For all these references to the fairytale, Sydney White soon takes an easier path, recycling familiar "Mean Girls" and "Revenge of the Nerds" scenarios.

A long, ambitious, fitfully rewarding movie, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is less about the gun-toting outlaws of the 1880s than the filmmaking outlaws of the 1970s.

The novels remain a witty portrait of life; this flick is just a study in preciousness.

This much is inarguable: In the more than two flamboyant hours of Across the Universe, Julie Taymor doesn't cheat us for a single second.

What it doesn't have is the resonance of Cronenberg's "A History of Violence," a film that exploited the same genre even while transcending its limitations. Eastern Promises delivers, but not on that scale.

In the Valley of Elah dearly wants to be the Iraq war's counterpart to "Coming Home," documenting the tragic domestic legacy of a misguided foreign conflict. Wants to be, but isn't.

If you're looking for a screwball comedy about bipolar disorder -- and who among us is not? -- then this picture fits the bill fine. However, if you're picky enough to want a good screwball comedy about bipolar disorder, well, I'm afraid the wait continues.

Who wants to watch any film where Sarandon, the sexiest 60-year-old woman alive, is first prize in a corn-eating contest?

Though elegantly staged, Silk is badly written and indifferently cast.

The film moves from cliché to cliché and hemorrhages blood and logic at an alarming rate.

While the newer version's darker ending lends a more contemporary twist, overall 3:10 to Yuma is reverent to the original – a few more bullets and more spilled blood notwithstanding.

Hatchet is further evidence of the decline of Western civilization.

Sington's smartest decision was to let 10 of the astronauts speak for themselves. The film juxtaposes their personal stories, both their doubts and machismo, with the titanic achievement of the lunar landings.

A furious 90-minute trailer of a movie that exceeds the speed limit for action films established by Quentin Tarantino's recent "Grindhouse."

There is no getting these boys down. They are just like Lloyd and Harry in the Farrelly brothers' breakthrough 1994 hit, "Dumb & Dumber." Except that they are never, ever funny.

The Hunting Party does a good job of illustrating Winston Churchill's observation, "There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result."

Sadly, Bacon is only intermittently convincing as a man hell-bent on revenge or a father tortured by what he has unleashed on his family.

Like kudzu vine, killer bees and herpes, we may never be rid of it.

Stupendously silly but viciously funny.

Even though the subject of this British documentary is a traveller who got lost in a more terrestrial sort of void, the spirit of the stranded astronaut haunts Deep Water.

Like the comic stars of the silent era, Mr. Bean's character transcends language barriers.

There's a good movie buried inside The Nanny Diaries, and a good cast trying hard to dig it out. Too bad they don't get much help.

The relationship between reporter and subject is always a tricky one, but in Resurrecting the Champ it's downright delusional.

A kind of dumbed-down, souped-up action thriller in a quasi-"Lethal Weapon" mode.

Most British actors are awfully good at underplaying the overwritten, and this group, headed by Matthew Macfadyen, Rupert Graves and Daisy Donovan, is no exception -- where others would mug, they demitasse.

Not super, but not bad, the teen comedy, Superbad, is another comic dance across the hormonal minefield of late high school.

Like any good religious sermon, it follows its scary vision of hell with a possibility of last-minute redemption.

Haven't they created a movie that is ultimately a soulless clone of a vibrant original and, thus, a splendidly dull example of the very forces it warns us against – the forces of grey and passion-sapping conformity.

Distinctly humdrum, The Last Legion, a boy's adventure story that seems to have been dragged out of the vaults of some early-sixties TV series.

Sunflower succeeds as both a moving family drama and a microcosm of China's social history since the 1970s.

A Canadian-made werewolf thriller, Skinwalkers occasionally rises above its station as a standard-issue horror flick to deliver some enjoyably cheeseball thrills.

Although she lets her flair for creating funny, sharply written, quirky scenes consume her feature directorial debut, her use of family, friends and even an ex (Goldberg) in 2 Days In Paris, gives the film a wonderfully natural, comfy feel.

The movies have given us plenty of loquacious teenagers – from such fast-talking truants as Ferris Bueller to such overachieving political animals as Tracy Flick ( Election). Hal Hefner is not one of these kids.

It's the same package with new wrapping.

For audiences tired of summer sequels that grind through the familiar motions, Stardust provides a dizzying antidote.

About as much fun as being given a wedgie and hung from the camp flagpole, Daddy Day Camp is an unnecessary sequel.

Feels like one of those misguided high-school-teacher exercises in making literary history sound contemporary.

Both the most bewildering of the three movies and also the most brutally compelling.

An inferior "Napoleon Dynamite." Call it Napoleon Firecracker. The film steals one of the best laughs of Jon Heder's surprise 2004 hit, the scene where Napoleon nosedives over a bicycle jump, and stretches the gag into an 86-minute movie.

The result is as off-putting as biting into a confection in which the sugar has been replaced by salt.

A passable romantic dish, a good-looking, old-fashioned date movie set in an idealized Greenwich Village, evocative of the better Woody Allen films.

On the positive side, it's still four back-to-back Simpsons episodes, which is still better than most of what either television or the movies have to offer.

Authentic, fresh and utterly relevant.

Icy landscapes, the cozy tones of Queen Latifah and a walrus-farting scene that rivals the campfire bean-fuelled explosions of "Blazing Saddles" help make Arctic Tale, a new wildlife documentary, a fun family indoor excursion.

What completely undermines that appearance is Shankman's chronic inability to shoot the damn scene. His camerawork is so stiff it should be interred in a pine box.

Somewhere between its loutish humour and laudable sentiments are the traces of a good buddy movie that could, at the very least, have been harmless summer fun.

That last wrong turn completely undoes a picture that had been steering a very impressive course.

Your Mommy Kills Animals works best as a fast-moving carnival of faces and feature stories. Like most amusement-park rides, it lets you off dizzy and confused, whereas the best documentaries leave you feeling that you've come to a settled perspective on a subject.

A lurid thriller that marks a new career low for both director Roland Joffé (The Killing Fields, The Mission) and co-screenwriter Larry Cohen (Phone Booth, It's Alive).

The end result of this showcase for Buscemi's writing, acting and directing chops is so uneven and mixed in small details and overall tone that it's anybody's guess if it's one for the Oscars or the Razzies next year.

The film's broad attempts at humour are all mouldy bits from Hollywood films.

The problem is, the last section of the movie doesn't follow the career path of Greene: It traces the blander character of Hughes. Cheadle, who galvanizes the first half of the film, fades from view, and the best part of the conversation in Talk to Me goes with him.

Is there an admired British thespian who hasn't toiled in Potter's field?

Creepy, cool and loaded with style.

The script's attempt to splice together a fumbling love story with a portrait of toxic personality disorder feels incongruous, like a serving of porridge flambé au whisky.

The strangely hybrid result, half Herzog and half Hollywood, plays like its own battleground. Sometimes, the tension is fascinatingly productive; other times, all we get is the worst of both worlds.

Some kind of mess...terpiece.

Forget about "Saw," "Hostel" and all the other films in the new, notorious torture-porn genre. If you're looking for a really sick movie, check out License to Wed.

The only country in the Western world without a universal system – is indeed Sicko. But if that social wound is gapingly obvious, so is this documentary.

A French rat as a master chef? Absurd. But a brilliant French chef with an American accent? C'est grotesque!

The characters, full of blue-blood archness and angst, are partial to self-conscious speechifying.

Nevertheless, Vitus's cool intelligence, knotty narrative and precise performances make it a pleasure to watch even when it sends mixed messages about the true nature of its protagonist.

In the moments at his disposal, Smith almost steals the flick. He's so wittily government-phobic that I found myself hoping for a climax that would blow Bruce Willis away and promote Kevin Smith to saviour-of-the-free-world. Now that might be a sequel worth rooting for.

Really wanting to get into our heads, 1408 tries awfully hard to play both sides of logic's boundary line -- tries and fails, and then succeeds, only to ultimately fail again. On the whole, the frights are frighteningly erratic.

Though far from a disaster of Biblical proportions, Evan Almighty is a mild, sporadically funny comedy in an oversized sentimental frame.

The film takes its cue from the widow, neither sermonizing or even villainizing, content to serve quietly as an admirable exercise in restraint and a moving example of the grace under pressure that is the essence of courage.

You Kill Me is not so much a bad film as one filled with missed potential and marked by the seams of compromise.

Like its predecessor, this is a basic bungalow of a flick, where low-maintenance superheroes take their ease and you can pay your (dis)respects painlessly enough. In short, okay to visit, wouldn't want to live there.

Call it Nancy Drew and the Case of the Confused Adaptation.

In the end, Eagle vs. Shark represents a convincing triumph for Dumb.

If Ocean's Thirteen were compared to a gem, it would have to be considered something of a flashy fraud: Initially impressive for cut and colour, it lacks either clarity or weight.

May not be your idea of a fun European vacation, but Roth's trip offers horror fans more than the usual sick kicks.

Surf's Up is that rarity in a children's movie, a comedy that's actually exciting.

Surprisingly but fittingly, for a film about the life of a singer, the use of songs is generally elliptical.

Falls into the category of heart-warming sports yarns, and, if television still made movies-of-the-week, it would enjoy a rightful home.

Move over, Jim Carrey, and watch your back, Mike Myers. Your tenure as the most bankable comedians to call Canada not-quite home but still native land is about to come to an end. The new money is on one 25-year-old virgin – to top billing, that is – from Vancouver. His name is Seth Rogen and he's (literally) the poster boy for the best American comedy of the summer and, what the heck, of the decade so far.

If plots were people, this obese thing would be cuing up for liposuction. Mr. Brooks may well boast the greediest yarn in the annals of filmdom. One serial killer just doesn't cut it – no fewer than four, actual and potential, pack these frames.

Ranks as one of the most elaborate, stunt- and effects-filled summer movies currently in the theatres. Unfortunately for its box-office prospects, it's also in Russian, which narrows its audience to action junkies with a foreign film bent.

Invites viewers to think critically about such weighty concepts as justice, atonement and personal accountability.

A rollicking good story set a millennium ago among Australian aborigines, Ten Canoes is one of those cultural-building exercises that genuinely entertains.

It's one helluva movie that makes Ashley Judd look ugly and demented, while turning Harry Connick Jr. into the most frightening screen thug since Ben Kingsley in "Sexy Beast."

The whole d--- thing can be summed up in three little words: yo ho hum.

How Besson drags this premise into 90 minutes of screen time should be of interest to the perverse among you – or anybody teaching a how-not-to-make-a-movie summer course.

As lovely to look at as it is dramatically inert.

Paprika is a creatively dizzying and visually dazzling allegory about alternative realities.

Von Trier's proficiency at the quicksilver business of comedy comes as a surprise, given the grinding seriousness of earlier films.

Compared with the recent spate of blockbuster sellouts, Severance is a worthy package, and fair compensation for time spent. Best to watch on the big screen, of course.

The only thing majestic about Shrek the Third is the title.

In most every frame, Hartley takes pains to tilt his camera at odd angles – in other words, he's gone literally off-kilter, and it's just off-putting. What's worse, a further hallmark of the Hartley canon, his self-reflexivity, has begun to smack of self-promotion.

With razor-sharp precision, Dumont interweaves scenes of battle with the unravelling of a young woman back home, involved with two of the soldiers. But this is not bleakness just for the sake of it. When it arrives, the ray of hope rings perfectly true for being so devoid of artifice.

Most movies have music, some movies are musicals, but very few movies combine the two with the grace and pure eloquence of Once.

Only occasionally does Fresnadillo rise above the mundane, but, to his credit, the exceptions are worth savouring.

Delta Farce is so relentlessly racist (and homophobic), without ever having the intelligence to pass that bigotry off as satire, that viewers will be left thinking "Borat" has a soft touch.

Director Marshall ( Pretty Woman) has created a comic drama so confused in tone, the actors often seem to be acting in different movies.

In a picture that begins with a torching scene and goes on to mine the burning question of the rights of abused women to strike back, Provoked never ignites the screen with clear argument or noble passion.

So what's Hanson exploring this time? His boring side, apparently.

A film rich in paradoxes. Much of the film's style is dreamy, from the snow-covered Ontario landscapes suggestive of a blanket of forgetfulness, to Julie Christie's pale, intoxicating beauty, to the ambient musical score.

The main flaw is an over-abundance of villains, a bout of narrative greediness that sees them marching out of their lairs like so many evil-doers-on-parade.