Fernando Meirelles's MTV-grandstanding worked for "City of God," but it's just not necessary for, and gets in the way of, a script this literate and solid. In the end, The Constant Gardener works in spite of, not because of him.

Beautifully observed tale of high-school kids in the projects outside Paris.

It's a barrage of visual stimulation so excessive that it's hard to sort it all out. But it's often funny, its texture can be breathtaking and its pleasures likely will grow with repeated viewings.

The utter lack of tension or suspense is as dumbfounding as Hunt's blender approach to editing, which purees action scenes into incoherent mashes of image confetti.

Undiscovered promotes one of the stupidest visions of the entertainment industry since "American Idol" opened the celebrity gateway to the dregs of the karaoke generation.

There's no comic spark under Showalter's drab direction, and no good argument in the film why we should ever wonder about the guy left at the altar.

Highly entertaining.

Judd Apatow brings no cleverness or wit to his one-joke situation, and he can't give it the kernel of credibility that even a low comedy needs to sustain itself for a feature length.

With so much going for it, it's sad that Red Eye goes into such a third-act tailspin and cliched slasher-flick finale.

It's a tale with plenty of spirit and a good heart, and yet, this story doesn't so much soar across the screen as it does waddle.

Far from perfect, but it only commits minor infractions of inconsistency and zeal for every plot twist.

Park is neither glib nor pedantic as he charts the vicious circle that leaves victims in its wake, unintentional and premeditated, and takes its dehumanizing toll on his increasingly brutal heroes.

Greenstreet captures all the hubbub on film but, while he makes the point that we are indeed a house divided, he can't quite persuade us that this particular situation is a metaphoric example of our national malaise.

Pierson is a high-powered egotist with appalling tastes and a great-white-father complex, and his whiny family is about as much fun as fingernails on a blackboard.

It's far from strikingly original, but it's well-acted, skillfully plotted and moderately chilling, and it's something slightly different in the haunted-house genre.

Not that there are any actual jokes to be had. The film simply jumps to the punch lines, a non-stop barrage of crude dialogue and vulgar sight gags that passes as humor among adolescent boys. Who exactly is the audience for this R-rated film? The terminally immature?

The casting is hit-and-miss. OutKast's Benjamin and "Troy's" Hedlund are weak, but Gibson is very appealing and the movie powers along on a strong lead performance by Wahlberg, who has never seemed more confident, commanding or scruffily charismatic.

Truth be told, the film is routine: the kind of one-note war movie that Hollywood used to crank out by the dozens every year in the 1950s.

A film that takes you by surprise, refusing to relinquish its grim, fascinating hold. Better yet, it has crept up on us without much advance promotional fanfare. The less known about its twists, the better.

It's Treadwell's contradictions and controversies that fascinate Herzog the filmmaker, inspiring him to create this enthralling documentary portrait, his best film in years.

The disingenuous attempt to give the tawdry story some kind of social import only makes the tinny caricatures more insincere, while his erotic display of 15-year-old girls isn't a satire of a sexualized culture, it's just dirty.

Kurosawa leaves much of the explanation enigmatic but he fills the film with an eerie emptiness, where suicides erupt out of nowhere and mankind dissolves in an oily smudge of hopelessness, adrift between life and death.

The rough, exposed emotional candor of Cheung's singing voice carries into her performance.

Subtly suggests it may not be all that much different from the delusions by which other cultures are structured.

The bright spot is Seann William Scott ("Dude, Where's My Car?") as Bo Duke. His good-naturedly maniacal manner and early Dennis Quaid killer smile are endearing, to the point where he occasionally threatens to elevate the movie into something special.

It's a consciousness-raising personal odyssey in the tradition of such recent indie hits as "Sideways" and "About Schmidt" -- only less obviously comedic and, as always with Jarmusch, blissfully unresolved.

The result is rich, lush -- simply exquisite.

Scott, whose sensitive turn as a priest inspired by Ralph's conviction and commitment gives the film a touch of grace at the cost of revealing McGowan's drab direction of every other actor.