Atmosphere and acting can't save a script filled with easy-target irony ("Who ever heard of gettin' rich from workin' with computers?") and a plot that telegraphs every left turn miles in advance.

The laughs are purely surface; the film's women's-lib pretensions seem grafted on as if to lend significance to a story that would benefit from a lighter, less cerebral touch. Still, it's hard to resist La Deneuve's charms.

Only Wilson acquits himself, finding a few insightful layers in his black-sheep stereotype and working up a sweet chemistry with Taraji P. Henson as his sassily devoted lady-friend.

A perfectly boring movie from Julian Schnabel - is it possible?

Lovingly designed, but dramatically inert.

Even as it stands as a cinematic monument to mass suffering, Korkoro can't help but swing, strum and celebrate life for as long as it lasts.

The movie's true brilliance comes from its portrayal of how the world curls around you in the grip of heartache-every song on the radio, every face you see, every story you're told reflecting only what you've lost.

Illegal has caused a stir in Belgium, and the sincerity of the movie can't be denied. But there's little emotion to hold on to, apart from a mother's impotent concern about her wayward teenage son (Gontcharov), still on the outside.

Bal's familiarity doesn't breed contempt. It does make you wish, however, for something above and beyond the usual high-art-cinema catnip.

Thus comes My Perestroika's most sophisticated idea: Day-to-day family struggles have a way of trumping even the most profound political change. Don't miss this.

The historical tragedy that's dramatized is heartrending; the movie itself is merely one cliché piled atop another.

No matter how predictable his arc is, writer-director Thomas McCarthy (The Station Agent) never loses sight of the difficulties of cashflow and making one's weekly nut. You'll want to give his movie-and his secret weapon, the lovably neurotic Bobby Cannavale, as a recent divorcé hoping to co-coach the team-a pass for sweetness.

The title character himself is also an unimpressive digital creation-Rogen might as well be performing his stoner-from-another-world shtick during a wee-hours movieoke session.

A moving meditation on history, knowledge and mortality.

These kinds of disease-fueled dramas already tend to be soap-operatic, but Kohlberg isn't taking any chances; by the time father and son end up at a Dead show in matching tie-dyed outfits, the director has aggressively, insistently overplayed audience heartstrings like Jerry Garcia in a long-winded solo.

Sure, the footwork is flawless in this 3-D rendering of Michael Flatley's high-kicking show; it's the filmmaking that's dull.

In theory, there's nothing wrong when a movie reminds you of TV. (That's where the fun is, anyway.) But when a movie resembles a long-lost, corduroy-clad episode of "The Rockford Files," that's a problem.

All of this touching and feeling makes I Am a so-awful-it's-mesmerizing mash-up of Hollywood entitlement and earnest goodwill. There's no questioning Shadyac's googly-eyed sincerity, but the film has all the depth of a late-night dorm-room exchange.

More earnest than agile, the whole thing smacks of heavy-handed authorial jiggering-never mind that it's based on a true story.

Queens-born horror specialist Stevan Mena has mastered the slow camera creep and the unusually artful vista-he even composes his own orchestral scores, good ones. But he needs to give up screenwriting, pronto. Put down the laptop, Stevan.

Anyone curious about the man behind the lens may find this doc, like its subject, frustratingly opaque and out of reach. Those interested in witnessing a true NYC eccentric document everyday-people city life one outfit at a time, however, will feel like this has been tailor-made.

A fresh twist on a familiar fog-of-war story.

Cracks simply doesn't make the grade.

As we work our way back to that cliff-hanger of an opening, it becomes clear that the movie is no acid critique, but a hollow endorsement of high living. Guess every generation gets its "Boiler Room."

The highlight, though, is Julie Christie as Grandma, whose GILFy gorgeousness (especially in the "better to eat you with" scene) is the only thing in this overblown campfest with real teeth.

Fess up: You want to see Los Angeles get blowed up real good, and it's a measure of this movie's incompetence that it can't even deliver that vicarious thrill properly.

Only Falco gets beyond being merely a symbol for suburban angst.

Redemptively, the cast goes a long way: Jean Desailly is perfect as a jowly literary celeb deep in midlife crisis, while the aloof Françoise Dorléac is magnetic as his airline stewardess and all-too-scrutable love object.