An incredibly powerful story of renewal, commitment and the resiliency of the human spirit, this is a movie that should attract a large theatrical audience, and no one will go home disappointed.

The dramatic story is related here in a somewhat diffuse and scattershot fashion that reduces some of its impact. But there is no denying its emotional resonance.

The movie is too parochial for a wide audience. The French judicial system is totally alien to Americans, for instance, plus the film is a talkathon.

The film is both too short and too long at two hours-plus. Not enough time is spent with the teens and far too much with their teacher.

This implausible plot full of holes does pave the way for a series of Cedric the Entertainer skits and physical gags. None of these is very funny. A few are painfully unfunny. In either case, the movie comes to a standstill. It's a pity no one thought to screen old Bob Hope movies to see how to integrate comedy into genre filmmaking.

The fairly routine plot is made somewhat more interesting by the infusion of issues regarding morality and faith, but ultimately Three, for all its philosophizing, is little more than a standard serial-killer movie with pretensions.

The performers are all good with Baquero poised and beautiful as Ofelia and Verdu vital and spirited as the rebellious Mercedes. Lopez gives an extraordinary performance as the bestial captain, an irredeemable villain to rank with Ralph Fiennes' Nazi in "Schindler's List."

Long regarded as unfilmable, Patrick Suskind's 1985 novel "Perfume" has finally reached the screen in a blockbuster production that succeeds reasonably well in achieving what many said was beyond the scope of cinema: conveying the world of scent and smell.

The problem confronting writer Richard Maltby Jr. and director Chris Noonan is that Potter lived a fairly uneventful life once you remove her success as an author.

By the movie's end, writer-director Karen Moncrieff's The Dead Girl delivers considerable emotional impact. But that doesn't mean you've enjoyed the journey.

Director George Hickenlooper captures the energy and ultra-irony of Warhol's scene, but his attempts to give the film a conventional biopic arc end up wallowing in dime-store psychology.

The result isn't an unpalatable pudding but rather a fair-to-middling children's film that is half CG-animation and half live-action.

Perhaps a greater passage of time was needed to provide a more effective historical perspective, but "Tiger" has a bigger problem with a dramatic structure that sags conspicuously in the middle, never to completely correct itself.

Eyre does a fine job overseeing performances by a terrific cast that rings true until female hysteria takes over the final act. But in tone and theme, the film has all the hallmarks of playwright-screenwriter Marber's stark, uncompromising misanthropy, if not misogyny.

Owen carries the film more in the tradition of a Jimmy Stewart or Henry Fonda than a Clint Eastwood or Harrison Ford. He has to wear flip-flops for part of the time without losing his dignity, and he never reaches for a weapon or guns anyone down. Cuaron and Owen may have created the first believable 21st-century movie hero.

There are a couple clever touches here and there, including one sequence in which the end of a candy cane has been carefully licked into a highly lethal weapon, but for the most part the accompanying histrionics feel more regressive than retro.

While a bit unwieldy at nearly three hours and at times slow going, the film is absolutely fascinating for anyone who shares De Niro's passions.

Director Levy struggles to find a uniform pitch that would agreeably blend together the gags, the visual effects and the obligatory heart moments. In its absence, there's a stop-and-start hollowness that confuses noise and chaos for comic energy.

What should have been an inspirational story about fortitude and courage in the face of mind-numbing tragedy becomes a compendium of sports cliches.

Now Eastwood turns on a dime and tackles not just his first war movie but two war movies of considerable scope and complexity. If he doesn't nail everything perfectly, he nevertheless has created a vivid memorial to the courage on both sides of this battle and created an awareness in the public consciousness at a most opportune moment about how war feels to those lost in its fog.

The film is unusual in that it is a co-production with the Chinese. Whatever difficulties this imposed on the Western filmmakers, the reward is a period film that feel authentic to its time and place.

Defies all expectations with a low-key, technically stripped-down production that really does come close to capturing the heart and soul of the original.

The film doesn't really manage to sustain attention through its brief running time. But it is heartening to see that the filmmaker, now in his mid-80s, is as passionately engaged as ever.

While not as balanced or fully satisfying as it should be, Matthew Barney: No Restraint will fit naturally as a pairing for future theatrical and DVD exposures of Barney's controversial works.

If there is a disappointment, it is this: The anticipation may have exceeded the realization. It's a damn good commercial movie, but it is not the film that will revive the musical or win over the world.

Blanchett gets everything right -- the accent, her German dialogue, the weary sexuality (deliberately reminiscent of Marlene Dietrich) and the amorality her character has embraced.

The endearingly enduring 1952 E.B. White novel about friendship and salvation, has been turned into a beautifully rendered motion picture that's full of warmth, wit and wonder.

There is little complexity in the social, cultural or political shape of this world. So this film, directed by visual effects master Stefen Fangmeier and written by Peter Buchman in a straightforward manner, cannot escape the rote nature of such a fantasy.