The movie belongs to Hugo Weaving and David Wenham, both playing what one newspaper dubs "the lost children of the Empire," men broken by the appalling conditions that met them in their new homeland.

It's a saga whose clichéd corniness would be practically sinful if not for the mighty Gugino, who almost counteracts the material's pap with megawatt charm and steel-tough resolve - exemplified by a low-angled intro shot of the poised, strutting, tight-sweater-sexy actress.

A lesser movie might hammer home the idea that the cult squashes Martha's sense of self. This distinctive and haunting effort implies something much scarier: that there is no self to start with.

Escalation is the main thing Margin Call has going for it, as more substantial actors are trotted out to have their way with Chandor's realistic-sounding boardroom dialogue.

Even with incredible fight footage, however, all we have here is a standard if formless ESPN hagiography, complete with a cheesy cop-show score and little sense of who these guys are outside of the ring.

Elevate works as a sympathetic portrait of cultural adjustment (learning in a nonnative language, sticking to Muslim dietary restrictions), but never adequately addresses the problems of what's essentially a neocolonialist system designed to shape impoverished Africans into first-world profit-makers.

So it's no surprise that what starts out as a beer-soaked cringe comedy about stunted masculinity ends up deep in the woods with noise-loving Japanese tourists and exploding craniums - or that such detours into psychotronic oddity for its own sake can make even a 75-minute running time feel like an eternity.

But take the puppet off his arm and he seems somehow vague and incomplete, like the Wizard of Oz without his curtain.

Spacey is ever the pro, shilling Axle's absurd redemption and countenancing the likes of Johnny Knoxville and John Stamos as if a third Oscar were in the offing. Yet his female costars fare worse, forming an unfortunate collection of dismal, man-dependent stereotypes, from Belle's perma-pouting idealist to Heather Graham's breast-obsessed, sapphic-by-choice ballbuster.

The School of Rock funnyman flies highest; passion, be it for rare birds or the Yardbirds, is a plumage he wears wonderfully.

These filmmakers got halfway there, but Carpenter's genius was about more than just a look.

That the filmmaker at least makes a concerted effort to tweak what in most hands would be an offensively whitewashed dark-continent parable is worth some measure of praise.

She never figures out what, exactly, the deal is regarding our short attention spans, but her ADD-afflicted film definitely provides evidence that they exist.

Dropping on top of the heap is Lucky McKee's barely competent domestic thriller, bound to make you groan more than think.

Spanning four years, To Be Heard has a large enough scope to map its subjects' rocky road to reinvention, concentrating on various bumps along the way.

Trespass is assembly-line product through and through - unabashedly mediocre and instantly forgettable. A Joel Schumacher joint, in other words.

You never feel the burn in The Skin I Live In, certainly not the way you do in an immortal shocker like "Eyes Without a Face." It's almost as if Almodóvar wanted to reach out into a gory genre, but couldn't do so without wearing prissy gloves.

A completely incoherent mess.

Jones may be a charismatic comedian, but no amount of her skilled mugging, Britpop tunes or help from supporting stars (Brooke Shields, Bill Nighy) can transform this derivative ugly duckling into a comic Anglophile swan.

Suffering through flatlining romantic and dramatic interludes isn't any less painful now than it was in '84, but when this musical occasionally kicks off its Sunday shoes, the dynamic memory-lane trip actually approaches - Kevin help us! - something resembling genuine fun.

When it comes to scenes in which characters are asked to say more than two words, however, the filmmaker's a decided amateur; Moretz, in particular, seems hopelessly stranded as the attitudinal wild child.

Other than giving Almodóvar regulars Carmen Maura and Lola Dueñas plum supporting roles, that's the best you can say about Philippe Le Guay's trite-to-intolerable tale on the discreet eye-opening of the bourgeoisie.

It works better as an idyllic travelogue through northern Spain than as a familial drama; despite the real-life relationship between filmmaker and star.

The star and co-director appears hopelessly out of place, trapped in a variety of awkward-fitting uniforms while forced to offer up laughably obvious battlefield advice ("Avoid gunfire!").

The question remains: Exploitative films are a dime a dozen, but how low will two-faced art-film distributor IFC go?

A standout in smaller parts in films like "Kaboom" and "Atonement," this frizzy blond actor has the air of a star-in-training in search of the right opportunity. This isn't it, unfortunately, but Temple does turn what's essentially a magical-hussy role into something more grounded and human.

Gil's alternative history gets one thing bang-on right: If Butch were to live into his senior days, he'd absolutely have to be played by Shepard. Wrinkled, leathery and densely carpeted in a salt-and-pepper beard, the 67-year-old playwright and actor still exudes intellectual mischief and hard-stare sex appeal; his self-styled ruggedness is a perfect match for an infamous gringo living incognito.

More of a formulaic Katherine Heigl joint than a femcentric "High Fidelity," this breezy challenge to post-Cosmopolitan gender politics boasts little in the way of surprises but plenty of offbeat charm from its daffy lead.