Once Bullock's character clears her head at the top of the thrill ride, Premonition becomes inescapably dull because it is her mental health, not her purposefully dull husband's fate, that interested us.

This is a war film with an anti-epic feel, best when it forgoes the forced march of plot to hunker down in the trenches of our flawed humanity.

As you watch -- no, endure -- this flattened-out spectacle, there's really nothing worth pondering save for a single thought: What a difference a director makes.

The first 20 minutes of the South Korean film The Host represents one of the most entertaining movie openings in memory. It's the same kind of pop-culture thrill provided by Steven Spielberg's "Jaws," with the same sense of astonishment, fear and pleasure at something genuinely new.

A 0-star Comedy that is nonetheless guaranteed to rake in multimillions.

The most provocative aspect of this compulsive riddle is how it resists closure. The end comes not when we have the answer, but when the movie reaches its irresolute end.

This is one of those ludicrous, semi-offensive, semi-entertaining potboilers that feels as if the script were dragged out from someone's naughty-book stash.

Rarely have I seen a movie which made me feel more skeptically Canadian. Please -- it's not true that you can do anything. Stop trying. You might make things worse.

About 45 minutes worth of funny stuff awkwardly stretched to 84 minutes.

What's missing, in the direction no less than the script, is any real sense of dramatic urgency.

Your basic and basically predictable by-the-numbers picture.

Under better circumstances, Cooper might be said to have stolen the picture outright. But as it is, and compelling as he is, there's just nothing here to steal.

Both a cathartic and a creative family entertainment.

This time out, writer and director Mark Steven Johnson has bounced back with a movie so full of camp spirit it should come with tents and a marshmallow roast.

Avenue Montaigne is not a film to be taken too earnestly, but it would be a mistake to miss its bittersweet undertones. The movie is as airy as a spun-sugar dessert, but Thompson's observations on the artistic life are both affectionate and knowing: Beauty and wealth, though inevitably compelling, are appreciated as means to humane ends, not goals in themselves.

The film is much more subversive for treading back and forth between the political and the personal, the Arab and the Israeli points of view.

Whether because of Madea's on-screen absence or the abilities of the two lead actors, Daddy's Little Girls is still a step up for Perry, boasting moments of charm that transcend the usual mess.

Fortunately, director-writer Marc Lawrence (he also created the Hugh Grant-Sandra Bullock comedy "Two Weeks Notice") manages saccharine saturation by tempering his stars' familiar appeal with enough dry wit to make this low-key romantic comedy a not-too-sticky Valentine's Day offering.

Not quite repellent enough to avoid tedium, Hannibal Rising is both too familiar in portraying Hannibal as a Dracula-like aristocrat monster, and crud in its exploitation of wartime atrocities.

Norbit is pretty much a bad-taste sinkhole.

A 105-minute cringe-a-thon that reduces the Katharine Hepburn of her generation to a sitcom harpy presiding over a brood of Valley Girl chicks.

Despite their hackneyed characters, Smith and Lewis create a tiny spark and add a little humour. Without them, Catch and Release would be totally dead in the water.

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer must be stopped. For the last two years, this filmmaking team has created a series of spoof movies so feeble, shoddy and unfunny that they may be part of a diabolical, "Manchurian Candidate"-like plot to stunt the intellectual development of American adolescents.

Twitchy, messy and uneven, it's an action flick that just won't shut up. The movie is somewhat saved by a smattering of wacky minor characters and humorous bits of non-essential business, but they certainly don't add up to a satisfying experience.

The young couple is far less compelling, which is one reason why the remake is only intermittently effective. Bland and dim-witted, it's hard to see why they'd attract Ryder's wrath.

The Italian belongs in group of excellent recent Russian films -- most notably Andrei Zvyagintsev's "The Return" and Boris Khlebnikov and Aleksei Popogrebsky's "Roads to Koktebel" -- that have examined the effects of the country's woes on its youngest and most vulnerable citizens, as well as the problems faced by any child unfortunate enough to have faulty or absent parents. At its best, The Italian conveys this grave issue with admirable clarity and power.

Like "Rebel", directed by Nicholas Ray, this film excels at capturing the nervous posturing of adolescent boys marking their territory by pissing on each other's shoes.

Though a few scenes drum up some intensity -- that green ham Gustave makes one last great appearance -- it's mostly grim, dull and ugly, three qualities that nobody wants in a piece of multiplex filler about a surly reptile.