For all its staleness, the melodramatic main story does contain enough good acting and resonant scenes.

It's like being trapped for an hour-and-a-half in a pound full of yappy puppies.

The secrets revealed here are not quite as shocking as the hints of child molestation captured in "Friedmans." Still, this is an equally intriguing and unsettling look at the turmoil hidden behind the white picket fences of suburbia.

The period sets, costumes and cinematography all superbly recreate the brutal era, grand illusions and everyday suffering of the Poles under both the Nazis and the Soviets.

Powerful, stripped to its very essence and featuring a spectacular cast (of mostly non-professionals), Matteo Garrone's sixth feature film Gomorra goes beyond Tarrantino's gratuitous violence and even Scorsese's Hollywood sensibility in depicting the everyday reality of organized crime's foot soldiers.

Phoenix plays the romantic lead with great intelligence and enormous charm, making his character's conflict utterly believable, and Paltrow positively glows as the radiant shiksa who dazzles him.

It's business as usual at Camp Crystal Lake, with very little in the way of fresh jolts or an innovative visual style that would have really revitalized the hokey franchise.

The resulting cat-and-mouse game -- occupies most of the film's running time, to gradually diminishing results.

This is a marvelous family story, tapping into all sorts of childhood dreams and nightmares involving Mommy, monsters and heroic youngsters. Selick's imaginative sets and puppets are in perfect pitch with Gaiman's fantasy.

All of this results in way too much relationship chatter and not nearly enough comedy, romance or even dysfunctional relationships. We want to laugh -- but at what?

This comedy whodunit generates more laughs than its predecessor, which is to say, two or three.

Despite its high-profile cast and a sizable marketing push from distributor Summit Entertainment, audiences won't require any paranormal powers of their own to realize they've seen this one before.

The end product is surprisingly charmless -- a shrill "Devil Wears Prada"/"Bridget Jones"/"Sex and the City" knockoff that keeps threatening to fall apart at the seams.

Punctuated with bursts of explosive energy, this is a contained, cerebral film.

Given how insultingly fanboys are portrayed, even the fan base could be put off.

This war-horror movie basically plays like "Blair Witch" in Afghanistan.

Might do good business at home and abroad among audiences unconcerned with the finer points of characterization or psychological insight.

The film is still cheesy rather than deliciously scary. It never really generates sustained suspense.

Strictly old hat -- and a poorly assembled hat at that.

The camera explores each nook and cranny of the dilapidated movie-house like an usher who knows his way round blindfolded, and the building, with its richly visual interior structures desperately in need of an overhaul, comes to symbolize poetically the predicament of its inhabitants and their moral ambiguity.

The film might amuse some, especially fans of Alfred Hitchcock, but is likely to annoy almost everyone else.

Thanks to sturdy performances by holdovers Michael Sheen and Bill Nighy as well as tidy, unfussy direction by first-timer Patrick Tatopoulos, the creature designer who is taking the reins from originator Len Wiseman, the third installment in the successful franchise should be to the fan base's lycan.

A formulaic yet clever chiller that offers generous doses of sex and violence aboard a luxury yacht.

Inkheart goes crazy with fairy tale characters popping in and out, all sorts of fantastical creatures materializing and so many rescues one loses count. Yet the movie fails to involve the key constituent: the audience.

It's entertaining nonsense with major league special effects, larger-than-life characters and inventive monsters that draw on the "Aliens" and "Predator" models, being terrifying but also vaguely sympathetic.

Poetically composed, with marvelous lumps of wit and perspective, Of Times and The City is a masterwork.

2 1/2 hours of shouting, gesticulating, pratfalls and groin kicks will leave viewers with an MSG headache.

Doerrie goes beyond the "Lost in Translation" jokes about East-West culture clashes to communicate something meaningful and deep about Japanese art and thought.