The 3-D effects come fast and furious, rendered with a technical skill and humor that gives this otherwise strictly formulaic slasher picture whatever entertainment value it possesses.

For a man apparently making his first film, Woolard carries the movie like a pro. Cross your fingers that this is no fluke, for this guy could be a real comer.

Great comics from Jerry Lewis to Peter Sellers have turned pathetic into comedic. But James never seems to able to get beyond pathetic.

Never gets off its high-concept stool long enough to explore what makes weddings so exciting and nerve-racking and treacherous. It flounders instead in juvenilia and bitchiness.

The actors do what they can with the cards they're dealt but can't overcome the nakedness of the dialogue or the characters' actions. Duke does ensure that the production flows smoothly though. And those frequent injections of comedy do wonders.

What finally undoes the struggle to maintain suspense is Goyer's dialogue, which is consistently hokey.

Reygadas has hitched his austere and protracted style to an allegorical tale of subtle strength and depth.

That butting of heads, as performed by actors as strong and soulful as Craig and Schreiber, lends Defiance an emotional charge, even as the film itself struggles dramatically to find its way out of those woods.

Paced deliberately in a way that reinforces the tragedy of evil flourishing when good men do nothing, Good may find boxoffice returns slow to build but the film's aim is true and patient audiences will be well rewarded.

In "Virginia Woolf," George and Martha are locked into a symbiotic, disturbingly needy relationship that absolutely feed off their acidic battles. But for Revolutionary Road's Frank and April Wheeler, you wonder: Why don't they just get a divorce?

The chosen style of animation leads to a distracting choppiness that renders the movements, gestures and facial expressions of the interviewees unconvincing. The other problem is that, memory naturally being something that returns in fits and starts, the film is rarely able to sustain any consistent narrative thrust.

Superbly made and winningly acted by Brad Pitt in his most impressive outing to date.

It is truly a mess.

"Stories" makes a better Christmas movie than those generic comedies manufactured this time of year. The hits-to-misses ratio for its gags is above average, the sentimentality is kept in check and the film plays well to its audience.

Imagine Paddy Chayefsky's "Marty" saddled with more sentimentality and sprinkled with a few more laughs and you pretty much have Last Chance Harvey.

A warm and fuzzy family movie, but you do wish that at least once someone would upstage the dog.

Singer has crafted a fine film. One just wishes for greater details -- and a different ending.

A penchant for suffocating close-ups and an overabundance of scenes that go on far too long mar Abdellatif Kechiche's The Secret of the Grain, an otherwise engaging drama about an immigrant Arab family in France.

The flatly generic results certainly appear at odds with the picture's stirring visual style, which pays homage to the great Flemish artists.

Highly enjoyable romantic comedy.

The film's Italian director does achieve in his second American outing a pleasing blend of Hollywood professional sheen and European sensitivity to character details and nuances.

Carrey's most satisfying live-action effort since "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

Bolstered by a career-best performance from Mickey Rourke and outstanding work by Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood.

A typically intelligent if occasionally overwritten political thriller, boasting a powerhouse cast.

Presented as a straight documentary about an American pop singer who had one U.K. hit in the 1960s as a member of a boy band and has gone missing ever since, but it plays like the slyest of spoofs.

Eastwood has always had the gift for comedy in his acting repertoire, but he indulges in it only rarely. His fans might embrace this return to comedy.

If this earnest, two-part biopic with a total running time of 268 minutes sometimes lacks cinematic flair, the straight-ahead, chronologically-driven film will inform and, to a somewhat lesser extent, excite viewers everywhere.

As a whole, the picture is, frustratingly, always much more about structure than substance.