkman never spins the stories into compelling cinema.

This beautifully sculpted poetic naturalism has more in common with the expressive use of words in the great screenplays of '40s and '50s than with modern movies.

Most of the film, however, goes down easily enough. The Queer Strokes, an all-gay rowing team, provide a humorous contrast to the less sexually confidant characters.

The funniest film you'll see this year about a political assassination.

A paragon of subtlety. Yet this message is exactly what we carry out of the theater, and it lingers on with a powerful resonance.

The movie is so well-cast, sympathetically acted and delicately directed -- and so genuinely touching and funny -- that it leaps right out of the narrow confines of the family bonding formula.

It never quite adds up to anything. It's engaging enough while it's going on, but has little visceral impact or resonance.

Don't watch this film unless you have a high tolerance and an undemanding appreciation for penis jokes and humor based more on a capacity to disgust than to surprise.

Surely played better on the page than on the screen. What's left is the same old drill driven by brutal master race fervor.

Daniels gives a career-best performance.

So devoid of the usual coarse Hollywood calculation that it plays like a breath of fresh air.

It's by far the most inspirational sports movie to come along in many a month.

An undistinguished treasure-hunting epic that rips off the 1977 movie, "The Deep," in virtually every frame. It's pretty to look at, but so low-voltage and instantly forgettable that it's hardly worth anyone's time.

The film's strength is compelling character relationships and Whedon's trademark dialogue, a smarter version of the cliched action-movie barrage of wisecrack under fire, only better executed, laden in personality, and enriched with evocative western colloquialisms of a frontier culture.

Indeed, it has to be one of the most eerie, morbidly absorbing and psychologically compelling movies ever made about a writer in the agonizing process of creating an important piece of literature.