We don't learn too many specifics of Smith's brilliant career, and only a die-hard fan will find all of it vitally interesting.

The sequel is something of a disappointment, embroiling its refreshingly level-headed heroines in a series of clichéd romantic dilemmas.

Still passable popcorn fare, even if you'll barely taste it before swallowing.

Hopelessly muddled film cries out for the firm hand of a dyed-in-the-wool cynic like Billy Wilder, who would have put some teeth in its jabs at amoral politicians and blindly ambitious journalists.

Though inspired by Weiland's own childhood, the film's plot sticks close to the underdog's coming-of-age formula and is marred by young Bernie's gratingly self-pitying voice-over.

Painfully undermined by its central characters.

A sprawling, messy, frustrating and impassioned examination of the psychological fallout from America's obsession with a highly artificial and all-but unattainable standard of beauty.

Strikingly authentic, socially conscious crime drama.

The Carter and Spotnitz's credit, such weighty concerns aren't the stuff of most mainstream genre movies. But they're also not sufficiently gripping to transform a middling thriller into something truly provocative or haunting.

The inspired pairing of "Talledega's" Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, two actors smart enough to play dumb and make it work.

The kids are real and their stories enthralling: When it comes to drama, there's nothing quite like high school.

It shifts the focus from Charles and Sebastian's youthful idyll to the stronger, more provocative relationship between Charles and Julia, wherein lies Waugh's concerns with materialism and velvet-gloved dual grip of family and religion.

Jeremy Gosch's documentary about the origins of professional surfing shines a light on four wave riders – three Australians and a South African – who helped transform a counter-culture life style into a billion-dollar industry.

Doesn’t break any new documentary ground, but it does exactly what it sets out to do: Preserve a live event and make it available to a broader audience.

The film runs 95 minutes, and you'll be holding your breath for most of them.

Margaret Brown's documentary is actually an examination of the racial divide in a city that claims there is none.

Director John Crowley and screenwriter Mark O'Rowe's follow-up to their feature film debut "Intermission" may follow an all-too schematic flashback structure, but the film is too brilliantly acted for that to really matter much.

That Ledger stands out in such a powerhouse ensemble is a tribute to his radically unhinged interpretation of a familiar character: The lank hair tinged seaweed green, the darting tongue and faint lisp that call constant attention to the ghastly rictus of his mouth, the nightmarishly smudged make up… taken together, they make previous Jokers feel like, well, jokes.

The direction is slack -- it's Lloyd's first feature film and it shows -- the choreography clumsy and every ten minutes there's yet another gratuitous showstopper shouting in your face and insisting you have a good time.

Kids might find the sight of monkeys -- sorry, apes -- wrestling in outer-space funny, but unless they're unusually sophisticated, much will probably just confuse them.

Features some strikingly intimate footage of Noonan's extended family, but lets Noonan himself drives the show and his colorful tales of villainy that cry out for more context than MacIntyre provides.

It all comes down to Nolot's marvelous performance: His Pierre is sulky, morose, self-centered and curiously likeable, and Nolot leaves you wanting to know a bit more about just where this odd figure might be headed.

Thinly conceived and thoroughly shallow.

Kilmer and Dorff, who was also an executive producer, immerse themselves in difficult roles.

Never an easy one to impress, Reed is clearly in awe of Antony's ethereal voice, and it must now stand as the definitive version of a 40 year old song.

Driver and Renner deliver haunting performances in this story of crime and punishment.

The execution is masterful and even as you see the building blocks of the climax being put into place, it's a delight to watch them fit JUST SO.

The same super-heated visual imagination that made Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" such a darkly thrilling delight is very much in evidence in his sequel to "Hellboy." It's a shame that it's at the service of such a blandly conventional story.

This dumbed-down spin on Jules Verne's classic adventure tale was devised as a kid-friendly roller-coaster ride, and it delivers the goods. Whether anyone over the age of eight wants the goods is another matter altogether.

Aside from some unnecessarily crude stereotypes, Eddie Murphy's least-painful comedy in years has a certain peculiar charm.

Stylish, well acted drama.

It's familiar stuff if you've sampled the vast body of work devoted to LA-dammerung.

The title, by the way, is age-old slang for a soldier's complete combat gear, which for the U.S. soldiers in Iraq -- both real and otherwise -- weighs over 50 pounds.

This handsomely mounted documentary takes the same, indulgent tone that at lot of Thompson's friends and associates seem to have had.

A risky, not entirely successful comedy about mental disability, based on the novel by Sherwood Kiraly.

There isn't enough by way of a story here to keep director Rosser Goodman and writer-star Brent Gorksi earnest but lethargic drama about a romantically stalled Angelino from petering out as well, but some decent performances from the likeable cast may be enough to hold your interest.

Groundlings alumnus Prendergast's dark comedy, drawn from on his own family experiences, is firmly rooted in messy, selfish, often-unappealing human behavior rather than self-referential irony and juvenile goofiness.

A deeply personal coming-of-age story steeped in heady nostalgia and all the creative myopia that too often comes with it.

The result is an inconsistent, incoherent anti-superhero action-adventure comedy.

Canet and Lefevre pruned subplots and fixed the novel's ending -- it's now merely preposterous rather than patently absurd – but it's the cast that makes the genre clichés feel vivid and even fresh.

This dark comedy of addiction, delusion and humor as a weapon marks the feature directing debut of veteran writer Peter Tolan.

It can hardly be called a children's film, but a masterpiece of feature-film animation for all ages.

Slick, stylish and super-violent, but also oddly dull.

Sentimental, formulaic, predictable and shamelessly manipulative, Marcos Carnevale’s tale of late-life love is also genuinely heartbreaking and heartening.

Under the beautifully appointed costumes and to-die-for interiors is Breillat's preoccupation with female sexuality and desire, all centered on a blistering performance from a perfectly cast Asia Argento.

Mukherjee's charm keeps the child-like Geeta from being thoroughly annoying, and the musical numbers are pleasant, if not particularly memorable.

Peter Askin's powerful documentary serves as an important reminder of our First Amendment rights, and a tribute to one man who fought to preserve them in the face of Congressional intimidation.

It's dramatically unsatisfying.

It's a light, silly instantly forgettable comedy peppered with action set-pieces and affectionate nods to its fondly remembered predecessor, including a gracious end-credits dedication to the late Don Adams and Edward Platt.

Adam Sandler can breathe a sigh of relief: Thanks to this crude, bafflingly unfunny comedy from fellow SNL alum Mike Myers, Sandler can rest assured that his "You Don't Mess With The Zohan" won't go down as the worst movie of 2008.

A truly fresh take on the romantic comedy: It's as sad as it is funny, and the boy-girl match so misbegotten you can't help but pray it won't work out in the end. Call it an anti-rom-com, and see it if you can.

It's fun, fast-paced, educational entertainment that's fit for the whole family -- American boys included.

Restrained and decorous to a fault.

M. Night Shyamalan's sixth film mines a rich lode of end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it clichés, but while the set up is spooky, the development is heavy handed and marred by Shyamalan's inability to write natural-sounding dialogue or convincing characters.

The dialogue is minimal but sharp, the pace swift and the action sequences suitably loud and brutal.

A subtle, unsparing portrait of families whose fragile dynamics fray under pressure. Its strength lies in the complexity with which the characters are written.

So it should come as no surprise that what Maddin eventually produced is a film about HIS Winnipeg, a psychological terrain that's no more -- nor less -- "real" than William Carlos William's Paterson or Marcel Proust's Combray.

The story eventually resolves itself a little too neatly, but it never devolves into a freak show or a fable, thanks in large part to Farmiga and Stahl's deft, quirky performances.

A deranged penguin is seen racing toward his certain doom amid the crags of a mountain range. It may not be "Happy Feet," but Herzog has made a penguin movie after all.

Beautifully animated, the celebrity voice performances are terrific, and the action sequences negotiate the fine line between being physically convincing and becoming too intense for the young children.

At a time when the images of Arab-Americans are already largely negative, do we really need more violently temperamental, bomb throwing men in turbans and beards?

A cute, slight tale.

While rich in ethnographic detail, the film ultimately recalls nothing more than pulp fictions like Robert E. Howard’s "Conan the Barbarian," which validate their worship of ubermensch-ian brawn by way of sad tales of childhood victimization.

A crude, artless bogey tale.

Conrad's script surprises at nearly every turn.

Dreams With Sharp Teeth Or, Why is Harlan Ellison so gosh darned angry?

For all her own frustrations, Davenport is honest enough not to gloss over the fact that what Muthana's adventures in the screen trade taught him was to hustle, toady and ingratiate himself to useful people. And she helped.

This scrappy, ultra-low budget comedy, made in 19 days for $70,000 by North Carolina School of the Arts graduates Jody Hill, Danny McBride and Ben Best, comes with its own Cinderella tale: It debuted at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival but failed to find distribution until comedian Will Ferrell and his business partner, Adam McKay, championed it.

Has everything one could ask of a true-crime expose.

It's a mainstreamed, big-screen version of the bowdlerized, endlessly syndicated version of the show, not the raunchy original.

There's nothing more to it than meets the eye, but Bertino understands the mechanics of suspense and knows how to use them.

The film is flat-out gorgeous and contains moments of sheer lunacy.

A drum-tight, extremely grisly thriller. And odd as it may sound given the subject matter, it's also surprisingly funny.

This formulaic adventure pays tribute to George Hogg, a true hero largely forgotten everywhere but China, where a statue of him now stands -- a rare honor for a westerner.

Postal's touches of wit are lost in the flying body parts, gross-out gags, and the full frontal spectacle of Foley's no-longer-private parts.

The trouble with this satirical take US involvement in Iraq, penned by Mark Leyner, John Cusack and Jeremy Pikser, is that the real thing is equally absurd and only marginally less funny.

The overall effect is either exhilarating or exhausting, depending on your emotional investment in the franchise, but credit where credit is due: Steven Spielberg and George Lucas set out to make one for the fans and delivered.

Akin achieves a peaceful balance here –- alongside the death and seemingly senseless tragedy, there’s also a kind of reassuring equilibrium.

If Caspian has a fault, it's that viewers familiar with neither the books nor the first film may have trouble picking up the strands of the story in the early scenes… but in all honesty, how many Lewis neophytes will choose Caspian as their point of entry?

The result is a rich and touching exploration of the vagaries of fortune, literary reputation and, above all, friendship that works on several levels at once. The soundtrack includes songs by Joy Division, New Order and Le Tigre.

An intriguing, if flawed mystery set in the shadowy subterranean world of undocumented Mexican immigrants.

It's hard to say whether the Wachowski brothers' live action take on the Japanese Speed Racer cartoons is more irritating because it looks like a Hot Wheels video game or because the brothers seem to think that there's a powerful family drama humming away beneath the flashing lights and spinning wheels.

Even Stevenson, a singularly accomplished and versatile actress, can't do much with Julia's early scenes, in which she's forced to dither around like a complete idiot.

There's no getting around the fact that Ross's whole cynical premise is based on the lurid male assumption that nubile, college-bound teens have few qualms about selling themselves, a fantasy as deluded as the targets of Ross's barbed arrows.

Although the film revolves around a child, it's not a children's movie: A cruel and bitter undertone runs through the fanciful adventures, and Walker's depression is no mere plot contrivance to be cured by Alexandria's childish enthusiasm.

Though neither subtle nor particularly original, Gens' spin on the meat-movie classic has both nightmarish energy to spare.

Bean fills in some empty spaces with heady thoughts about the nature of power and beauty, but the movie's real appeal lies in the simple but by no means inconsiderable pleasure of watching Tim Robbins take a hammer to a parked car as it wails pointlessly, deep into the night.

A huge hit in France, Michel Hazanavicius' straight-faced spy spoof unleashes a French operative of incomparable incompetence on the volatile Middle East of 1955.

Chalk up another family for Leo Tolstoy and Philip Larkin file: The Paskowitz family is unhappy in its own unique way and mum and dad f**cked them up -- they didn't mean to, but they did.

Even though the screen is often divided into a Mondrian-like grid, each individual box containing its own discreet moving image, McDonald's film is surprisingly fluid and easy to follow.

B-movie stalwart Michael Madsen turns in a no-holds-barred, road-wreck performance in this nihilistic crime thriller, which plays out a variation on the old maxim that there's no honor among thieves -- even if they're cops.

Cameron Diaz is the ideal guy's gal and Ashton Kutcher is, well, a guy. Together, they're a zero.

Sivan's film is well acted, beautifully photographed and oddly reassuring. It comes perilously close to suggesting that the injustices of colonial rule were the product of morally weak and misguided individuals rather than a system that empowered and enriched foreign interests at the expense of locals.

Broomfield's film is didactic, awkwardly acted by the cast of former Marines who are meant to lend the film credibility, and clumsily inflammatory.

A dark delight that combines pop-culture wit and genuine emotional depth.

As unpalatable as stale wedding cake.

The film is really little more than an array of sometimes imaginative images.

A perverse mixed-martial arts film in which talk trumps action.