That rare sequel that took its time -- 23 years -- so it not only advances a story but also has something new to say.

Has no inherent laughs, so an extremely versatile and talented cast struggles mightily to make something funny that simply isn't.

This picture sometimes rivals "Avatar" in its spectacular landscapes and thrilling flying sequences, but of course it won't come anywhere near those megagrosses, and it's too scary to be wholeheartedly embraced by children.

What's cinematic experimentation without a few failures in the lab? Maybe that's why Howl is so appealing: The filmmakers don't get everything right but their passion for Ginsberg's genius and their excitement over trying to deconstruction a literary master work is contagious.

Many flashbacks to the children's early trauma, along with other scenes, are unnecessarily repeated several times.

A moving and effective film whose subject may lack the hot-button boxoffice appeal of the director's "An Inconvenient Truth" but is at least a crisis practically everyone agrees actually exists.

The movie ends just when complications start to set in, which makes you wonder how invested Allen really is in the little melodramas within this comedy.

Hoffman emerges as a confident film director with visual flair and, no surprise, a remarkable ability to maximize his fellow actors' work.

A high school romp that turns a stale genre upside down with sly wit and sharp satire.

Abounding in dumb jokes that kids are bound to like but sometimes too scary for very young viewers, the movie -- also going out in 2D -- takes too long to find its footing and at best is proficient, not exhilarating.

Affleck gets the tribalism of Boston's traditionally Irish-American enclaves; it's a defining force in his character's lives. But for all their well-played grit, those characters resolutely remain types, and for all the well-choreographed action, the outcome doesn't matter nearly as much as it should.

Jaw-dropping and surprisingly kind-hearted considering the circumstances.

Expertly acted, impeccably photographed, intelligently written, even intermittently touching, the film is also too parched and ponderous to connect with a large audience.

Bran Nue Dae has so much feel-good fizz that you can almost overlook its rickety construction. But not quite.

The production is over-stuffed with cutesy split screens, jarring dream sequences and a pushy score by Bright Eyes band members Nathaniel Walcott and Mike Mogis that succeed in dragging the proceedings from merely cloying to increasingly annoying.

This sporadically engrossing mockumentary, which gets better as it rolls along, must have been planned way back before Phoenix bombed on "Late Show With David Letterman."

Shot in actual 3D rather than being the latest example of the horrible post-shooting conversion process, "Afterlife" undeniably looks terrific.

Landing somewhere between a generational comedy and soap opera, the film is forgettable fun.

It's a safe bet that exposure to the film should cause audiences to make room on their iPods for some serious downloading.

The audience it manages to reach will find it as vicerally satisfying as a doc on this subject can be.

Director Jean-Francois Richet shows a career in crime with pulse-pounding moments of pure cinema, then lets you decide what to make of this homicidal sociopath.

Going the Distance is, in a way, a remarkable film: It's hard to imagine any romantic comedy going wrong in so many different ways.

The ensemble cast -- ranging from an Oscar winner (De Niro) and faded action star (Seagal) to a B-movie vet (Fahey) and tabloid fodder (Lindsay Lohan, not exactly playing against type as a drugged-out, hell-raising sexpot) -- pretty much offers something for everybody.

Among the girls, Emma Roberts has solid scenes with Rockwell.

Zhang Yimou's remake of the Coen brothers' "Blood Simple" as a Chinese period thriller-farce in a desert setting. A high-rolling but garish production with untranslatable regional ribald humor, it is aimed squarely at the China market.

Admirably resourceful, Prince of Broadway thrives in that increasingly fertile stylistic niche combining documentary and narrative aesthetics.

International audiences will be confronted by a rather predictable and highly implausible road movie that strains to achieve too many agendas.

The film is always engaging, from the boyish horseplay of the young innocents to the bravado shown in multiple encounters to the involvement of the revered king in exile to the final toll taken by the increasingly ruthless Nazis.

Nothing really adds up, and the ending is downright absurd. You would like even the most austere, doctrinaire existential movie to earn its downbeat ending. This one fails utterly to do so.

The stunt work is amazing, and the pace is breathless enough to keep one watching right up to the somewhat ambiguous conclusion.

Part One, at least, is a French "Bonnie and Clyde."

A backwoods psychological thriller delivered faux-documentary-style, with mixed results.

Centurion delivers some large-scale action but plays almost like a Roman-era Western in its depiction of a few soldiers trying to get home alive after the slaughter of their comrades.

The next time you're invited to a French dinner party, you might want to give it a pass, if the tedious proceedings in Change of Plans are any indication.

The film is gorgeously shot and contains a plethora of haunting images.

A faux black-and-white silent film that will gain immeasurably from its road show presentations, Louis is more of a novelty than a satisfying cinematic experience.

A pitch-perfect, guilty-pleasure serving of late-summer schlock that handily nails the tongue-in-cheek spirit of the Roger Corman original.

No one on the creative side has his eyes on the characters, so they flounder in a sea of misguided energy.

Like most films in this underdog genre, the emotional manipulation of the audience is constant and obvious.

James Newton Howard's music picks up its comic cues perhaps a bit too swiftly and loudly, but little of this detracts from the movie's many pleasures.

Despite a virtually unplayable premise, The Switch overcomes this handicap to turn itself into a friendly, offbeat romantic comedy.

Capably narrated by Josh Brolin, Amir Bar-Lev's penetrating and vital documentary goes beyond tracking the Tillman family's investigation into Pat's death to question the motives of commanding officers and higher-ups.

Although well-meaning in its attempt to dramatize the stigma the subject evokes in the South Asian American community, Hiding Divya ultimately falters in its execution.

Though it drags here and there and is a bit flat in places, the film is solidly made and for the most part quite involving.

In a fine ensemble with many well-drawn smaller characters, Bleibtreu ("Run Lola Run", "The Baader-Meinhof Complex") as the hapless brother, Unel ("Head On") as the fussy chef and Bederke, as a waitress, all stand out.

Hersonski enriches this evidence by bringing in survivors of the ghetto, who tell stories of life there while watching the film themselves.

The main performers do a reasonably good job of parodying the "Twilight" leads, with Proske particularly effective in subtly lampooning Kristen Stewart's moody mannerisms.

The film never ventures, even once, into a situation that does not reek of comfy familiarity.

An effective mix of lean and over-the-top, The Expendables is often preposterous, but it achieves the immediacy of a graphic novel without the overdone mythology.

This is a discouragingly limp movie in which nothing is at stake.

A naturalistic drama rich in psychology and attention to details. There's no glamour here, but one false move by anyone can result in death, so tension fills nearly every scene.

A satisfying comic gem.

An artistically arresting yet narratively lame and strangely unfocused cartoon aimed at older children and young adults.

Depressingly one-note, a story that never springs to life.

Although at times the film gets bogged down in psychological murkiness, the relentless pace and brooding charisma of its star overcomes its narrative deficiencies.

Largely devoid of the sex-farce style comic wit to which it aspires, the film is palatable largely because of the charm of lead actress Cheung.

While several of the dance sequences admittedly pack a visual pop, the added dimension does the hokey scripting and some of the acting no favors by amplifying their already noticeable shortcomings.

Nimbly blending comedy and action -- with an affectionate slo-mo nod to John Woo -- McKay does his best work to date here.

Aside from the sweltering Egyptian climate, little heat or excitement is generated by the film or its attractive stars.

Reiner again demonstrates compassion and insight into young people's battles to acquire self-knowledge, but in his new film, too many clearly fictional characters and contrived situations bog down his story.

Decidedly stimulating in its own right, at least in the early going.

Taut, superbly executed and consistently engrossing, The Disappearance of Alice Creed marks an auspicious feature debut for writer-director J Blakeson.

"Dream" brings together so much history, sheer adventure and terrifying moments.

Joel Schumacher's Twelve, the latest expose of self-indulgence among privileged teens, is sleek, giddy fun.

The emotional traumas of young Israeli soldiers drafted into the war with Lebanon in the 1980s are recounted through the eyes of a tank crew in this wrenching concentration of raw emotion directed by Samuel Maoz.

Artistically uneven, emotionally strained but at times sullenly poetic depiction of a sexually confused love pentangle.

Though Carell and Rudd are both saddled with characters that just aren't as interesting as many they've played in the past, the movie benefits from having drawn many gifted comedians to supporting roles.

The film doesn't just fail, it actually gets sillier by the minute.

The film is at its most potent delineating Hefner's role in the American civil rights movement, going beyond the pages of his magazine.

This isn't so much that the story and characters are weak -- though they very much are -- but that animatronics and computer animation so anthropomorphize these critters that they bear more resemblance to cartoons than actual flesh-and-fur animals.

This odd collection of oddballs doesn't quite play out as a satisfying movie.

The results are entertaining -- up to a point.

Filmmaker Leon Gast ("When We Were Kings") paints an entertaining portrait of the still-working 79-year-old photographer.

Ultimately, there's not enough material to sustain a feature-length film, and the sloppy editing, cheesy re-enactments and cheap graphics don't exactly make for compelling viewing.

Salt moves ever forward -- pushing, pushing, pushing its heroine to greater feats every minute. It doesn't stop for martinis, either shaken or stirred, or any other detours. The movie is lean and muscular, looking for action even in situations where a little sleight of hand might have done the trick.

While its cast delivers uniformly breezy performances, most everything else about Ramona's move to the multiplex feels unremarkable.

Convincingly argued and extremely polished, it has theatrical potential for auds whose reservoir of worry about humanity's future hasn't already run dry.

While the film is too convoluted to stir boxoffice excitement, it offers some rewards for sophisticated moviegoers

A heady mix of deadpan humor that boldly uses such topics as pedophilia, race and terrorism to plead the need for forgiveness at a personal and national level.

Its awkward title notwithstanding, Mugabe and the White African offers the sort of narrative drama rarely found in documentaries.

Spoken Word, which centers on the tense reunion between a recovering addict poet and his dying father, features more cliches than it can comfortably handle and is not helped by its grindingly slow pacing.

A thoroughly engaging film about an inimitable New York painter.

In a summer of remakes, reboots and sequels comes Inception, easily the most original movie idea in ages.

By keeping his (Daly) focus on the two remarkable youngsters without an ounce of sentimentality he succeeds in making something true and satisfying.

One is hard-pressed to imagine who the audience might be for this actually quite mesmerizing film. Its violence is way too intense for the art film crowd, and its glacial pacing and fascination with brooding on nothing will surely alienate those who've come for the blood and guts.

"Apprentice" lurches from one been-there-done-that sequence to another.

This love letter to gay-marriage supporters is respectably entertaining filmmaking, it's just not exceptional.

Very much bearing the creative imprint of Robert Rodriguez, but directed by Nimrod Antal, the new edition, in its best moments, is an unabashed B-movie that plays like a jacked-up "Twilight Zone" with award-winning actors delivering the pulp-infused dialogue.

Despicable doesn't measure up to Pixar at its best. Nonetheless, it's funny, clever and warmly animated with memorable characters.

Noir never has been this dark.

A film that starts out as a gimmick but winds up as a genuinely touching character study, though one does wonder whether that is what the filmmaker initially intended.

Doesn't exactly bring anything new to the genre, it's no less effective than its predecessor in expertly conjuring an air of low-tech-style dread.

What is most interesting is hearing the directors speak of their work in general, rather than any film in particular.

Even during the climax, the film still is struggling to introduce the world of the film and its strange rules.

It took three films, but The Twilight Saga finally nails just the right tone in Eclipse, a film that neatly balances the teenage operatic passions from Stephenie Meyer's novels with the movies' supernatural trappings.

What makes "Ecstasy" essential viewing for any pop-music fan and any student of celebrity pathology is the interview itself. Spector, despite his immodest comparisons of himself to Bach, da Vinci and Galileo, is surprisingly entertaining company, not simply the mad recluse with crazy hair that was his shocking image during the trials.

Thanks to the great Helen Mirren as the wife and Spanish actor Sergio Peris-Mencheta as the boxer, the film does create a convincing portrait of a late-flourishing love that takes everyone by surprise.

Despite the lazily self-satisfied results, his (Sandler) aging fan base likely will come along for the lackadaisical ride.