Songwriter Jack Johnson's collection of laid-back, sunshine pop tunes unobtrusively support the sweet and surprisingly touching story line, rather than the other way around.

The downtime between deaths has never been duller, and the Rube Goldberg-type death scenes are so poorly staged that it's difficult to figure out what's about to happen and to whom.

The charismatic Rajskub, who played a prickly computer geek on TV's "24," has nothing to do as Jack's loyal secretary.

Sacre bleu! Bumbling French police inspector Jacques Clouseau is back, and he's never been less funny.

The film delivers lots of high-pitched hysteria but never manages to make its spoiled protagonists interesting.

A bracing cover of Ian Tyson's "Four Strong Winds," performed by no fewer than seven acoustic guitars, rounds out the set, but be sure to stick around for the credits.

It's a pleasure to see the articulate, disciplined Telfair succeed where so many other young men have failed, but ultimately his path to success is so smoothly upbeat that there isn't much urgency to it.

Amazingly, not all of the witty and wise barbs are Wilde's, and any confusion between the old and the new is probably the highest compliment one could possibly pay to screenwriter Howard Himelstein's tart screenplay.

Rather than remake the entire original movie, Simon West and screenwriter Jake Wade Wall have taken only that now-classic first act and padded it out into a dull, filler-filled feature that's remarkably void of any new ideas.

First-time feature director Sanaa Hamri's virtually perfect romantic comedy is a marvelous mix of brains and heart that confronts serious questions about race and dating with sensitivity, humor and enormous sex appeal.

Repetitive and uninspired, it panders to the lowest expectations of horror buffs and squanders the efforts of a competent cast.

Harkening back to a time when race relations in New York City were even worse than they seem today.

Ambling but never less than endearing.

The goofy use of animated, Flubber-like blobs aping Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" video (by way of illustrating the irresistibility of desire itself) makes it hard to take the science seriously, which is the BLEEP problem in a nutshell.

Hits the ground running and never backs off until an ending that is disappointingly diffuse. (Review of Original Release)

The film's flippant style ultimately undermines its material - Rosen's decision not to immediately identify interviewees is especially irritating - and, ironically, makes the American art scene of the '60s appear as shallow and trendy as its detractors always claimed it was.

Ultimately, Bubble is less important as a film than as an experiment in simultaneous cross-platform film distribution.

It's really just "Rocky" in gleaming dress whites.

Lawrence is a comedian with talent who rarely uses it for anything worthwhile, and here he makes a halfhearted, paycheck-collecting effort that's actually in perfect keeping with the rest of the movie's tired, recycled tone.

This quirky, uncommonly intelligent adaptation is a strange delight.

Taut, cynical thriller.

Where "Brockback" leaves its lovers where gay love stories have left them for centuries - isolated, ostracized and miserable - this small comedy finds a far more liberated alternative for everyone involved. In its own modest way, it's the far more radical film.

Beautifully played by Valette and Zylberstein, and directed with amazing grace by Albou, this touching film offers a respectful, fascinating look at a community that's ignored as often as it's misunderstood.

The film's conceits grow thin and von Trier's mocking, hectoring tone tiresome.

Rather than adapt the novel per se, Winterbottom has adapted Sterne's hilarious attempts to make the mess of life fit the neat contours of the novel by making a movie about an attempt to make Sterne's chaotic and confusing novel fit the contours of a film.

However deep the divide currently separating the Middle East from the West appears to be, there's at least one thing we can all agree on: Albert Brooks isn't all that funny anymore.

It's a deeply provocative piece of filmmaking.

This ersatz jungle adventure is really a thinly disguised Sunday School lesson in faith, charity and the savagery of life without Christ.

True to its serial roots, this equally silly but undeniably entertaining sequel to "Underworld" (2003) picks up right where its high-grossing predecessor left off and offers more of the same.

Embry and first-time actress Sparks have charming chemistry, but Christopher's slight screenplay wears out its welcome long before the film - which runs a scant 80 minutes - is over.

Though the film verges on hagiography, Angio unearthed a treasure trove of fascinating clips, from the bored-looking writer-director leafing through his program at the 1971 Tony Awards.

While the subject is potentially fascinating, Gosling's unfocused, sluggish film is a case study in missed opportunities.

Lucas rarely breaks his glower to express anything other than tough determination. It's an attitude that's clearly modeled on that of storied Nicks' coach Pat Riley, who, it so happens, played for Kentucky that now legendary final game.

There are a number of excruciating moments that are almost too silly to mention.

Director Kevin Reynolds isn't so much inspired as determined to tell it with period accuracy, without bothering to be historically accurate.

Among those who are on hand to offer their own feelings about the man known as Peter Berlin and his art are fellow porn legend Jack Wrangler, groundbreaking gay writer Armistead Maupin, pornographer Wakefield Poole and director John Waters, who remembers Peter from his days in San Francisco, and still doesn't quite get what he's all about.

Moreau gives a beautifully sensitive performance as a woman who finds herself at a literal and figurative crossroads, a performance for which she was quite justly rewarded the Cesar Award in 2005.

Overall, it's like watching a home movie of a charming relative.

Westby's sympathy for the Scottys of the world is evident, but like them he doesn't always know how to put his best face forward.

Firm dates and more detailed historical background would have better served the filmmakers' purpose than their "chronological narrative relay race," which muddles an already complex situation.

This exceptional film features some of the most beautiful cinematography ever seen on film, in service of some of the most horrible images imaginable.

It's a back-to-basics, gore-and-gristle look at the no-frills nastiness of 1970s films, in which monsters, mutants and ghosts can't hold a candle to the sheer, unadulterated evil that lurks in the hearts of men.

Lacking so much as a shred of wit and crammed with more product placements than jokes, this unendurable stoner comedy clearly disproves the movie-formula wisdom that two guys, one Xbox and a 2-foot-long bong add up to something funny.

If you know there's so such place as Avenue E in the East Village, or if you've ever taken a bath in your kitchen, this one's for you.

Why do moviegoers and gamers keep going to see video-game-based movies when neither group is ever happy with the results?

Luis Orjuela's sweet, slight comedy is about a middle-class Colombian family and the huge, cherry-red Chevrolet Bel-Air convertible that conveys them through several years worth of life's little dramas.

The mixture of action, drama and romance isn’t as potent, and Kaige’s reliance on subpar special effects hurts the movie. Wu xia fans will still find things to like, but the uninitiated will probably find this slow going.

This thin chronicle of bad behavior among the rich and self-obsessed is above all painfully derivative, borrowing wholesale from Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" and echoes Allen's own "Crimes and Misdemeanors."

Told mostly through haunting, often chilling visual fragments, this handsomely mounted and unusually gripping account amounts to an important exercise in biography: It faithfully restores Spielrein to her rightful place as a crucial contributor to the fields of child psychology and psychoanalysis.

Easily one of the most brutally realistic horror movies since the original "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (1974).

The feisty supporting cast is forced to carry the show, and fortunately, they're more than up to it, notably Olin, Platt and Jeremy Irons.

Not much to laugh about -- or shout about for that matter.

First written in the early '80s, Terrence Malick's fourth film in three decades is a trancelike take on the relationship of Native American princess Matoaka - better known by the nickname Pocahontas and English adventurer John Smith.

Clad in dull khakis and a polo shirt, the always reliable Kinnear is his (Brosnon's) perfect foil, while Davis' neat turn as a suburban wife with a penchant for guns and the men who use them turns what might have been a cliched supporting role into something worth watching.

The thorny heart of Steven Spielberg's sober, fact-based political thriller about Israeli retaliation for the murder of 11 Olympic athletes by Palestinian terrorists is the knowledge that vengeance is a self-perpetuating murder machine that drags successive generations into a mire of tit-for-tat bloodshed.

Anyone looking for the comfort in a tense thriller ending in a satisfying restoration of order and psychological security will be bitterly disappointed, but Haneke isn't in the business of encouraging comforting illusions.

It's the supporting characters' combination of smarts and sass, not to mention an honest and positive depiction of the mentally challenged, that turns this potentially crude and heartless comedy into something that the Special Olympics actually endorses.

The film is surprisingly satisfying and meaningful.

Ironically, one of the film's best-developed characters is a mouse: The four-legged "Chizzler" actually has a legitimate story arc with a genuine payoff.

Unfortunately, the remake is as toothless as the original and gets bogged down in the humiliations of the Harpers' down-slipping life.

Ivory's last minute decision to render his hero sightless may make certain symbolic sense, but creates an even greater distance between Jackson and the woman he must inevitably come to love; their dull self-restraint makes "The Remains of the Day" look like soft-core porn.

Indie director Bezucha has held on to just enough individuality to breathe a little life into the cliches.

Jones handles his fellow actors well, drawing a hard, anguished performance from Pepper and allowing January Jones (no relation) to bring a touching vulnerability to Mike's bored, vapid, baby-doll wife.

Xiao's bittersweet film is superficially a swoony love letter to the cinema. But her valentine has a hidden sting, rooted in some hard truths about movie mania.

The film falls short even as a record of Broderick and Lane's crowd-pleasing rapport: Both have done the show so many times that every scrap of life is gone.

An enjoyably ironic rethink of a beloved fairy tale.

The product of this ingenuity is a slight spin on an obscure motion-picture artifact, but it's surprisingly artfully done.

But overall, Jackson goes for the magic by sidestepping every error of judgment and failure of imagination that brought the ponderous 1976 remake thudding to Earth before Kong ever did. He delivers three solid hours of breathless, enchanting entertainment.

Through what sounds like a project of unpromisingly limited scope, Lee manages to touch on a surprisingly wide range of subjects, from cultural identity, familial expectations, community responsibility and, above all, self-definition.

The soundtrack includes great songs by Andre Williams and Shirley Ellis, and music by local R'n'B legend Ernie K-Doe and electronic organ freakazoid Quintron, who both appear in the film.

Simultaneously gorgeous and forgettable, sentimental and prurient.

While Gyllenhaal is a competent actor, Ledger - surprisingly enough - is becoming a great one, and the levels of intensity they bring to their roles render this romantically star-crossed relationship emotionally lopsided.

Say what you will about feel-good films anchored by feisty old broads, the English have a knack with them and Stephen Frears' fact-based tale of a formidable, aristocratic widow who makes it her mission to put naked girls on the London stage is delightful.

The extensive CGI work is well used and the children are exceptionally well cast, especially the girls.

Shot on digital video as murky as Masuoka's imagination, its creeping sense of dank dread is as slow to build as it is hard to shake.

The film's heart is the concert, whose highlights include "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?," "Wimoweh," "Guantanamera" and the crowd-pleasing "Have You Been to Jail for Justice?"

It's intriguing stuff, but Curtis overplays his hand when he underplays the existence of any real threat (Madrid? London? Amman?), proposes that Al Qaeda is a fiction and risks undermining the credibility of an otherwise compelling argument.

Mendez directs with remarkable assurance, using B&W footage to suggest the monochromatic clarity Santiago craves, as well as color to depict the riotous reality that threatens to overwhelm him.

Rarely do movies portray the elderly with such admiration and respect.

This live-action cartoon tries to walk the line between pleasing the faithful and appealing to a broad-based action audience. It fails on both fronts: It's too lifeless and watered-down to stand on its own high heels, but commits the cardinal sin of messing with the original.

A flawed but nevertheless endearing father-son road trip with a distinctive twist.

While snowboarding enthusiasts will eat up every minute of its two-hour running time, it's thin stuff for the unconverted.

No matter how you parse it, the film is a bizarre muddle.

Lepage maintains a leisurely pace and lets the narrative wander, but ultimately lands on the right side of the line between contemplative noodling and aimless navel-gazing, ending with an image that's simultaneously melancholy and playful.

Warmly funny and very moving.

A quietly harrowing chronicle of addiction and fragile recovery anchored by Vera Farmiga's intense performance.

Directed with charming restraint by the acclaimed American producer Dan Ireland, the film is a quiet triumph for Dame Joan.

How about something a little nasty for the holidays?

That the 27-year-old Usher isn't much of an actor is no surprise, but he's strikingly uncharismatic for someone who's been in the spotlight since he was six.

Ironically, Faris' Samantha is the most convincing personality in the mix: She's a grotesque caricature of Courtney Love by way of Nancy Spungen, a vulgar, selfish monster of unbridled id, but you always know where she's coming from.

While most of the show's scenes work well cinematically, some are laughably miscalculated. Rock-video aesthetics and overamplification swamp "Glory" and "What You Own" while also robbing other sequences of their depth.

Rip Torn, Linda Hunt and Jerry O'Connell mark time in minor supporting roles.

Aside from the overbearing soundtrack, the film is mercifully unsentimental and Ami himself can be quite droll.

Johnny Depp's coruscating, rigorously uningratiating performance as debauched, self-destructive 17th-century aristocrat John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, is the glue that doesn't quite hold together first-time director Laurence Dunmore's adaptation of Stephen Jeffreys' 1994 play.

We can only hope that the time frame is meant to be sometime before 9/11, and not after. Either way, it's a troubling vision of how terrorism and "martyrdom" occur on both sides of this ghostly war, and is both perpetrated and facilitated by the very forces enlisted to stop it.

Inventive visuals and funny bits abound, but the film's gritty look and unsentimental characterizations - Harry, Hermione and Ron are far from golden teens - ominously foreshadow the truly wicked shape of things to come.

Conventional to the core but gets a blast of pure, hard-driving energy from Joaquin Phoenix's and Reese Witherspoon's vividly realized performances.

Black comedy requires perfect pitch: Pedro Almodovar has it and cowriters/directors Michalis Reppas and Thanasis Papathanasiou don't, at least by the evidence of this film.