For all the personal ties to the material, the film too often reaches for broad-strokes inspiration in a way that feels generic.

Despite the inherent, shocking nature of the material, Dan Klores' narrowly focused, poorly paced documentary lacks a narrative thrust that could have made for a more compelling film.

An improvement of sorts over the lifeless 2005 edition.

The culture-clash procedural, which brings the small-town teen to big bad Hollywood, feels more perfunctory than inspired.

Carell is getting quite good as these everyman characters but lacks the audacity of, say, a Carrey or a Robin Williams. He is making comedy out of dullness.

What a cast but what a disappointment.

More accessible than some of the filmmaker's more extreme work.

The film feels miscast. Neither Zeta-Jones nor Eckhart look the least bit comfortable in a restaurant kitchen. More troubling, they look downright uncomfortable with each other.

Finally, a postfeminist multicultural musical extravaganza for 8-year-old girls. Is Bratz not the most totally stylin' movie ever? Grownups won't think so, but for their daughters who share a "passion for fashion" with the dolls that are giving Barbie a run for her money, it will be the event of the season.

The ending underscores the old cliche about the banality of evil but getting there is meant to be the whole fun. For some people at least.

A comedy-drama with alarming similarities to a relic from 1976, "Norman, Is That You?" In that film, Redd Foxx and Pearl Bailey were parents shocked to discover that their son was gay and living with a white lover. That's basically the same gimmick in this new film from writer-director Maurice Jamal.

In its third time out of the gate, Rush Hour 3, reuniting Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan, hits the ground stalling.

The comedy has several inspired moments and a genuine flair for the satiric, but overall the film leaves you cold.

Cain has crafted a modest picture, filmed in Canada, that too often feels like a very elaborate episode of "Gunsmoke."

Bears more than a slight connection to the landmark of the genre, 1974's "Death Wish," starring Charles Bronson. It is based on novelist Brian Garfield's sequel to his original book, though any resemblance is tenuous at best.

The movie doesn't have much visual style or atmosphere, but it does have a kinder, gentler spirit than many gross-out comedies, and that makes it a likable time killer.

Julie Taymor's visual gifts are very much in evidence in Across the Universe, an ambitious, only partly successful attempt to reinvigorate the musical genre.

As Mr. Woodcock demonstrates, a great premise can generate a lot of goodwill and almost overcome an uneven script. So too can expert performances.

Cute and cartoonish rule the day, and teens and tweens will be the film's chief audience.

This fascinating relationship gets smothered in pointlessly long takes, repetitive scenes, grim Western landscapes and mumbled, heavily accented dialogue.

Ang Lee's lugubrious spy epic Lust, Caution brings to mind what soldiers say about war: that it's long periods of boredom relieved by moments of extremely heightened excitement.

No one will mistake director Alejandro Chomski's Feel the Noise for great drama. But there's an undeniable sweetness to the characters, the performers are highly appealing, and the music sizzles.

There is a fine idea for a romantic comedy in Jake Paltrow's The Good Night but the writer-director, in his debut feature, never develops it much beyond the idea stage.

The film plods along without a lot of excitement or inspiration.

Ultimately, the film, for all its evident verisimilitude, never really demonstrates a compelling reason for being.

Rendition tackles the concern in a heavy-handed thriller with simplistic characters and manipulative story lines.

An unstable mix of a tearjerker, junkie-recovery story and odd-couple pairing. The film marks the American debut of Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier, whose European films show a strong affinity for stories of human frailties and of families unraveling.

Somewhat original and amusing. But only somewhat.