Like a frumpy version of "Knocked Up" playing out in a sadder, stranger world, Barry Munday offers two icky humans and hopes that, by the tale's end, we'll be happy they're procreating.

A clever DIY comedy that could be this year's "Humpday" for art house audiences in search of characters they recognize from their own lives.

Hatchet II earns bragging rights with buckets of giddily over-the-top blood 'n' guts in sequences that are as gratuitous as they are amusingly ridiculous.

Scott Thomas is an accomplished actress who can do passion as well as she can do light comedy. But she never quite convinces as a woman prepared to endure every humiliation to pursue her dream of a new life.

Speed-Dating seems designed to exploit the black indie theatrical circuit but hardly merits even a DVD release.

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.