It's a frantic piece of filmmaking that invests nothing in the characters and moves much too fast for its own good. But things do pick up a bit for the final third, when a story line finally arrives.

Thanks to Martin and Hunt, who both have a seemingly casual flair for mining laughs from even the most generic lines of dialogue, Cheaper by the Dozen works better than it might have in less capable hands, but even they're challenged by some of the picture's forced mood swings.

Determined to be faithful to the strong, often shocking language and in-your-face drama in Marber's mannered writing, Nichols and his actors find no way to lift Closer into a realm that enlightens.

An awkward blend of live action and animation.

The film works best as a kind of mindless, action-packed B-movie. But on the A-level at which recent science fiction/fantasy films operate -- meaning the "Spider-Man," "Harry Potter" and "Terminator" series -- this movie falls woefully short.

The film suffers from uneven acting, an over-reliance on production values and an uncertainty over how dangerous the children's adventures should be.

A protracted and uninvolving affair in which men battle over issues that audiences may struggle to find compelling, and no central figure emerges to take command of the film.

A one-note, lightweight, condescending comedy about the rubes of Idaho.

Feels jammed into a sitcom-shaped bid for laughs.

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

Laziness permeates the film from the inexplicable escapes to the neglected romance.

Never achieves the propulsive traction and outrageous/endearing balance that made "The Hangover" such a smash this time last year.

Good-looking but not very effective adaptation of the seedy classic by "Grifters" author Jim Thompson.

Reveals a definite been-there, done-that feeling.

What could have been a biting black comedy taking product placement to the logical extreme instead is so obviously predictable that even a savvy cast led by David Duchovny and Demi Moore can't sell it.

The film never is boring, but it's never engaging, either, because its heroes hit every target in sight, while the villains, despite holstering much greater weaponry, never hit anybody. So forget about suspense.

A scattershot exercise whose points of interest are surrounded by too much that is trivial. Still, the film earns points for its examination of politics and the political process.

A worthy title for cable nets scheduling hard-hitting documentary fare

First conceived as a documentary, this debut feature from Geoffrey Enthoven betrays its origins via its naturalistic, raw style and occasionally suffers from aimlessness and poor pacing.

With Made-Up, the sisters Adams and Shalhoub (who is married to Brooke) have taken a playfully irreverent approach to middle-age rites of passage that comes with many opportunities for the performers to self-consciously "act."

Oddly bereft of scares or tension, the film is mainly notable for its sustained atmosphere of weirdness.

Unfortunately, the back story behind FireDancer is ultimately more interesting than the finished product, a thematically ambitious but rough-hewn combination of love story and examination of cultural dislocation.

Despite the melodramatic plot twists, there's little emotional resonance to the proceedings, and the film's attempts to link them in metaphysical fashion prove overly ambitious and pretentious.

Ultimately, the sex scenes seem of far more interest to the filmmakers than the narrative or characterizations, which are rendered in frustratingly vague and often deliberately confusing fashion.

Another effective civics lesson that, unfortunately, will probably never be seen by the people whose minds it seeks to change.

Mildly engaging but never entirely convincing.

Wavers between would-be satire and romantic drama, inhabiting neither mode convincingly.

Things are too predictable. Perhaps the viewpoint is to blame.